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Barely a nanosecond after Episcopal “bishop” Mariann Edgar Budde castigated President Trump in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral on January 21, commentators like Megan Kelly asked, “Where was Trump’s team; why did they send him into the arms of a notoriously angry, woke bishop?”
Indeed, why would the president’s team allow him to participate in a potentially volatile prayer service in-of all places-an Episcopal Church where wokeness is practically considered a sacrament?
What was Trump’s team thinking? Even religion 101 students know that Episcopal sermons these days are rarely about Christ and salvation but about social justice and politics.
Is there really anyone alive on the planet who doesn’t realize the Episcopal Church has become a virtue-signaling entity disguised as a pretty vestment?
It can be argued that because ‘The Service of Prayer for the Nation’ was held in the famous National Cathedral-the scene of so many historic ceremonial presidential visits-the atmosphere there on January 21 would be ‘gentlemanly’ and polite. Despite the weirdness the Episcopal Church exhibits in big urban parishes-namely sermons on the protection of illegal migrants-the legacy of the nation’s most famous Episcopal Church offered a false sense of security.
Architectural grandeur notwithstanding, never underestimate the persnickety wickedness of a female “bishop” with thinning hair in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Only a woke “bishop” like this could tarnish the legacy and idea of the National Cathedral, which was the dream of President George Washington.
Washington, of course, was baptized an Anglican and a churchgoer throughout his life although he was a Deist and did not believe in the divinity of Christ-ironically an Episcopal trait that is not uncommon today.
Washington’s dream of a cathedral became a reality when he chose urban planner and architect Pierre L’Enfant, a Frenchman who migrated to America as a young man to fight in the Continental Army. Washington wanted to design “a great church for national purposes,” or a place where bishops do not talk down to presidents.
L’Enfant designed the layout of Washington D.C. although his plan for the city-with wide diagonal avenues, canals and monuments- would not be executed until 1900, years after the architect died in 1825, his legacy all but forgotten. L’Enfant was by all accounts a very difficult man; his temper was so bad that even Washington eventually fired him.
Nevertheless, the National Cathedral became a reality.
In 1898, President William McKinley attended the dedication of the Peace Cross on the cathedral to mark the end of the Spanish American War. Other presidential visitations followed: in 1928, President Coolidge opened the General Convention of the Episcopal Church at the cathedral. President Franklin Roosevelt attended the National Prayer Service in 1937 for his second inauguration. Queen Elizabeth II of England visited the cathedral on at least two occasions.
The cathedral-and by default the Episcopal Church-was by now an institution; in many ways inseparable from the federal government.
Not far from the National Cathedral is St. John’s Episcopal Church in Lafayette Square. Every president since James Madison was been an occasional attendee there. St. John’s is known as the “Church of the Presidents,” due mainly to the disproportionately Anglican religious affiliation of U.S. presidents as well as the Church’s proximity to the White House.
This presupposes a kind of “good marriage” between Episcopalism and the federal government, a fact most took for granted until January 21, 2025.
While one may wax nostalgic about the historic Anglican tradition, the “soul” of the Episcopal Church has been completely perverted by the revolution that has been transforming the Church since the 1970s.
Recall the June 29, 1973 ordination by three male Episcopal bishops of 11 deaconesses to the priesthood in Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate, a social justice church that has always put social issues ahead of theology and faith. Three years prior in 1970 the General Convention of the Church voted to ordain women as deaconesses. In 1988, Barbara C. Harris was ordained the first female bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The dye was cast.
Today the Episcopal ‘down escalator’ is in full swing. There are 66 Episcopal bishops worldwide; among them 43 are women, some (non-celibate) LGBTQ+.
Clearly, this is not the same Episcopal Church that existed during the early days of the Republic.
This is why the federal government needs to end its cozy relationship with the Episcopal Church, and by default its “partnership” with the National Cathedral. Simply put, there needs to be a divorce.
The nation’s first Church has become an arm of the DNC. Sermons are not about faith or the nature of Christ but about climate change, social justice, racial reconciliation, systematic racism, marginalized communities, migration and environmental stewardship.
One solution to downgrade the inexorable link between this Church and the White House would be an executive order (or an act of Congress) changing the location of official prayer services and ceremonies involving the president-at least during the Trump administration-from the National Cathedral to a more apolitical setting, like Washington’s National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
Such a change would probably lower the chances of a woke bishop or priest capsizing a presidential prayer service in the name of social justice.
As the culture becomes increasingly polarized-witness the DNC’s 2025 party leadership election of woke gender activists-future Republican presidents should not have to risk ‘pop up’ rants from the pulpit from left wing ideologues masquerading as clergy. Since the Episcopal Church is now 100% political-the Jesus of advocacy and civic engagement minus the Jesus of sin and repentance-it no longer qualifies as the nation’s “first Church” of choice.
Let the Democrats resurrect the Episcopal Church if-God forbid-at some future date a non-binary DEI left wing candidate is elected to the White House.
The demotion of the Episcopal Church under the Trump administration should apply to presidential funerals as well. President Carter, for instance, was not an Episcopalian but a Baptist. There was no reason why any religious ceremony honoring his life and commemorating his death should have been held in a church that was not Baptist.
But even if a divorce between the Episcopal Church and the federal government is not in the cards, the Episcopal Church may be “dead” in a couple of decades anyway.
An Anglican Watch 2023 article explained the decline in Episcopal Church attendance and came to the conclusion that the Church was actually dying. Most readers’ comments agreed and shared why they felt this way.
One reader offered:
“The problem began when Episcopal priests started apologizing for instead of proclaiming the Gospel. The last time I attended an Episcopal service, the priest on the first Sunday of Lent, greeted me with ‘Namaste:’ (a Buddhist greeting) from the pulpit and then turned things over to a guest speaker. A black woman who harangued the congregation for 45 minutes about the “1619 Project” and our hereditary guilt as white people of “racism” and our perpetual obligation to apologize to a serve blacks. Missing was any mention of God, Jesus, forgiveness and sin. My family has been Episcopalian for at least four generations. Combine that with the cowardly compliance with the anti-Christian social engineers in Washington during the COVID ‘pandemic’ have completely turned me off.”
Another reader mentioned the problem of diminishing orthodoxy in the Episcopal Church:
“There seems to be an engagement to participate in other world religions and a New Age like mysticism by those in the highest positions of the church and some leaders at larger urban churches….”
However the “divorce” happens, it’s almost certain that the Church’s cozy affiliation with Washington D.C. is on the wane.