Where faith and doubt sit at the same table

Below is my column in today's edition of the Grand Haven Tribune. You can also read the column below. 

A few years ago, a parent stopped into the office to talk to me, a bit anxious.

“Father Jared,” she said, “my child told me they’re not sure they believe in God. I don’t know what to do.”

I smiled and said, “You know what? Sometimes, I don’t know if I believe in God either.”

She laughed nervously. “Father Jared, you cannot tell me that!” But I explained that this is simply part of the life of faith. Every one of us – including clergy – sometimes struggles with doubt. Because doubt isn’t a defect in the Christian life; it’s built into it.

We’ve sometimes been taught to treat doubt like a disease to cure, but maybe it’s more like a companion on the journey – one that keeps faith from growing rigid or self-satisfied. Any faith that can’t survive questioning probably isn’t faith at all – it’s fear dressed up in religious clothes.

So, when someone tells me they’re not sure what they believe, I don’t hear a problem to solve. I hear an invitation – to conversation, to honesty, to relationship. That’s why atheists and agnostics are welcome at my church. Because what matters most isn’t whether you can recite the Creed without crossing your fingers; it’s whether you’re willing to wrestle with the divine, to be open to wonder, to build community around love and truth.

John’s Gospel gives us two of my favorite examples of this: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

Some scholars divide John’s Gospel into believers and unbelievers – and say only the believers are invited into the kingdom. But that’s not what the story shows. Nicodemus, who first came to Jesus under cover of night, and Joseph, who followed in secret for fear of the crowds, are the only disciples who appear when Jesus dies. When all the “faithful” have fled, it’s the half-believers who come. They carry his body, wash it, anoint it, wrap it lovingly in cloth, and place it in the tomb.

They don’t proclaim the resurrection. They don’t yet understand it. But they love. And that love, John seems to say, is enough.

Faith and hope are important parts of the Christian journey, but St. Paul tells us the most important is love. Because even when faith fails, even when hope seems far away, love will still come to the cross and carry the body of Jesus to a tomb. Love will wash the body, anoint it with myrrh aloe and spices, wrap it in cloths and lay it lovingly in a tomb. Love will do all of this because love is stronger than even the feeblest of faith.

That’s one reason I’m so excited about what’s happening at St. John’s this week. On Sunday, Nov. 9 at 7 p.m., C3 Spiritual Community has organized an event happening at our church building. They are welcoming the folk duo The Rough & Tumble for a concert built around their album “Hymns for My Atheist Sister & Her Friends to Sing Along To.” The songs are raw and human – written for anyone who’s wrestled with belief, belonging, and meaning in a complicated world.

I was particularly struck by the way C3 described it in their own publications. “The Rough & Tumble are walking a tightrope – not of neutrality, but of radical love that appeals to the heartstrings of a wide array of audiences – most poignantly in a time of a country critically divided.”

And so, my own devoutly Christian church is naturally delighted to welcome our non-religious but spiritual siblings and their friends into our own space for this event. After all, that’s what I think church is at its best – a space where believers, doubters, and seekers can gather around beauty and truth, even when we understand those words differently. Because when people who believe and people who question come together, each brings a gift the other needs.

The Church needs that kind of shared table – a place where faith and doubt, belief and unbelief, can sit side by side and listen to one another. The questions of the doubter often sharpen the faith of the believer. And the honesty of sharing your struggles as a believer can build a bridge of relationship with those who may have lost faith in God, but are still searching for meaning and love in a world that sometimes feel so dark.

I’d like to invite you to come on Sunday night. Sit among people who sing, question, and hope. Sit among believers and unbelievers and that whole mess of humanity in between who is searching for love in a world where it often seems in short supply. You can get tickets in advance at https://form.jotform.com/C3Michigan/hymns.

Bring your faith, your doubt, your skepticism, your longing – all of it is welcome.

It’s welcome at this event, hosted by a local spiritual community of folks who have stepped away from traditional religion. It’s welcome at my own church – a place of traditional worship and progressive action, a place full of faithful doubters and searching sinners.

