All genders flow from God

Below is my column from today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

This past Monday was the International Day of Transgender Visibility. As I pondered the day, I kept coming back to my own deep concerns about the rising number of attacks on the trans community.

This was brought home locally when one of our local county commissioners, Joe Moss, violated the policies of Grand Valley State University by carrying a pistol on him when on campus. He was attending an anti-trans event and photos show the gun poking out of his jacket while he speaks with trans right protesters.

The most recent FBI report on hate crime saw incidents of violence due to a person’s sexual orientation increase by 23 percent – and that’s in one single year. The increases in incidents of violence related to gender identity increased as well, by 16 percent. While that’s less than the increase on people due to sexual orientation, that’s still an alarming number. For the second year in a row, more than 1 in 5 hate crimes are related to anti-LGBTQIA+ bias.

So, a known far-right conservative poorly concealing a pistol while talking to college students who are protesting in support of trans people – well, that is a disturbing photo to see. It’s particularly disturbing given attacks on the trans community that have come from Moss and other politicians aligned with him.

Sadly, the fodder for these attacks is taught in churches, where the Bible is used as justification for the exclusion and marginalization of transgender people. I’d like to try an unpack that just a bit – because so much of what people have been told is simply bad exegesis.

For example, one of the first things many Christians do when you get into conversations of gender and sexuality is they go back to the start of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, to insist that the structure of male and female in marriage was part of the way God ordained creation itself to exist.

There are so many errors to unpack here. Let’s get started.

First, what you have in Genesis 1 is what’s known as a series of merisms. This is a rhetorical device where you use two contrasting parts to refer to the whole. So, for example, instead of saying you searched everywhere for something, you might say you searched “high and low.” If you said you searched “high and low,” no one would think you didn’t search in the middle or assume only high and low existed. It’s a figure of speech.

So, God in Genesis 1, we hear about water and land, light and darkness, morning and evening, sea creatures and wingèd birds in the sky, and so on and so forth. So, when it comes to the creation of humanity, we read that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

But that doesn’t mean that only male and female exist within humanity any more than Genesis 1 might mean that there is only light and darkness and nothing in between.

The brilliant poet David Gate articulated this beautifully in a poem he wrote after the tragic death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student who died after a year of bullying and physical violence at school. The poem goes like this:

If God created he night & the day

& the dawn, of course

& the dusk

& the tangerine rosepink sunset

& in the infant bright of morning

& the deep amethyst of twilight

Then to perceive the world in binary is to forego knowledge of the divine

I couldn’t say it better myself. And, if both male and female were created from God and in God’s image, then we are reminded, of course, that God is neither male nor female. God is a non-binary entity, the divine source of all who holds all genders within God’s being. God is the original they/them.

And when God created humanity, God made male and female and everything in between, God made people cisgender and transgender, nonbinary and genderfluid, agender and genderqueeer and intersex and bigender … God made all of these realities and expressions of gender, and just like when you look at the rich variety of daylight blending into evening, God looked at all those genders that came out of God’s own image, and God said they were very good.

So, if you are reading this and you exist somewhere on the gender spectrum beyond the cisgender identity, I want you to hear me say very clearly: God said you were very good. And never let anyone tell you otherwise.

If you want to know more about what the Bible might actually say about trans people, I encourage you to check out the resource the Human Rights Campaign put together. You can get it online at http://sjegh.com/bible&trans. You might be surprised to find there’s actually far more positive to say than you thought.

About the writer: The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. 

The ethic (and reality) of sanctuary

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

There was a bit of a kerfuffle (I believe that’s the theological word for it) this past week when it began making the rounds that the City of Grand Haven Human Relations Commission (HRC) was exploring the question of making our city a “Sanctuary City.”

