Not all boys are boys; not all girls are girls

 

My column in today’s edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.

Last week, one of my fellow community columnists asked a question. On Oct. 25, Geri McCaleb wrote, “What’s extreme about recognizing that boys are boys and girls are girls?” While I doubt that McCaleb does not know how very loaded and problematic that statement is, I’d like to offer an answer. Whether or not McCaleb is interested in learning the answer to her question, though, I’m absolutely sure there are likely a good number of well-meaning and thoughtful folk out there who might ask the same question.

The question itself comes from one of the core commitments of the “Ottawa Impact” PAC, as every candidate they endorse has as one of their values the statement, “A boy is a boy. A girl is a girl.” The problem with this statement is that it seeks to erase the reality of any person who does not fit within the gender binary. It literally seeks to pretend that the trans community doesn’t exist – and thus only continues the marginalization and discrimination toward those who identify as anything other than cisgender (this is the term for those whose sense of gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth).

First, just from a scientific and realistic standpoint, the idea that “a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl” ignores the reality of people who are intersex. That is, the statement ignores the reality of those who are born with ambiguous genitals, or genitals that do not clearly match their chromosomal gender identity due to a variety of scientifically identified conditions. Most scientists believe that somewhere between 0.02 percent or as many as 1.7 percent of births fall under this identification.

Yes, these children are real. Yes, they attend schools in Grand Haven. And to pretend they do not exist is to participate in the culture of stigmatization and discrimination that has led to the high rates of infanticide and abandonment these people experience within their own families.

Second, the true attack of this claim, I imagine, is not on the intersex community (I’m willing to allow that people may be ignorant and unaware of this scientific reality). Rather, it is directed at those who might have a clear biological gender externally but who cannot identify with that gender internally. This could be someone born as a boy who identifies as a girl, someone born as a girl who identifies as a boy, or someone who is nonbinary and does not identify as either female or male.

The Mayo Clinic (clearly not a secret cabal of liberalism) even has a helpful article for parents titled “Children and Gender Identity: Supporting Your Child.” In that article, the staff of Mayo Clinic stress that it is common for children to go through periods of gender exploration when it comes to clothes and toys and even the roles they adopt in play. For some kids, however, as they get older this sense that they identify as a different gender persists. They encourage parents, “Listen to your child’s feelings about gender identity. Talk to your child and ask questions without judgment.”

People can become aware and able to articulate their transgender identity at any age. In a non-discriminatory environment, many adults who identify as transgender can point to an awareness of that reality as young as 7 years old. Some can identify it even younger. For others, they may live for years with a vague sense that they don’t really fit in and it’s not until later in life they realize it is because of their gender identity.

The reality of children and adolescents who don’t fall into the “boy/girl” categories of cisgender is an essential reality for educators and school board members to recognize.

The American Psychological Association advises: “Parents of gender-nonconforming children may need to work with schools and other institutions to address their children’s particular needs and ensure their children’s safety.” Data from the National Institute of Health indicates that 82 percent of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40 percent have attempted suicide – with rates of suicidality being highest among transgender youth.

As adults, these children will also face profound challenges. Most anti-discrimination laws do not protect transgender people from discrimination. They are often discriminated in housing, employment, health care, legal systems, along with their educational experience and their family of origin. In a recent study, about half of transgender participants reported they had experienced a transphobic hate crime at some point in their life. Half.

“A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl” – these are words that contribute to a culture that is literally killing trans people, literally killing trans kids. And ignorance cannot be an excuse anymore. It particularly cannot be an excuse among those who would like to be elected to our school board. Their denial of the reality of non gender-conforming kids is just one of the many reasons I voted for our current school board incumbents (Carl Treutler, Nichol Stack and Marc Eickholt) and against the transphobic platform of the Ottawa Impact candidates (Tommy Van Hill, Roger Williams and Thomas Hoekstra II). While Van Hill, Williams and Hoekstra certainly have the right to their transphobic views, they must be stopped from imposing them on the children of our school district.

One more word on this question, before I close. And that is to the loss. There is a loss when people deny the reality of trans people. You miss how wonderful, beautiful and strong these people are. In my work with the Lakeshore GSA Youth Group (http://sjegh.com/gsa), I’ve had the gift of meeting some kids in our schools who don’t identify as cisgender. They are smart, funny and amazing kids.

Because I believe our God delights in diversity. After all, God created animals that can change their gender identity (particularly common among fish). Some birds can have the biological characteristics of both genders. People want to force God’s creation into a box, insisting that everything should live how God made them – and I agree. After all, fish should swim and birds should fly, right? But our God is a God who created some fish to break the norm and fly into the air and some birds to dive into the water and swim.

The wonderful diversity of God’s creation – and the wonderful gifts of all transgender individuals, whether kids or adults – should be cherished, celebrated and protected. It should never be denied.

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. His opinions with regard to the candidates in the school board election are those of him alone as a resident of the community and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or congregation. However, his congregation and denomination enthusiastically support the rights and gifts of trans people everywhere.

Impact versus Integrity: A Correction

The following is a column I have submitted to the Grand Haven Tribune to correct a very unfortunate typo in the first paragraph of my column published yesterday. 

Yesterday, in my column on the attempts of far-right extremists to take over our school board and force their views upon all the education of all children in the district, there was a tremendously unfortunate typo in the first paragraph. 

I wrote how all this began two years ago with a group called “Grand Haven Conservative Parents” and their attempts to ban book with sexual content, particularly books that contain LGBTQ characters. I wrote how that group then became “Restoring Ottawa,” and then wrote how many of the individuals associated with this campaign are active in a local PAC.

However, in a slip of the keyboard I wrote that this local PAC was “Ottawa Integrity.” Clearly, though, “Ottawa Integrity” is not the PAC formed from these extremist individuals. And throughout the rest of the column, I referred to that PAC by their actual name “Ottawa Impact.” 

As soon as I was alerted to the typo in the first paragraph, I alerted the Tribune who promptly corrected the online version and issued a correction in the next print version. However, there may be a “felix culpa” here. That Latin phrase means “happy fault” and refers to the truth that goodness can flow even from mistakes and sins done wrong. The typo raises the importance of explaining why a distinction between Ottawa Impact and Ottawa Integrity is so very essential. 

Ottawa Impact is a PAC that has already successfully won primaries where their candidates will now run unchallenged to represent several districts on the Ottawa County Commission. Absent challengers in the General Election, those Ottawa Impact commissioners will likely be elected  in November and establish their own majority on the Commission. Presumably, they will proceed to do what they promised in the campaign. They will seek to dismantle the Ottawa County Health Department and to eliminate the Ottawa County Office of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. They will find any way they can to grind their axes from the restrictions of the pandemic and punish public health officials who were trying to keep us safe. 

This is the same group that is running extremist school board candidates in the Grand Haven Area Public Schools election: Roger Williams, Thomas Hoekstra, and Tommy Van Hill. Not only are these candidates running on a platform to ban books in the name of parental rights (they really are only interested in the rights of parents who agree with them, not other parents who want a free and professionally curated library for our kids), but they have all signed a contract with Ottawa Impact supporting its platform. That platform is based on not only on banning books in library, but is also opposed to LGBTQ content in sex education (erasing the existence of queer and trans kids, something that will only increases their pain and suffering), the rejection of healthcare policies for vaccinations to keep the public safe, and a platform statement that explicitly opposes attempts at racial justice and equity.