Together, I think we can continue to find more meaning, more understanding, and more ways to love the way I think Jesus taught us to.

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.

Free Speech, Small Businesses, and the True Test of Faith

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

This week I would like to address a local situation that occurred and impacted two of the amazing businesses that have been a part of making the East End of Grand Haven a more thriving part of our community.

After the death of Charlie Kirk, one of the owners of Burzurk Brewery posted to social media a past comment of his: when it comes to gun violence, Kirk once said, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights.” She noted the irony, given that he himself died by gun violence. She also explained that she did not mourn him because she also rejected his racist and homophobic views, as well as his unapologetic support for unfettered access to guns—no matter the cost in human lives.

She followed up with an insistence that we have now moved beyond mere political differences to fundamental differences in morality. She pointed out how his rhetoric has led her to feel personally unsafe in her own country and community. Current politics have even allowed legal racial profiling of the Latinx community. She said she simply cannot “agree to disagree” anymore. She also stated that she was quite comfortable with a business that reflected her own standards—and that it was absolutely fine with her if Kirk supporters chose not to patronize her establishment.

In response, the vitriol and hatred of the far right were unleashed upon this small business owner. I will not even repeat some of the vile things said by people who supposedly claim to follow Jesus. A group of local Republicans, one of whom had already launched a profanity-laced attack at her, even made plans to protest her business. Hundreds of neighbors reached out to her in support, but because of her commitment to safety and her fear that violence might break out, she closed her brewery that night—losing significant income—in order to keep people safe. In response, the far-right crowd boasted that they had “shut her down” and even hung a Charlie Kirk shirt on a sign outside her door.

One person then claimed that she had said she didn’t want Christians at her brewery—and therein lies the heart and rot (and I do mean rot, not just root) of the problem. Those who support Charlie Kirk have conflated loyalty to a political figure (and one with incendiary far-right views at that) with what it means to be a Christian. Furthermore, they apparently assume that they are the only Christians—entirely ignoring the many Christians who did not support Kirk and who have always been welcomed at this brewery with open arms.

Around the same time, another local restaurant in the neighborhood, the Unicorn Tavern, came under fire for planning to host an 18+ drag brunch called Pancakes & Wigs. To be clear, the event was originally designed to be family friendly, and allowed parents to choose to purchase tickets for their own children. After talking to the drag troupe, several weeks before the event, everyone involved decided to limit ticket sales to 18+ and refund the tickets purchased by families for their under 18 family members. But even after that, the hatred and opposition were profound, extreme, and devoid of any humility or recognition of the values of free speech in our country. 

Right-wing Christians who have long claimed that their only objection to drag shows is when children are present had their hypocrisy revealed as a bald-faced lie. Here was an adults-only event, exactly what they claimed to want—and yet it was still bombarded by hatred. The performers became so frightened for their safety that the event had to be postponed. The truth is obvious: it has nothing to do with protecting children (who, let us remember, are far more at risk from gun violence—the number one killer of children in our country—than they are from attending a family-friendly drag performance). No, this is about homophobia, transphobia, and the rejection of anyone who falls outside the cisgender, heterosexist norms of right-wing Christianity.

There are two things I want to say here.

First, I am embarrassed. Embarrassed that people who claim to follow Jesus can be so cruel and so quick to spew profanity-laced hatred. Embarrassed that they would threaten to try to deport someone who is a legal citizen. Embarrassed that they would attack a business that tried to do precisely what they had claimed they wanted when it came to drag performances.

I am particularly embarrassed because I know the owners of these businesses. They both pour out significant energy into nonprofit work on behalf of the poor and marginalized. Karen, one of the owners of Burzurk, serves on nonprofit boards and donates immense time and resources to charity work. Her husband left corporate life to try to build up a small business in a part of our city that needed revitalization.

