Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde

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Want to trigger Episcopalians? Ask an evangelical superstar to preach at National Cathedral

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Want to trigger Episcopalians? Ask an evangelical superstar to preach at National Cathedral

Halfway between Norway and the North Pole, scientists have buried a million seeds and crop samples under a mountain in the Svalbard archipelago -- in case an environmental doomsday comes to pass.

That strategy rings true during "this crazy, chaotic season" when so many are anxious about the coronavirus pandemic, global warming, lost jobs, surging debts and the bitter state of public life, said evangelical megachurch leader Max Lucado, in a recent sermon streamed online by the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

“Most of us can't hide out in a bunker, yet threats of calamity may make us try to do so," he said. "If the wrong person pushes the wrong red button -- it's enough to make a person purchase a plane ticket to Svalbard."

But there was a problem. While pre-service publicity stressed that Lucado's books have sold more than 120 million copies and Christianity Today has called him "America's pastor," this invitation alarmed legions of Episcopalians opposed to his history of orthodoxy on sex and marriage. His sermon about God offering comfort in the midst of chaos avoided hot-button topics, but his cathedral appearance triggered an online storm.

Before the event, the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith linked the Lucado invitation to the cathedral's history of hosting a variety of religious leaders. This has included evangelicals such the late Billy Graham, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and megachurch leader Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Southern California.

"When we only engage with those with whom we agree on every issue, we find ourselves in a dangerous (and lonely) place," wrote the cathedral's dean. "That means this cathedral, and this pulpit, are big enough and strong enough to welcome pastors, rabbis, imams, clergy of every faith. … It does not mean we agree with everything they might believe, but it does mean that we exhibit and inhabit a sense of open handed welcome."

However, Hollerith issued a formal apology in response to the online backlash, noting: "In my straight privilege I failed to see and fully understand the pain he has caused. I failed to appreciate the depth of injury his words have had on many in the LGBTQ community. I failed to see the pain I was continuing. I was wrong."

While Lucado is known as an evangelical moderate, Episcopalians were outraged by a 2004 sermon, and online commentary, stating that he "categorically opposes" gay marriage, as well as his conviction that "homosexual activity" is sin.


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Democrats embrace interfaith America, while a few DNC caucuses cut 'under God' from pledge

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Did the Democrats “get” religion or not?

Certainly, lots of headlines coming out of this week’s virtual Democratic National Convention had strong faith elements.

But a different storyline gained attention, too.

The words “under God” were left out of the Pledge of Allegiance at the DNC’s Muslim Delegates & Allies Assembly and its LGBT Caucus Meeting, as first reported by David Brody, the Christian Broadcasting Network’s chief political analyst.

“NOT the way to win rust belt culturally centered Dems,” Brody tweeted.

Victor Morton of the Washington Times noted:

The phrase was not part of the Pledge when Congress first officially codified it in 1942 (it dates back in various forms to 1906). It was added in 1954 under a bill signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty … In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource, in peace or in war,” Eisenhower wrote.

Brody stressed that when reciting the Pledge during main sessions, the Democrats said the words “under God.”

But the exclusion of those words by certain Democratic caucuses, he suggested, harkened back to 2012 when Democrats came under fire for removing “God” from the party platform. At the request of then-President Barack Obama, the party reversed that decision.

Eight years later, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign — in what Biden calls “a battle for the soul of America” — has put an emphasis on winning over religious voters.


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Evangelicals know better: President Trump just doesn't know how to 'Billy Graham' a Bible

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Evangelicals know better: President Trump just doesn't know how to 'Billy Graham' a Bible

For generations, young Christians have learned how to hold and respect their Bibles during competitions known as "Sword drills."

The sword image comes from a New Testament affirmation that the "word of God is … sharper than any two-edged sword."

Drill leaders say, "Attention!" Competitors stand straight, hands at their sides.

"Draw swords!" They raise their Bibles to waist level, hands flat on the front and back covers. The leader challenges participants to find a specific passage or a hero or theme in scripture.

"Charge!" Competitors have 20 seconds to complete their task and step forward. For some, four or five seconds will be enough.

The key is knowing how to open the Bible, as well as hold it.

It's safe to say the young Donald Trump didn't take part in many Bible drills while preparing to be confirmed, at age 13 or thereabouts, as a Presbyterian in Queens, New York City. His mother gave him a Revised Standard Version -- embraced by mainline Protestants, shunned by evangelicals -- several years earlier.

President Trump was holding a Revised Standard Version during his iconic visit to the historic St. John's Episcopal Church, after police and security personnel drove protesters from Lafayette Square, next to the White House. To this day, evangelicals favor other Bible translations, while liberal Protestants have embraced the more gender-neutral New Revised Standard Version.

A reporter asked: "Is that your Bible?"

The president responded: "It's a Bible."

"Trump is a mainline Protestant. That's what is in his bones -- not evangelicalism. It's clear that he's not at home with evangelicals. That's not his culture, unless he's talking about politics," said historian Thomas S. Kidd of Baylor University, author of "Who Is an Evangelical? The History of a Movement in Crisis."


