A few weeks ago, Episcopalian bishop Mariann Budde presented a sermon at the inaugual prayer service in Washington, DC. Her sermon made headlines because it was perceived as arrogant and a slight against the president. The items singled out for attention were these:
“I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,”
“There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives,”
“the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals,” calling them “good neighbors” and “faithful members” of religious communities.
With these statements, she admonished President Trump for his intent to halt diversity programs (DEI) and to deport illegal migrants.
I thought it was rude and confrontational, though presented mildly by a small elderly woman. It did not look like courage or “speaking truth to power”, but lies that Satan himself would have been proud of. The statements aren’t easily falsified but were used to present a false narrative.
There may be members of the LGBTQ community that fear for their lives. Not because Trump’s policies will hurt them, but they believe lies about Trump and those cause them to be fearful. For instance, Budde’s statement in this sermon.
It is hard to know whether “the vast majority” of illegal aliens are criminals or not. An argument can be made either way. Not that it matters. What matters is that significant numbers of hardened criminals are entering the United States as illegal aliens. Budde ignores that as if they are a negligible consequence of life in this world.
Budde’s sermon supported two mainstream narratives:
LGBTQ communities are oppressed and must be protected (given special rights)
Illegal aliens are oppressed and must be protected (given special rights)
Yesterday, I learned that Budde’s church received 53 million dollars from USAID in 2023 to resettle illegal aliens. These aliens, are a significant number of them are from “Preferred Communities” which happen to be LGBTQ. So, this could be seen as the underlying motive for Budde’s sermon.
My takeaway was this, “Holy cow, we have state-sponsored religion in America.”
Whether a quid pro quo exists or not, this qualifies as a state-sponsored religion. The reason is that the government was the source of the money and the church accepted it. To tie the two even closer, the church accepted the money to carry out activities consistent with the governments wishes, effectively making them government contractors, if not employees.
With that as a backdrop, Budde’s Trump-chiding moment looks less like a genuine reaction to policies she disagrees with, and more like a paid advertisement from the previous administration.
The Episcopal ministries aren’t the only church or church-related group that received money from USAID. Catholic Relief Services received $4.6 billion dollars. There is no way a church can be independent of the state when they receive sums of that size. This explains why we see so many rainbow flags outside of churches, and why they show up in documentaries about human trafficking along the southern border.
Perversely, our government has corrupted our churches by making them into government proxies for actions they can’t take themselves. This is similar to how the government used social media to censor Americans because they couldn’t legally do it themselves. Instead, they made someone else the bagman. It was Mark Zuckerberg for censorship at Facebook, and Catholic Charities for human trafficking.
In light of this, it is rich how atheist globalist like to shout “Church and state!” They do it to emphasize that the church and out government must be separate. However, they are not talking about churches taking government money to do things that their own faith tells them not to, but about government officials who might be Christian.
That is, when an official is Christian, like President Trump, they don’t want him interfering with their state-sponsored version of Christianity with a reminder of what real Christianity looks like.
China has a state-sponsored version of Christianity also. It is carefully regulated by the government to ensure no disagreements with the official narrative. However, the people of China know it is state-sponsored. They know it is full of lies crafted by their government. Here in America, we can see the drift toward progressively more liberal sermons, but it is not easy to see how thoroughly compromised our places of worship are.
President Trump was shot in the ear on a Saturday last July. I went to church the following day, expecting an extended prayer for Trump, his family, and aides. Instead, the incident wasn’t mentioned at all. On many prior occasions, an elder or deacon would come up and say a prayer for “our nation’s leaders.” The prayer was that they would be guided by God’s wisdom to do the right thing, end war, and so on. The “end war” portion of the prayer usually sounded suspiciously like a prayer that Russia lose the war in Ukraine rather than a simple cessation of hostilities, but I let that pass. I stopped attending after they slighted Trump, and stopped my monthly donation.
Churches are important to the moral stability of our nation. To the extent they are infected by government-sponsored progressive agenda, they must be purified of those contagions.
“Separation of church and state” does not mean that pastors cannot mention politics. If they want to, they can, even if it supports one candidate over another. The hope is that when this happens, it does so in accordance with the standard set by their faith and is done independent of the government’s interest or involvement. Separation of church and state is meant to prevent exactly what we see now: government control or influence over churches.
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