Millions of Christians in churches around the world heard the same passage on Sunday from the Gospel of Luke. In it, Jesus declares his intentions “to proclaim good news to the poor” as he speaks to people gathered in a synagogue in Nazareth.
At Transfiguration Episcopal Church in Dallas, the passage felt particularly appropriate this week, even though it was chosen years ago as part of a three-year cycle of Bible readings.
“It’s Jesus 101,” said church parishioner Michelle Williams, 55.
It was the first Sunday since a fellow Episcopalian, Bishop Mariann E. Budde, delivered a sermon that many observers heard as an echo of passages like Luke’s. Speaking at a prayer service at Washington National Cathedral the day after President Trump’s inauguration, he faced the president and made a direct plea: “Have mercy.”
After the service, Trump called Bishop Budde a “hardline radical left Trump Hater” in a social media post. Her enemies immediately hailed her as an icon of resistance. But for many progressive Christians and their leaders, the confrontation was more than a moment of political catharsis. It was about more than Mr. Trump. It was an eloquent expression of basic Christian theology, expressed in an extraordinarily public forum.
Sara Ivey, 71, another parishioner at the Church of the Transfiguration, said the sermon reminded her of Psalm 103, which describes God as “merciful and kind, slow to anger and abundant with steadfast love.” The sermon, which she watched live, made her “very proud to be an Episcopalian,” she said.
Bishop Budde’s sermon delivered a jolt of energy to many mainline Protestant churches, whose numbers and influence have declined sharply from a high point in the middle of the last century. Some mainstream Christians have sensed a disturbing whiff of irrelevance that has accelerated in the Trump era, as Trump has elevated a strain of conservative political Christianity whose leaders in some cases do not even consider Bishop Budde a fellow Christian.
It was therefore surprising to many progressive Christians and their leaders to see Bishop Budde’s sermon dominate the prayers that were delivered at the inauguration by clergy members more sympathetic to Mr. Trump, and to see it rely primarily on theological principles, rather than advocating for specific policies.
“A plea for mercy, a recognition of the stranger in our midst, is the core of faith,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, the Episcopal Church’s top administrative leader, said in an interview. “It is radical, given the order of the world around us, it is countercultural, but it is not bound by political ideology.”
Across the country, core parishioners proudly shared clips of Bishop Budde’s sermon online and made plans to read his books with their book clubs. Priests and pastors discussed the sermon in church bulletins and in intimate conversations with their members.
Members of the clergy also addressed it directly in their sermons. At the Church of the Transfiguration, Associate Rector, the Rev. Ted Clarkson, acknowledged to the congregation that aspects of the bishop’s sermon might have been “difficult to hear.” But “mercy is truth,” he said, “and I hope a bishop preaches the truth.” (Bishop Budde preached Sunday at a church in Maryland.)
In fact, not all core parishioners appreciated his message. Some in the Church of the Transfiguration worried that he had inappropriately politicized the pulpit, or allied the denomination with a political party, according to the Rev. R. Casey Shobe.
Mainstream white Christians in the United States are politically diverse, in contrast to white evangelicals, who are overwhelmingly Republican. there is still More Republicans than Democrats on major banksaccording to an analysis of the 2022 Cooperative Election Study by Ryan Burge, a political scientist. (Episcopalians are something of an exception; 58 percent of them are Democrats.) Still, the mainstream tradition tends to be theologically liberal, preferring Bishop Budde’s message of mercy over an emphasis on judgment or authority.
Pastor Jonathan Barker of Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha, Wisconsin, said he felt a thrill watching clips of the sermon spread across his feeds on social media, appearing from fellow Lutherans, parishioners and people he wouldn’t have guessed to be supportive.
His congregation is part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and he was active in mobilizing support for Jacob Blake, a black man shot by a white police officer in Kenosha in 2020. About 50 years ago, at the height of the main force , the Grace Congregation had about 1,500 people. He is now around 40.
“We’re willing to do things that other people would find desperate,” he said. “Our Christian tradition is marked by hope. This feels like a time where we need hope.”
Others who had stopped attending services wondered if there might be a place for them after all.
“It gave me hope, maybe I can go back to church,” said Amy Tankard, 59, who lives in a rural part of eastern Virginia.
Ms. Tankard had been part of a church in the Presbyterian Church (USA), with a female pastor. But the church splintered during the coronavirus pandemic, he said, and the pastor was ousted over a dispute over whether the church should remain closed due to health concerns.
Mrs. Tankard told her husband that she was not stopping the church until the church stopped being so involved in conservative politics.
“It seems like if you’re not with the current government, then you’re not with the church,” he said. “And I miss him. I think that’s why his sermon meant so much.”
It was too early to know whether a sensational moment in a pulpit was enough to bring people like Ms. Tankard back to church. Mainline Protestants now comprise about 14 percent of American adults, according to the Pew Research Center. Evangelical Protestants represent about 25 percent, and Catholics 20 percent.
Trump has abandoned the main line. He announced in 2020 who no longer identified with the Presbyterian denomination that confirmed him as a child, but rather as a nondenominational Christian, a tradition closely associated with evangelicalism.
Bishop Budde’s message seemed to be resonating beyond the usual audience for Sunday sermons.
His most recent book, “How We Learn to Be Courageous,” was listed as temporarily out of stock on Amazon on Friday afternoon. At the time, the book was No. 4 on the site’s best-seller list, 11 spots above Vice President JD Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
The publisher of Bishop Budde’s book, Avery, an imprint of Penguin Books, was struggling to reprint “a significant number of books,” said Tracy Behar, Avery’s president and publisher. She declined to share details.
At the Church of the Transfiguration, Father Shobe noted that the sermon was more than the only brief passage that made the news. In his remarks, he said, Bishop Budde further explored the concept of unity in complex times.
The past few months had been difficult for many people in the mostly progressive Dallas congregation, he said. But they were determined not to spend the next four years fixating on Trump’s every attention move.
“We’re going to be much more focused on the broader work of the Kingdom of God, which is beautiful and good and true,” he said. “If we can focus on what is beautiful and good and true, we will get through these four years and find our purpose.”
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