Speaking Truth to False Power: Bishop Budde vs. Trump and the History of Christian Opposition to Corruption

Christianity is always political. It should be separated from political parties, and the church’s leaders should not also be the state’s leaders, nor should the state lead the church. But, at no point is Christianity apolitical. The Church, and it’s representatives, must and should hold political power to account.

The sermon given by Bishop Budde to President Trump is an example of a representative of Christ giving a prophetic call to a person in political office. The attacks made against her following her sermon speaks volumes about the state of the church as well as the power of Christ’s Word in the world to unsettle the powerful.

The early Christians made competing claims of loyalty to Christ above Caesar. Throughout history, Christians have called on the principles of the Gospel to direct social reformation. If you believe that Jesus is Lord, you are involved in politics because you care about how this world is run and organised. This is part of what it means to be a steward of creation. To care about how we organise our societies.

Part of the social function of the church within the political body is to speak to people in power and remind them of their limitations. People in authority, especially those with state power, are subject to the judgement of the cross. It is to the crucified Christ that the Church needs to call political figures and people with power and authority in repentance.

Whether this is on the national scale, with regional or national church leaders using their public presence to speak on behalf of those whose voice is not heard and to subject people in authority to the critique of the cross, or whether it is at the local where church leaders are called to hold local politicians and authority figures to account.

Anyone who thinks questions of justice and compassion have no place in church has not read the Gospel. Anyone who thinks God does not want us to be involved in politics has not read the scriptures. The church as a whole, and us as individual disciples, need to recapture the prophetic call to political action on behalf of the Gospel.

Prophets and Apostles – Scriptural Critique of Political Power

The scriptures are the first place we see God’s people acting to hold people in power to account. This is political action. It is a form of direct engagement with how society is organised and how those who lead our societies should exercise their power.

Nathan the Prophet Vs. David the King

In 2 Samuel 12, we find the story of Nathan, the prophet who fearlessly confronts King David in his moment of sin and failure.

Nathan tells David a story that draws out David’s sense of empathy and justice and then turns it around so that David realises that he was in the wrong all along. David had sinned against God and had fallen far short of what was right and proper for his position.

Not only had he abused his power by raping Bathsheba, he had then arranged the death of one of his soldiers so that he could cover up his shame and marry Bathsheba.

Nathan risked the displeasure of the King to confront him with sins and to call him out on his behaviour. The prophet placed the judgement of God on King David. David may have been a king, but he was a servant of God and the Law, and it was the job of Nathan the prophet to remind him of his duty.

John the Baptist vs. Herod the King

In Mark 6, we read about the execution of John the Baptist by King Herod.

John had been preaching against King Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife. Herod was angry about this, but Herodias, his wife, held a grudge and wanted to get her revenge on the wild prophet of the wasteland.

John the Baptist was fearless in confronting a king who maintained his authority through violence and power. John was willing to face imprisonment and death in order to say to the king when he had sinned and fallen short of the responsibilities of kingship.

A ruler could not just do what they wanted to do. A ruler had a duty to God and to the law, and if they did not fulfil their duty, then they invalidated their authority to rule. John’s public criticism of Herod undermined Herod’s authority, especially because of John’s popularity with the masses, and so Herodias convinced Herod to have John killed.

Peter vs. the Sanhedrin

In Acts 5, we find Peter and the other apostles standing up to the Sanhedrin’s authority for the sake of the Gospel.

The chief priests and teachers of the Law had condemned the apostles and given them strict orders not to preach in the name of Jesus. Peter and the apostles could have been scared of the chief priests since these were the people who had convinced Pilot to execute Jesus. But filled with the Holy Spirit and confident in the power of the Gospel, Peter and the apostles stood up to the Sanhedrin and wouldn’t back down.

They said that they had to obey God rather than human beings. They called out the authority of the Sanhedrin and were secure in their faith to speak up for Jesus even when they faced punishment for doing so.

Saints and Martyrs On Behalf of the Truth

Throughout the history of the Church there have been figures who stood up against people in power on behalf of the Gospel and of those whose voices go unheard.

