Confessions from the Church on Ash Wednesday

My column in today's issue of the Grand Haven Tribune.

“You have something on your forehead.”

Today, Christians around the world will likely have someone come up to them at some point and say just that, noticing the dark smudge on a forehead. The reason, of course, is because today is Ash Wednesday — the day that marks the beginning of the season of Lent.

Many Christians — and many preachers for that matter! — have noticed the odd incongruity of the practices surrounding Ash Wednesday. In many churches, the Gospel reading includes Jesus’ admonition in Matthew 6: “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret.” Then, we all come up to the altar rail to have our faces disfigured by a smudged ashen cross — proclaiming to the world that we are fasting.

And let’s be clear, if the ashes any Christian receives upon their forehead are worn as a symbol of pride in their piety, they should indeed wash those ashes off straightaway rather than fall victim to the sins of pride and self-righteousness. However, if the ashes upon your head make you look a bit silly, if they make others inquire after your spiritual life curiously, if they provoke within the wearer the willingness to say openly and honestly, “I wear these ashes because I am a sinner and, through God’s love, I’m trying to do better” — well, then I think the ashes might indeed serve a deep and important purpose.

Because far too often the church pretends to be a place where everyone has it all put together. Rarely do individual Christians stand up and repent of their sins. Even more rarely does the church as a corporate body stand up and repent of her sins.

It reminds me of a story Donald Miller told in his book, “Blue Like Jazz,” when the Christians in his group set up a confession booth in the midst of a gloriously hedonistic university festival. Revelers would giggle and go inside, only to have the Christians present confess to the revelers the sins of the church and to ask their forgiveness. People would leave struck and confused, completely unused to hearing religious people say they have been wrong, and to say so in specific ways.

I participated in something similar a few years ago at the Grand Rapids Pride festival. I attended with a group of other Christians who wore T-shirts proclaiming, “I’m sorry.” We were there as a public witness, a public apology for the way the church has harmed and demeaned LGBTQ people — those with faith and those without faith.

Some people looked strangely at the priest wearing a T-shirt saying “I’m sorry,” thinking it must be a trick. But many people came up with tears in their eyes and said, “Thank you. I’ve been in such pain from being kicked out of my church, or told I’m disordered, or being told my love for my partner is a sin.” I gave each of those people a hug, telling them the church had gotten this wrong for a long time, and I wanted them to know that I apologized on behalf of the church. I apologized for my own failures in this area, when my own thinking was more rigid and narrow.

This is the sort of thing I think ashes are about on Ash Wednesday. The ashes Christians wear are not a symbol of our deep spirituality — or at least they shouldn’t be. The ashes are a public apology for the sins we have committed, the times we have failed to make manifest the love of God to our neighbors, to our enemies, to the world itself.

And I do believe the church has much to repent. We need to repent of our treatment of LGBTQ persons, treatment that has caused countless suicides and resulted in innumerable shattered faith relationships. But there is more.

We need to repent of our preference for those who look and think like us, resulting in Sunday being the most segregated time of the week.

We need to repent of our complicity in economic systems that rely upon people making starving wages so that we can have cheaper products and more comfort at home.

We need to repent of being more concerned with keeping a specific institution running than with being the bodily presence of God’s love on earth.

We need to repent of enabling leaders in the church to abuse and harass, and of not being willing to do the hard work of supporting processes that keep the vulnerable safe from the powerful and predators.

We need to repent of our silencing of the voices of women, of how long they have been kept out of places of authority, and how the loss of their voices among the clergy has diminished the whole body of Christ.

We need to repent of approaching the tragedy of abortion with language that has made untold women feel they are murderers, instead of people who were often faced with equally horrible choices and who needed a loving support while they made those choices.

We have much to repent. That’s what those ashes mean to me.

You might see me out on the street today, wearing my strange priest clothes, a funny hat and a big cloak, offering “Ashes to Go.” I do this so that people can be invited into this season whether or not they can attend a service, whether or not they have a church home. But I do this as well because, at the end of every rite, after I’ve imposed ashes and we’ve prayed together, I ask the person who stopped to “Go in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.”

I stand on the street because I need your prayers as I seek to be more faithful to God’s love in my own life.

The church often needs your forgiveness as much as you need God’s. This is what Lent is truly all about. God’s love is waiting for all of us in this Holy Season, but we must have the courage to turn to God and say, “I’ve done wrong. We’ve done wrong. And we are ready to change.”

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.

What 'Rent' Taught Me

My column in today's issue of the Grand Haven Tribune. 

The first time I saw the Broadway musical “Rent,” I was on a trip to New York City with the other thespians from Grand Haven High School. I remembered this experience with the partially live production of “Rent” that aired on Fox-TV at the end of last month, a production that often moved me to tears.

