by Rev. Sean Amato

“Shout Out” – Scripture: Luke 19:39-40

Friends, I’ve been wrestling with a question that I thought I had an answer to – but I’m not sure my answer holds water anymore. So here’s the question: “When it comes to politics and faith, where’s the line?”

I ask you this question, and offer you some of my relevant experience. In early 2025, just a few months after I was called to Slatersville Congregational Church, I began to first really notice what I now call ‘the
Shift’ – a pivot in how Americans engaged with each other about religion, and how Americans treat ‘opposing’ religious leaders. I think I can pinpoint the start of this ‘Shift,’ even, to one specific event: Rev.
Mariann Budde’s homily at the Presidential Inauguration Service.

If you’re not familiar, Rev. Mariann Budde is an Episcopal prelate who spoke as part of the National Cathedral’s Presidential Inauguration Service in 2025; she spoke there not because of any partisan gerrymandering, but because she was and is her denomination’s Bishop of Washington, D.C. – a position she earned after a lifetime of servitude to the people of God through the Episcopal Church. I can speak to the efficacy of her work, as well, having personally known people, including now-ordained people, who attribute their souls and lives being saved to Rev. Budde’s ministry and pastoral care.

At that 2025 service, Rev. Budde preached a homily that was, from my pastoral perspective, not very political. (You might disagree, and that’s fine, but I digress.) The crux of Rev. Budde’s homily was the  importance of showing a Christian heart to everyone – including the LGBTQIA+ community and America’s wide immigrant population, groups of people who had been put ‘on notice’ by the incoming administration. She spoke out against our culture of outrage, advised humility, and appealed for  mercy – because, whether we like it or not, these are Christian precepts. Her words were not controversial, friends, at least in my opinion: they were explicitly, fairly, and righteously in line with the faith we both likely claim.

But in the days to follow, Rev. Budde was castigated for her perceived partisanship – for her preaching a faith that seemed to bump up against the moral and ethical preferences of the incoming administration. In the days to follow, hundreds of threatening emails and calls were made to the National Cathedral; thousands of articles and millions of comments were posted online, ones that tore her apart. Her accomplishments, her appearance, her identity, her womanness, her status as a woman ordained – all were subjected to the scrutinous, foul eye of a public eager to rend her faith and witness for the sake of partisanship. Those with no clue as to who Rev. Budde was, whether she existed prior to the news of the day, declared her a heretic. Without even having moved, without even having preached ‘out of line,’ the line between politics and faith crossed right over Rev. Budde.

Since Rev. Budde’s time in the fire, I’ve observed a new and aggressive willingness to cross the line between faith and politics – and it’s hard not to notice for a pastor, quite frankly, because it’s happening to all my friends, too. The lady pastors I’ve come to know, for instance, have begun documenting the constant attacks and threats they experience online… just in case those threats manifest in their church. Another pastor friend had to cancel service at his church two weeks in a row after repeated, serious threats.

Sadly, even I am not free of this abuse: I’ve received over a dozen threatening calls and messages, a trend that started about two months into my time as your pastor here – a trend that intensifies whenever Rhode Island and North Smithfield hits the news, be it for a vigil we’re holding or a flag our friends at the library hang up outside their front door. Yes, to reiterate: I received threats for hosting a prayer vigil, on the basis of some stranger’s politics. There’s that line between faith and religion, crossing right over me. And it happens all the time now.

To survive the strangeness of what it is to be a modern pastor, I’ve found myself diving further into Scripture – into the ‘best practices’ of the Savior we Christians try our best to emulate. In addressing this matter of angry partisanship, of a shifting line, I turn to Luke 19:39-40 – a short passage, one in which Jesus chides the Pharisees after they try to silence his joyous followers. When the authorities try to clasp their mouths shut and charge them with partisanship, Christ responds, in effect: “You can go on ahead and tell them to shut up. But if they stop talking, even the rocks will find a way to preach my message.”

When Christ said these words, he said them in defense – passive, even resigned defense – of his people’s ability to joyfully practice and proclaim their faith. He knew that even if the authorities managed to shut up good Christians for a time, it wouldn’t last: the message was so powerful, creation itself – the stones amongst our feet – would shout it for us.

Friends, the truth of our faith cannot be silenced – no matter how far into my lane, our lane, politics treads or swerves. We have a right, a need to live out a better way of life than what we’re handed; we have a
calling from our God to supersede powers and principalities by resisting their snares, their need to control and define.

We are Christians, led by the Spirit; Christians, who – if you read that banner out in front of our church – actually care about our community, everyone in it, and want to make it good and safe for whoever walks in this door, and then some. And that is NOT political. That’s the Gospel, and no partisan line can overrule or divert it. Amen.

Pastor Sean