As one would respect in our day and age, people immediately jumped to their respective sides on the question before they had a chance to see what actually was going on and what it would actually entail. Like so many hot button issues, the word “sanctuary” has become a polarizing concept for folks. It’s like other terms, such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” “pro-life vs. pro-choice,” or “gun-safety vs gun-rights” – the second the phrase is uttered the battle lines are drawn and the ability for curious inquirer evaporates.

The first and most important thing that everyone needs to be aware of is that, despite what some people claimed online, neither the HRC nor the City Council have plans to make Grand Haven a sanctuary city. (That rumor became so pervasive that the city had to issue a statement clarifying matters.) There are people in our city who think the question is worth exploring, so they sent that request in and the natural first place for it to go to be vetted was the HRC. That way they could study the question and give their own recommendation to the elected City Council.

That shouldn’t scare anyone or make people angry. In a participatory democracy, all citizens should have a voice, should be able to ask their government bodies and committees to study questions and ideas. Having the conversation is a good thing, no matter where you hope the conversation will lead.

(And, by the way, the actual conversation at their meeting was less than five minutes long before they all agreed they needed to do more research so they could have a good response to those who asked about this question).

In the hopes of that conversation being a bit more productive, no matter what our City Council or residents decide, there are a few things that might be helpful to remember.

First, the idea of sanctuary cities comes from the Bible. In ancient Israel, there were six “Cities of Refuge” established by God himself in Numbers 35. The Hebrew word is “miklat” and it can be translated as refuge or asylum. If someone killed another person unintentionally, they could flee to those cities and be kept safe until there could be a just trial to determine guilt.

Starting in the 5th Century, churches became places of refuge and sanctuary under canon law, meaning that if someone was accused of a crime but was able to reach a church, they could claim sanctuary and avoid being arrested immediately. (Fun fact, this is the reason why many churches – including my own – have their doors painted red; it’s a symbol of sanctuary.) During the time of the reformation, as the Roman empire gave way to the rise of the nation-state, sanctuary laws were gradually abolished and modern protections like the right to due process were instead put into place.

In the early 1980s, the idea of churches as sanctuary was revived because of the many Central American refugees who were fleeing civil conflict. Obtaining asylum (a recognized right for refugees under international law) was increasingly difficult and so churches offered to provide safe haven for refugees until they could receive legal status and safety.

This sort of sanctuary is an act of civil disobedience, a choice someone or a group make because of their deeply held religious belief and because they believe that handing refugees over to immigration officials would violate their duty as Christians to care for the least of these. It was this same form of civil disobedience that inspired Christians who worked on the Underground Railroad, breaking the laws of cities, states, and even our own country to protect slaves seeking freedom.

Now, what the HRC was asked to consider was something different than that. It was whether Grand Haven should be a sanctuary city. The practicality of that decision would simply be that our police and civil servants would not work with immigration officials in enforcing immigration law. It would also require that we don’t inquire into or take action based on someone’s immigration status. Basically, it leaves immigration enforcement to ICE and says that, as a municipality, we will not involve ourselves in this question.

That’s actually the way our law works. There is nothing in the United States law that requires local government to cooperate with immigration enforcement and that point has been upheld by the Supreme Court. Many have found that it’s essential for local authorities not to be involved, that way immigrants feel safe contacting police when they are the victims of violent crime or going to the hospital when they are in need of care.

Even though the immediate warning people throw out there at this idea is that it would lead to a rise in crime, studies show that’s not the case. In fact, a 2017 study published in the Journal of Urban Economics found that sanctuary policies had no statistically significant impact on crime rates. In the same year, a report by the Center for American Progress indicated that “Statistical analysis illustrates that across a range of social and economic indicators, sanctuary counties perform better than comparable non-sanctuary counties.”

In fact, the only study that has found a correlation between sanctuary study and a rise in crime is one done by the right-leaning “Heritage Foundation” – and that study has been criticized for its faulty methodology.

And I will say that, as a Christian, I support the sanctuary movement. Our current immigration laws and system are broken and based upon the history of racism in our country. And I do believe that we need both civil disobedience on the part of Christians alongside of the refusal of municipalities to cooperate with this unjust system.