I loved all that the theater programs in both middle and high school opened me up to as a teenager, and I had very much looked forward to my first visit to the big city. We saw a handful of shows while we were there, but the one that stood out to me and changed me forever was the evening we saw “Rent.” If you’re not familiar with this show, it is a loose adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's opera “La bohème.” It follows a small, eclectic group of artists who live in the East Village as they seek to make sense of life in the midst of poverty, drugs and the growing HIV/AIDS crisis.

As a young, conservative, evangelical teenager, this show was my first exposure to LGBTQ persons who didn’t seek to hide or cover things up. Some of the couples in the show are same-sex and some are opposite-sex, and that’s just the way the story goes.

One of the couples, Collins and Angel, were particularly compelling to me. Collins is a part-time professor of philosophy and an anarchist. He meets Angel, a street drummer and drag queen. They connect that over the fact that they both have AIDS when Angel tenderly cares for Collins after a mugging. Their love for each other as they seek to overcome difficulty, their shared dreams for a different future, and Angel’s heartbreaking death make their narrative one of the strongest threads running through the musical.

The song that impacted me then most deeply, I think, is “Will I?” It is sung at the end of an HIV support group gathering, as he sings about his fear of losing his dignity as he dies from AIDS. He sings, “Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care? Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?” and the other members of the group join in singing with him, his fear also being their fear.

I was taught in church, of course, that all of these people were unrepentant sinners and that much of their struggle and suffering was because of the moral and ethical choices they had made. Thus, though this was all sad, what they really needed was to repent and find Jesus. That’s what I was taught.

But the cold arithmetic in that theology entirely evaporated as I watched this show for the first time. I cared less about whether or not they were sinners and more about their struggle to claim some sense of dignity. These seemed like people who were remarkably good deep within, and at that time in my life I lacked the theology to articulate why.

I believe “Rent” was the beginning of the unraveling of my simplistic view of morality, as I began to understand that what matters most are people and the rule of love. Jesus himself said all the law and the prophets hang on love of God and love of neighbor — my understanding religion had cut people off as unworthy because of the law and, thus, this reading of the law, failed in the task of helping me love my neighbor.

Seeing “Rent” was also the beginning of my own construction of a positive understanding of goodness, mission and evangelism — one that began to realize that the characters didn’t need Jesus. First, they needed food. They needed somewhere safe to live. They needed medical care. Most importantly, they needed to be seen with dignity — and that requires real relationships, not simply evangelism. Indeed, many of them could actually teach me just as much (if not more) about Jesus than I could ever teach them.

Quite frankly, I needed these characters to evangelize me. Thankfully, they did.

Much of the conversion experience I had watching “Rent” parallels the need Christianity still has to repent of the church’s behavior and response during the rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Those suffering from AIDS were ostracized in society and especially in the church, with those who had the disease being labeled as sinners due to their sexuality or their drug use. Some Christians went so far at that time to proclaim that the disease was God’s punishment for homosexuality. In 1987, Jerry Falwell said, “AIDS is a lethal judgment of God on the sin of homosexuality and it is also the judgment of God on America for endorsing this vulgar, perverted and reprobate lifestyle.”

Even at the highest levels of our government, President George H.W. Bush said nothing as the death toll continued to rise. When he did speak, he said people needed to change their behavior. He opposed needle exchange programs that could have saved lives and passed massively inadequately funding for research in this growing health crisis largely because so many of the victims were seen to be culpable for contracting the disease. It was almost as though they were an expendable part of society.

“Rent” taught me how religion can blind you to seeing people, really and truly seeing people as people with inherent dignity and worth, ironically enough. It taught me that God’s love can exist in a variety of forms and that I, as a Christian, had some repenting to do. In the two decades since that trip, I’ve certainly changed. I’m now honored to serve in a church where we joyfully celebrate our LGBTQ members. I’ve had the privilege of officiating at a handful of same-sex weddings, both for parishioners and for community members. And, as a priest, I know very clearly that it does no good to preach at people when you ignore their basic needs of survival.

“Rent” taught me that what Jesus demands of me is love. That I truly love people. And I hope that as the legacy of this musical continues to grow, wider portions of the church will also find themselves convicted for their continued ostracization of LGBTQ Christians, their continued patronizing approach to the poor, and their continued finger-wagging at those struggling with addiction, telling people they just need Jesus when they also could probably use some excellent addiction-related mental health care.

I hope that wider portions of the church will find themselves convicted, will repent of their own response to people, both during this crisis and today. And I hope we will all be willing to learn anew what love truly demands of us.

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 human costs of the current shutdown

My column in today's issue of the Grand Haven Tribune.

When many people are asked to think of those who work in the federal government, the first thing that comes to mind are those elected to serve in the federal government. So when a government shutdown occurs, people often do not realize the massive pain that it causes among the actual average civil servant.