This group is so extreme that one of the candidates, Roger Williams, has regularly attended school board meetings and when he is told he has to keep to the same three-minute time limit as everyone else in public comment period, he says the board is racist for insisting upon that reasonable guideline.

And Ottawa Impact is not only active in Grand Haven. They are running candidates in school boards across the county. Right across the bridge in Spring Lake, they are running candidates who are disingenuously hiding their connections with Ottawa Impact, as our communities increasingly realize the danger of this group’s extremist views. Indeed, their fear to confront the public is evident in the refusal of any of their candidates for school board to attend the public forum hosted by the non-partisan League of Women Voters. Ottawa Impact, and candidates aligned with their views, are part of a larger effort nationwide to takeover local government and replace public servants with ideologues who support fascist control based on narrow puritanical and discriminatory beliefs over service to a diverse populace. 

Ottawa Impact is true to its name: they are seeking to punch through the policies and structures that seek to enable the freedom and flourishing of the whole community, insisting everyone else must follow their own views on these questions. Theirs is a platform that would violently disrupt our community.

On the other side of the world from them is Ottawa Integrity. While it is clear that Ottawa Impact only supports far-right candidates who align with Trump’s “America First” worldview, Ottawa Integrity is a non-partisan PAC that “is driven by a desire to protect, promote, and uphold integrity for the people in our community.” Rather than attack the health department and school boards, they have explicitly expressed appreciation for the work they (and so many other publics servants) did, trying to keep us safe in the worst health-crisis we’ve seen in a century. Instead of dismantling government, or running on national partisan issues for local elections, Ottawa Integrity believes that “the primary responsibility of local governments is to assess and meet the needs of the community; through the functional administration of municipal services and infrastructures.”

And, yes, they are non-partisan. When you go to the website of Ottawa Integrity, you can see that they have endorsed both Republican and Democratic candidates who follow the principles of integrity they have outlined. None of these candidates are required to sign a contract with Ottawa Integrity. 

So, I want to express my apology to Ottawa Integrity for anyone who may have been confused by the typo in the first paragraph of last week’s column Ottawa Integrity is striving to create a non-partisan response to far-right extremists like Ottawa Impact. Please, whether you live in Grand Haven or elsewhere, be very attentive to who is running in this year’s election and who supports them. It will take every resident standing up and rejecting this takeover for it to be stopped. It might be too late for this year’s Ottawa County Commissioners, but it’s not too late to protect the kids in our schools. 

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. These opinions are those of him alone as a resident of the community and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or congregation. 

Vote for the Interest of All Kids and Against Censorship

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

It’s been around two years since I first wrote in this newspaper, expressing concerns of the efforts of some individuals in our community to ban books, particularly books with LGBTQ content. Originally, that group was “Grand Haven Conservative Parents.” Then it became “Restoring Ottawa.” Now many of the individuals associated with this campaign against our schools are active in the local PAC “Ottawa Impact.”

Ottawa Impact has now released the names of their “vetted” candidates for school board, and you can tell that there is a direct connection between the efforts to ban books in our schools and the candidacies of Roger Williams, Thomas Hoekstra, and Tommy Van Hill. 

Williams states on his campaign site that he began attending board meetings when this effort began bank in 2022 and that, as a board member, a major focus “will be to protect children and defend their innocence, allowing them to enjoy their childhood, free of divisive and obscene materials. He believes children should not be bombarded with adult themed books and subjects, or made to feel like oppressors or oppressed, based on skin color or ideology.” Similarly, on Hoekstra’s website, it says, “Thomas decided to run for school board after viewing pornographic material in the school libraries and attending board meetings where there was disregard for parent comment and school policy.” Finally, Van Hill’s website shares his concern for “recent government overreach into individual freedoms, parental rights, and American values.”

So, let’s clarify a few things right off the bat. There are no pornographic books in our school libraries. Are there books with some sexual content at age-appropriate levels? Yes. That’s not the same as pornography. These parents continue to attend board meetings, reading selections from books without attention to the overall literary quality of the work or how that section of content fits into the larger narrative. It is parents like this who have sought to ban some of the greatest pieces of literature from our school libraries, including: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Brave New World  by Aldous Huxley, Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin, Rabbit, Run by John Updike, and And Are you there God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume. 

These candidates, and the individuals in our community who are still waging a war to ban books, say that they support parental rights in education. They don’t let anyone question them about what that means, though, and so they refuse to participate in open events like the one recently hosted by the non-partisan League of Women Voters. Regardless, let’s be clear, these candidates do not support the rights of every parent. Instead, they believe all children and teenagers in our school should only have access to literature they deem acceptable. They believe they should be the arbiters of age-appropriate content. 

These are candidates with a solution in search of a problem. Parents already have access to the books their kids check out. There is already a system for determining appropriate content, a professional program at the Library of Congress that uses experts in the field and identifies the proper age of the audience. Our school librarians are then trained to use this system when curating content that is age-appropriate for libraries. Furthermore, if a parent thinks a mistake in categorization has been made, that parent can raise the issue with the librarian who can investigate the book and what library it is most appropriate for. 

It's of note that many of the books they disagree with contain LGBTQ characters or content. However, as I’ve written before, the Journal of Adolescent Health published a study that found that 24% of suicides between the ages of 12 and 14 were completed by LGBTQ kids. Data from the United States Department of Health and Human Services indicates that LGBTQ youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth. Another study from the National Center for Transgender Equity found that LGBTQ youth are almost five times more likely to have actually attempted suicide. A study published in Pediatrics found that 40% of transgender adults have reported attempting suicide with 92% of those adults attempting before the age of 25.

However, when LGBTQ students have access to literature which accurately reflects their experience, it helps them as they grow and develop a healthy understanding of self. Studies have shown that LGBTQ students who have access to themes related to their identity have higher attendance, GPAs, and a stronger sense of safety in the classroom. Rates of suicidality decrease. 

Furthermore, as children grow up into teenagers and then young adults, it is important that they have access to age-appropriate literature—including literature with sexual content that is appropriate to their ages. Studies have shown that this literature helps kids explore what is going on in their bodies safely. And many of these books help adolescents begin to understand the importance of questions like consent as well as providing an avenue for finding language around trauma or abuse they may have endured. 

Will one parent have different ideas about the content they want their child or teenager to read? Of course! That’s why it is so important to cultivate an open relationship with your child, to ask them questions about what they are reading and what they think about it. Education should be a partnership between parents, students, and educators—not a war where some parents try to force their own narrow views on all children in our schools. 

As author Laurie Halse Anderson, whose young adult books are frequently challenged, argues, “By attacking these books, by attacking the authors, by attacking the subject matter, what they are doing is removing the possibility for conversation. You are laying the groundwork for increasing bullying, disrespect, violence and attacks.”

Grand Haven can do better than this. Grand Haven is better than this. And the only way this small group of parents will succeed in their attempt to take over the education of our children will be if we don’t stand up and tell them no. 

So, I urge you, vote in the election on November 8. You can already even request an absentee ballot if you need to. Vote for GHAPS Board of Education incumbents Carl Treutler, Nichol Stack, and Marc Eickholt, and send a message that Grand Haven does not support book banning, puritanical views on sexuality, the shaming of LGBTQ students, or efforts to stop our children from engaging challenging content about race and history. Let’s keep professionals and librarians in charge of our schools, not far-right extremists. 

