Continued Pressure on BLP Needed to Save Grand Haven

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

Christians are a people of resurrection. This Wednesday in Easter week, just a few days after the Day of the Resurrection itself, that should be clearer to us than ever. We are a people who believe God is at working bringing new life out of the death of this world—and that we are called to be a part of that work.

There are some people in Grand Haven trying to do that work right now with Harbor Island, the power plant that used to exist there, and the Board of Light and Power. Unfortunately, they are still not truly being heard. Our community is not being heard. 

Like many residents, I was glad to see the J.B. Sims coal-fired power plant retired in 2020. It was no longer economically advantageous and it was far behind the cleaner energy generation options available today. As a Christian who believes God has given us stewardship over creation—a stewardship we have often squandered as we have been complicit in violence against creation. Climate change is an increasingly pressing reality around the world, with the effects of climate change having particularly negative impacts on the lives of the poorest in our world. We must do better.

The Board of Light and Power (BLP) wants to construct a natural-gas fired plant to supplement the grid and the power needs of the city of Grand Haven. However, as one of my fellow community columnists, Mike Troupos, noted earlier this year, this is an economically-questionable decision because the plant only works economically if it functions for thirty years and it is rather unlikely, given the pace of change and regulation when it comes to power production, that a natural-gas fired plant will be desirable in another decade and certainly not in another two. 

BLP Vice-Chairman Gerry Witherell, an advocate for the current plan, has touted how in the current practice of only managing energy distribution, they have not had to reduce any employees. That makes the rush to construct another fossil-fuel plant even more head-scratching to me. 

Thankfully, the Grand Haven Energy Organization (GHEO) has been putting increasing pressure on the BLP and the City Council to re-think this plan, to pause and get more community input. Witherell insists that we need to move forward with the plan, but former City Councilman Josh Brugger in his own letter to the Tribune offered a sensible middle-of-the road plan to ensure distribution and continuing to run the snowmelt boiler without issuing roughly $45million in bonds to finance a fossil-fuel burning plant on some of the best real estate the city owns. 

There is currently a petition being circulated by GHEO (you can sign it at ghenergy.org) urging City Council to delay this decision, to request that there be an objective and independent study of the plan and that the results of that study be made publicly available. Furthermore, a collection of youth activists are urging the creation of a Community Sustainability Plan before moving froward with the proposed Harbor Island project. Surely, in 2021, there are better ways to meet the energy demands of Grand Haven than burning more fossil fuels and doing more damage to the environment. Their last petition garnered 250 signatures and didn’t move the needle. In fact, instead of listening the BLP is now spending nearly $50k to hire a public relations firm that can convince the community their plan is a good idea. The residents of this city must demand change.

We live in one of the most beautiful cities in the State of Michigan. We also know, living so close to the lake, how dependent we are upon the nature around us life, how much climate change can adversely affect our city. We know the power and beauty of the dunes and the detrimental effect upon all aspects of the ecological system when they are battered. Coastal scientist Charles Shabica told NPR in a 2019 story that the warmer atmosphere from climate change will result in more intense storms causing even more erosion and damage to structures along the shore. The City of Grand Haven should be leading the way in combating climate change, making smart decisions for power generation and doing everything we possibly can to reduce the effects of climate change and save our city. 

But nothing will change unless we continue to put pressure on those in leadership to step back from this plan, truly engage the community, and come up with a science-driven solution that will lead us into a safer and healthier twenty-first century.  

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.  

Questioning Christianity & Life

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

One of the No. 1 reasons people give for not being a part of the church is that it feels like the church is a hypocritical organization. One response to that is to take the approach of legendary Christian singer-songwriter Rich Mullins, who used to say the church isn’t full of hypocrites, we’ve always got room for a few more.

What Rich was playfully pointing out was that everyone that is in church is hopefully trying to grow, and that means at times they will be inconsistent in their actions and beliefs. Christians are not those who are perfect; they are those who fall down and then get back up through the grace and love of God.

But another response to the perspective that the church seems to be a hypocritical organization is repentance and contrition for the times that charge is true. And I think one of the largest issues facing our world, one in which the church has often taken a conflicting and sometimes hypocritical stance, is the question of life. So, today, I’d like to try to break the myth about what Christianity believes about the value we place on life.

Most of the time a conversation with Christians on the value of life centers around the legality of abortion. Being a priest in a church that affirms the tragic dimensions of abortion while also believing that legislative solutions don’t actually deal appropriately with what is involved means I often find myself on the other side of my siblings in Christ on this question.

Roman Catholic nun, Sister Joan Chittester, said it best: “I do not believe that just because you are opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed. And why would I think that you don’t? Because you don’t want any tax money to go there. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.”

