President Donald Trump throws pens used to sign executive orders to the crowd during a presidential inauguration event in Washington on Jan. 20. (Matt Rourke/AP, File)
The upheavals roiling us today, though not exactly evoking déjà vu, have a familiar ring. Threats to equal rights and religious liberty come to mind.
President Donald Trump’s order to terminate all “diversity, equity and inclusion” mandates, policies and programs — a frontal assault on efforts to promote fairness and full participation of people who have been historically underrepresented or subjected to discrimination — rings familiar. The country has been through this agony before.
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Today, the group carrying out the scheme to dismantle federal efforts that advocate for historically marginalized groups is called the Department of Government Efficiency. The group that went to great and often bloody lengths to roll back the tide of Civil War Reconstruction reforms in the South called themselves Redeemers.
The times were different, yet much the same. How to liberate a Black population and overcome almost three centuries of enslavement? How, today, to overcome decades of racially disparate treatment and unequal opportunity?
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Granting liberated Black people the same rights to citizenship, voting and legal protections didn’t sit well in the Confederate South. Change brought Black people to places where they had never been before — to public schools, land ownership, state legislatures and Congress.
What served as progress in the eyes of the liberated was viewed as ruin in the vanquished Confederacy. Regaining the South from Northern control and return to the antebellum social order where white supremacy was enforced by threat, gun, noose and racist rules was the Redeemers’ mission in the 1870s — and they succeeded.
Describing Reconstruction, historian W.E.B. Du Bois said, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”
Redemption ushered in a Jim Crow era where Black people were denied the voting booth, jobs and education — segregation that legally existed well into mid-20th century America.
DOGE picks up where the Redeemers left off.
The civil rights era dream of a more inclusive, fair and just America is falling victim to restoration of racial and socioeconomic disorder pursued by Trump and DOGE with Redeemers-like vigor.
Upheaval and retreat present on another front.
In a week of turmoil in both the federal government and the journalistic world, a largely unnoticed event took place Tuesday evening — and for a deeply troubling reason. A group formally called Episcopal Church Women in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington came together by videoconference to, as the host explained, “join in prayer for protection, safety and continued health for our brave and beloved Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.” The need for special petition was disturbing.
As a sign of the times, Budde has been on the receiving end of threats ever since her sermon during the inaugural worship service at Washington National Cathedral that was attended by Trump.
As part of her Gospel message, Budde pleaded for Trump to have mercy on people who were scared, “gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” she said. “Have mercy,” she said, on the people who may not be citizens, or have proper documentation, as “the vast majority … are not criminals.”
Trump, taking to his social media platform Truth Social, unloaded on Budde, calling her a “so-called Bishop” who is “a Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” “She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” he said, and “she brought her church into the World of politics.” And Trump, declaring the bishop to be “not very good at her job,” said: “She and her church owe the public an apology.”
The vitriol directed by a president of the United States in an effort to discredit a religious message — and demean a messenger — of mercy is stunning, and unsettling, especially in a free society. Trump loyalist Rep. Mike Collins (R-Georgia) went so far as to suggest that Budde, a U.S. citizen, should be deported.
Coming from a president who pardoned criminals who heeded his call to stop the peaceful transfer of power in Congress on Jan. 6, 2021 — which they succeeded in doing until repelled by D.C. and Capitol Hill police — it’s sobering to think that his followers may be out and about and emboldened to strike, once again, at his critics.
That may explain why the Episcopal Church Women singled out this week to especially pray to God for the bishop’s safety and protection.
With the likes of Trump and DOGE — and, by extension, the freed Jan. 6 insurrectionists — wielding unchecked powers, where else are church faithful, and the let-down and left-out in our towns and cities, to turn?"
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