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. These opinions are those of him alone as a resident of the community and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or congregation. 

The Call of Labor Day for the Christian

Below is my column from the September 7 edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

I know many of you, similar to me, likely enjoyed the traditional three-day weekend which ends summer each year. I’m always struck, though, that despite the common (and important!) refrain to “remember the reason” for the Memorial Day holiday each year, there is rarely a similar call for Labor Day.

Many of the roots of the labor movement can be found in Christianity itself. Beginning in the late 18th century and running to the mid 19th century, the Clapham sect in the Church of England (the mother church of my own denomination) was active in calls for social reform. The best-known member of the group was the evangelical Anglican, William Wilberforce. Their denunciations against the slave trade were one of the strongest forces that led to its end.

With the rise of industrialization in the 19th century, there was a corresponding rise of a formal Labor Movement which advocated for workers in the new industrialized world. Whether their politics were conservative or liberal, many Christian theologians and pastors found themselves aligned with the concerns of the labor movement.

In an early 20th-century edition of Biblical World (one of the earlier names of the Journal of Religion, which is still published today by the University of Chicago Press), a theologian wrote, “The ‘workingman’ is first of all just a man, and his power to produce commodities is not the object of his existence.” A person’s value cannot be determined by the goods they produce – their existence has much deeper meaning than this. Christian virtues, like the importance of the Sabbath in Judaism, began to be brought to bear on an increasingly industrialized world, with Christians insisting that every person should have a day of rest.

Around the same time, in the early 20th century, the Federal Council of Churches – which included the Anglican, Baptist, Orthodox, Lutheran, Methodist, Moravian, Catholic, Presbyterian and Reformed traditions of Christianity – adopted something called the Social Creed of the Churches, giving their own support and commitment to responding to these issues. The Social Creed they adopted expressed these convictions:

• For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life.
• For the principles of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.
• For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.
• For the abolition of child labor.
• For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.
• For the suppression of the “sweating system.”
• For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.
• For a release from employment one day in seven.
• For a living wage in every industry.
• For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.
• For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.

In our own time, including right here in our community of Grand Haven, we are seeing once more the need for strong advocates for labor. While corporations and executives take in significant profits, they also complain about the difficulty in hiring workers. Something about the experience of the past two years has made many people unwilling to work for wages that cannot produce a reasonable standard of living. It’s not that there is a shortage of labor – it is that companies and businesses have not caught up to the fact that workers will no longer put up with inadequate pay nor the constant demands for work created by technology, where your office is always hidden right there in your mobile device, 24/7.

We can set partisan politics aside, I hope, and agree as Christians that the inherent dignity of every human being means we should be concerned with the wages people are being asked to live with, even as corporate funding continues to go up to those at the top.

In our church’s nighttime office of prayers called Compline, there is one prayer that particularly highlights this concern to me and is a meaningful end to the day. It says, “O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while others sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Indeed, our common life does depend upon each other’s toil. May we learn, not just on Labor Day but always, to respect and honor that more fully.

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.

Giving thanks for the history and service of the Coast Guard

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

Growing up in Grand Haven, I remember regularly hearing complaints about the crowds of people descending upon our city for the Coast Guard Festival. However, in the 12 years I have been back home, I’ve come to enjoy watching our small city fill up with people who want to enjoy this place we can so often take for granted.

Part of what we can take for granted is the rather extraordinary history and place of the United States Coast Guard in our country’s history. Now if, as a resident of Grand Haven, you already know the history of the Coast Guard, feel free to skip the rest of this column. But if you are curious to learn some more about this uniformed service, then read on.

When the Coast Guard was created by Congress in 1790, it was originally known as the “Revenue Marine” or “Revenue Cutter Service,” and was an idea from Alexander Hamilton. (The lack of a song featuring the Coast Guard in the “Hamilton” musical is a true oversight that I hope Lin Manual Miranda will at some point correct – though they do get a shoutout in the song “The Adams Administration” if you listen closely.) The focus of the group was collecting customs duties at our nation’s seaports (hence “revenue” in the name). However, in 1915, the group was merged with the United States Life-Saving Service and became the modern Coast Guard we know today.

The United States Coast Guard is now one of the eight uniformed services (and one of the six armed services) in our country, with maritime law enforcement jurisdiction in both domestic and international waters, and also serving with a federal regulatory agency mission. One of the hallmarks of the Coast Guard is that it has both the security service mission above, but also a distinct humanitarian service.

Even though the Coast Guard is the second smallest of the military service branches in our country, in terms of membership, ours is still the largest and most powerful coast guard in the world. It surpasses the capabilities and size of most navies other countries might have. Indeed, it is the 12th-largest naval force in the world.

When it was created, it operated under the Department of Treasury (hence the connection to Hamilton and the original mission as a revenue service. After the second world war, the Coast Guard operated under the Department of Transportation from 1967 to 2003. Then, in 2003, it was transferred to Homeland Security as part of a massive reorganization of federal agencies.

During times of war, the Coast Guard can be transferred directly into the United States Department of the Navy – something that happened in both world wars. That said, the Coast Guard has actually been involved in every war from 1890 through the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. It not only protects the borders of our country, but safeguards sea lines of communication and commerce across territorial waters.

Each year, the Coast Guard saves tens of thousands of lives at sea and in bodies of water here in the U.S. It also brings emergency response and disaster relief for both man-made and natural disasters both domestically and around the world. Organizationally, authority is remarkably decentralized compared with other armed services, and significant responsibility can fall on the shoulders of even junior personnel. This is one of the reasons the Coast Guard is often praised for its ability to respond quickly in times of distress and disaster.

In a 2005 article in Time magazine, after the work of the Coast Guard in responding to Hurricane Katrina, Wil Milam, a rescue swimmer from Alaska, told the magazine, “In the Navy, it was all about the mission. Practicing for war, training for war. In the Coast Guard, it was, take care of our people and the mission will take care of itself.”

The lifesaving work of the Coast Guard after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon mobile drilling platform was featured in the film of the same name. Base Kodiak, the major Coast Guard shore installation in Kodiak, Alaska, was featured in a Weather Channel series and works closely with the film crew of the Discovery show “Deadliest Catch.”

There are 29 cities in our country that are designated as Coast Guard Cities, but Grand Haven, Michigan, was the first when we were designated “Coast Guard City, USA” by an act of Congress that was signed by President Bill Clinton on Nov. 13, 1998.

So, as the crowds descend on our city during this week, I hope you’ll join them in enjoying the amazing festival that our community has hosted since 1937. Remember that these crowds can be a hassle for year-round residents, but they are the lifeblood to many of our small businesses who rely on festival business to make it through the slower winter months. And if you see someone in uniform, thank them for their willingness to serve.

If you’re interested, you’re welcome to join our members at St. John’s Episcopal Church at 10 a.m. this Saturday, before the parade starts, for a service of Morning Prayer. We will begin with a patriotic hymn sing and then move into that time of Scripture and prayer together as we give thanks and pray for the well-being of those who serve in the Coast Guard. After morning prayer, our church will be selling pulled pork, hot dogs, snacks and drinks all to benefit the Unity School, a small school our church supports in Kaberomaido, Uganda. All are truly welcome.