The owners of the Unicorn Tavern consistently give away portions of their profits to a variety of causes—especially schools and educational needs. Garry is on the board of Walk the Beat and their family has also contributed to NORA and other West Michigan organizations that help those in need. They even have a food pantry outside their restaurant to serve the hungry. 

Christians should be praising these businesses. Even if some Christians disagree with their views on sexuality, gender, or immigration, those same Christians (who supposedly cherish the Constitution more than the rest of us) should be first in line to defend free speech. Even if they lack the expansiveness of heart and humility of mind to be in genuine relationship with those who hold diverse views, they should at least be able to stand for freedom.

To be clear, my criticism is not about the protests in and of themselves (that is a part of free-speech). Rather, it is the irony in the right using their free speech to protest another person’s free speech. And that the speech of those on the right leading up to these protests was so extreme that the business owners feared for the safety of their supporters.

Second, conservatives and moderates must take a stand against these kinds of attacks. They must make clear that their more conservative views do not mean they condone this kind of racism, these attempts to erase the queer community, or these attacks on free speech and small businesses. Until they do, until conservatives and moderates clearly refuse to stand with those who would shut down small businesses simply because they disagree with their religious views, the entire witness of conservatism will continue to be lost to a whole generation. A generation that will not—and should not—abide this sort of hypocrisy. 

And the same is true for conservative Christians. Though some Christians have acted in this hateful way, these individuals do not represent the totality of Christianity. But until faith leaders and everyday Christians who do believe in freedom and diversity of views stand up and repudiate this kind of hatred and vitriol, the witness of our faith will remain compromised. Christianity will continue to be confused with cruelty, and the gospel of Jesus will remain obscured by the ugliness of those who claim his name but deny his love.

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. 

When Pride Turns Deadly

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

A few weeks ago, someone once again stole the Pride flag that hangs in front of my church. Like clockwork, the incident sparked a familiar conversation online: “How can a church celebrate Pride Month,” people asked, “when pride is clearly a sin?”

The answer lies in language. When Christians through the centuries condemned “pride,” they weren’t talking about the joy of LGBTQIA+ people embracing their identity (like they weren’t talking about being proud to be an American). They meant arrogance – thinking of yourself as more important than others. The Greek word hyperiphaneia means self-overestimation; the Latin superbia means an inflated sense of self.

Ironically, condemning Pride Month actually commits the very sin Scripture warns against: placing your own identity and way of life above others. To insist that only heterosexual or cisgender identity is “normal,” and that others must conform, is to place yourself above your neighbor. It is to live out superbia.

That doesn’t mean pride is always harmless. The Bible repeatedly warns that arrogance leads to calamity: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (Prov. 16:18). Pride blinds us to our dependence on God, narrows our world to ourselves, and eventually produces violence.

Which brings us to today. We live in a culture that exalts personal rights over communal responsibility, that elevates comfort over children’s safety, that clings to “my way of life” even when others are dying as a result. That is pride. And its fruits are on daily display.

This past week, in Minneapolis, a person with legally purchased guns walked up to a Catholic church during morning Mass and shattered a sanctuary with bullets. Two children – 8-year-old Fletcher and 10-year-old Harper – were killed as they prayed, and nearly 20 others, mostly children, were wounded. One student, who was shot in the back, was using his body to protect another child.

Some headlines emphasized that the shooter was a transgender woman. But the overwhelming majority of mass shootings are committed by cisgender men. To make this horror about her identity is to miss the reality staring us in the face: our nation’s epidemic of violence knows no single political party, no gender identity, no neat ideological box. What makes this possible – again and again – is the sheer availability of guns, and our collective refusal to enact even the most basic forms of gun safety.

Investigators recovered more than 100 spent rifle casings, several shotgun shells, and a handgun that jammed. Four magazines had been emptied, with more ammunition ready. To say that restricting certain firearms or limiting magazine capacity would make no difference is to ignore the facts.