Did you know that the idea that crossing a national border without authorization is a criminal offense is actually a rather new idea. It wasn’t until 1929 that our own country passed a law criminalizing undocumented immigration. That law was part of efforts by nativist politicians and white supremacists who believed that the United States should be a nation of white Anglo-Saxon protestants. And so they created race-based quotas that gave preference to people from northern and western Europe while banning almost all immigration from Asia, for instance. And the current system continues to give preference to some countries (like the UK) while also creating backlogs so that it takes twenty-two years to wait in line and immigrate legally from Mexico.

I think it’s unlikely Grand Haven will become a sanctuary city, largely because there is more violent emotion around the phrase than thoughtful concern for the plight of the undocumented person who is fleeing violence and poverty. But I do hope we can have that conversation and, no matter what, come away better informed about what our actual laws entail even as Christians ask what we, as people of faith, believe Jesus would have us to do when it comes to our immigrant neighbor.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. Information on his own parish’s Sanctuary Statement is online at https://www.sjegh.com/immigration-justice

The Order of Love

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

Well, it’s not every day that the latest in politics gets people debating about Augustinian theology or the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, but we do indeed live in strange times.

Last Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance gave an interview where he claimed that the concept of ordo amoris (the order of love, or, love rightly ordered) was what lay behind his views on immigration and refugees. He said the concept was “that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”

Now, Vice President Vance is correct in one thing, order amoris does exist as a theological and ethical concept in the Christian religion. However, as a relatively new convert to the Catholic faith, the way he is using it in this context demonstrates that he is lacking in catechetical instruction about this concept and how it applies in the life of the follower of Jesus.

St. Augustine wrote about this in De Doctrina, when he talked about holiness of life involves keeping your affections under control and loving rightly. That is, not loving things you ought not to love, nor loving things more (or less) then you should. This concept was picked up by Aquinas in Summa Theologica, where he defined the ordo caritatis (the order of charity, or, rightly ordered charity). In that work, he cited Augustine to insist that Christians must love all people equally, but that the manifestation of that love runs out in concentric circles of interconnectedness.

Since then, many have taken to social media, either in defense or in criticism of how he is interpreting the application of the order of love, particularly in the policies of our country. One of the best responses I have read came from Mark Clavier, a priest and theologian whose doctoral work was on St. Augustine of Hippo.

As Clavier so aptly articulates, the point actually being made by Augustine and Aquinas (as well as authors like Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx) is that to love rightly we must begin by loving that which is the highest good – God. In Clavier’s words, “This does not mean rejecting the love of family, place, or work. Rather, these loves only find their true form when they are rooted in the love of God and a generous love of neighbor. Left to itself, love folds inward and becomes possessive, seeking to claim rather than to give.”

What Vance has unfortunately missed is the starting point of the order of love. It’s not your family. It’s certainly not yourself and your people. The starting point is the love of God as made manifest in our love of Christ, his son.

When Christ is at the center, our love will indeed pour out in concentric circles, pushing beyond the natural boundaries we tend to create. It will push us beyond our family and friends, our own country and people. It will propel you into love for the marginalized and vulnerable. Because Jesus told us clearly in Matthew 25 that loving them was how we love him. It will propel you into love for the immigrant and stranger, because the love of Jesus crossed those lines in his own ministry, often to the discomfort even of his own disciples. It will propel you even into love of your enemy, a love that Jesus said was the new teaching he brought in the Sermon on the Mount.

Once more, as Clavier so artfully says, in the church we are called to “practice a love that moves outward, not because of our own strength, but because love, rightly ordered, cannot help but spread. Like a bonfire on a winter night, it’s not content to warm only those nearest to it. Its nature is to glow, to beckon, to give itself away to a world lost in its own darkness.”

