American Anti-Nomianism and its False Gospel
The American project has always been shaped by two central tensions: the struggle between legalism and antinomianism, and the contrast between Christian salvation and the pursuit of mere material prosperity. These tensions can be examined separately or as interconnected forces that reinforce one another. When a society fails to seek and understand its chief end, it inevitably suffers the terrible natural consequences of that ignorance. Yet beyond this, divine providence also imposes judgments—some as restraints on sin, others as discipline to refine and correct believers.
American history can be framed between two false teachers who preached a distorted Gospel: Anne Hutchinson and Mariann Edgar Budde. Both advanced antinomianism and moral perversion and rejected the demands of God’s law. That one now wears a bishop’s robe and preaches from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral is a clear sign of divine judgment on our nation. The question before us is whether we will recognize this judgment and repent of the false Gospel that has been proclaimed from such an exalted position.
Anne Hutchinson was the seed, and Bishop Budde is the fully ripened, rotten fruit. Hutchinson defied the authority and teachings of the elders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, setting up her own Bible study and claiming direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit. She rejected the necessity of outward obedience to God’s law, teaching that Christians, under grace, were not bound by any moral law—a doctrine known as antinomianism. She insisted that true believers were guided by inner revelation, dismissing the role of the objective truths in Scripture for doctrine and life.
Hutchinson’s teachings threatened not merely the social and theological order of the colony, but the immortal souls of those she influenced, leading to her trial and eventual banishment. In modern times, this error has been repackaged as “free grace,” a message that promises salvation without repentance or obedience. The consequences of such a distorted Gospel are now fully evident in figures like Bishop Budde, whose leadership from the pulpit is the logical conclusion of Hutchinson’s rebellion: a religion severed from God’s law and reduced to one of self-justification and moral anarchy.
Antinomianism arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of God’s law and its various distinctions. The moral law, summarized in the Ten Commandments, was given to teach humanity how to live a life pleasing to God and to reveal our sin, pointing us to our need for grace. The ceremonial law, practiced by the Levites at the Tabernacle and later in the Temple, was not an end in itself—but a foreshadowing of the person and work of Christ, who would fulfill its types and shadows. The civil law of Israel, meanwhile, applied the moral law to the specific context of God’s covenant people during a unique period of redemptive history when they were a theocratic nation with no separation between religious and civil authority. Confusing these categories, as antinomianism does, leads to either lawlessness or legalism, failing to grasp that the moral law remains binding as the standard of righteousness while the ceremonial and civil laws have been fulfilled in Christ and the New Covenant.
In the Christian age, the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Christ and is no longer binding. The civil law, which was uniquely applied to Israel, has also ended—though we can still derive general principles from it that remain relevant today. However, the moral law endures, revealing both what pleases the Lord and the depth of our ongoing sin.
Anne Hutchinson rejected this distinction, insisting that the Christian is under no law at all, a confusion that persists to this day. She wrongly accused her Puritan elders of teaching works righteousness simply because they affirmed that the Christian life always bears fruit pleasing to God. In her view, any emphasis on obedience suggested that salvation was earned by works rather than received by grace. This fundamental misunderstanding has echoed through the centuries, leading many to embrace a false dichotomy between faith and obedience, grace and law, causing significant theological and moral confusion in the church ever since.
This theological error reached its noxious public fruit in Bishop Budde’s sermon. After quoting from Matthew 7, she declared, “Rather, unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect.” In this statement, she replaced biblical truth with the relativism of our age, redefining unity as the mere acceptance of diverse perspectives rather than a shared commitment to Christ and His Word. By doing so, she revealed the logical conclusion of antinomianism: a false gospel that shuns God’s moral law. In her counterfeit gospel, faith is no longer tethered to objective truth but instead serves as a platform for affirming whatever views are most palatable to the cultural moment.
It is unclear why Bishop Budde believes that appealing to Jesus carries any weight when she so openly rejects the authority of Scripture in both her doctrinal positions and her teachings on sexuality. Like Anne Hutchinson before her, she trusts her own intuitions as divinely guided, granting herself the authority to pick and choose which parts of the Bible to apply and how to interpret them. In her framework, personal understanding aided by the 21st century moral consensus—not the Word of God—becomes the final authority.
She then declares, “The first foundation for unity is honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, which is, as all faiths represented here affirm, the birthright of all people as children of the One God.” Here, she moves beyond biblical Christianity into a universalist creed, flattening all distinctions between faiths and reducing unity to a vague affirmation of human dignity. But Scripture does not teach that all people by birthright are children of God; rather, it makes clear that we become children of God through faith in Christ (John 1:12). In elevating human intuition above divine revelation, Budde exemplifies the very antinomianism that has undermined the church for centuries, turning biblical authority into a tool for advancing cultural and political agendas rather than proclaiming the truth of the Gospel.
For Bishop Budde, all faiths represent and affirm the same truth—a claim that collapses under even the most basic study of world religions. Any introductory course in comparative religion makes it abundantly clear that this notion is not only absurd but also incomprehensibly simplistic. The world’s religions do not merely differ on minor points; they fundamentally reject the teachings of the Bible and the exclusive claims of Christ as well as God the Creator (Yahweh). The Gospel does not affirm all faiths as valid expressions of the same truth—it calls them to repentance, to turn from unbelief, and to embrace Christ as the only way to God.
Yet Bishop Budde, like Anne Hutchinson before her, elevates her own understanding above Scripture. The objective truths contained in the Bible are either used selectively to fit her needs or rejected as mere cultural artifacts of the ancient world. Just as Hutchinson scolded her Puritan elders based on self-proclaimed divine inspiration, Budde confidently sets aside biblical authority and replaces it with her own theological preferences. Where Scripture draws sharp distinctions between truth and error, Budde erases them, reducing Christianity to a vague, human-centered spirituality that bends to cultural pressures rather than standing on the unchanging Word of God.