And yet, again and again, we refuse reform. That refusal is not neutrality. It is pride – pride that insists a person’s right to own any weapon they want outweighs a child’s right to live. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teenagers in America – it surpassed motor vehicle accidents in 2020 and we did nothing. Seven children die every single day. We argue on social media, or we just become numb.

Nor is Ottawa County immune. Our local party has attacked Grand Haven’s Pride Festival, calling drag shows “adult entertainment” and portraying queer joy as dangerous for children. Commissioners have relaxed rules around guns on county property, one even carrying a handgun onto a campus that prohibited them. Hostility toward difference combined with lax gun laws is exactly the recipe Scripture warns against.

But Christ offers another way. Jesus taught that true life is found not in scrambling for power but in humility – recognizing others as just as beloved as ourselves. To affirm LGBTQ dignity is not to exalt one group; it is to reject the lie that some lives matter less. To support responsible gun reform is not to trample on freedom; it is to insist that freedom without responsibility is no freedom at all.

The choice is stark. We can cling to deadly pride while children bleed in sanctuaries. Or we can walk in humility – laying down idols of violence, listening across divides, building a society where every child can grow up safe and free.

The God that many of us worship is not indifferent. This is the God who hears the cries of parents in Minneapolis, who weeps with children crying while they hide under pews, the God who stands beside every queer and trans teenager told they are unworthy. This is the God who bears in Christ’s wounded body the cost of our violence – and still calls us to another way.

That way is possible. But only if we are willing to let go of our pride.

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.

Reflections on the mountain and the mushroom cloud

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

Today is an odd and somewhat unsettling confluence of events. It is the 80th anniversary of the day our country dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, bringing World War II to an end. At the same time, Aug. 6 is also one of the major feasts of the church – the Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ upon the mountain.

At my own parish, we’ll be commemorating both tonight at 6 p.m. with a Requiem Mass for Peace. As a part of the service, we’ll hear four Hibakusha testimonies. Hibakusha is the Japanese word used to refer to those who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As one NGO that seeks to share these stories explains, “The focus of Hibakusha Stories is to employ the testimony of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, Indigenous Peoples, Downwinders, nuclear test survivors and other affected communities to take action for disarmament.”

We’ll also pray for the repose of the souls of those who died in the second World War, including those who died in the bombings and their aftermath, along with victims of war in our own time. You’re welcome to join us.

As I have been working with our parish staff to prepare for tonight’s liturgy, I keep coming back to the juxtaposition of these two days: the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and the Feast of the Transfiguration.

The Feast of the Transfiguration commemorates the day when Christ ascended Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John and was transfigured before them, his face shining like the sun and his clothes becoming as white as light itself. The ancient lawgiver of the Jewish people, Moses, appeared with Jesus, along with the great prophet Elijah. Both long-dead, we are told that they discussed Jesus’ impending departure in Jerusalem – that is, the coming suffering and crucifixion of Christ. A voice came from the cloud, commanding the disciples to listen to Jesus. And then, just as quickly as it began, the whole thing ended, and the three disciples were left alone with Jesus.

I cannot seem to shake the curious similarities between the two events. In both the bombing of Hiroshima and the Transfiguration on the mountain, blinding light blazed forth. The light that burst forth from the nuclear bomb was profoundly destructive – immediately killing between 70,000 and 80,000 people. Over the next four months, the effects of the bomb killed somewhere between another 90,000 to 166,000. So, hundreds of thousands dead, almost all civilians. It’s estimated that 38,000 of those killed were children.

In theory, the light of the transfiguration of Christ was not a destructive light. Rather, it was the revelation of Christ’s divine glory. And yet, those who decided to drop the bomb and unleash the horrors of nuclear warfare on the world were also Christians. President Truman was a devout Baptist. Secretary of War Henry Stimson came from a family of prominent clergymen.

While Truman remained steadfast that dropping the bomb was the only way to end the war, to avoid what many believed would be an even greater loss of life through a wholesale invasion of Japan. He did not believe it was an easy decision. In a speech after the bombing, he said, “You know the most terrible decision a man ever had to make was made by me at Potsdam. It had nothing to do with Russia or Britain or Germany. It was a decision to loose the most terrible of all destructive forces for the wholesale slaughter of human beings.”

