On Dissent

I wrote this piece as a way to digest the first week of Donald Trump’s presidency. After receiving some passes on it from newspapers and magazines, I decided that I needed to get it out into the world. While it may feel like Bishop Budde’s sermon was ages ago, it is essential that we, the public, do not allow the outrage machine to force us to forget all that has happened, even just 3 weeks ago.

When Indians heare the horrid filths,
Of Irish, English Men,
The horrid Oaths and Murthers late,
Thus say these Indians then:
We weare no Cloaths, have many Gods,
And yet our sinnes are lesse:
You are Barbarians, Pagans wild,
Your Land’s the Wilderness.  (Roger Williams, A Key to Language in America)

Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island colony and one of the earliest proponents of the separation of church and state in the United States, composed this poem in his first book, A Key to the Language of America. In highlighting the humanity of the Narragansett Indians in tension with the colonial impulse for violence in the name of God, Williams set the stage for clerical responsibilities to speak faithfully according to his conscience when human rights were being denied.

Williams’ bold proclamations and inclusive vision challenged the Massachusetts theocracy, prompting leaders to call for his exile, an exile not entirely unlike calls for Bishop Budde’s deportation.

In the middle of the night, Williams fled Massachusetts and journeyed through the winter wilderness only to be saved by the Narragansetts in what is now known as Rhode Island. The colony of Rhode Island was founded as “a shelter for persons distressed of conscience,” even those who were practitioners of other religions and no religion at all.

Not even a century later, John Leland, ironically born in Massachusetts, was ordained to ministry and moved to Virginia, where he pastored Mount Poney Baptist Church. Leland adamantly opposed the idea of a Christian nation and stood up to political elites in Virginia saying, “No National church, can, in its organization, be the Gospel Church. A national church takes the whole nation, and no more; whereas, the Gospel Church, takes in no nation, but those who fear God, and work righteousness in every nation.” It was Leland, under the influence of fierce protectors of personal conscience and the separation of church and state, who supported Thomas Jefferson in enacting The Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia, ending Virginia’s state church and paving the way for a similar inclusion in the First Amendment.

The Act said, “That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall he be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall he otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion.”

On Tuesday, January 21, Bishop Mariann Budde stood in the pulpit of the historic Washington National Cathedral and begged for President Trump to have mercy on the people of the United States of America, specifically calling his attention to “gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic and Republican families,” and immigrants, documented and undocumented “who pick our crops,” and those who children fear for their parents’ deportation. She said, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger for we were all once strangers.”

Bishop Budde’s sermon has since been criticized and her office reports having received death threats. One senator even went so far as to suggest on X that she should be deported.

But what her critics do not grasp is that woven deeply into the fabric of this country is a radical proclamation that religious leaders and citizens alike must be able to offer faithful dissent because, without the freedom of conscience, no one is truly free. When calls for deportation and threats of death become normative for religious leaders who speak according to their conscience, America has betrayed itself. When religious leaders of any religion are considered unAmerican or even terrorists for speaking truth to power, we have forsaken American ideals.

Centuries before Donald Trump’s rise to fame, Americans were working out the checks and balances that will ensure that all people will be treated with dignity. While the collective society is still working toward the all people part of that aspiration, it is the aspiration itself, rooted in Roger Williams’ and John Leland’s faithful witness that makes the goodness within each of us attainable.