Some have said that the problem isn’t a desire to exclude some people from love, but a limitation of resources that this was the point Vance was trying to make: you feed your family before you feed the stranger. The problem with that idea is twofold. First, you cannot extrapolate the responsibilities of the individual onto the responsibilities of the most powerful country in the world. Surely we, as a society and a people, have greater responsibilities than any of us could hold individually.

The second problem is that’s just false. There is no scarcity of resources here. We are by far the wealthiest country in the world, holding over 30 percent of all household wealth. Second behind us is China with 18.6 percent, then Japan with 5 percent, Germany with 3.8 percent, and the UK with 3.5 percent. Did you catch that? We have over 30 percent of all household wealth and our siblings in the UK only have 3.5 percent. So, for leaders in our country to say we do not have the resources to help those fleeing violence and poverty is not just false, it is obscenely false.

So, let’s be clear, our country can absolutely reach out in support of others, we can follow international law for the welcome and resettlement of refugees, we can build a new rational immigration policy that is not based on racist quotas, we can do all of that and absolutely still care for our families. Nothing is stopping us. (Other than, perhaps, the wealthy and powerful who would prefer the system keeps benefiting them.)

As a country, we have resources to help the vulnerable. And to insist that the order of love requires us to take care of our own and turn our back on the rest of the world is a twisting of Augustinian and Thomistic theology of the highest order. It is contrary to the very basic teachings of Jesus Christ himself, who calls us to remember that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him.

Rightly ordered love, in truth, orders us to extend our love, our resources, out from our own people to heal a world broken by sin, violence, and injustice. Love orders us out, not in.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

Christianity: Not just for the religious

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

One part of the new year I am excited about is the return of my short radio segment on WGHN radio each week: Christian Mythbusters. I ran this for a few years in 2020-2022 and, after a break for the past couple of years, I’m glad to have it starting again. You can also find it on Apple Podcasts. So, I thought for this year’s first column I would share my first new episode of that series.

I was working on all of this on the Feast of the Epiphany, a feast in the church that falls each year on Jan. 6. And, as I reflected on this feast in preparation for my own parish’s celebration, I found myself thinking about how this Feast actually breaks a myth – the idea that Christianity is only for religious people.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Christian priest and so, clearly, I’m a pretty religious person. And I’m not one of those people who thinks religion is a bad thing or a dirty word. The word itself comes from the Latin ligare, which means to bind or connect to something. So anyone who adopts practices, customs or ways of living that seek to bind you or connect you to something is practicing some form of religion – for good or ill.

In my own life, both as a priest but also just as a Christian, I have found binding myself to the teachings of Jesus, teachings of love, compassion and mercy to be an important part of who I am. I keeps me from focusing on my own perspective or desire too much; it helps me grow as a person.

But, not everyone’s as religious as a priest and that’s OK! And, as I said, the Feast of the Epiphany reminds us of that.

If you know the story of the Epiphany, it’s the story of the magi from the East who came to worship the Christ child, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrhh. Depending on how the Greek is translated, you may have heard them descried as the Three Wise Men, the Three King or the Three Magi.

The word in Greek, though, is magos, and that was the same word used to refer to the Iranian priestly caste of Zoroastrianism, a group who gained an international reputation for the ancient science of astrology.

A few things here are essential. First, unlike the Jewish shepherd who visited the Holy Family after the birth of Christ, the magi were certainly not Jewish. They were from another nation entirely and practiced another religion entirely. And yet, something in their own religion drew them to Jesus, leading them to offer their own gifts.

Second, though it says that they worshipped the child Jesus, it doesn’t actually specify that they converted to Judaism. It’s even less likely that they would have converted to Christianity – that religion wouldn’t be founded for another 30-some years, after Jesus died and rose again.

And yet, their witness and presence is honored, both in the biblical text and the tradition of the church.

To put it another way, when Jesus was born some Persian astrologers showed up and brought gifts. They weren’t told to change their beliefs and they weren’t turned away. Their gifts were accepted and God even protected them on the way home so that Herod wouldn’t come after them.