As I noted earlier, many believed that the bombings were necessary to stop the greater loss of life that would be caused by a full-scale invasion… but I don’t know how to weigh the lives of soldiers fighting in a war against innocent civilians. I don’t know how to weigh the lives of those held captive in the military-industrial complex against children sitting at school who were incinerated in the blink of an eye.

And so, even as I celebrate the gift of the Transfiguration of Christ, I also must acknowledge that the followers of Christ have often used their power for violent ends. The divine light of Christ’s suffering thereby becomes twisted into the blazing and burning fires of discrimination, war, violence, and all manner of suffering.

At Hiroshima, humanity was revealed to be capable of violence that had at one time been unimaginable. Jesus was revealed as the Son of God, a son who choose to suffer. Perhaps that was a part of the divine equation – the knowledge that the only way to save a fallen humanity that would be capable of violence like nuclear warfare was for God himself to descend and let the full violence of humanity fall upon God’s own son. And as Christ carried the violence of our human race deep into the heart of God, somehow God’s love can perhaps heal our violent ways … if we will let him.

Perhaps what we’re left with is just the voice, the voice that spoke from the cloud on Mount Tabor so long ago, a voice that urged us to listen to Christ. The first disciples didn’t do a good job. They still thought Jesus was going to Make Israel Great Again. They didn’t understand that Jesus had chosen the path of suffering love – even though that was the path he was discussing with Moses and Elijah. But eventually they would. And eventually they would understand that the path of suffering love was the one they needed to walk upon as well.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, I hope you’ll spend some time listening to the voice of Christ today, asking what Jesus is calling you to do. Perhaps it is to find ways to support efforts at nuclear disarmament. Perhaps it is to learn more about the suffering of all those affected by the many horrors of war. Or maybe it’s just to take a step back, to consider that whoever you consider to be your enemy is likely not the villainous figure that exists in your mind, someone who deserves all the negativity and violence and anger that roils your mind. Rather, that person is just a broken child of God – just like you, just like me – also seeking to find their way in a violent world. Maybe if we could all find that truth, it is the light of dignifying and merciful love that would envelope us all.

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 GOP, reconsider what freedom means for LGBTQIA+ individuals

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

As I have sought to bask in the glow of yet another fabulous and beautiful Pride Month, and as my family (like many others) starts making plans to celebrate Independence Day this weekend, there is a pebble in my flip-flop.

Yet again, just as they did last year, our county Republican party has taken aim at Grand Haven’s Pride Festival. Last week, Ottawa GOP published a document (newsletter, essay, editorial, screed?) entitled, “Something Must Change in Grand Haven Based on New 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Decision for Naples, FL.”

The heart of their claim is that the drag shows at the Grand Haven Pride Festival are “adult entertainment” and should be hidden behind closed doors (as was recently decided in Naples, Florida). As I read their disappointing and painful claims, the words of Humpty Dumpty from “Alice in Wonderland” kept running through my head: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’”

And as much as the Ottawa GOP apparently wants to believe that a drag show is adult entertainment, just saying it is over and over again in your newsletter doesn’t make it so.

Perhaps some help from the dictionary can assist here. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines drag as “entertainment in which performers caricature or challenge gender stereotypes (as by dressing in clothing that is stereotypical of another gender, by using exaggeratedly gendered mannerisms, or by combining elements of stereotypically male and female dress) and often wear elaborate or outrageous costumes.”

The article included pictures of some of the drag performers, with an expression of alarm that children are there. However, the performers are not nude. They are not even scantily clad. The drag queen’s rear end in the photo they highlight is actually covered with tights in addition to her glittery costume. One wonders if they have walked the boardwalk in Grand Haven recently, because there is far more skin on display on the boardwalk than was ever displayed by performers at the Pride festival.

