Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, Pastor of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, spoke out tonight regarding her reaction to today's surprise visit outside the heavily damaged iconic church by Donald Trump. These are her words.
"We were not informed that he was coming. We were given no warning that the president was making his way across the park to St. John's. I was sitting at home watching the news when I saw the images. Let me say that he held in his hand the most sacred texts of our Jewish and Christian traditions. Texts that call upon us to love God and love neighbor. That proclaims that every human being to be a child of God and exhorts us to live lives of peace and justice. And as you saw, as you displayed prior to doing so, he was preceded by a violent clearing of non-violent protesters to make his way and he was using our church as a backdrop and the Bible as a prop in a way that I find deeply offensive and I felt it was immediately necessary for us to disassociate ourselves from his actions and symbols in front of St. John's Church."
"If he had come to St. John's because he wanted to pray. If he had come to St. John's because he wanted to lament the death of George Floyd and the grief that has been unleashed across this country. If he had come to offer words of solace and healing and resolve to bind the wounds of our nation, that would have been an appropriate use of the sacred symbol of walking across the park to the church, but he did none of those things. He used the church and he used the Bible in some ways as a symbol to demonstrate or to symbolize American military power. St. John's is not my church, it is a house of God, it is a house of God for all people.
The only reason it's said it's 'the president's church' is because from time to time some presidents worship there. They worship God there in communion with other people. That is the purpose of a church. And so, that's simply what I'm here to say. I don't want this night to be remembered for that. Our focus needs to be on our nation's grief and demand for systemic change and justice and an acknowledgement that lives are being taken by the brute force of police and vigilante citizenry and we need to keep our focus there. That's where the pain is coming from. I am a follower of Jesus who was a man of non-violence, I do not believe that violence does anything but beget more violence. But that's the pain, that's where our focus needs to be and that's where we will stand in solidarity for people that are calling for peaceful change in our country."
Incidentally, Trump said nothing about the damage to the structure to Bishop Budde.
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