So, when I say that this day reminds us that Christianity is not just for religious people, what I mean is that one of the fundamental points of Christian belief is that the child whose birth we just celebrated, Jesus of Nazareth, came to earth for all people, to offer all people God’s transforming and merciful love. Some people respond to that love by binding themselves to it, being baptized and becoming practitioners of the Christian religion. Others, though, don’t – but that doesn’t mean they don’t have gifts to bring. That doesn’t mean you don’t have gifts to bring to bear when it comes to the cause of God’s love and justice in the world.

And whether or not other people appreciate your gifts, know that this Christian priest does.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember, protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.

About the writer: The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven.

"Eyes to See the Visions of God"

Below is my homily from tonight's celebration of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Since the earliest days of Christianity, there has been a sense among the followers of Jesus that Mary was more than simply the biological mother of Our Lord. As early as the third century, around 250 AD, there was a prayer used in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy for Christmas. It is known by its Latin name “Sub Tuum Presidium,” and in English the text is, “We turn to you for protection, O Holy Mother of God. Listen to our prayers, and help us in our needs, save us from every danger, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin.” And so, we find, from the earliest centuries, Christians asking Mary to pray for them, trusting that her love for her son, her love for his followers, would carry their own prayers for safety and protection. 

In the epistle reading appointed for today, we hear from the Revelation to John. In the vision, the temple in heaven is opened and the Ark of the Covenant is made visible in heaven. Then, parallel to the ark, a pregnant woman appears who is in the agony of giving birth. A dragon appears who wants to destroy the woman and her child. But as the woman gave birth, her child was snatched away and taken to God and the woman fled into the wilderness where God will protect her from the dragon. 

The Ark of the Covenant has long been associated with Mary. The Ark was the box constructed by the ancient Israelites to hold the stone fragments of the Ten Commandments. The Ark was kept in the Holy of Holies and God’s presence dwelt upon it. In the same way the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Ark of the Covenant, the Spirit overshadowed Mary so that she would give birth to the Son of God. And so she became the living shrine of God’s presence while the child Jesus grew within her. 

We are reminded in this reading from Revelation that Mary’s willingness to become the God-Bearer carried with it great threat. Not only did it bring the possibility of rumor and reproach that would come upon an unmarried young woman who finally found herself pregnant, but the dark powers of this world which seek to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God would also seek to harm and stop Mary from bringing God into this world. And, as the dragon pursues the offspring of the woman, we are reminded how the powers of this world seek to pursue and destroy the followers of Jesus today.

Even as early as the first century, when the Gospel of John was written, all of these connections between Mary and her son, between the followers of Jesus and the world, all of this was a part of the theological imagination of the church. And then, throughout the centuries, other Christians followed in the footsteps of John. Over and over again, Christians who lived in a time of threat and persecution, like John did, also saw visions of Mary that gave them hope in their own time. 

Today we celebrate the vision that occurred in December, 1531, in Mexico, the vision of Our Lady of Guadalupe. As we heard in the reading from the Nican Mopohua, Mary appeared to Juan Diego, an indigenous peasant, asking for him to request a church be built in her honor on the site. No one believed Juan, certainly not the Archbishop of Mexico City. But Mary told Juan to persist, that she, her little child, her little son, was the one she had chosen to make this request. 

He knew he would need a sign, but instead of going back to the site on December 11, Juan Diego found out that his uncle was ill and so he went to visit him and then, sure that he was near death, journeyed to find a priest to hear his confession and provide last rites. But Mary found Juan Diego on the way, she chided him gently for not asking her for help. She spoke to him in words that are inscribed above the main entrance to the Basilica of Guadalupe, saying, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” She instructed Juan Diego to gather flowers from the summit of the hill—in the middle of December—and to take them to the archbishop. She arranged the flowers in Juan Diego’s cloak and when he opened the cloak before the archbishop, the roses fell out and an image of the virgin was revealed on the cloak itself. The archbishop believed. Juan Diego’s uncle was healed. And a small chapel was built on the hill at Tepeyac where Juan Diego’s cloak was put on display. 

