A day after President Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second term as president, the Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Church’s Bishop in Washington, D.C., called on the president to show mercy.
“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” she said, specifically naming for LGBTQ+ children, migrants, and refugees — people the president had targeted in his campaign.
At Temple Israel on Friday morning, Budde said she didn’t think anyone could have anticipated the speed and the ferocity.
“The dismantling of the federal government, the erasure of our history, the attack on higher education, the attack on immigrants, the full-scale funding of what’s become like a private police force to root out people of color,” Budde said. “It’s a shocking weaponization of the state.”
Budde was one of the speakers at a Friday morning interfaith service with nearly 600 people in attendance – including elected officials and more than 100 clergy of all faiths from around the country. The event featured pieces of several different faith traditions, including the burning of incense, a mu’adhdhin with the Muslim call to prayer, and the blowing of a shofar. The event kicked off “ICE Out of Minnesota Day of Truth & Freedom,” a day of action with an afternoon march and rally in Downtown Minneapolis, Shabbat services welcoming the visiting clergy across the community, and a community havdallah service at Temple Israel Saturday night.
The clergy has descended on Minnesota as a multifaith show of support for the community, with more than 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arriving starting last month as part of “Operation Metro Surge.”
(From left): Retired State Rep. Frank Hornstein, State Sen. Scott Dibble, former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak, and U.S. Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar. (Lonny Goldsmith TC Jewfolk).
Budde has a deep connection with Minneapolis. She served as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church from 1993-2011 when she became the Bishop of Washington. She said her children and grandchildren still live in the Minneapolis area, and she and her husband still plan to return to the area.
“We are under no illusions that our actions would change things for you,” Budde said from the bima. “But simply because we are called, as all people of faith are, [we] show up and be present when people are hurting.
“Minnesota has shown the country what it looks like to stand up and exercise not only every tool available to us as citizens in our legal and legislative systems, but also in the vast reserve of community action and determination to love our neighbors and tend to the fabric of community and care and decency that sustains us all.”
Bet Shalom Congregation Senior Rabbi David Locketz, also the co-president of the Minnesota Rabbinical Association, said this is a moment for people to come together.
“The most important thing is this is a moment where everybody’s putting their differences aside and coming together and feeling like we have to show up,” he said. “Hopefully, all these people felt moved to come here and be a part of this are going to go home and tell the story in all those other states.”
Minnesota’s U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, former Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak, and current and former state legislators Frank Hornstein, Scott Dibble, Ann Johnson Stewart, John Marty, as well as John Willoughby, the husband of Congresswoman Kelly Morrison
“The fact that we have faith leaders coming from all over the country is the inspiration and energy we need,” Klobuchar said after the event. “Nothing like this has ever happened that I know of in modern history, in any other town. And while ICE has gone into other places, it’s not in these numbers, not in two cities where you have 3,000 ICE agents and only 1,000 sworn officers.”
Klobuchar was concerned that the focus has expanded beyond the Twin Cities and into the suburbs and beyond to places like Willmar and St. Cloud.
“I do think it’s bringing people together. We’ve had people call in [saying] ‘I’m a Republican, but this is just wrong.’ They know their grandkids are at a school where someone was taken, or they know someone at the little cafe. It’s just spreading way beyond the Cities, and I think that’s a story that’s not always been told.”
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