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.

Let's look at abortion from a position of all faiths

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

I read with interest the column from my colleague, Pastor John Koedyker, on “Looking at abortion from a position of faith” (July 13). I was disappointed, however, to see that it was only his own perspective on faith on this issue that was presented.

I was disappointed, but not surprised. Because increasingly in our country, and in our own local elections, one segment of Christianity is privileging their own personal view over the views of other Christians – not to mention those from other faith traditions or those who do not choose to belong to a faith tradition. And the idea that one particular view in one particular religion should govern the law of the entire country runs counter, not only to Christian charity but also to the First Amendment to our Constitution, which insists that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

My own religion, Christianity, as it is understood in the Episcopal tradition, would disagree strenuously with the claims that Pastor Koedyker has made. In our most recent General Convention, just concluded in Baltimore, our church passed a resolution which states that our church, “Recognizes that pregnancy and childbirth are dangerous undertakings that risk permanent disability and death for those who bear children” and also that “access to abortion is a key element in preserving the health, independence and autonomy of those who can bear children.” This resolution is based upon the stance our church has maintained since 1967, our “unequivocal opposition to any legislation on the part of the national or state governments which would abridge or deny the right of individuals to reach informed decisions (about the termination of pregnancy) and to act upon them.” (You can read a summary of all our church’s statements on abortion and women’s reproductive health online at http://sjegh.com/abortion).

But it is not only the Episcopal Church that maintains this stance. Our own view is similar to the stance of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ. Our view, however, is not respected by the law, given the Supreme Court decision, even though we hold these views as people of faith. Indeed, two-thirds of non-evangelical protestants disagree with the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even 55 percent of Catholics in America believe it should not have been overturned, despite the official stance of their church.

And, of course, it is not just Christians who disagree with this view. Most Islamic scholars believe that it is only after four months in the womb that a fetus becomes a living soul, before that they would not characterize abortion as murder (as Pastor Koedyker so unfortunately phrases it). Traditional Judaism sanctions abortion when it safeguards the life or well-being of the mother, and Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative Judaism are all clear that abortion should be safe and accessible to women.

Indeed, the majority of Jewish texts assert that a fetus is not the same thing as a person until it draws its first breath at birth (drawing upon Genesis 1). Pastor Koedyker conveniently ignores the biblical view of Exodus 21, where if men fighting injure a pregnant woman to the point of causing a miscarriage, there is a fine – but it is not treated as murder. The Mishnah, one of the earliest and most authoritative rabbinic texts, actually requires an abortion if a woman’s life is at risk.

The tyranny of a particular Christian religious view being imposed upon all women in our country is one of the greatest constitutional and religious crises of our time. And it is actually an action that is profoundly contrary to the sanctity of life. It will result in more unsafe abortions for women who do not have the resources to travel to a place where they can safely access the procedure. It will increase maternal mortality rates as women are forced to have children despite their health concerns. The advocacy against abortion will also continue to traumatize women who have experienced miscarriage or struggled with infertility, telling them that an eight-week fetus was the same thing as a baby and telling parents who do IVF that their babies are dying when an embryo does not implant.

An article in Forbes magazine was clear that the broad and imprecise language in many of the laws going into effect after the Supreme Court decision will very likely impair access to many forms of assisted reproductive technology.

Pastor Koedyker quoted one Catholic thinker, and I’d like to quote another. Sister Joan Chittester, the famed and well-respected Benedictine nun, said in an interview with Bill Moyers in 2004: “I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth.”

The hypocrisy, the lack of respect for different religious and Christian views, the lack of concern for the health of women and children (along with trans or non-binary people with wombs), it is all shocking and deeply upsetting to me, as a person of faith.

Sadly, however, one particular view in Christianity will continue to insist that their view is the only correct view and that other views must be shut down with the full force of government law. More people will die. More children will struggle in poverty. And more and more people will give up on Christianity entirely, disgusted and outraged.

And none of it has anything to do with the teachings of Jesus, no matter what any pastor might claim.

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.

Proudly Free – A Sermon for Pride

Below is the transcription of my sermon from our parish's 2022 Community PRIDE Worship on the Waterfront in Grand Haven, MI, on Sunday, June 26, 2022. The sermon may also be viewed on YouTube here. Our parish offers this community service each year, on the final Sunday in June. Any Christian or church in the community who wants to join is warmly welcomed. 

A reading from the Letter to the Galatians (5:1, 13-25), as appointed for Proper 8, Year C:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

In the epistle reading chosen for today, the third Sunday of Pentecost and also the day we gather for this community pride worship service, we hear St. Paul remind us that it is "for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Freedom is not only a central theological concept to Paul but central, of course, as well to the great American experiment. We live in a country founded on the importance of freedom from tyranny, with many of those who founded it being those who were fleeing religious oppression. We live in the land of the free, or at least we want to believe we do.

You may have noticed lately an increase in banners and yard signs, all across Ottawa County, proclaiming a set of political candidates all united by one organization. On their signs, it says freedom and family. Well, who can disagree with that? If you go to the website of the group running these signs and candidates, you'll see what sort of freedom they believe in, the freedom to tell other people how to live their lives. They believe in their freedom to insist that their particular religious views should control what kind of books children have access to in the library. They believe in the freedom to dismantle the Ottawa County Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion because it runs counter to their personal beliefs. They want the freedom to do these things.

Groups like this, people who believe in this particular brand of Christian freedom, also believe, of course, in the freedom to tell women what to do with their bodies. A freedom that found its fulfillment just this past week when the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade. Now a woman cannot make her own conscious decision because our government has taken it from her. I want to be clear. This is, of course, the opposite of freedom. This is the tyranny of a particular religious view, and it has no place in our country. It has no place in the church.

The candidate running from this group for county commissioner in Grand Haven township, where I live, has on his flyers commitments to his beliefs about freedom. On his flyers, he insists that he believes "A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl." He proclaims his freedom to declare the gender identity of children for them, to erase the biological reality of intersex people whose gender could not clearly be identified at birth, and also his freedom to erase the reality of children who do not yet know, who have not yet claimed their own gender identity. This once more is the opposite of freedom. This is the tyranny of a particular far right religious view, and it has no place in our country. It has no place in the church.

Now, I'm not here to tell you how to vote in the upcoming August 2nd primary election in Ottawa County, though I do hope you will vote regardless of whether you agree with me. I am, after all, a lowly parish priest. But I am here to talk to you about what Christian freedom actually means because the word freedom has been twisted out of its original meaning in scripture, twisted into a reality where supposedly Christian freedom looks an awful lot more like a theocratic version of America, a reality that more closely resembles Margaret Atwood's nightmare The Handmaid's Tale than the reality Jesus Christ sought to bring about by his death and resurrection. We desperately need to understand anew what freedom means for the Christian.

The Apostle Paul, the author of the Letter from the Galatians, which we read from just a few minutes ago, gets kind of a bad rap in this regard. Partly, this is because people tend to go to Paul to find reasons to tell everyone else why they're wrong. Which is, of course, ironic because as we heard in the epistle reading for today, Christian freedom, as Paul says, is not biting and devouring one another. It's not using scripture to bind up and dehumanize others. 

