Washington, summer 2025. While rainbow flags wave through the streets of the capital and hundreds of thousands of people from around the world gather for World Pride, she stands on a small stage with the calm of someone who has seen much, heard much, and endured much: Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Washington. Her voice is quiet, but it carries. Her words are clear, but not harsh. And what she says sounds like a prayer - not just for one community, but for an entire nation.
“We’re not living in the 1960s or 70s anymore,” she says. “And we are not going back.” It is a sentence that meets resistance - but also hope. Because as the political climate in the United States cools and the attacks on queer people, migrants, and minorities increase under President Donald Trump, Mariann Budde remains a moral constant - upright, compassionate, courageous.
Six months earlier, on the evening of Trump’s second inauguration, Budde had spoken with clear words during an interfaith prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. In front of diplomats, lawmakers, clergy, and cameras, she asked the president to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now” - including queer people, refugees, immigrant families. Trump’s response came quickly. The very next day, his team accused Budde of “politicizing prayer,” and right-wing media mocked her as a “leftist churchwoman.”
But her words resonated - and touched hearts. Thousands shared the video of her sermon, newspapers printed her intercession, activists from across America invited her to events. Mariann Budde became the quiet face of a movement that responds to injustice not confrontationally, but contemplatively - with dignity.
“Love, joy, and community are the antidotes to fear.” She said she was not there to make political demands - that was the role of the activists - but to speak to what remains beneath the surface after the noise has faded: solidarity. Dignity. Hope. “We must not let fear paralyze us so much that we forget who we are,” she says. “And what we have fought for together.”
Mariann Budde does not speak like a voice of protest. She speaks like someone who knows pain but does not turn it into a weapon. Her religion is not one of punishment, but of remembrance. Her message is not one of exclusion, but of open arms. At a time when many churches in the U.S. are struggling with growing intolerance, retreat from public life, and dogmatic narrowness, Budde’s voice is a rare exception. She shows that faith does not have to mean indifference. That theology can also bring comfort. And that spiritual authority is strongest when it stands with those who are marginalized, mocked, or threatened.
Her speech at World Pride was not an outcry. It was a light. A quiet call for humanity in a noisy world.
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