Engage

This Great Idea is an invitation to engage with the realities of today’s politics.

Religious freedom, which is guaranteed in the First Amendment of the Constitution, is being threatened as a result of The Right Reverend Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s profound, scriptural, and doctrinally sound sermon/entreaty at the National Day of Prayer, January 21, 2025.

If you haven’t yet heard or viewed Bishop Budde’s sermon, I strongly encourage you to do so, here.

The House of Representatives of the 119th Congress are entertaining/voting on House Resolution 59.

Please read HR 59 in its (brief) entirety here.

HR 59 calls Bishop Budde’s sermon an ‘act of political activism’ and ‘condemns its distorted message’ – and states that Bishop Budde, ‘used her position inappropriately, promoting political bias instead of advocating the full counsel of biblical teaching’.

Numerous ELCA bishops have come out in support of Bishop Budde and her right to cry for mercy. See Grand Canyon Synod’s Religious Liberty at Risk: Protecting the Right to Preach without Political Retribution and the more ambiguous, A Pastoral Message from ELCA Bishops in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

Please see the United Church of Christ’s response here and join them in contacting your Representative(s), today.

Christians Against Christian Nationalism have created a petitions specific to HR 59. You can read more about it and engage here.

If you feel called to engage your advocacy or justice team in this conversation, or for your own edification, you might give some context with this Britannica entry: Confessing Church: German Protestant Movement. The reference may feel dire or dramatic, but it is appropriate, given the executive orders and the recent spate of federal employee firings.

Please do not sit idly by: our ability to live out the Gospel is under significant threat. Please read about DOGE’s ‘misinformation and baseless doubt’ (here) that are hamstringing Lutherans’ ability to support immigrant and refugee families and children. View ELCA Presiding Bishop Eaton’s response here.

Learn about the crackdown on sanctuary congregations here.

These are not ‘normal’ times and we as Christians cannot, on behalf of our neighbors’ rights and our own religious freedoms, sit quietly by. Please engage!!