Paul is clear, right here in this reading, that the whole of the law can be summed up in a single commandment, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the heart of Christian freedom: love of neighbor. A love of neighbor that is so profound, Paul says for the Christian, you are actually enslaved to one another. It is not about my freedom to have what I want. It is about my commitment to serve what is best for you.

Freedom is willing to be constrained by the good of the other, to seek the best of your neighbor ahead of your own personal privilege. That's why Paul then sketches out kind of two different ways a person can live, a life lived to gratify the desires of the flesh versus a life living to make manifest the fruits of the spirit. 

Now, once more, hold lightly to what you think Paul is talking about and consider his actual words because, for Paul, living according to the flesh means living a life enslaved to yourself. As one scholar notes, Paul's problem with the flesh is not that it desires, but that its desires become disordered. It wants good things, but in the wrong way. And so, Paul gives a list of ways that epitomize living according to the flesh, living enslaved to yourself instead of living with a concern for the good of your neighbor. In each of these items, you can see how a desire that is good becomes twisted, turned inward and misused.

Paul begins with three words related to sexual sin, fornication and purity and licentiousness. Ooh. Now, rather than get into the original Greek of each of these terms and run the risk of you falling asleep on this lovely Sunday morning, remember the context Paul is talking about. Paul is using each of these as examples of living with a sole concern for yourself instead of a true concern for the good of your neighbor. Yes, that is absolutely a risk in sexual intimacy. It can become turned inward, willfully blind to the good of the other. All of these examples of desires of the flesh are instances when you refuse to see the other as a person, instead when they become only an end to your own desire.

As much as so-called American Christianity wants to talk about the first three sins, Paul names, Ooh boy, they tend to ignore the rest of the list. Because Paul also describes enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions factions, envy, and Lord knows that straight white American Christianity is filled with those sins as well, just as much as it is filled with views of sexuality that dehumanize people... views of sexuality that refuse to see the other.

As one scholar puts it, for Paul, disordered desire enslaves us to our passions and it destroys community. And the appropriate response to disordered desire is neither rejection of desire (desire is not bad), nor blind surrender to it (you've got to think about what you desire). Instead, the answer is to desire properly, something we do through the gift of God and the grace of the Holy Spirit. What does desire well and faithfully ordered look like? Well, it would be a desire that always seeks the best of your neighbor or, in Paul's word, it is desire that produces the alternative to living according to the flesh, a desire that produces the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and self control.

Back in the '80s, my denomination, the Episcopal Church, started trying to be very intentional about listening to the experience of our LGBTQIA+ siblings. The more the straight cisgender parts of the church listened to the other parts of the church, they discovered that their love, their relationships, were not relationships that resembled the first path Paul laid out, the path of being concerned only for fulfilling your own desires and pleasure. No, queer relationships had all the evidence of the fruits of the spirit because they were filled with love, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. In many ways, we discovered queer relationships were even more committed to the good of the other than many straight relationships. Perhaps that's because of the discrimination they'd faced... so they'd had to work even harder to crucify a concern for self alone so that they could live entirely for the person they loved for their good, their wholeness. We learned and the church got a little more whole because of that.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, but far too many people today live under a yoke of slavery. Make no mistake, any form of Christianity that enslaves another human is false. That was true not that long ago, when most Christians thought it was okay to own human beings and they used the Bible to justify it. But any form of Christianity that enslaves another person is false, whether it is enslaving the undocumented immigrant to a system that doesn't recognize their humanity and worth, that is false. When it is enslaving a woman so that a small group of religious men can control her body, that is false Christianity. When it is enslaving the queer person by telling them that they need to be celibate or they need to hide who they are or be anything else, anything other than who God created them to be, this is false Christianity. These systems of slavery have nothing to do with the gospel of freedom found in Jesus Christ. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

You can teach us, oh beloved and fabulous children of God, particularly those of you who have different gender identities and sexual orientations. You can teach the rest of us so much about what it means to love when it's difficult and hard, when you're not seen or honored. You could teach us what it means to love when it's vulnerable and even dangerous. Queer Christians can teach all the straight cisgender Christians here what it means to value the good of your neighbor more than your own comfort, because it's a very comfortable place to sit quietly on the side while other people's lives and freedoms are eroded away.

In light of the very anti-freedom agenda right now in this country of so many people who claim the name of Jesus, it is far past time for all Christians, gay and straight, cis and trans, to stand up and demand the just protections of freedom for all people to be who God created them to be and to live lives of autonomy and goodness that they choose for themselves. 

Because it is only by working to increase love in this world, all the fruits of the spirit to increase kindness and generosity and gentleness, only by asking what you could do to protect your neighbor who is at risk of being marginalized, trapped or killed by the powers of this world, only by doing this will we find what truly Christian freedom looks like. A freedom that should be available to each and every person.

Be free beloved of God. Be proudly free. Amen.

How a Book is a Book (and Why it Still Matters)

[Edited after the HoB Vote on July 9 at 7:50pm].

I've been spending the past couple of days in Baltimore as an Alternate Clergy Deputy from the Diocese of Western Michigan at the 80th General Convention of the Episcopal Church. If I just said more than three words that make no sense to you, you can probably skip this post. 

The Convention has been shortened from the normal amount of legislative days down to just four and both the House of Deputies and the House of Bishops are working tremendously hard to do the essential work of the church. You see, in the Episcopal Church, this bicameral legislature is our highest authority—no true and lasting change occurs (in theory) without the support of a majority of bishops... and clergy... and laity. 

For the past two days, the House of Bishops has spent significant discussion on the question of what exactly should constitute the Book of Common Prayer. It started with Resolution A059, the primary goal of which was to provide a holding container, constitutionally, for the various liturgies authorized by General Convention. In the approach of A059, those liturgies were categorized as original BCP, then there were trial use liturgies and then alternative or supplemental liturgies. However, Resolution A059 also  redefined the Book of Common Prayer to be all those liturgies authorized by General Convention. In the words of the explanation for the resolution on page 649 in the Blue Book, "A second sentence is added to express the understanding that all liturgies that General Convention authorizes following the protocol of Section 2 are part of the Book of Common Prayer."

In response, Bishop Provenzano of Long Island produced the excellent substitute B011, which made a distinction between The Book of Common Prayer and other liturgies that might be established by the Authority of our church. In addition to the BCP, Bishop Provenzano provided for liturgies in Trial Use, Experimental Use, or Supplemental Use. His resolution was moved as a substitute and passed the House of Bishops on a slim margin, 60 to 57 (with one abstention). 

Rather than vote on the amended resolution, however, there were some technical fixes and so the matter was delayed until after dinner last night. After dinner, Bishop Hollingsworth of Ohio moved that the entire question be delayed for consideration the next day, so that a compromise resolution could perhaps be crafted. 

Tonight we heard that compromise resolution in Floor Amendment 031, which may indeed be a compromise but is one that still maintains the key change made by A059 by stating, "The Book of Common Prayer is understood to be those liturgical forms and other texts authorized by the General Convention." To wit, it is a compromise that still fundamentally alters our understanding of what constitutes The Book of Common Prayer. 

During the discussion, one bishop was noted to have said something to the effect of, "My sense is that we do not know what book means." We are evolving beyond books (I am told by bishops many years my senior) and now our BCP should be understood to be everything General Convention has authorized. All hail the cloud liturgy and the final accession of cut and paste worship.