The average federal worker earns $51,340 per year. That’s a pretty good middle-class salary, but that’s by no means a guarantor of financial security when you are all of the sudden forced to go without a paycheck. And there are many federal workers who don’t make that much and are even still required to work.

Workers in the Transportation Security Information have a starting pay of around $16 per hour and an average salary of just over $40,000 per year. However, under government shutdown rules, they are required to work even though they will not receive pay.

All told, there are 800,000 federal workers who are currently not being paid. That’s 800,000 people who do not know when they will receive their next paycheck. There is no indication that the government is reopening anytime soon, and so the anxiety is only growing among these dedicated civil servants.

And, make no mistake, that’s what the average federal employee is — a person who has chosen to work in the government even though they would often make more money in the private sector. However, these people have a passion for the common good and so serve our country in a variety of agencies.

During my first two years of ordained ministry, I served in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Our parish was filled with federal employees and I found them to be some of the most sacrificial, dedicated and committed people I had ever met.

The average American has less than $4,000 in savings and 57 percent of all Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. And yet, for each of these federal employees, there are mortgages and rent that are due every month. There are groceries to buy and utility bills to pay. The Office of Personnel Management has sent out sample letters employees can use to send to landlords and creditors asking for leniency during this shutdown, but those letters will rely on the goodwill of those who receive them.

In the 1981 government shutdown, President Ronald Reagan (a strong opponent of government unions) acknowledged the “temporary hardship” the shutdown would have on workers. In 2013, when the government was shut down under President Barack Obama, he wrote an open letter to those affected: “None of this is fair to you,” he wrote, adding, “You and your families remain at the front of my mind.”

However, President Donald Trump has yet to say anything publicly that acknowledges the massive hardship this shutdown is on federal employees. The closest he came was a tweet last week when we wrote, “Do the Dems realize that most of the people not getting paid are Democrats?” Aside from being an entirely unproven claim, his tweet also betrays a partisan disregard for the human cost of not getting a paycheck.

Some may argue that Congress should cave into the president’s demands for $5 billion for a border wall, that the cost that is being born by federal employees is worth that agreement. But let’s be clear, the president is holding the livelihood of 800,000 people hostage so that he can get this wall, and 56 percent of Americans oppose the border wall and even more than that (58 percent) believe Trump should withdraw his demand for wall spending.

One of the most common ways undocumented immigrants enter our country is actually with a legal visa at a legal port of entry. They then overstay their legal visa. Ironically enough, the Cato Institute has found that as the amount of border fencing increases, the number of people entering the country legally and then overstaying illegally also increases. That is, the increase in border fencing has only changed the manner in which people enter our country illegally.

Furthermore, border fencing has had the unintended impact of making it harder for undocumented immigrants to return home. In 1996, when our country’s experiment with border fencing was just beginning, University of Pennsylvania sociologist Douglas Massey found that the majority of those who entered our country illegally would leave within one year. Thirteen years later, with triple the number of border agents and 650 miles of barrier, the likelihood of leaving within one year had dropped to almost nothing.

So, our president is holding the livelihood of 800,000 federal employees hostage for a border security plan that will not actually work. The money he wants to spend on a border wall could instead be spent on increasing funding for our overflowing immigration courts, it could be spent on all kinds of areas which would actually have a positive impact upon immigration reform on our country.

A compromise of some sort must be reached. A great compromise — one that would actually appeal to a majority of our country — would be a return to the offer that was on the table last year: funding the wall in exchange for protection for dreamers, those in our country who were brought here as children. But the president has rejected even that offer yet again because he says it would make him look foolish.

The dedicated civil servants in our country deserve better than to be held hostage over a policy proposal that studies have shown is unhelpful and that a majority of our country oppose.

And immigrants to our country — both those who come legally and those who come without documentation, fleeing violence and poverty — deserve better than being used as chips to appeal to a right-wing nationalist base.

We, as Americans, can do better than this. We must do better than this.

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.

Making room in December for the faith of everyone

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

The addition of a Latino ministry has brought many rich experiences to our congregation here at St. John’s Episcopal Church. We’ve been blessed by more multicultural experiences, including the ways different cultures experience and engage with the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. All of us, Anglo and Latino alike, have formed bonds across many of the divisions in our culture, enriching and enlarging our perspectives. Preaching and celebrating Holy Communion in Spanish every Sunday at 12:45 p.m. has brought my Spanish to new levels. And the food — oh, the amazing food we eat when we come together.

I’ve been thinking about the blessings of this experience a lot over these first few days of Advent, here at the beginning of the church year and the end of a calendar year. Though much of society celebrates the days from Thanksgiving to Christmas as the Christmas season, the tradition of the church is actually slightly different.

