Bishop Budde and the courage to practice nonviolence
Part III of Planning our Way (Strategically!) Toward Nonviolent Social Change
This is the third part in a series on Planning our Way (Strategically!) Toward Nonviolent Social Change. To read part II on Comm(unity), click here.
Like millions of others, I have been awed by and grateful for the courageous witness this week of the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington.
I have long known Bishop Budde to be a person of deep integrity and courage. She and I met eight years ago when I was co-facilitating a series of conversations about the removal of Confederate windows from the Washington National Cathedral. She participated in those conversations with clarity about what was right (the windows, installed in the 1920s by the Daughters of the Confederacy, needed to go), but also a gentleness, refusing to impose her opinion through domination or shame.
A couple of years later, I heard from my friend Pastor Delonte Gholston that the bishop had attended a Peace Walks training to learn from him and other Black leaders about gun violence prevention through neighborhood relationship-building and community-resourcing. She has since regularly participated in that vital work.
When Trump pulled his infamous upside-down Bible stunt in front of St. John’s Lafayette after tear-gassing racial justice protestors, Bishop Budde issued a stern retort in the New York Times (I won’t link it here because I no longer subscribe to the Times, but you can look it up), saying she was “outraged” over Trump’s exploitation of the Bible for his political purposes.
And last March, Budde became more vocal in advocating for justice in Palestine as she joined “with all those calling for a bi-lateral ceasefire, the release of all hostages, and the free flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza where the population faces hunger and famine.”
These are just a few examples of what I and many others have observed: that Bishop Budde has been consistent in her ministry of mercy and advocacy for justice — as well as in her humility and willingness to learn and change.
But Tuesday really takes the cake.
On Tuesday, with Trump seated in the front row, Bishop Budde preached at the Washington National Cathedral Service of Prayer for the Nation.
Budde’s sermon spoke to three vital components of unity:1
honoring the inherent dignity of every human being,
honesty,
and humility.
She concluded with a plea:
In the name of our God... have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.
She specifically invoked LGBTQ children, immigrants and refugees as people feeling afraid.
Over the course of the sermon, Trump went from appearing to (possibly?!) be listening to the bishop to awkwardly looking at anything else but her. In the aftermath of the liturgy, he defaulted to dismissing and demeaning the bishop, the service and the cathedral — no surprise there.
What was a surprise was to see this man, so accustomed to browbeating people from his bully pulpit, sitting quietly before a soft-spoken woman preacher as she spoke firmly loving words from the deepest part of her being. The whole room — full of Trump’s family and administration — seemed to be hanging on her every word, perhaps waiting to see if the president would fly off the handle. He never did.
For a full 14 minutes, I had the feeling of being in an upside down universe. Bishop Budde gave us a glimpse of the world where love reigns, while hate cowers in the corner. It was hopeful, even joyful. And it was very good.
As Rev. Gholston wrote,
Bishop Budde reminds us that we don't always need to raise our voice to use our voice. Whispered prayers and pleas matter too.
Bishop Budde has written a book called How We Learn to be Brave. While I have yet to read it, I understand she is forthcoming about not considering herself an inherently brave person — that she has become so by practicing courage as a spiritual discipline.
Indeed, Bishop Budde’s courageous example of speaking truth to power reminds me of Dr. King’s first principle of nonviolence:
Nonviolence Is a Way of Life for Courageous People.
It is not a method for cowards; it does resist.
It is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
It is aggressive spiritually, mentally, and emotionally.
To stand before the most powerful man in the world and call upon him, in God’s name, to exercise his humanity for the common good, takes a strong spiritual backbone, strengthened over years of practice.
It takes learning to live with and even befriend the deep discomfort of one’s own human vulnerability in the face of violent and death-dealing systems and the people who represent them.
It takes refusing — again and again and again — to see anyone as disposable (including oneself), and remembering that it is injustice that must be crushed, not people.
It takes fiercely defending the inherent dignity of each person before anyone or any system that would deny it.
The effect of Bishop Budde’s courageous nonviolent practice was to create a dilemma situation for the president: She made mercy the baseline for our collective humanity. She then mercifully (without the use of shame or dehumanization) called upon Trump to exercise mercy. The only way Trump would have come out of this situation unscathed would have been if he had kept silence. Of course, he couldn’t help himself — Trump’s petty reaction revealed him as merciless. His demeaning rebuttal only reinforced the gap between his behavior and policies and the common good.
This is what the practice of nonviolence does: it creates the conditions for violent hubris to reveal itself clearly. It illuminates the stark contrast between those who are being oppressed and those who are participating in systems of oppression. It opens opportunities for people to divest and defect from systems of domination while offering alternative, concrete visions of collective flourishing.
This wasn’t about persuading Trump (though it is my spirituality of nonviolence that nudges me to always leave room for miracles), so much as it was about revealing to the rest of us that another way is possible.
We can live in a merciful — and just — world, within communities of mutual respect across difference. There are millions of us in this country that want this.
And we can become brave for the big moments that demand our moral clarity and our courage by daily practicing nonviolence.
Shout out to my essay last week on this same subject!
Thank you for this, Lauren!