John Ball – Preaching For the Rights of the Poor

Priest John Ball was central to the Peasant’s Revolt in 14th-century England.

He was imprisoned several times for speaking against the oppressive practices of feudal land owners and the aristocracy. He preached the doctrines taught by John Wycliffe, including social equality, services, and the Bible in English, and criticised clerical corruption.

His attacks on the Archbishop of Canterbury led him to be excommunicated after he highlighted the Archbishop’s role in oppressing the poorest people in the land. It was said that during the Peasant’s revolt, he preached a sermon at Blackheath that said:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondmen from the beginning, He would have appointed who should be bond, and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may (if ye will) cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.

He was captured by the authorities and put on trial, where he was given permission to speak.

He used the opportunity to criticise the King for not living up to his responsibility under God to serve his subjects. He was hung, drawn, and quartered at St. Albans in the presence of the King. He was willing to speak the truth of the Gospel to the King, the nobles, and the landlords of his society.

Preachers Murdered by Henry VIII – William Peto, John Skip, and High Latimer

All three preached critical sermons before Henry VIII, risking their lives.

Friar William Peto preached on Easter Sunday, 1532, where he compared Henry VIII to King Ahab, who was punished for refusing to listen to God’s prophets and for marrying Jezebel.

John Skip, who had been chaplain to Anne Boleyn, preached on Passion Sunday 1536, comparing the situation between Henry and Anne to the story of Queen Esther. He said that they were using the idea of protestant reform as a guise to disguise their political scheming, which came not from religious motivation but from the desire for personal power.

Bishop Hugh Latimer preached a sermon on the King’s duty of obedience to God, after which the King summoned Latimer to answer for what he had preached.

Francis Turner Vs King James II

During the restoration period in the late 17th century, Bishop Francis Turner preached at the coronation service for James II (VII of Scotland).

James was a Roman Catholic who no one really wanted to be king. There were fears that he would undo the reformation and spark a renewal of the civil war that had torn the country apart earlier in the century.

The sermon compared James to Solomon, where the people were good and willing, but the king was compromised. He said that no usurper could expect to reign prosperously and drew similarities to Edward II and Richard II, who had claims to the throne but lost them due to their misgovernment.

Turner concluded by reminding James that he could only rule with the people’s willing consent without turning into a tyrant.

The Confessing Church vs. The Nazis

Perhaps the single biggest example of the church’s success and failure to stand against corrupt political power is during the Second World War. Many church leaders collaborated or flat-out supported the Nazis. Those who stood against the Nazis were in the minority, and those who actively worked against them were an even smaller number.

Clemens August Graf Von Galen

A German Roman Catholic priest and Cardinal who was the bishop of Munster during the Second World War.

He publicly preached and taught against the Nazi ideology and against Hitler. He particularly called out the Nazi ‘worship of race’ in a letter sent to the parishes under his care. He was a fierce critic of the Nazi policy of euthanasia and, despite threats to his life, widely published his sermon.

The consequence was that for the first and only time, the Nazis’ backed down and stopped the most public version of their euthanasia of the disabled. His sermons inspired the peaceful resistance group called the White Rose, whose members were eventually executed.

His letter and further condemnation of the Nazis was read out from every Catholic pulpit in Germany, denouncing the killing of the innocent and the helpless, the disabled and the infirm, prisoners of war and criminals, and those people from foreign races.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In 1933, when Hitler was to take up his elected position as Chancellor, Bonhoeffer gave a radio address calling out the sin of the fuhrer principle.

He called out Hitler for his sins and for his behaviour, but he also called out those people who willingly followed him. Throughout the Nazi period, Bonhoeffer worked against them, writing theology which broke apart Nazi ideology and training pastors to resist the idolatrous and heretical versions of Christianity promulgated by the Reichs Kirche.

Eventually, Bonhoeffer was killed by the Nazis for his role in opposing them. But throughout his life, he never feared calling sin what it was, even when people in power committed sins.

The Barmen Declaration

While the majority of the Christians in Germany either allowed or supported the Nazis, some elements of the Church refused to collaborate and instead resisted the idolatrous ideology of Nazism.

