The trouble with moral emergencies is that they rarely announce themselves like sirens.
They arrive as “policy.” As “efficiency.” As “law and order.” As a shrug. As a punchline. As a post that trains our eyes to look away. And then, one day, you wake up and realize the country you love has been quietly taught to despise itself—neighbor against neighbor, faith against truth, power against dignity.
That’s why Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde matters right now.
In the long tradition of the American pulpit serving as a platform for social justice, few moments in recent history have been as visually and morally arresting as the ones that placed Budde squarely in the nation’s line of sight. In 2020, when President Donald Trump used a Bible as a political prop outside St. John’s Church, Budde did what too many leaders—religious and political—have trained themselves not to do: she told the truth out loud. She called the display what it was—antithetical to the teachings of Jesus—and in doing so reminded the country that Scripture is not a stage prop and the Gospel is not a brand strategy.
That moment did more than make headlines. It clarified a line that America keeps trying to blur: faith can be used as a shield for the powerful—or as a force that protects the vulnerable. Bishop Budde has chosen her side.
Her leadership now functions as a pivot point in a budding moral movement—one that insists the National Cathedral’s identity as a “House of Prayer for all people” cannot be sentimental language. If it is truly for all people, then it must also become a site of active resistance whenever the dignity of those people is threatened by those in the highest offices of power.
And Budde’s resistance isn’t performative. It’s theological.
In our conversation, she described something like a moral fuse—a spiritual alarm that ignites whenever rhetoric or policy begins to treat human beings as disposable. It’s the fuse that lights when immigrants are “snatched,” when communities are targeted under false pretenses, when contempt becomes a political strategy and cruelty becomes casual. For the Bishop of Washington, that is not “politics.” That is pastoral care in a democracy—public-square ministry rooted in a conviction as old as Genesis: every person bears inherent worth, because every person is made in the image of God.
And it’s precisely here—at the intersection of economic justice, racial equity, LGBTQ+ dignity, and the protection of democratic institutions—that Budde’s witness becomes a roadmap for the new civil rights movement. She is helping to redefine what modern church leadership can look like: not confined to “traditional” civil rights as though dignity comes in categories, but expansive enough to defend migrants and LGBTQ+ families with the same moral clarity that earlier generations brought to lunch counters and voting booths.
This is what America keeps forgetting: the fight for civil rights has never been only about laws. It has always been about who counts as fully human—in practice, not just in poetry.
In my conversation with Bishop Budde, she didn’t romanticize the church’s role in the freedom struggle. She told the truth: faith leaders have been the moral compass at times—and its greatest resistors at others. That one sentence should land like a gavel. It means the church cannot coast on its own mythology. The collar does not make you courageous. The choir robe does not make you righteous. And quoting Scripture does not make you clean.
So what crisis does she believe we’re actually facing?
She named two forces—interrelated, mutually reinforcing—that are poisoning the American spirit.
First: the scandalous disparity of wealth, and how money has distorted our political processes until public discourse itself becomes a luxury item—owned, shaped, and sold back to the people like a product.
Second: the rising contempt with which we speak about one another across our differences—contempt that isn’t just a mood, but a tool. Because someone profits when we hate each other. Someone always does.
That’s not a “culture war.” That’s a moral crisis with a business model.
And here’s where the Bishop’s strategy becomes as important as her courage. She refuses to build a movement addicted to outrage. When asked when silence becomes complicity, she didn’t posture as judge and jury. She acknowledged the pressure to speak constantly—and the temptation to perform. Then she offered a line that should be taped above every activist’s laptop and every pastor’s pulpit:
“Shouting louder than the other side isn’t going to change anything.”
America needs fewer performers and more builders.
Because prophetic witness must be tied to communities of practice—lives close to the ground—where words become deeds and deeds become durable. A sermon that circles the globe is still just air if it isn’t connected to solidarity with the poor and protection for the vulnerable. In other words: the movement can’t just trend. It has to touch.
So what does her blueprint look like?
It looks like lowering the temperature without lowering the standard.
It looks like rejecting the lie that “if we’re not together, we’re against each other.”
It looks like seeking unpredictable alliances and unusual suspects—not to dilute justice, but to widen its reach.
That is not naïveté. That is seasoned leadership.
Because the enemy of civil rights has always been more than laws—it’s the web of relationships that make injustice feel normal. Movements don’t only win by exposing cruelty. They win by making a different future feel possible—and then organizing people into it.
And if you’re looking for the next civil rights movement, stop waiting for a single march, a single leader, or a single moment. The next movement will be a mosaic: local protections, legal resistance, moral storytelling, multi-faith coalitions, youth organizing, labor, educators, elders, artists, and everyday people refusing to treat cruelty as normal.
In the end, Bishop Budde didn’t offer false comfort. She offered the kind of hope that doesn’t depend on wishful thinking:
This will not last forever. And when it’s over, we will have rebuilding to do.
That’s the call.
Not simply to survive this era—but to outlive it with our dignity intact, our relationships strengthened, and our strategy sharpened.
Because civil rights is not a chapter in a textbook. It is the ongoing work of a people who refuse to let contempt have the final word.
And if we are wise, we will treat this moment the way our ancestors treated theirs: not with panic, but with purpose.
Not with performance, but with power.
Not with hatred, but with holy resolve.