In the time of John, the first Christians feared for their life under the threat of the Roman Empire. John reminded them that the mother of Jesus was their mother as well, that God would protect those Christians and that even in the wilderness God would protect Mary, would protect anyone who sought to bear Christ into this world by word and witness. In the sixteenth century, Mary appeared again to an indigenous peasant, making it clear that he also was her child, he also was a beloved child of God and a part of the church with full voice no matter what those in power said. And she provided her own miraculous image to prove this truth.

And I wonder, if you and I have eyes to see, what might we see today. What visions might Mary want to show us of her children, of any of those under threat from the powers of this world, any of those who are ignored and pushed aside by the religious and political authorities. Mary speaks to all children of God at all times and all places, saying, “Am I not here, I who am your mother?” May we, as the followers of Jesus today, have eyes to see the visions God would give us of our lady. May we, as followers of Jesus today, have the strength to speak truth to power, just as Juan Diego did. And may we know that God’s love holds us, cares for us, and protects us, no matter the wilderness of our lives. Amen. 

O God of love, you blessed your people at Tepeyac with the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Guadalupe; grant that her example of love to the poor and forsaken may stir our faith to recognize all people as members of one family. Teach us to follow in the way you have prepared for us, that we may honor one another in word and action. May we who have been marked by your image share with the Mother of our Lord your commonwealth of peace, where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting. Amen. 

The after party of a presidential election

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

In the days following November’s election, I spent some time praying and pondering how best to respond as a pastor.

My parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church, has for decades been an historically progressive faith community. And so, there were many who were shocked and disturbed by Donald Trump’s election. At the same time, our parish strives for diversity and that includes diversity of political views. And so, there were members of my church who voted for Donald Trump for reasons that meant a lot to them – and reasons they were hesitant to share given the heat of the progressive blowback.

I worried about alienating those members of the body of Christ who had more conservative views even as I worried about marginalized members of my community who feared for their safety and security given some of the promises made by Trump in the election.

Then I remembered a book a colleague had recommended at a clergy gathering not too long ago. It is called “The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics” by Curtis Chang and Nancy French. Both Curtis and French come from a conservative background and the book was clearly written with evangelical Christianity in mind, and yet I had heard that the principals of the book transcended party and tradition and were well worth reading. So, I put out information that, as we entered into the dark season of hope known as Advent, anyone who wanted could join me in reading the book and see if we could find a better way forward.

Much of the book is centered on the premise that there are basically four types of Christians when it comes to faith and politics, basing the typology on where an individual fell when it came to their level of hope and their level of humility.

The combatant is the Christian who is high in hope but lower in humility, fighting political battles with great hope but also with confidence that they absolutely know what’s right and that those who oppose them are absolutely wrong and out to do damage.

The opposite of the combatant is the person who is exhausted. Whereas the combatant is full of hope, the exhausted profile has pretty much lost all hope. They are humble, they don’t claim to have all the answers and are afraid no one can find a good way forward. So, they’ve kind of given up. They avoid conversations that are challenging, block people on social media, avoid the news, and would rather just not talk about politics at all. Surveys show this group is more widespread in our country than any other.

Also low on hope is the cynic. This person also has given up on engaging with those who are different than them, but they do it because they are also low on humility. They are certain they are right; they’re not interested in arguing about it anymore and they tend to, in the words of the authors, stew “in a spiritually degrading mix of pride and despair.”

The fourth type is what the authors call the disciple, the person who is both high and humility and high in hope. They are humble because they are able to acknowledge the complexity of the world and the issues that face us (compared to the certainty of the cynic and the combatant). And so they are eager to listen to those with whom they disagree, to discuss, and – most importantly – they think they might learn something. Unlike the exhausted, the disciple also is filled with hope because they believe that God is active in the world and will always raise up those who need to do the work that needs to be done. Like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, they believe that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”

If you want to take out the quiz from the book and see where you fall, you can do so online at https://redeemingbabel.org/hopehumilityquiz/.