They put their church in a state of ‘confession’, which meant refusing to do baptisms and weddings, to say that the fundamental principles of Christianity were being threatened and that anyone who was not in keeping with the Gospel was outside of the Church of Christ.

They published the Declaration of Barmen, written by Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, amongst others, which said that the Church would not fall away from obedience to the Gospel, to the Lordship of Christ, and that as such there could be no other lord but that of Jesus and no other Gospel but that of the crucified and resurrected Jewish Christ Jesus.

Many of those who were part of the confessing church lost their life. Some were executed. Some were sent to concentration camps. Many were tortured and beaten. But they refused to stand back and ignore the demands of the Gospel in the face of corruption.

Modern Day Prophets Against Corrupt Political Power

The Church’s days of standing up to corrupt power and speaking the truths of the Gospel to those in positions of authority are not limited to the past centuries. Those disciples brave enough to use their public platform to call the powers of this world to repentance are still at work in the world for the sake of the Gospel.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most significant figures in the civil rights campaign in the USA and is, for many, the public face of that movement. He was assassinated in 1968.

His campaigning and blistering sermons and the sense of justice that underpinned them came from his Christian conviction. His faith propelled him into public ministry, and his experience of injustice gave him the courage and conviction to preach and speak against corrupt authorities and people in power.

He was attacked and imprisoned and abused and eventually killed because of how much his preaching on equality and freedom offended those people in positions of power. His enduring legacy as a symbol of defiance against injustice and oppression is so powerful that it has been appropriated, or attempts have been made to appropriate it, by racists and oppressors.

However, anyone who pays attention to what he wrote and said and did cannot be anything but convinced that he stood against any corrupt and oppressive power because of the message of the Gospel.

Oscar Romero

Oscar Romero was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Salvador who was assassinated by a death squad in 1980.

He was declared a martyr by Pope Francis and made a saint in 2018. Initially seen as a social conservative, he was converted by the murder of his friend and fellow priest, Rutilio Grande.

He became a critic of the military government of El Salvador. He was convinced that God had a preferential option for the poor and worked for a social revolution based on the reform of individuals through the Gospel. Romero also criticised the USA for giving military aid to the military dictatorship.

The US government was so worried about communism that they funded and supported fascist and military dictatorships as preferable to communism, including the government of El Salvador.

Romero unsuccessfully tried to get Pope John Paul II to condemn the military dictators, but the Pope was more concerned with church unity than social revolution. Romero gave a series of radio addresses and popular sermons criticising the government for the persecution of the church, the use of murder squads against those working for the sake of the poor, and their widespread use of violence against those who opposed them.

On the 23rd of March 1980, Romero gave a sermon calling on the members of the military to disobey their orders and stop carrying out the government’s repression and violence. On the 24th of March, He went to a retreat and, in the evening, celebrated Mass at a small chapel in a hospital for cancer and the terminally ill.

As he finished his sermon and stood in front of the altar, a gunman stepped into the chapel and shot Romero. He died shortly after. Archbishop Romero stood up for his beliefs and criticised the government even though he knew that he carried a risk of death for doing it. But his conviction of the Gospel and the needs of those under his care demanded that he speak up for those who could not.

He paid the price for speaking the truth to people in power who were willing to use violence to maintain their power.

Bishop Budde vs. Trump

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the presiding Bishop of Washington DC, gave voice to the thoughts of many when she preached a prophetic sermon directly to Donald Trump at the prayer service before the inauguration.

Bishop Budde had previously criticised Trump when, during protests, he stood in front of a church to hold up a Bible for a photo shoot. To be able to take that photo shoot, Trump ordered the police to use tear gas to drive away protestors from outside the Church.

In what is normally a quiet and generally rather benign service of prayer and thanksgiving, Bishop Budde made a direct call to Trump to consider his behaviour as the President of the USA. She said:

“Let me make one final plea Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and as you told the nation yesterday you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, 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 people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbours. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honour the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

This took immense moral courage. Standing in front of some of the most powerful people in the world, at least powerful from the world’s perspective, and speaking the truth of the Gospel with quiet grace and confidence is an amazing thing.

