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.

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.

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