It will perhaps surprise few of you who know me that I fell in the combatant territory (though, when I took the quiz, I was right on the edge of combatant and exhausted). At first that stung a little because it meant I have some work to do on humility. But then I took a deep breath, prayed, and realized the book is right. I do have some work to do on humility.

I also realized that another way to phrase that – both for myself and for others who might fall in a type that is low on humility – is to replace humility with curiosity. That’s not because I don’t need to grow in humility (I absolutely do), but because a great first step in developing more humility is to develop more curiosity.

While I (and a good amount of other people, I imagine), might find it challenging to be curious about the new administration that’s forming, particularly when that administration seems poised to act in ways that we believe will cause profound harm, perhaps we – perhaps I – can try to be curious about people who voted for this administration.

After all, it was not a small group of far-right extremists who voted for another Trump administration. It was a majority of our country (or, more accurately, a majority of those who showed up and voted). Even as Ottawa Impact lost its hold on our county, the county also still went for Trump by 68 percent. And so that means I need to get curious about my neighbors, my friends, and my parishioners.

It also means that if I don’t think I know people who voted for Trump, it’s likely that some of those close to me have given up on talking to me about some of the important issues facing us. Either that, or I have built a social circle that is simply an echo chamber of my own views.

I’m also grateful that each chapter of the book is clear that it’s not suggesting we are all going to be disciples, super high on hope, humility, and curiosity. In fact, each of the other groups (combatant, exhausted, and cynic) have gifts to bring to the conversation. The body of Christ is diverse, and each sort of person is needed. For people like me, the book says what is essential is remembering that my true battle is not against those who disagree, but against powers that seek to harm God’s children. If I can fight that battle, while being curious about those who are caught up by those powers, I’m heading in a good direction.

No one truly knows what the next four years will bring (except that we all probably agree there is going to be some upheaval.). But we must keep talking to one another if we want the next four years to move us forward as a people. I’m going to try harder on my end to do this better. I hope you’ll join me.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com.

Ottawa Impact is not done with us (Tribune Version)

I posted the original version of this column several weeks ago. Here is the version the Tribune ran in their print version today, with several updates and revisions. 

As I was working on my absentee ballot for (today’s) election, I was surprised when I hit the school board section and saw some familiar names. Some familiar Ottawa Impact and Ottawa Impact-adjacent names.

Tommy VanHill had previously run as an unabashed Ottawa Impact candidate and lost, and is on the ballot once more as an official Ottawa Impact candidate. Joshua T. Spurr and David Olthof have been endorsed by the chair of the Ottawa Impact-run Ottawa County Republican Party.

Olthof’s social media shows regular posts from the far-right group Restoring Ottawa, which has been behind repeated attacks on our public school system. In his answers to the ONTRAC questionnaire that was sent to all candidates, he is clear that he homeschools his own children.

Spurr’s social media includes a video from May 2023 that has him shooting at Bud Light cans, presumably part of the far-right protest of Bud Light’s brief promotion with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. Spurr heard of my concerns, and, to his credit, he reached to me personally. He confirmed that he did indeed post the video shooting cans because of Bud Light’s partnership with Dylan, something that, in his words “was meant to be a funny video.” He said he is not opposed to transgender people in general, just Dylan in particular.

I asked Spurr if he thought that the parent of a trans teenager in our school system would think that was a funny video. He declined to answer, simply saying that “a company protest does not translate into me not treating all kids unequally.” We ended the conversation cordially, with me letting him know I still have concerns and him saying he appreciated keeping lines of communication open.