The four Sundays before Christmas are known as the four Sundays of Advent. Not simply an elongation of the Christmas holiday, the Season of Advent exists as a time of preparation for the celebration of Christmas. Its roots are traced to St. Martin’s Lent — a period of fasting to prepare for Christmas that used to begin on St. Martin’s Day (Nov. 11 — so, apparently there is some backing to starting to think about Christmas before Thanksgiving!). Later, the period was shortened to the four Sundays before Christmas and took the name “Advent.” However, in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites of the Catholic Church, Advent still actually begins on the sixth Sunday before Christmas, the Sunday after St. Martin’s Day.

Various Christian traditions observe Advent differently, but most are united in the idea that it is not just four extra weeks of celebration before Christmas Day. Rather, the season of Advent is a time when we prepare for the coming of Christ, when we seek to “make room” for the Advent of God into our world, into our lives.

One of the essential aspects of our Latino ministry was that our congregation had to learn what it would mean to “make room” in our congregation for new people from a different culture, many of whom spoke a different language. We were clear from the front that we didn’t just want a separate Spanish-speaking congregation. Rather, we wanted our new Latino members to find themselves at the heart — “el corazón” — of our community. That means we had to think differently about Sunday schedules, about how to ensure key moments throughout the church year could be fully celebrated by people of both cultures and languages.

We’ve sought to be intentional about what it means to be invited into something different. So, this Saturday at 6 p.m., we’ll have a Las Posadas party at our church. This Latin-American tradition replicates the journey of the Holy Family, seeking to find room at the inn but being turned away. It includes the singing of special carols, especially “Peregrinos” or “wanderers” — a back and forth between host and guest, with the hosts playing the role of innkeeper and the guests the role of the Holy Family — before a celebratory meal.

Next Wednesday at 7 p.m., we will have a Solemn Procession and Eucharist in honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe — a vision of Mary that appeared to a poor native Mexican and which was first ignored by the church hierarchy, until Mary filled the poor man’s cloak with roses in December and left an imprint of her image upon the cloak itself.

And, on Christmas Eve, in addition to our Family Eucharist at 5 p.m. and our Solemn Eucharist with incense at 10:30 p.m., we will have a Spanish-language Eucharist at 2 p.m.

A lot of this has been new to our members. (It has been new to me, as well!) But we have sought to be curious and not afraid to hear how others may experience God differently than us. We’ve been blessed as we have made room for one another and the faith of everyone — Anglo and Latino alike — has been tremendously deepened.

I truly think this is what Advent is all about, after all — making room. When Christ was about to come among us in the baby in Bethlehem, no one wanted to make room for a traveling family and an unwed mother. That’s why they sent them to the stables, where a pregnant teenager cried and screamed as she gave birth on dirty hay surrounded by animals. But God came nonetheless, even though no one really wanted to make room.

There are all kinds of places in each of our lives where we probably don’t want to make room, where we prefer comfort and consistency. December tends to fill rapidly with parties and shopping until the days after Christmas Day finally seem like a welcome break. But I’d invite you to ask if there are some ways you can stretch in these next weeks. Are there some places in your life where you can open your perspective, open your life, so that God may show up in ways you might not expect?

Partisan division is at near record levels. Crowds of people fleeing poverty and violence are at the very gates of our nation. Here in the sleepy Tri-Cities, many continue to struggle with anxiety and depression. Suicides always peak this time of year. There are still not enough affordable places to live in our community. LGBTQ persons often find themselves needing to hide their identity if they want to show up at church on Christmas, much less at the family table with a partner.

None of this is OK. We shouldn’t paper it over with tinsel and bows.

God will come among us, nonetheless. But if history is any indicator, it will be easy to miss God’s coming if we don’t prepare first.

So, see if you can make a little more room — in your life, in your family, in your church, in your community and in our country. See if you can make a little more room for what the love of God is trying to do. I guarantee you will not regret it.


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

Jesus Calls Us to This: An Argument in Favor of the Methodist-Episcopal Full Communion Proposal, "A Gift to the World"

In October an updated version of the United Methodist and Episcopal Church Full Communion proposal was published, entitled, A Gift to the World: Co-Laborers for the Healing of Brokenness. You can read the proposal itself online here.

As I suspected, there has been much hand-wringing by several of my colleagues who are distressed by a move to full communion with the United Methodist Church and who believe that this proposal is  theologically flawed.

On Facebook, when I bemoaned that once again I seem to be in favor of something many of my friends seem to hate, one person asked me to share why I support this movement and, specifically, the proposal for full communion which now exists. I started writing a comment, but that quickly got too long. Instead, I want to offer this reflection.

Prolegomena—In Favor of Ecumenism
The first thing to say is that I am a strong advocate of ecumenism. I spent six years representing The Episcopal Church on the Faith & Order Commission of the National Council of Churches. That work remains some of my favorite work I have yet done as a priest. I withdrew from that appointment when the National Council of Churches reorganized because it seemed the Faith & Order work that would be done going forward wasn't the best fit for me. At the same time, I still believe the NCC and other ecumenical bodies are doing important work.