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Home, home on the rage: And seldom was heard an unpredictable word in Trump Bible wars

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Let me just shout a quick “Amen!” in response to the sentiments offered on Twitter by my colleague Bobby Ross Jr.

Here’s the quote: “Too. Much. News.”

For the past three decades or so, Tuesday has been the work day when I try to hide away and write my “On Religion” column, which I ship to the Universal syndicate on Wednesday morning (this week: black preachers, Old Testament prophets and centuries of pain).

Nevertheless, during the past day or so I have been following the Trumpian Bible battles on Twitter. I saw, of course, quite a few people — including conservative Christians — addressing President Donald Trump’s Bible-aloft photo op. I wondered, frankly, whether we would hear from many of those people in the mainstream press coverage that would follow. Uh. That would be “no.”

So raise your hands if you were surprised that the Episcopal Church leadership in Washington, D.C., was outraged? Their comments were essential, of course, because the story unfolded in front of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House (site of a fire a day earlier). So you knew religious progressives would get lots of hot ink, as in the Washington Post piece that opened with the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, Episcopal bishop of Washington:

“I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop,” Budde said.

She excoriated the president for standing in front of the church — its windows boarded up with plywood — holding up a Bible, which Budde said “declares that God is love.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde of the president. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”

Let’s keep reading. Raise your hand if you are surprised that predictable evangelicals said predictable things — which is also a valid part of the story:

Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for several of Trump’s evangelical religious advisers, tweeted favorably about the incident as well.

“I will never forget seeing @POTUS @realDonaldTrump slowly & in-total-command walk from the @WhiteHouse across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,” he wrote. “After just saying, ‘I will keep you safe.’ ”


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Ryan Burge on unique coronavirus fears in pews of America's aging 'mainline' churches

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Anyone who has worked in a newsroom knows that journalists often have to study the equation 1+1+X=3 and then find the missing X factor that produces “what comes next.”

What am I talking about? Journalists look at one set of facts in the news. Then they study another set of facts that we tend to take for granted or that we have pushed onto the news back burner. When you pay attention to where the two sets of facts overlap — #BOOM — you can see potential headlines.

Right now, the coronavirus crisis is creating all kinds of overlapping sets of facts and many are life-and-death matters. This is shaping the headlines and this trend will only increase.

However, after all of the COVID-19 stories I’ve read in the past week (while 66-year-old me has faced my usual spring sinus woes), none has hit me harder than a Religion News Service essay — “Why mainline Protestants might fear COVID-19 the most” — by political scientist Ryan Burge (also a contributor here at GetReligion). It’s crucial that he is also the Rev. Ryan Burge. He teaches at Eastern Illinois University, but he also a minister in the American Baptist Churches USA. Here is the overture:

I walked through the doors of First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, a congregation that I’ve pastored for the last 13 years, and shook hands with the 91-year-old greeter. Afterward, she said to me, “I didn’t know if we should shake hands today.”

I hadn’t even thought about it, but I know that she had.

COVID-19 has now infected more than 100,000 people, killing 4,000 of them across the globe. But, one of the real curiosities is that the mortality rate is dramatically different based on age. The disease takes the life of nearly 15% of the people that it infects over the age of 80.

I find that to be incredibly cruel, especially for my mainline church that has been dwindling in size and increasing in age at a stunning rate. Of our 20 or so active members, four of them are over the age of 90. Another 10 are in their 80s. If COVID-19 becomes a true global pandemic, my church would likely not fare well.


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Did I shake hands with the rector? COVID-19 hits a highly symbolic altar inside DC Beltway

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I know, I know. I couldn’t believe it either.

In terms of shock value in the Twitter-verse, the Washington Post team buried the lede in a timely news piece that ran with this headline: “For Georgetown churchgoers, a coronavirus self-quarantine is embraced as necessary.”

This is an Inside. The. Beltway. Story and I am perfectly OK with that. So see if you can spot the shocking symbolic detail in this overture:

The longtime friends were looking forward to their regular game of bridge at Washington’s posh Metropolitan Club on Monday afternoon, a bit of welcome routine in a world slowly spinning out of control.

The three prominent lawyers, C. Boyden Gray, William Nitze and Edwin D. Williamson, were well aware that the novel coronavirus was spreading, and that it had just made an appearance in Maryland with the announcement of the state’s first three cases last week. They never imagined, however, that the District’s first confirmed case of covid-19 would arrive at their doorstep: the 203-year-old Christ Church Georgetown, an affluent Episcopal congregation co-founded by Francis Scott Key and attended by a bipartisan collection of well-known Washingtonians, among them Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

You can just hear the gasps from readers across America who do not understand the role that Georgetown plays in the DC political ecosphere.

Yes, Tucker Carlson and his family attend an Episcopal parish. If I remember correctly, they have been members of this parish for quite some time.

It’s a Washington thing. Lambs and lions (who is who depends on the biases of the observer) may occupy the same pews. It’s all about location, location, location. And as any editor inside the Beltway will tell you, the Episcopal Church retains its clout, serving as a kind of “NPR at prayer” (a label created by my Orthodox priest, a former Episcopal tall-steeple clergyman).


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