They seem unable to draw the distinction between medium and content. Drag is a medium of performance that can have a variety of content suitable to different ages. In the same way that all movies are not R-rated, not all drag performances are inherently adult-themed in content. The medium is simply performance art that bends gender expressions and expectations.

One does not have to read that far behind the lines to discern what their actual objection is: the fact that the performers are dressed in clothes from a gender other than the one they were presumably born into … and those performers are dancing. Not pole dancing. Just ... dancing.

It is precisely this kind of language – particularly raising claims of danger to children – that continues to put not only drag performers at risk but also trans and other gender non-conforming individuals. By portraying people who are not gender conforming as dangerous to children, they dehumanize and vilify anyone who is not gender conforming, insisting that this sort of thing simply has no place in the public square.

And when an official political party in our community takes up these attacks, they embolden other forms of transphobic hate. I wish the leadership of the Ottawa GOP would spend some time listening to the experience of trans and gender non-conforming people. Listen to Sadie, a member of my church, sob as she recounts people at her job calling her gross and leveling all sorts of insults at her. And her management does nothing, because the Ottawa GOP has already said people who are not gender conforming are dangerous to kids – so you are free to do anything you want to them.

I can show you screenshots of the vile, hateful, and violent attacks on our festival on social media. Let me share just a few comments that people made on content that was just telling people that the pride festival was coming:

Get hit by a bus.

Proud to be a child molester.

Nobody cares. Get the F&@ out of here.

Filth always. Pray the gay away.

I see attacks starting to happen with this kind of crap.

Demons.

There was one that was just an illustration of someone wiping their naked butt with a pride flag.

And what breaks my heart is that so many of these people claim to be followers of Jesus. I consider myself friends with several pastors in the area and I cannot imagine they would be encouraging their congregants to treat LGBTQIA+ people this way.

As we approach Independence Day holiday, I would urge the Ottawa GOP and the others who have attacked our festival to reflect upon what freedom means and what it means to cultivate a society in which people who do not fit their own gender norms or follow their own religious beliefs for sexual orientation are free to exist – not hidden behind an 18-plus payroll as though they are something prurient. But free to walk down the street, wearing the clothes that represent their own sense of gender identity, free to hold hands with the person they love, and not worrying about someone hurting them.

Sure, I know that the Grand Haven Pride festival may not be something the leadership of the Ottawa GOP will want to attend (though I think they would learn something if they attended and sought to listen to the lived experience of participants).

But it would be great if the party whose leadership changed our county motto to “Where freedom rings” also cared deeply about the freedom of LGBTQIA+ individuals.

It would be great if they cared about the freedom of families like mine who bring our kids to the festival because we want our kids to grow up knowing that it’s OK to be who you are – who God created you to be – and we want them to grow up in a community that doesn’t stigmatize those who are different.

Because kids are in danger, absolutely. The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently found that firearms remain the leading cause of death for children and teens. So, let’s have a conversation about how to balance freedom, the Second Amendment, and the safety of the seven children who die every day from gun violence.

And kids are in danger from hateful rhetoric that says it’s dangerous to break gender norms or have a different sexual orientation. That’s why 43 percent of LGBTQIA youth considered attempting suicide. It’s why 1 in 5 attempted it in the past year.

Kids are in danger, but it’s not from the Grand Haven Pride Festival and our drag shows. It’s from a culture addicted to violence and weapons that marginalizes, excludes, and attacks those who are different. And kids deserve to be protected from that.

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.

A proud Grand Haven gets ready to celebrate Pride Month

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

Welcome to Pride Month! Each year June is dedicated to celebrating the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (or Questioning), Intersex, Asexual (LGBTQIA) individuals who make up our society and their long fight for equality, respect and freedom. A brief walk through mid-century American history will demonstrate why this celebration is important.