I believe this for two reasons.

First, division in the body of Christ is a sin for which we must all repent. Even though the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, was not always a full-throated supporter of the ecumenical movement, he insisted that division and schism were not the Christian way and that work needed to be done to heal that division. He was not a supporter of women's ordination when the question came to the Anglican Consultative Council, but after it became a part of The Episcopal Church he knew of an American priest who left the church and joined a dissident movement over they issue. Ramsey was massively opposed to this entrance into schism and told his friend just that.

While the church remains in a divided state, no one part of the church can claim a full and true catholicity.

Second, I have seen in my own ministry the fruits of ecumenical work. I have seen congregations from the Lutheran and Episcopal churches who have come together and been able to discover vibrant and faithful ministry. In my own parish, I have been tremendously enriched by our Priest Associate, a Lutheran pastor who has helped me grow in my first decade of priestly ministry. The coming together of our churches, the interchange of our ministries, through the Full Communion agreement we have with the ELCA has been a tremendous gift to us as a church.

I also believe that the way in which ecumenism takes place, we can never merely ask one church to adopt another practices or beliefs. Rather, the riches of the ecumenical movement has been the discovered convergence through difficult theological wrestling. The primacy of baptism in the 1979 BCP is a great example of the way in which ecumenical conversations surrounding baptism led to a refining of our own understanding and practice in the Episcopal Church.

To return to Ramsey, we have to remember that the church is not yet fully and perfectly that which God is calling it to be. As Ramsey wrote in The Charismatic Christ,  “So the sacramental order of the Church witnesses to its historical givenness and witnesses also to its growth to-ward a future plenitude when, partly within history and partly beyond history, the Church will become perfectly what it is already.”  This idea of combining the historical givenness of the church with its future growth toward plenitude was not Ramsey’s own creation. Here he notes his debt to the work of Yves Congar who had envisioned Christian unity not as a process of “returning to Mother Church,” but rather “as the converging of all Christians upon a goal which will be a Church different from any now visible yet in continuity with the Church as once founded.”

So, I believe in ecumenism and I believe good ecumenism will not only enable each tradition to bring the riches of its history to other communions, but it will also result in the growth, change, and movement towards greater faithfulness in those traditions.

Now, to the proposal itself, and my own reasons for supporting it.

We Share Core Doctrine
One of the fundamental questions with which anyone must approach questions of full communion relationships is whether or not you believe the differences between two churches are church-dividing issues. That is, is the difference of perspective so significant that it warrants us living in continued schism. Over the course of bilateral ecumenical conversations, those leading both of these conversations have come to the conclusion that our difference are indeed not church-dividing issues. That does not mean our difference are not important or that we don't need to have further conversation. Rather, it says that these differences do not rise to the level that we should live in division from each other.

This is undergirded by the theological statement Sharing in the Apostolic Communion, issued over twenty years ago as the result of international dialogue between the World Methodist Council and the Anglican Communion. At that time, the document noted that we share the core doctrine of the Christian faith and do not need further doctrinal assurances from one another.

Some people have strangely claimed that the United Methodist Church doesn't affirm the Nicene Creed. This claim is based upon a movement to have it formally added to the Book of Discipline, a moment which died in committee for reasons no one can articulate. However, we should remember not only the point above (where we have already said we agree on core doctrine), but we should also remember that the United Methodist Book of Discipline gives its own requirements for full communion, one of which is "a mutual affirmation of one another’s membership in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church 'described in the Holy Scriptures and confessed in the church’s historic creeds'" (¶431.1).

We Share in the Historic Episcopate, locally adapted
This has been one of the major sticking points of those outside the conversation. There are some Episcopalians who continue to insist that the historic episcopate must, by definition, include the manual transmission of apostolic authority through the laying on of hands through the centuries. I would commend to those who hold such an understanding (one that I believe to be anemic and theologically and historically deficient, by the way) John Burkhard's excellent book Apostolicity Then and Now.

Burkhard is a Roman Catholic theologian and his book did tremendous work in articulating a nuanced understanding of apostolicity that is based upon the best of Scripture, theology, and church history. He cites authorities no less impressive than Joseph Ratzinger to advocate for an understanding of apostolicity that is more than the strict historical apostolic succession. Apostolicity must be seen within the context of the apostolicity of the whole church, including origin, doctrine, and life—historic succession can be one aspect of that apostolicity and it is far from a guarantee of that apostolicity.