Finally, Bishop Budde addressed President Trump directly, invoking the language of mercy. Mercy is indeed a virtue, and a call to it carries rhetorical power. But look at how she distorts its meaning to serve her own agenda: “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families who fear for their lives.”
Here, she falsely implies that gay, lesbian, and transgender children are under actual physical threat in America. If all she meant was that they perceive such a threat, then the proper response would be addressing their fears through mental health support, not distorting reality to fit a political narrative. This is the same delusion I encounter among university professors who have convinced themselves that the physical lives of transgender individuals are under mortal threat under conservative leadership.
By cloaking her political rhetoric in the language of mercy, Budde not only misrepresents the actual state of affairs but also weaponizes fear to advance her ideological goals. Instead of offering genuine pastoral care or biblical truth, she reinforces a false narrative that sows division, all while claiming the authority of God’s name to do so.
The real danger is not the imagined physical threats that Bishop Budde invokes but the very real risk of eternal loss. Jesus declared that only those who believe in Him will have eternal life (John 3:16). False teachers like Anne Hutchinson and Mariann Edgar Budde do not merely distort doctrine—they endanger souls by leading people away from the truth of the Gospel. By elevating personal intuition over Scripture, they replace divine revelation with human invention, offering a counterfeit faith that soothes rather than saves.
The question before us is whether we will continue down this path of compromise and confusion or return to the clear, unchanging truth of God’s Word. A society that abandons God’s moral law does not become free; it becomes enslaved to falsehood. The law of God is good and upright—it pleases God and it directs us to our chief end. The way forward is not through the empty platitudes of progressive theology but through repentance and renewed obedience to the Gospel. America does not need more self-styled prophets who twist Scripture to fit the spirit of the age—it needs faithful teachers who proclaim the whole counsel of God.
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So what do you plan to do to LGBT people? You claim that there is no physical threat but never say what you plan to do?
This piece is OBVIOUSLY un-Biblical.
Bishop Budde’s pivotal, prayerful message was about mercy. The word ‘mercy’ and related terms appears HUNDREDS OF TIMES in the Bible.
Further un-Biblical are claims in the piece that immigrants and refugees do not DESERVE mercy, and that persons with emotional conflicts about sexuality and gender do not DESERVE MERCY.
The teaching here is un-Biblical, un-Christ like and blasphemous (claiming that what God’s command – mercy, even in the prayer Jesus gave – is NOT God’s command).
Furthermore, the teaching here is antinomian: DIS-believing the teaching and example of God’ way and will in the whole Bible.
American Reformer’s consistent un-Biblical and blasphemous abuse of the Bible is shocking!
I’ll need to think about it further, but I can be convinced Budde’s sermon errs too close to pluralism for comfort. It depends upon what she means by “valid” (and lesser extent what exactly is “worthy of respect”), but in a sense of absolute Truth as espoused by John 3:16 this is false.
This is not, however, an invitation to act malignantly to those who live lives contrary to the Christian life. While the exact theological argument is perhaps unsound, I believe the ultimate conclusion on an appeal to unity, or more accurately living lovingly and mercifully with those around us, can be reached in the universality of our sinful nature, the shared need for the universal reach of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice (even though it won’t universally be accepted) and by appealing to the fact that all humans being are made in the image of God.
If that is not convincing, lets defer directly to the Gospel.
Per John 8
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. 5 Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
Notice the order of events. A woman who had violated the moral law is brought before Jesus by the pharisees (the “charge to bring against him” is most likely referring to an appeal to Roman law that did not grant Jews authority of capital punish). Jesus famously proclaims, “Let him who is without sin… be the first to throw a stone…”, declares her slate clean, and finally instructs her to sin no more.
Here the mercy and grace of Jesus precede repentance even in violations of the moral law. John completely avoids any comment on her repenting nature or lack thereof, and frankly I think it’s beside the point in this story. We are all sinful and undeserving of the grace of God, therefore unfit to judge and even more unfit to enact justice. Of course, repentance is important, but it is in response to the grace of God.
Enter: Romans 2
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
So back to the part of her sermon that has drawn the most ire, her appeal to mercy. Despite such appeal being completely founded within scriptural tenants (and fully reasonable within the social context, the president’s inaugural church service called for the president and his administration to act with Christian values), the article’s author insists that Trump’s actions will cause no physical harm and that it is therefore mean spirited and misguided.
The first problem is that this ignores the various concerns over non-physical wellbeing, including protection against discrimination. Project 2025, which is proving to have a large influence on Trump’s executive orders, equates the topics of sexual orientation and gender identity to pornography. What does this mean? Various proponents of similar state legislature have claimed to argue for a common-sense sexual education policy that protects children from early exposure to obscene content, which seems reasonable on the surface. Yet when these proponents finally elaborate on the specifics, it is clear that any exposure to LGBT topics (including the simple acknowledgement of their existence) is considered pornographic. How is one to feel safe when society considers their mere presence to be obscene? Furthermore, how can one be sure that laws restricting LGBT behavior (in public or otherwise) will not follow suit?
The second problem is the ignorance of non-state targeted violence. It is reasonable to assume increased anti-LGBT rhetoric policies and legislature will lead to an increase in hate crimes targeted at the LGBT community, which can directly threaten the physical wellbeing of those individuals. Should a fair reason to instate LGBT restrictive legislature/policy even exist in the first place, it would only be merciful to ensure that such changes to the legal code do not incite or encourage vigilantly and or mob violence amongst the populace.
But of course, the true source of division within the broader American Church is one Bishop’s plea that the new administration act mercifully, and not the leader of the free world’s appeal to religious sentiments for authoritarian political power.