President Trump's controversial foray to St. John's Church on Monday is generating widespread criticism, after police and National Guard troops physically cleared out demonstrators, using tear gas, to allow a photo opportunity outside the church.
The bishop who oversees St. John's is among the critics.
"He used violent means to ask to be escorted across the park into the courtyard of the church," Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington tells NPR's Morning Edition. "He held up his Bible after speaking [an] inflammatory militarized approach to the wounds of our nation."
"He did not pray," the bishop continued.
"He did not offer a word of balm or condolence to those who are grieving. He did not seek to unify the country, but rather he used our symbols and our sacred space as a way to reinforce a message that is antithetical to everything that the person of Jesus, whom we follow, and the gospel texts that we strive to emulate ... represent."
Every president since James Madison has visited St. John's Church, which opened in 1816 and sits across the park from the White House. Despite that longstanding relationship, Budde says her diocese had no warning of Monday's visit.