Furthermore, those who insist that the historic episcopate must include apostolic succession have no argument upon which to base their claim. The phrase itself is notably absent from the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral. Indeed, its absent from the Book of Common Prayer itself! It was virtually unknown in Anglican circles before the Oxford Movement of the nineteenth century—and even then, was never broadly shared or affirmed officially in any way. Our church has never made apostolic succession the basics of any of our ecumenical dialogues. And lest Anglicans get too high on their horses with this question, let's remember that it was a strict understanding of this question that led Rome to call our own orders invalid because of the loss of strict manual succession in the Edwardian times.

Furthermore, this document does not eliminate the role that historic succession plays as a part of the historic episcopate. All future episcopal consecrations will include at least one Episcopal bishop, along with a Morvaian and ELCA bishop. Thus, over time, the Methodist church will also now share once more in the historic succession—even as they already currently share in the historic episcopate, adapted for their own churches needs and ministry.

I would also note that Tom Ferguson has rather strongly argued that the insistence upon apostolic succession is not only problematic historically and theologically, it has tremendously unfortunate sexist and racist overtones that need to be acknowledged.

We Affirm the Ministry of Four Orders
Once again, there is a strange claim by some that Methodists to not affirm the three-fold ministry of bishop, priest, and deacon. I find it unsurprising that those who make this claim ignore that our prayer book is clear that there are four orders of ministry, and that the ministry of the baptized is the first order in the Outline of Faith.

Both TEC and the UMC have worked through a revival of the ministry of deacons. I find any criticism of the UMC revival to be a significant amount of pointing out specks of dust and ignoring the plank in your own eye. In our own church we are still struggling through this revival, evident in the massively different expectations, formation processes, and practices surrounding the diaconate. It was not until I was the Chair of the Commission on Ministry that I fully realized how very little the average Episcopalian—including the average priest!—truly understands about the history and theology of the diaconate.

The UMC has not held onto the practice of the transitional diaconate (that is, one is ordained a deacon before being ordained a priest). But, once more, we need to be clear that this was not the practice in the church for centuries. There are theological and practical reasons both for it and against it, but it cannot be seen as a church-dividing issue unless we plan to divide ourselves from the early church! (And, furthermore, the UMC official statement on this question states clearly that Christ is present in the elements.)

The UMC has chosen to use the word "elder," that is the translation of Presbyter/Priest, in its own articulation of the one who is ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament. However, it is clear that the office itself is the same. Sure, most UMC elders probably don't have the same understanding of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist as I do—but I know a lot of Episcopal clergy who don't as well. Once more, since the Elizabethan settlement Anglicanism has allowed for room for disagreement on this question. We cannot reject their elders as inauthentic without also rejecting the orders of many of our own colleagues and entering into a quasi-Donatist world where the validity of sacraments becomes a question of each person's personal views.

The way in which the episcopate has been historically adapted (one of the specific allowances of the Quadilaterial) in Methodism is instructive. Here I will quote from the document itself,

Following the American Revolution, The Episcopal Church adapted the office of bishop to its new missional context: bishops were elected by representative bodies (Diocesan Conventions) and exercised oversight in conjunction with clergy and laypersons. After the American Revolution, Methodists also adapted the episcopal office to the missional needs of their ministerial circumstances and settings. Early Methodism adapted the office of bishop as an itinerant general superintendency, and the name of the largest Methodist body incorporated the word: Methodist Episcopal Church, reflecting this choice of episcopal governance. The United Methodist Church includes among its antecedent denominations the Methodist Protestant Church resulting from a merger in 1939. The Methodist Protestant Church incorporated the Methodist episcopacy at that time as it did not have the office of bishop in its structure. In 1968, The United Methodist Church was created through the merger of the Methodist Church with the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which also had bishops, at which time the churches’ episcopacies were brought together into a unified whole. 

In The Episcopal Church and The United Methodist Church, bishops are consecrated by other bishops and ordain presbyters/elders and deacons. They exercise oversight in a specific geographic area—the diocese or annual conference—and in conjunction with clergy and lay persons.

Sure, there is also an apology on the Episcopal side for the ways that some in our church have claimed that Methodists don't have valid orders. But that seems like a pretty good thing to apologize for, given the ecumenical consensuses that have been reached at this point in our life.

Some have very oddly claimed that there is a big problem because the UMC do not understand the ministry of bishop and presbyter to be distinct ministries.

Well shit. I suppose this person never read a lick of early church history, wherein the terms episkopos and presbyter are used interchangeably in Scripture and the monepiscopate (as we know it) gradually developed as the primary presbyter in the area, with the added authority to ordain other presbyters.

In our own church, bishops and priests are not entirely distinct ministries. After all, the prayer book is clear that the bishop functions as the primary presbyter at celebrations of Eucharist and Baptism. The ministry of a bishop is inextricably bound up with the ministry of the priest. They aren't distinct in our own church.

What Really Hangs People Up
You know what all this leaves us with? Grape juice or wine.

Seriously.

