A Bishop's Call for Mercy Draws Criticism
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde (The Episcopal Church) delivered an exhortation to President Trump at the National Prayer Service calling on him to show mercy to LGBT people and undocumented immigrants.
You can watch +Mariann’s homily here as well as her response to the criticism.
Some of the criticism has been visceral and unhinged, including Joe Rigney, part of Doug Wilson’s New Saint Andrews College, who said on X:
“Women's ordination is a cancer that unleashes untethered empathy in the church (and spills over into society).”
My response was befuddlement: “untethered empathy”? Is that like, “love unleashed” or “kindness without license”?
To which I responded:
“Or ... Christan patriarchy is a disease that hardens our hearts, scoffs at God's mercy, and abandons God's love for the love of godlike power over others.”
I’m an evangelical and orthodox Christian, yet I steadfastly believe in mercy for LGBT people just as I earnestly believe in compassion for immigrants. That’s not a capitulation to progressive theology nor an affirmation of an open border. In any case, I reject the castigation of female ordination on the grounds that it allegedly leads to “untethered empathy” because spiritual gifts do not come in pink and blue and empathy is not a vice.
Some of the criticisms of +Mariann sounded positively cartoonish, like a Star Wars villain declaring, “the jedi's weakness is their compassion.”
Trump himself responded on Truth Social to criticize the “so-called Bishop” as a “Radical Left hard-line Trump hater” and accused her of bringing “her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way.” He labeled her sermon as “nasty in tone,” “boring” and “uninspiring,” even went so far as to demand an apology from her and the Episcopal Church.
What are we to make of this? How can mercy and compassion be regarded as a vice?