If Trump had never made any kind of claim to the Christian faith, then perhaps this call might have been misplaced. But when Trump has made claims to Christianity, and has relied on Christian conservatives for his electoral support, then the Bishop has every right, in fact every responsibility, to hold Trump to the standards of the faith that he has claimed.

Trump took to social media to say:

Trump once again revealed his true colours in mistaking a call to the truth of the Gospel for radical left hard-line Trump hate.

Since posting his social media reply, Bishop Budde has received death threats and threats of violence and assault, including from people who misguidedly believe themselves to be Christian. When you stand up to oppression, you create fear, and fear almost inevitably leads to anger and violence. She is an example of the courage that ministry demands and of the role of the Church in holding power to account.

The Public Vocation of The Church

One of the most important roles that the Church has to play is its public role as a representative of Christ. Although imperfect, fallible, often sinful, and frequently mistaken, the Church still stands as the mark of Christ’s work in and commitment to the world.

A fundamental part of Christian theology is that people in positions of power, especially those who wield the authority of the state, do not possess absolute power. They have limits on their behaviour and on their legitimacy as leaders. They cannot just do what they want, but are subject to the authority and judgement of Christ.

The role of the Church is to remind rulers that they are not the ultimate source of authority, Christ is, and as such they will one day have to account for what they have done with their power and authority. When they act outside of their limits then their power loses its legitimacy and Christians no longer have to be obedient to their authority.

Instead, it becomes a Christian duty to resist and overthrow a person who has invalidated their legitimacy by using their power to abuse and oppress the most vulnerable.

This is the key element of this role.

The Church is called to speak for those who have no voice and to stand in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed and the suffering. God has a preference for the poor and for the subjected.

God stands with the victim, not with the abuser. God stands with the oppressed, not the oppressor. God stands with the suffering, not with those who make them suffer. In the Kingdom of God it is the poor who will inherit the earth while the rich are sent away hungry.

The lowest will be highest, the broken will be healed, the powerful will lose their power and rulers will be cast down from their thrones.

The world will be turned upside down and those people today who cling to their power because they think it makes them safe, because it gives them a sense of security, should rightly tremble at the idea of what the Kingdom of God means for them.

People who hide behind hatred and violence. Those who turn people against each other and work to oppress the poorest in society will be the ones who experience God’s judgement most fully.

The Church exists to remind people of that promise. Sometimes, this means that the Church is attacked. Sometimes this means that people on social media take out their fear and anger on others from the safety and security of their keyboards. Sometimes, it looks like martyrdom.

A Church which does not confront corruption and sin and call it out for what it is fails to be the Church of Christ and becomes a collaborator with the fallen powers and principalities of this world. The Church leader who does not remind those with authority of their responsibility under the Gospel fails to live out the requirements of their vocation.

A disciple who does not stand up for the poor and the suffering and the oppressed and instead lets things slide by because it is easier is someone who is no longer following Jesus.

Conclusion

The idea of freedom always scares those people with power, and there is no greater freedom than that which comes through the Gospel.

The ultimate tool of power is violence, whether that is through imprisonment, economic sanction, deportation, or death. But the power of violence is disarmed and rendered mute in the face of the promise of the Gospel.

What can you do to a person who knows that they will be in heaven when they die? You can threaten them with pain but pain is passing. God’s judgement is not afraid by positions of temporal power.

The Church in the west rarely faces a threat of death or violence, and yet it is often more likely to stay quiet in the face of injustice than in those places where doing so could lead to their death. Social death and cancellation is feared more than physical harm. Being rendered irrelevant or having bad social media comments is more problematic than actual persecution.

But thankfully some remember the calling of the Gospel to speak for those who can’t and to stand up to those who think their power protects them and makes them special.

The cross always stands in judgement against anyone who claims the authority of power over other people. There is no one is above God and who is not subject to the judgement of the cross.

Jesus was very clear. When he returns, we will be known as his followers by the way that we fed the poor, clothed the naked, loved the unloved, visited the prisoner, and cared for the stranger.

Christianity is inherently political because Christianity is about every part of our life and for every element of our world.

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