Methodists use grape juice and Episcopalians use wine. Each do this for important theological and historical reasons. However, let's also be clear, lots of Episcopalians actually use port—a fortified type of wine that wouldn't have existed in the first century. There are also Episcopal churches that do use grape juice—a nonalcoholic fruit of the vine that did not exist in the first century. An extreme condemnation of any of these modern variations of fruit of the vine is historically anachronistic and delves into the odd Roman insistence upon technical specificity (very out of step for our Anglican tradition), which goes so far as to articulate what percentage of wheat must be in bread for it to be called bread.

Do I prefer the use of wine? Absolutely. In fact, in our parish we use actual red wine—you know, that tastes like the sort of wine you might drink at dinner.

But to return to the refrain of this entire essay, is this a church dividing issue? God, I hope not.

Sure, this full communion proposal will have problems. We'll have things we will need to work out. Most significantly, the UMC is currently wrestling with the place of LGBTQ Christians in their body. I hope we'll all join in praying for our brothers and sisters in this struggle—knowing that we didn't do all of that wrestling perfectly or well in our own church.

But I sure hope this thing passes. Because Christ prayed passionately for his followers to be one. And as for me, I see it to be my call as a disciple of Christ to work toward that end, not against it.

Questions for Huizenga and answers from Davidson

Today's column in the Grand Haven Tribune, reprinted below.

It has now been over one year since the citizens in Michigan’s Second Congressional District have had an opportunity to meet with their representative in a public forum.

There may be a significant reason why Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, is so hesitant to show up in a public forum in his own district.

After all, it was at a town hall in February of last year that the citizens of our district were introduced to the person who is now running as his opponent, Dr. Rob Davidson. For a good 15 minutes, Davidson and Huizenga debated on the question of health care.

After that experience, many who were in attendance encouraged Davidson to run against Huizenga for Congress. And that’s what Rob has been doing.

He has been out meeting people and knocking on doors. The sheer number of public events he has held has been unheard of in our district. On Aug. 27, Davidson challenged Huizenga to a series of seven debates, one in each county which makes up our district. It was all crickets from the Huizenga office, but Davidson plowed ahead — eager to engage with the citizens of our area. On Sept. 10, instead of the hoped-for debate with Huizenga, Davidson hosted a town hall meeting to a standing-room only crowd in Holland. He held a second town hall on Sept. 29 in Kentwood.

Rep. Huizenga has had ample time during congressional recesses to meet with his constituents. However, in the absence of a public forum, he appears to spend his time primarily cultivating his donor base. He has not given us, the citizens in the Second District, the opportunity to ask him questions in public about the choices he has made while supposedly representing us in Congress.

If I had the opportunity to ask Rep. Huizenga some questions, I would have a few that immediately come to mind. Why does he talk so much about how it is Congress who makes laws for immigration and then fail to actually do anything productive to solve our broken system and protect families? Why did it take him weeks to speak out against the policy of forced family separation? Why did he support the president’s original ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries? Why is it that he has accepted over $1 million in corporate dollars, including a significant amount from banks that are not even in our district? How is he ensuring we don’t lose the regulations put in place after the Great Recession to protect our country from risky decisions in the financial sector? Why hasn’t Huizenga worked for common-sense bipartisan gun reform, advocating for policies that enjoy broad support across the political spectrum, including universal background checks and red flag laws that keep firearms away from domestic abusers?

And the question I have that hits particularly to home is what exactly is he doing to fix our struggling health care system? Sure, he sought to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but when the American Health Care Act replacement failed, it seems he has not done much else. While Congress has been in a state of inaction, health care premiums continue to rise. West Michigan Christians who serve on church boards have seen first-hand how the continued increase in health care premiums for clergy and lay employees has continued to make it harder to devote a congregation’s financial resources to the important ministry to which we are called. As a committed Christian himself, I’m curious how Huizenga is working to alleviate this burden which every congregation, church board and pastor feels.

It has been reported that Rep. Huizenga has finally accepted Dr. Davidson’s invitation to debate. Our own Grand Haven Tribune secured this agreement, with a debate planned for Oct. 30 — one week before the General Election. Another debate is planned earlier, on Oct. 15 in Newaygo County. I suppose there is nothing like waiting to the last minute.

No matter what political views you hold, if you are able to attend one of these debates, I would encourage you to do so. If not, try to find a way to engage them online. Listen to what each candidate says. Ask yourself who will better represent all the residents of our district.

And Rep. Huizenga, if you’re reading this, maybe try holding at least one public town hall before the election so that your constituents can ask you the questions that will be on their hearts and minds when they go to the polls Nov. 6.

Anthems, protests and honoring sacrifices

Today's column in the Grand Haven Tribune, reprinted below.

