How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, racism, and addiction.

Mariann Edgar Budde describes the consequential day of June 1, 2020, when President Donald Trump held a photo-op in front of St. John’s Church, the so-called “Church of the Presidents,” which has been attended by all sitting United States presidents. The church sustained minor fire damage during a march organized to protest the police killing of George Floyd. After a press conference at the White House, in which Trump threatened to use military force against the American citizens who banded together to protest the murder of Floyd by police, Trump posed with a Bible in front of the church while reporters took photos.

Budde, as Episcopal bishop of Washington, DC, was appalled by Trump’s use of the church as a political tool to further his own agenda of political repression, and she spoke to CNN and other prominent news stations and publications to remind the American public that Trump “d[id] not speak for St. John’s” and that his use of the church and the Bible itself as a justification for immoral violence was “antithetical to the teachings of Jesus” (xi). In the days that followed, Budde continued to repeat this message, and for a brief period, her words carried far across the United States, though she acknowledges that the significance was not about her or St.