Though not endorsed by the Ottawa County GOP chair, two other candidates still concerned me as well. Helen Brinkman made news in 2023 as an attorney in Kent County that sought to ban books in school libraries that her clients deemed unsuitable, part of a continued pattern of attacks on books with LGBTQIA+ characters and storylines. She also represented Marlena Pavlos-Hackney, the restaurant owner who refused to follow health department guidelines during the pandemic. One only needs to read the news articles to see the ways that her efforts are part of the larger attacks on the LGBTQIA+ population. In her answers to the ONTRAC questionnaire, she expresses her own support of Ottawa Impact and says she would welcome their endorsement.

Steve Skodack has repeatedly denied his connections to Ottawa Impact and yet his views tend to align with those of the movement. Skodack lost his bid to get on the Grand Haven City Council and apparently now is trying this route of school board candidate instead. However, he has no campaign website and his candidacy page on Facebook still, with only a few days to go before the election (as this column was being written), names him as a City Council candidate, so it’s rather difficult to suss out why he is running for this position.

I was reminded that though Ottawa Impact did indeed lose ground in the recent primary election, that group and those who support their far-right views are far from done with Ottawa County – and that includes Grand Haven.

This is perhaps also a helpful time to remind everyone that the waste, corruption and vengeful governing tactics of Ottawa Impact were not an aberration or something that only happened in our neck of the woods. Ottawa Impact is only one manifestation of a national movement by Christian nationalists seeking to seize local control of counties and school boards.

Much of this movement can be traced to Mike Flynn, who served as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor for a whopping 22 days until he resigned after it was revealed that he had lied about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. He pleaded guilty to a felony count of making false statement to the FBI. Before he was sentenced, he was pardoned by Donald Trump.

During the Great Lie, as Donald Trump sought to overturn the results of the 2020 election, Flynn encouraged the president to silence the press, suspend the Constitution and hold a new election run by the military. When he was deposed about the insurrection on January 6, Mike Flynn repeatedly pleaded the fifth.

After the failure of the insurrection, though, Flynn took to calling for a different approach to seizing control of government. Claiming danger from everything from Critical Race Theory to LGBTQIA+ rights, Flynn began urging Christians around the country to take over their school boards and county commissions in order to stop the “woke” infiltration of these bodies.

As the Associated Press has reported, “Flynn’s movement envisions Christianity as the basis of American life and institutions; where the right to bear arms is paramount; where abortion is illegal; where concepts such as systemic racism and gay or transgender rights have no place in the schools; and where people who disagree are called ‘Marxists,’ or perverts, and are excluded from American civic life.” Sound familiar?

Make no mistake, Mike Flynn and those who share his views will not rest in their attempt to take over local boards and governments. As Ottawa Impact’s brand continues its downward spiral into toxicity, it will become harder to identify candidates who are a part of this attempted far-right takeover of our community.

Naturally, all of the candidates I have identified above whose views concern me don’t share all of Flynn’s views. But voters must dig deep and do their research to know how far-right a candidate’s views swing.

Thankfully, groups like the League of Women Voters help out from a non-partisan perspective (though Olthof, Brinkman and Skodack declined to participate in that forum on Oct. 15). And, we also have the gift of Organize Ottawa, an organization that has carefully vetted all candidates and is working to keep extremist control out of our schools and government. You can access their information at organizeottawa.com.

Because, conservative or liberal, independent or progressive, there are lots of followers of Jesus out there who do not believe in the hateful rhetoric against queer people, who believe families and households of all shapes and beliefs should have equal access and rights in schools and the broader community, and who are more interested in showing love than banning books and using terms like “Marxist” so that you don’t have to engage in actual conversation with others. It is those followers of Jesus who must continue to stand against these far-right misrepresentations of his life and teachings.

After all, protecting the marginalized from religious extremism, that’s the sort of thing Jesus actually did do.

The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. The views in this column are his alone as a Grand Haven resident and parent of a student in Grand Haven schools and do not necessarily reflect the views of his congregation.