Except, I do know what a book means. It means a definable text, with clear limits, often accessible in paper form. And you know who else knows? People who visit my parish and pull a book out of the pews, or people who visit me in my office and are curious about our church. I always tell them what I was told in seminary, "If you want to know what we believe, read this," then I hand them a free leather-bound edition of the prayer book. "Our prayers will tell you what we believe."

I understand that some of the resistance to Bishop Provenzano's substitute was because it would mean liturgies that make the Sacrament of Marriage available to all couples are not part of the Book of Common Prayer. To be clear, I absolutely share that concern. The solution, however, is not to wave our hands and say that now "The Book of Common Prayer is understood to be those liturgical forms and other texts authorized by the General Convention." 

The solution is to modify the prayer book itself. 

Because when a gay couple comes into my parish, they will not go to the (very helpful!) website https://www.episcopalcommonprayer.org to find out what we believe. I love that website. It's great work and will be helpful to seek a clear listing of authorized liturgies and to know what sort of restrictions, if any, exist in their use. 

But the gay couple who comes to my church will pull out a 1979 BCP. Then, they'll listen to me explain (as I have countless times) that our prayer book has not caught up to our church's teaching on marriage. But they will be confused, because they are holding a book in their hands that tells them something different than what exists on the internet, in the META PRAYER BOOK. They won't know why we didn't change the book we put in our churches. They will be baffled when I tell them the book is just part of the book, and an inaccurate book, and the whole book is actually on this website. (I'm sorry, please come back. I promise you my church knows how to make sense.)

Bishops, I appreciate your hard work to find common ground, but you have taken a step backwards. My own hope is that when this Resolution comes to the House of Deputies, it will be defeated. Then, I hope the House will concur with A145, the constitutional change already began in 2018 to resolve the important question of how we authorize various texts. Let's not redefine the prayer book at this Convention.

But I think we can do more as well. We can fix the can that was kicked back in 2018, when Resolution B012 said that the trial use of the same-sex marriage rites "shall extend until the completion of the next comprehensive revision of the Book of Common Prayer." Instead, pass a new resolution which will be crafted to be the first reading of the a change in the BCP rite of marriage to the gender-neutral form approved in 2018. Include with it a revision to the catechism, while you're at it.

And then, two years from now, pass both of them again and we will have the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, as amended in 2024 to reflect our church's teaching on marriage equality. We'll also have a Constitution that makes sense and clearly articulates the reality of a variety of liturgical forms that carry varying weight because they reflect varying stages of discernment as we seek the Spirit's call to us as Christians today.

Don't amend the definition of the Book of Common Prayer in our Constitution (particularly not in a shortened Convention without the needed time for debate). Instead, amend the prayer book itself and make the fact that marriage is between two persons—without regard to gender or sexual orientation—the clear teaching of our church as found in the BCP any visitor might pick up in a local parish. 

And, by sticking with Bishop Provenzano's original substitute, you will also create the constitutional container our church needs for the variety of liturgical forms that are indeed essential for the church of the 21st century. Because I agree, our church needs growing and evolving liturgical forms. We need supplemental liturgies and trial rites. 

But we also need the Book of Common Prayer. 

Christianity, the Gun Lobby, and Peacemakers

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

We’ve all had around a week to process it, but I know many of you are still reeling from the horror of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Two dead teachers. Nineteen dead elementary school children. As I read of how the gunman locked himself in a classroom with those kids and that this was how they all died, I felt my spirit tear inside of me. I could not wait to get home and hug my own child a little more closely. 

I’ve been trying to think about what to say, what to write, about this tragedy and how we, as a society, should respond to it. I’ve written and spoken so many times about gun control by now, that it feels hollow to pull all that out yet again. But I’ll try. I’ll try because I want to say something about the systemic sin inherent in Christianity and its relationship to the gun lobby in our nation.

I mean, we know. We know that 92% of Americans favor mandatory background checks for all gun sales. We know that 75% of Americans support a 30-day waiting period for all gun sales and 70% of Americans support mandatory registration of all privately-owned guns with the police. We know that 77% of Americans support laws that would allow a family member to seek a court order to temporarily take away guns if they feel a gun owner might harm themselves or others. We know that 70% of Americans support police filing that same order. We know that 68% of Americans support raising the legal age at which a person can purchase certain firearms from 18 to 21. We know that 56%, still well over half of Americans, support banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons such as the AR-15 which have no purpose other than being a weapon of war and death.

And we know that the majority of Republicans support almost all of these measures.

We know all of these things… and yet we do nothing. We do nothing because our legislative system is broken, particularly when it comes to gun reform. And we know that a good deal of that legislative system is owned by the National Rifle Association, meaning almost no Republicans would vote for the very sensible and bipartisan measures we know people support, measures that would absolutely save lives. 

And the fact that pastors and faith leaders don’t call out this broken system, the fact that churches don’t take to the street to protest the failure of legislators to make our country safer for her residents… to make schools safer for our kids… it boggles the mind. It breaks my heart. And it makes me very angry.

On Thursday, June 9, my parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, will be holding a Requiem Vigil and Mass of Advocacy for Victims of Gun Violence. The service will be at 6pm and anyone who is interested is welcome to attend. 

We chose that date because it is the feast day of the great St. Columba. Columba was a monk in the sixth century who was active in both Ireland and Scotland. He had a strong personality and preached forcefully in ways that often stirred up opposition. He wound up exiled to Scotland, but remained active in Irish politics and Scottish politics, always working for peace in his land. In fact, his name is derived from the Latin word for dove, as we worked for a peace that was just and holy, a peace that was inherently political.

Jesus told us in Matthew, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” And it is time. It is long past time for all Christians, no matter your political persuasion, to stand up and work to bring peace because our country is being torn apart by gun violence. Children, minorities, and all sorts of people are victims every day. 

We don’t even hear reports on all school shootings because they happen too often. There have been seventy-seven school shootings on campuses just this year. In addition to Uvalde, there have been two others where more than four people were shot. And I bet most of us couldn’t even name those schools. 

We must make peace. Each and every one of us. The church must stop being known as one of the biggest supporters of gun rights in our country, bought, sold, and paid for. Instead, the body of Christ needs to get to work making peace. 

Because the cost of this fantasy of an unrestricted right for every person to own firearms, no matter their lethal capacity… this fantasy must be challenged. It must end. And it won’t, until the church stands up and says, enough.

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 expressed in this column are those of Father Cramer as a private citizen and do not reflect the views of his congregation or church. 

Listening to the Unchurched & Dechurched

One of the central aspects of our congregation's Mission, Vision, and Plan for the Future is to try and be more intentional (and curious!) about questions related to evangelism, welcome, and incorporation. 

In April we undertook a survey of our members, divided into groups by how long they'd been a part of our parish life. We learned a lot of interesting points about who our church is, what parts of our shared life people most value, how people felt welcomed and how we could welcome better. We also learned how the answers to those questions shifted somewhat, depending on how long someone has been in our congregation. My own analysis of that data, along with the raw data itself, is online here.

As the Vestry discussed the data from that survey, we kept coming back to one reality: the importance of being attentive to the sample reality. The survey was a sample of those who not only visited SJE, but who chose to come back and be committed. We started wondering about those people who live in our area but are not currently connected to a faith community. What would be important to them? What are they hungering for (if anything!) in their own spiritual life.

