Who is Mariann Edgar Budde
Right Rev. Mariann Budde is the Episcopal bishop of Washington who on Tuesday morning (January 21, 2025) gave a sermon at a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral focused on national unity. While ending her sermon, she appealed to President Trump, who was in attendance, to have mercy on LGBTQ+ people and undocumented migrant workers.
Mariann Edgar Budde Early Life and Career
Budde was born in 1959 in New Jersey, the younger of two daughters. Her mother emigrated from Sweden as a young adult while her father was from New York. Her parents divorced shortly after she was born.
As a child she attended Episcopal church but she has said that her first conscious experiences of Jesus were in the context of a fundamentalist church that she was drawn to as a teenager while living in Colorado with her father. When she returned to live with her mother, the Episcopal priest of her childhood helped her find a way to integrate a deep, personal faith in Jesus with an inquiring intellect and openness to the world.
After College, she worked
in
Tucson,
Arizona
with
the
Methodist
Church,
among
homeless
people,
refugees,
and
the
working
poor. She however kept returning to the Episcopal
Church and at the age of 24 she was accepted as a
postulant
for
Holy
Orders.
Her first year of marriage was spent in Honduras, together with her husband, as volunteers at an Episcopal home and school for abandoned boys. After seminary, they moved to Ohio where she began her life as a parish priest. In 1993, she became a rector at St. John’s Minneapolis.
Mariann Budde Education
Budde graduated magna cum laude from the University of Rochester with a B.A. in History. She has two masters degree, a Masters in Divinity (1989) and Doctor of Ministry (2008) from Virginia Theological Seminary.
Mariann Budde Family
Edgar is married to Paul Budde and have two sons, Amos, married to Erika, and Patrick.
Mariann Edgar Budde Career as a Bishop
Mariann is the ninth bishop of Washington having been consecrated in November 2011. She served as Interim Dean of Washington National Cathedral from 2016-2017. Prior to her election, she served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Minneapolis for 18 years.
She serves as spiritual leader for 86 Episcopal congregations and ten Episcopal schools in the District of Columbia and four Maryland counties. She is also the first woman elected to the position. In addition, she serves as the chair of the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation, which oversees the ministries of the Washington National Cathedral and Cathedral schools.
She is also an advocate and organizer in support of justice concerns, including racial equity, gun violence prevention, immigration reform, the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons, and the care of creation.
She is also a published author of three books, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith (2023); Receiving Jesus: The Way of Love (2019) and Gathering Up the Fragments: Preaching as Spiritual Practice (2007). Her sermons have also been published in several books and journals.
Mariann Edgar Budde Trump
On January 21, 2025 during a traditional inaugural prayer service at Washington National Cathedral Mariann asked President Trump to have mercy towards LGBTQ people and immigrants.
“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. 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 neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara 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.”
Trump has criticized the sermon telling the reporters that ‘he didn’t think it was a good service.’ He later took to his Truth Social platform to claim the service was very boring and uninspiring and added that together with her church they owe the public an apology.
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”
No Apology
Budde has said she is not going to apologize for asking the President to have mercy. During an appearance on NPR’s All Things Considered she said she decided to ask the president as gently as she could to have mercy as she knew how dangerous it is to speak “of people in these broad categories, and particularly immigrants, as all being criminals or transgender children somehow being dangerous.”
She continued, “to be united as a country with so many riches of diversity, we need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And rather than list that as a broad category, as you heard me say, I decided to make an appeal to the president.”
She added that despite the backlash, her remarks were sincere and had no regrets.
“I don’t hate the president, and I pray for him. I don’t feel there’s a need to apologize for a request for mercy. I regret that it was something that has caused the kind of response that it has, in the sense that it actually confirmed the very thing that I was speaking of earlier, which is our tendency to jump to outrage and not speak to one another with respect but no, I won’t, I won’t apologize for what I said.”
Mariann Budde Previous Criticism on Trump
In 2020, Mariann criticised President Trump after he used force to clear a large crowd of peaceful demonstrators from the street between the White House and St. John’s Episcopal Church, which is across the White House so that he could visit the church. This was a day after a fire was after a fire was set in the basement of the historic building amid protests over the death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police.
In a telephone interview with the Washington Post, Mariann said she was outraged by Trump’s actions and that she was not informed that they would be clearing the area with tear gas. She added that everything that Trump has said and done is to inflame violence.
“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.” She added, “Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”