The observance of Pride Month dates back to events over half a century ago. In the 1950s and 1960s, many forces in our country were trying to return the United States to a version of America that they believed existed before World War II. A national paranoia about communism, fueled by figures like Joseph McCarthy, had infected out country, leading to the U.S. Army and other government institutions labeling various groups as un-American and subversive security risks – including gay men and lesbians.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the police, and even the U.S. Postal Service kept records on known homosexuals, their friends and the establishments they frequented. States soon followed suit, and eventually even local cities were performing sweeps to rid neighborhoods, parks, bars and restaurants of gay people.

Every state in our country criminalized same-sex acts during this time, with penalties ranging from a light fine to five, 10 or 20 years in prison – or even life. The only exception was Illinois, which decriminalized sodomy in 1961. In 1971, 20 states even had what are known as “sex psychopath” laws which permitted detaining suspected gay or lesbian people for that reason alone. In Pennsylvania and California, they could be committed to a psychiatric institution for life and in seven states they could be castrated.

On June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan in New York. Owned by the Mafia, with an agreed-upon payout to the police to leave it alone, the bar catered to many of the most marginalized people in the LGBTQIA community, including drag queens, transgender people and homeless youth. It was the only bar for gay men in New York where dancing was allowed.

When a raid occurred, identification cards were checked, but generally only trans women and drag queens were the ones arrested. During that raid in 1969, some of those detained refused to go into bathrooms and let the police check their genitalia to confirm their sex. Some of the lesbians reported the police were feeling them up instead of professionally frisking them.

A crowd began to grow outside the door, and within minutes more than 100 people were gathered outside of the club. As the police began loading people into patrol wagons, a bystander shouted “Gay power!” And someone else started to sing the Civil Rights anthem “We Shall Overcome.”

An officer pushed someone in drag who then hit the officer with her purse. The cop then clubbed the suspect over the head, raising the anger and frustration of those in the crowd.

A lesbian complained that her handcuffs were too tight was beaten over the head with a police baton by an officer. She looked at the crowd of bystanders and shouted, “Why don’t you guys do something?”

That’s when the riot began. It lasted for six days as people stood up, claimed the streets as their own, and refused to continue to be subject to inhumane abuse and discrimination. A year later, to mark the first anniversary of the riot, Gay Pride marches were staged in New York as well as Los Angeles and Chicago. From there they spread to other cities and the modern gay rights movement was born.

In 1999, the U.S. Department of the Interior included several parts of Christopher Street and Greenwich Village as a part of the National Register of Historic Places – the first time this was done for a place meaningful specifically to the LGBTQIA community. At the ceremony, Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior John Berry said, “Let it forever be remembered that here – on this spot – men and women stood proud, they stood fast, so that we may be who we are, we may work where we will, live where we choose, and love whom our hearts desire.”

I am proud of my own congregation, St. John’s Episcopal Church, which played a small role in bringing this celebration of Pride to Grand Haven five years ago when we offered a pride-themed community worship service at Waterfront Stadium. Thanks to the work of numerous community members, our city is now blessed to have Grand Haven Pride (http://ghpride.org) a fully independent 501(c)(3) charity that provides year-round programming and is currently in the final days preparing for the third Grand Haven Pride Festival on Saturday, June 14.

If you come to the festival that day, you will be greeted first in the morning at 10 a.m. with the fifth annual Pride Worship Service – an opportunity for LGBTQIA people of faith and their allies to gather, proclaim the good news of God’s love, and worship a God who delights in the diversity of creation. During the festival you will see amazing entertainment, get to know some great vendors and nonprofit agencies that support the Pride Movement, and celebrate the strides our community has taken.

And, when you see the first drag queens step foot on stage, you will now know why drag queens are an absolutely essential part of the Pride Movement – because queens and trans people faced some of the worst attacks that led to the Stonewall Riots.

As someone who moved to Grand Haven in 1991, when I was just 10 years old, I am so proud to see the thousands of people who have gathered for each of these past festivals, and I cannot wait to celebrate with you all again this year. Because love will always overcome hate – but only if people of goodwill stand up and say no to those who want to hate, demean and exclude.

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.

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.