With these questions in mind, the Vestry asked me to design a new survey that would be targeted out on social media to the unchurched in our geographic area. I used the trend-lines and ideas from a survey the Pew Research Center did in 2018 (see the CNN article online here) as my own baseline, but then edited it to get as well at some of the questions our Vestry had. 

After designing the survey using Google Forms, I boosted it on Facebook among people who are not currently connected to a faith community and who live within 20 or so miles of our parish. As the first line in the boosted ad, I also wrote, "Do you not have a faith community? If you'll fill out this short survey, you'll be entered in a drawing to receive $50 in Dune Dollars!" (Dune Dollars is our local gift certificate system supported by the Chamber of Commerce.

The ad ran for about two weeks. It reached over 7,000 people. Of those, over 200 clicked the link to find out more. And of those 200, 64 individuals took the time to fill out the survey.

That may not seem like a lot, given the reach (unless you understand the difference between ad reach and action with Facebook advertising), but what I want to emphasize is that we had over sixty people who do not go to church and live in our area respond and tell us what would be important in a faith community, from the perspective of someone not currently involved in one. 

The demographic breakdown of the ad from an age perspective was also particularly interesting, with 92% of respondents being under the age of 50 and 70% being under the age of 40. 

We offered a total of fourteen possible items that could be important to someone when choosing a faith community. Of those fourteen, the following were the top five:

1. Authentic Community (78%)
2. Progressive Advocacy (66%)
3. A chance to make a difference in the world (54%)
4. Preaching that connects with my life (53%)
5. To become a better person (53%)

The three lowest items that people found important were Contemporary Worship (24%), Conservative Advocacy (12%), and Traditional Worship (5%). 

What this says to me is largely what I've read in other studies on these questions over the years. For people outside the church, the worship wars are largely over. The style of worship will not, for most unchurched people, be what draws them to your congregation. However you worship, whether traditional or contemporary, low or high, do it well with integrity for your tradition and authenticity for your best gifting. Worship style isn't going to move the needle. What people want is a sense of authenticity, advocacy and action when it comes to issues progressives care about, and a message that will connect with their own life and help them to be who God is calling them to be.

This is good news to me, as an Episcopalian and as the priest at St. John's Episcopal Church here in Grand Haven. Because these are things we can do. We can be authentic advocates for change who connect people with a spiritual life that grounds them and empowers them to grow into all the fullness God has for them. 

We also asked those who responded what keeps them away from church. Once more, almost no one spoke about the style of worship. Instead, many of the respondents talked about the hate they hear in supposedly Christian voices, particularly to LGBTQ, BIPOC, and other marginalized individuals. Several also spoke to an experience of a toxic religious environment or traumatic religious upbringing, people who had been deeply wounded by churches and who had trouble believing they could ever find anything healthy and life-giving. 

This underscores the essentiality in being a full-throated advocate for issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion. No matter how articulate you are in the pulpit, or in your church newsletter, people who are outside of the church aren't hearing those messages. So it is incumbent upon Episcopal Churches to be explicit about the ways we celebrate all the ways LGBTQIA+ people contribute to our common life and to be very intentional about the work of dismantling racism and engaging in works of reconciliation. 

It also speaks to the essentiality of a spirit and tone of gentleness when you engage someone who is not in a faith community. The odds of them having had a traumatic or abusive religious experience in their past is pretty high—and it skyrockets if they are a woman, a person of color, or from the LGBTQIA+ community. Gentle and authentic affection, a willingness to walk alongside of them—not to try to convince them just to join your church—these are so very important if we are going to bring any healing to those who have had spiritual wounds inflicted upon them. 

Many people also said they find themselves too busy. They would be open to being a part of a church, but carving out that time is difficult—particularly when they fear they will be pressured to get more involved, to volunteer in several activities, to let the church sort of suck them up. This underscores the importance for me in having a church that is invitational in posture and attitude. That is, people are invited to get as involved as they feel called... but they are also told clearly that we are here to be a faith community for them no matter what. If that means they just show up to feed the hungry once every few months, or just come on Christmas and Easter, or if they kind of pop in and out from time to time, our job is to be a welcoming place where people feel invited—not compelled—to explore the rich life of faith in community.

We also asked people what they would say to a church that wanted to be a more meaningful place for people like them to attend. Over and over again, we saw two key points. First, be open to those who doubt and are unsure of their faith or belief in God. Let people know they will not be judged for their struggles. Give them room to explore and question. Second, be a community that truly accepts all people, where people from marginalized groups are not just tolerated but are celebrated. 

We also heard the essentiality of concrete action. Words mean little when they do not have positive action behind them. So, if you care about racial reconciliation, demonstrate that by the actions you take, your hiring decisions, the programs you offer. 

And don't be afraid to say, "We're not that." That is, clearly and boldly separate yourself from the nationalistic, homophobic, heterosexist, ethnocentric, and capitalistic forms of Christianity that have come to dominate the national perception. Be clear that that is not the God you believe in and that you believe following Jesus means not only rejecting that false version of Christianity but being an advocate for those who have been damaged by it. 

Most people who filled out the survey, 55%, said they didn't want to be contacted after filling out their responses. It is important to honor that, and so that is what we did. However, for the other 41% who said they would be open (and the 4% who said please do contact me), I took about two days to read through every individual response. I then wrote an email to each individual, expressing gratitude for them sharing their perspective and engaging with what they specifically wrote. I also offered to get together so I could learn more of their story, as well as answer any questions they might have about the Episcopal Church.

I don't know how many people will respond to that invitation. I'm having coffee on Wednesday with one person who responded, though. She even came to church this past Sunday to check us out. But even if very few people respond, I hope we've been able to plant some seeds, to model an approach to Christianity that is more about listening with curiosity and affection and less about telling people how wrong they are. 

And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the way all of this information will help our Vestry engage carefully and strategically with efforts of evangelism and welcome. Because what's clear to me is that many of the people who responded would love to hear some good news, and that's really what evangelism is. It's sharing the good news with people. It's our job now to go out and tell them that there is a place like us, a place where they would be welcome, honored, invited to go deeper spiritually and engage in bold advocacy and action. That sounds like good news to me—and I hope it will to them as well.

To see the full report on the data gleaned in the survey, you can click here. 

Freedom misunderstood: The perils in our county elections

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

One of the wise points in our local election system here in Grand Haven is that the elections to City Council and for mayor are nonpartisan elections. That is, candidates campaign on the substance of their ideas for our local community instead of upon the platform of a national political party. This makes sense because the larger points of national party platforms don’t always transfer as easily to the issues facing a small city government like ours.

Unfortunately, that changes at the county level in Ottawa County. Those elections are partisan, which means that each party can run a candidate for office. In the 2020 election, nine of the 11 commissioner nominees ran unopposed as candidates from the Republican Party. In District 3 (city of Holland wards 1, 2, 3 and 6, Ward 4 Precinct 3), the Democratic candidate, Doug Zylstra won by a margin of 10.8 percent, or 1,171 votes. In the only other contested district, District 6 (about half of Georgetown Township), the Republican candidate won by a 3-1 margin.

