And none of them are conservative Evangelicals.
Those Christians who are remaining faithful to the gospel message of Jesus Christ, and to a biblically guided, doctrinally and theologically honest practice of Christian principles are labelled as liberal, progressive, moderate, or some other descriptive adjectives used by conservatives to cast derision and disrespect, and accuse those they are labelling of apostasy and heresy. But it's the conservative Evangelicals, the "religious right," the fundamentalists, Pentecostals, Charismatics and other right wing pseudo-Christians who have distorted and misinterpreted the Bible, and attempted to use it to advance a cause it was never intended to advance, including the Heritage Foundation's "Project 2025" that have become a godless cult.
Speaking Truth to Power
Bishop Marian Budde had Trump in her sights, in the front row, as she spoke truth to power. His response resembled the spinning head, green pea-soup spitting character of Regan MacNeil, played by Linda Blair, in The Exorcist. She stood her ground, backing up her words with Biblical support. The fact that she is exactly the opposite of what any conservative Evangelical would consider to be an ordained messenger from God--an ordained woman, and a liberal Episcopalian--just underlined the truthfulness of her words and the conviction that they brought.
That certainly got my attention.
Growing up Southern Baptist, I've had to work on getting an awful lot of bigotry and prejudice out of my own life. The absolute nature of the fundamentalism in which I was raised never sat very well with me, but I wasn't in a position to dispute much of it, since the preacher's words were considered as equal with the Bible when he preached, especially from the pulpit. And the explanation given to attempt to reconcile the contradictions I was hearing from college professors at the Baptist university was that the school had been "taken over by the liberals," and what the professors taught was heresy.
But that turned out not to be the case at all. In fact, I discovered, much to my own personal satisfaction, that there are theologically educated Baptists who remain true to the core values and doctrines originally preached and taught by founders of the Baptist faith, in its original confessions, that are rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and are labelled "flaming liberal heresy" by the fundamentalists of the extreme right, who have abandoned the early Baptist confessions.
I really wish I would have been more decisive in moving away from the cult of conservative Evangelical identity toward the more liberal, Quaker values that are a natural extension of intellectual acceptance of the Christian gospel which is much more centered in living out the core values of Christ's teaching than accepting dogmatic statements about what must be professed and confessed in order to be "saved." I might have avoided a lot of the frustrations and disappointments I've experienced, even in my career choices, if I had simply walked away.
Boldness Pre-Dates Bishop Budde's Sermon
It's difficult for many people on the political left to embrace any kind of alliance with any group that identifies as Christian. Many American political liberals see any kind of Christian practice as intellectual failure, and a betrayal of rational thought. I would think that pure progressive liberalism would embrace free conscience, regardless of what it produces, and would see those who have made the connection between one of the most powerful cultural influences in the world, and its alignment with their own political views in a way that has the power to protect and preserve American Democracy, and there are many who do see it this way.
The Episcopal Church has, for a long time, stood squarely on the core values of the Christian gospel. I remember, when I was a high school student, seeing a sign outside of an Episcopal church building in Tucson, Arizona that proclaimed, "It is a sin to build a nuclear bomb," and directly linking that message to Matthew 5:9, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." When I asked my Sunday School teacher in the Baptist church where I grew up about it, I was told that dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary actions to bring about God's will, and was told that the Episcopalians were in error when it came to understanding and interpreting the Bible.
It would have been a very bold move for me at the time, when I left home and went off to college, to find, and join an Episcopalian church. I was a student at a Baptist university after all, and I didn't want to cause my parents more grief than the whole leaving home experience already had caused. But during that first semester, when the university held a "spiritual emphasis week" with church services held in the middle of each day, the guest speaker was the pastor of a Baptist congregation in Houston that was much different than the one in which I grew up. In fact, in both preaching and in practice, it sounded and looked much more Episcopalian than Baptist.
On the Sunday following his last sermon at the university chapel, he was the guest speaker at a Baptist church not far from campus that was much like the one in Texas where he was pastor, and I discovered it, much to my own delight, and joined it. The preaching and teaching opened up a world of liberal, progressive Christianity to me, along with what I was learning in the required Bible classes at the university, that I didn't know even existed among Baptists who, by remaining true to the original Baptist confessions of faith dating back to the early 1600's, identified them as "flaming liberals."
Doctrinal purity is not only impossible to achieve, it's a major distraction from the point of the Christian gospel, which is not intellectual assent to correct doctrine and theology, but living a lifestyle influenced by values which enhance human existence and link people together, believing that we are all created in God's image. We're capable of rational thought, so that we do not become subject to blind obedience. Some American Christians, because of their tradition and their past, have learned from their history and avoid repeating it. And I am particularly grateful for all of the clergy, Protestant and Catholic, who are now rising up and pointing out the contrast between the selfishness of MAGA and the grace of the Christian gospel.
The two things are mutually exclusive. Embracing MAGA is abandoning Christianity, and embracing Christianity requires complete abandonment of MAGA.
There is a War Being Waged Against American Values
The whole Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, and "religious liaison" office of the Trump administration is an attack on biblical Christianity. It operates under the cover of conservative Evangelical grievance that they have lost their influence in government, and must be subject to the first amendment provision of separation of church and state. The churches and the members and leadership that buy into this lie can't seem to function without the power of the secular government behind them, and as they have now sunk into malaise and rapidly declining attendance, membership and money, are blaming the "secular" society for their problems.
It has attacked by infiltration.
It is also an attack on Democracy, especially on the core principle of freedom of conscience. The inability of most of those involved in the far religious right to tolerate the existence of churches and Christian groups who don't share their doctrine and theology, and who practice their faith according to their own convictions goes along with their inability to tolerate diversity, equality and inclusion as core American values.
Two recent research surveys, one by Public Religion Research Institute, the other by Pew Research, have contradicted the forced claim from some conservative Evangelicals that the decline in their membership and attendance, with the bottom falling out since the pandemic, had reversed, and that they were experiencing "revival." But the research, including from some sources that tend to have a bias toward conservative Evangelicals, shows that the declines are not only continuing, but they are getting worse, with the largest single-year attendance and membership losses occurring in 2024 and 2025.
And those who have left, and are leaving, are doing so, by their own testimony, because they see that the mission and purpose of their church has been replaced by a political agenda.
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