The debate over whether or not people should be forced to stand during the national anthem has come up over and over again in the past 100 years since the anthem has held an official place in our country’s life. The most recent debate was sparked when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the anthem during a preseason game in 2016. His action was motivated by the deaths of African-Americans by police or while in police custody.

Afterward, Kaepernick had some careful conversations with another teammate, Eric Reid, about what would be the best thing to do. The two of them even sat down with Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and a former NFL player. After these conversations, they decided they would not sit down because this could convey an attitude of disrespect. Instead, they would kneel during the anthem.

As Reid explained it, “We chose to kneel because it's a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”

However, during 2017, various conservatives began sharply criticizing those players who decided to kneel. Never one to seek to bring calm to a controversy, on Sept. 24, President Donald Trump said that anyone who didn’t stand should be fired. In response, more than 200 players knelt or sat in an even stronger protest.

The anger of those who felt anything other than kneeling during the anthem was disrespectful only grew, leading to calls in several conservative outlets to boycott the NFL. Other players began joining Kaepernick in the protests, choosing to raise a fist during the anthem or to stand with their arms locked instead of with their hand over their chest.

During the preseason, a new league rule as approved by the commissioner and the NFL owners will require all players either to stand or to remain in the locker room. The players union was not consulted. Then, last month, Kaepernick won a legal battle, gaining the ability to enter into arbitration with the league about his claim that owners are colluding to keep from hiring him due to his affiliation with this protest.

All of this was ignited further by an advertising campaign by Nike which includes Kaepernick. The ad features many people who have overcome numerous challenges and have gone on to do great things. Near the end of the ad, there is a shot of Kaepernick while the voiceover (who we find out has been Kaepernick all along) says, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” The ad ends with Kaepernick saying, “Don’t ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they are crazy enough.”

And, of course, the anger on the right flashed white hot again as people burned their Nike apparel or cut the iconic swoosh off of it in protest. Some conservatives even started replacing images of Kaepernick with NFL star Pat Tillman. You may remember that Tillman turned down the chance to make millions and instead enlisted after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, going on to serve bravely and die in combat.

Tillman’s widow immediately spoke out angrily, asking people not to use her husband’s sacrifice as a way to attack Kaepernick. Tillman’s biographer, Jon Krakauer, spoke out, as well, insisting that, “I have no doubt if he was in the NFL today, he would be the first to kneel. So there is irony about what is going on.”

Of course, despite the claims of President Trump and many on the right, Kaepernick’s protests and the protests of his fellow players is not disrespecting the flag, those currently serving in the armed forces or our military veterans. Rather, they are kneeling in protest of the fact that our country still has not dealt with the continued killing of unarmed African-Americans by our police. And, as Tillman’s own widow said in a statement, “The very action of self-expression and the freedom to speak from one’s heart — no matter those views — is what Pat and so many other Americans have given their lives for.”

The best response to this controversy that I have seen came from Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic nominee in the 2018 Texas Senate race. Someone in the crowd asked Beto about the NFL protests and Beto said two very important things. First, he said, “Reasonable people can disagree on this issue and it makes them no less American to come down on a different conclusion.” As someone who supports the protests of the players, I also strongly agree with O’Rourke on this related point. We need to get back to a place in our society where we do not attack those who hold different views than we do on important issues. Particularly, because these are issues that need to be engaged, not dismissed by an angry meme or a knee-jerk refusal to listen to the other.

O’Rourke then went on to highlight the powerful history of civil rights protest for equal rights, those who sacrificed so much for those rights, who were killed and attacked for insisting that our society must change. He argued that taking a knee in a football game is a part of our country’s strong tradition of peaceful nonviolent protest. He insisted that their protest that unarmed black men, black teenagers and black children “are being killed at a frightening level right now, including by members of law enforcement, without accountability and justice.” He argued that the players are frustrated that those in power have not resolved this tragic problem and he insisted that he “could think nothing more American than to peacefully stand up or take a knee for your rights.”

I’m tremendously disappointed in the tone of those who disagree with these protests. I’m disappointed with their refusal to respect an opposing viewpoint (notice that no one significant is saying you are not American if you remain standing and chose not to protest). And, most importantly, by angrily insisting that everyone had better stand for the anthem, those on the right are making it abundantly clear why this protest is important: because standing for an anthem is more important to them than the bodies of African-Americans which continue to fall on the streets of our country.

Stop getting angry about the decision to peacefully kneel in protest. Stop burning Nike apparel because you don’t agree with their decision to affirm Kaepernick’s work. Stop insisting that anyone who doesn’t agree with you isn’t a real American.

Instead, take a breath and listen to the grief and anger pouring over from those who are experiencing violence and oppression in our country. Get angry about black bodies being killed with no consequences.

Honor the veterans who have fought for this country to ensure all people have the right of freedom of speech, freedom of protest. Honor them by working to ensure all people in our society truly do have access to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.