I raise this reality because local politics are shifting in ways that will not only affect the Republican Party in Ottawa County, but will have an impact upon the entire county because those candidates who win the primary race on Aug. 2 will almost certainly win in the general election on Nov. 8.

A local political action committee called Ottawa Impact is running their own candidates in eight of the 11 districts of our county. They are putting money and energy behind candidates who support their ideals.

It’s probably no surprise to most of you that I’m a definite left-leaning progressive when it comes to my own political views. However, I’m deeply concerned about the goals of Ottawa Impact – and I imagine many Republicans would be concerned about their goals as well. On their website, they state that, “The mission of Ottawa Impact is to preserve and protect the individual rights of the people in Ottawa County.”

They enumerate their understanding of the threats to these rights as follows: “We are committed to defending the constitutionally protected rights of parents to make health and education decisions for their own children. We recognize our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage and celebrate America as an exceptional nation blessed by God. We oppose indoctrination of our county’s youth and the politicization of public schools. We believe civic engagement, ground up, is critical to preserve a healthy, moral society. We seek to educate, encourage, and support local leaders who fight to preserve Ottawa’s values and work to eliminate policies which oppose them.”

They then close by insisting their passion is “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness!” However, I believe the goals of Ottawa Impact are fundamentally opposed to the ideals of freedom in our country and also to the values of the people of Ottawa County. Let me explain.

There has been a consistent misunderstanding of the nature of freedom on the far right of our country for the past several years. People want freedom to do what they want, without restriction – but also freedom to insist other people follow their own far-right values.

One of the reasons these candidates are running is Ottawa Impact’s opposition to the fact that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners did not fire the leadership of the Ottawa County Department of Public Health or change the health department’s guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it would have been illegal for the Board of Commissioners to interfere with the health department.

Furthermore, under the “freedom” this group believes in, people should be allowed to drive drunk, ignore seatbelt laws, and the health department should not require cooks in kitchens do things like wash their hands after touching raw chicken. The reason people do not have freedom to do those things is because that sort of an exercise of freedom would put the safety of others at risk.

You absolutely have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – until your exercise of that right takes it from someone else. So, you do not have the right to drive drunk or ignore seatbelt laws. You do not have the right to say you will simply follow dietary guidelines in the Bible and ignore health department rules. The reason you do not have those rights is because following them would pose a threat of harm to others.

Furthermore, for more than two years, people associated with Ottawa Impact have been harassing our school board, demanding the banning of books they deem inappropriate, or at least the restriction of those books and insisting they require parental consent. Once more, this is not about the freedom to make education decisions for your children, because they can already do that. Parents already have the ability to see what their kids check out. No, these parents want their values to control what all kids have access to. That’s not freedom – that’s religious activism seeking to control the parental rights of all families, no matter whether or not you agree with them.

They say that they recognize the Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation, mistaking the reality that the majority of our Founding Fathers were actually religious rationalists, deists, or unitarians – none of which would be recognized as Christians by modern evangelicals. They say they opposed “indoctrination,” but if you read the flier from the candidate they are running here in the district of which Grand Haven is a part, that means they are opposed to: “Marxist teachings of CRT/DEI.” I’m guessing that means she wants the writings of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. removed from our schools.

And the idea that believing in “diversity, equity and inclusion” makes you a Marxist is flabbergasting. I always thought believing in diversity, equity and inclusion just made you a good human being.

Ottawa County is one of the best counties in the entire state of Michigan. If you look at our statistics, we are going by a healthy clip, our county departments function well, and most other county boards of commissioners consistently hold up our county as one of the best-run. As much as I might disagree with many of the Republican commissioners on national partisan questions, there is no denying the excellent job they do for our county.

Every citizen of Ottawa County, no matter your party affiliation, should look very carefully at the candidates who are seeking to control the place we live. Our county motto is “Where you belong,” and I hope our county can continue to be a place where everyone can thrive, where we try to cast down barriers to equity and inclusion to have a truly diverse community, where we support public servants who work to serve the common good – not just the views of a fringe minority.

Pay attention in these next few months and get involved. The future of our county is at stake. And make no mistake: Their next target will be the school board, too.

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 views expressed in this column are those of Father Cramer as a private citizen and do not reflect the views of his congregation or church.

A New Thing on the Cusp of Holy Week

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

You and I live in an age and in a time when bodies of water are admired and enjoyed. Very rarely are they feared or seen as uncrossable boundaries. Of course, this does not apply for those of us who live in the Grand Haven area and have tried to cross the bridge from the north, with all that construction traffic. At times this has made the Grand River seem like an uncrossable boundary.

In the Hebrew Bible reading our church read this past Sunday, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Thus says the Lord, who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick: Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

For the Israelite people, when they hear a prophet remind them that their God is a God who makes a way in the seas and a path in the mighty waters, they know from a very visceral place what that means. 

Their minds go back, back to the stories their ancestors had told them about when the Hebrew people fled slavery in Egypt and arrived at the beaches of the Red Sea. There was no way to turn, no other path of escape from Egypt, and the armies of Pharaoh were advancing rapidly. But then the power of God pushed to the waters aside and made a pathway through the sea so that the children of Israel could walk to their freedom on dry land. 

They remembered as well, the stories how, decades later, when the descendants of those escaped slaves arrived at the Jordan River, on the eastern boundary of the Promised Land, their priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the water and the waters parted once more, creating a pathway into the land of promise, the land of God’s long-awaited blessing for God’s people. 

The prophet speaking in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah is trying to invoke those powerful memories for God's people. For decades they have lived in exile, with no sense of how they could ever break free of Babylonian imperial power and return to the land God had given their ancestors so long ago. They were afraid, afraid that their sin, their failure to be the just society God had called them to be, that all of this had forever broken the covenant. 

But Isaiah is trying to remind them in this reading that every time it seems like the end for God's people, God has always made a way. Their God is the God who can make a path in the Red Sea, who can turn the waves of the sea into a chariot and horse to protect God’s people.

Isaiah is telling the exiles that the God who had made paths through uncrossable water was going to bring them home, it was just that God was bringing them home by a new and different way. So, they needed to remember those past memories of God’s salvation, but also needed to let go of them just a bit so they would be able to see the new liberation God was bringing about in their own time. 

This time they wouldn’t be coming home through water. Instead, God was going to sustain them through the middle-easter desert. God was going to create a new path, a new way home.

I wonder, at the end of Lent, with Holy Week and Easter almost here… I wonder what new things God is trying to do in your life, in the churches of our community, in the Tri-Cities area, and in the world. 

The prophet is right, if you only ever look for God where you have found God in the past, you will miss the new things, the new salvation God wants to bring you. And sometimes, like those ancient exiles, you need to pull your eyes from the place where God has always saved you and look instead to what might seem like a desert. Because it could be that your salvation now lies in an entirely different direction. 

Know this, beloved child of God, throughout all of the paths behind you, all of the things that shaped you—for good or for ill—God’s hand has been at work, redeeming that which was wrong and never should have happened and giving strength to that which was good. 

So, wherever you find yourself at this end of Lent, don’t give up. Remember the past, but turn into the new thing God is bringing about in your life. Let it be OK that you don’t have it all figured out, that you don’t know the answers, that you still struggle with sin and doubt. Don’t let that weigh you down. Because the goodness God has for you is there, just ahead in the distance, if you can but make room in your life to accept and receive it. 

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.