Years later, when the Trump administration was putting children in cages at the border, she stood by the statement, saying, “You have babies and pregnant mothers on the border. They’re innocent and defenseless, but those babies are being separated and segregated.”

Part of the problem is that many Christians base their opinions on questions related to life on the political views of the party with which they follow, instead of basing their views on Scripture and a consistent ethic of life. That’s why you have people who are very strong believers and outlawing abortion but who also support capital punishment, war and immigration policies that absolutely cause the death of those fleeing violence and poverty.

But I want to be super clear here that I’m not only criticizing the right. Because the Democratic Party also fails significantly on this question. I know, some of you might think I spend most of my time disagreeing with the policies of our former president, but when President Obama was in office, I found plenty of time to disagree with him, as well. Most significantly, I found his use of drones to kill people outside of the judicial process to be deeply disturbing.

And now, under the leadership of President Biden, I continue to be concerned. Reports are very clear that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Solomon approved the 2018 assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamaal Khashoggi. Who knows why? Perhaps due to some international relationships, President Biden has refused to hold the crown prince responsible for this murder. And the outrage is significant.

Don’t get me wrong, President Trump refused even to release this report when it was created. But now that the facts are known, for President Biden not to deal strongly with Saudi Arabia with regard to this murder is a tremendous dereliction of duty. I hope that the outrage over this decision pushes the administration to act differently, to demonstrate that the lives of all people do matter, including the life of Jamaal Khashoggi.

I don’t know what the next four years of the Biden administration will look like, but I do know that I hope that the church stands up on the side of life. And I think that means we need to stand up on the side of social policies that will protect the most vulnerable, that means we must insist on an end to the cruel practice of capital punishment, that means we must resist constant militarization and war. That also means the church must come clean with its complicity in systems of homophobia and white supremacy that have resulted in the deaths of countless gay, lesbian, transgender people who had occupied some of our pews – systems that have resulted in the deaths of countless people of color, while so many Christians stood by, doing nothing.

Either we really do care about life or we don’t. And an unbelieving world is watching to find out.

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: Father Jared Cramer is the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. This column was taken from his March 2 edition of “Christian Mythbusters,” which he offers to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. You can hear “Christian Mythbusters” in the Grand Haven area on WGHN (92.1 FM) on Wednesdays at 10:30 a.m. and Sundays at 8:50 a.m.

Rethinking the Episcopate: Apostle, Priest, and Pastor

Since last summer, our diocese has been living without a bishop. I won't go into the details (you can get the skinny on our diocesan website here), but it has meant I've done a good deal of reflecting on the ministry of bishop as I've experienced it in the Episcopal Church, both as a lay person and as a priest. And I have some... thoughts.

I also want to acknowledge that I offer these thoughts gingerly. What I'm writing here isn't about what has happened in our diocese, what is happening now, or what might happen at the end of our bishop's suspension. This isn't about agreeing with or not agreeing with current or past diocesan leadership, but is an attempt to reflect upon what I, as one lone priest, might hope for from the ministry of bishop in The Episcopal Church of the twenty-first century. 

Though it might be risky to write something like this while your own bishop is suspended... and when there are a multiplicity of views not only on his return but also upon the very shape and structure of the ministry of your diocese and a diocese with whom you are in partnership... I converted to the Episcopal Church because I believe in the apostolic ministry of the bishop. Of course, it's much more than that and there are now a host of reasons why I am an Episcopalian... but I believe in the office of the bishop. I believe it is one of the fourfold ministries necessary for the church to be who God calls her to be. 

I also want to be clear that none of this is a commentary on previous bishops with whom I have served, but is instead a commentary on what I perceive in the broader Episcopal Church, the continued patterns we repeat over and over again. 

Being a bishop must feel like an impossible job at times. I get that, I truly do. But part of the reason it is an impossible job is that we have so often lost sight of the true nature of the job itself. And so, I think we need some fundamental rethinking of this office in the Episcopal Church. 

There are two key questions to be answered when it comes to the ministry of a bishop. First, what does our prayer book envision for the ministry of a bishop theologically and practically? Second, what do churches in our time need from a bishop so that Episcopal parishes can reverse decades of decline?

The catechism begins its exploration of the four-fold ministry of the church (laity, bishops, priests, and deacons) by saying each one's first job is to represent Christ and his church and that each one is called to participate in the reconciling ministry of Christ. On page 855, the catechism says that the ministry of a bishop, specifically, is to represent Christ and the church, "particularly as apostle, chief priest, and pastor." Further, the bishop is called to "guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the whole church, to proclaim the Word of God, to act in Christ's name for... the building up of the Church, and to ordain others to continue Christ's ministry."

As an apostle, the bishop not only connects the church to the first apostles but also to the church catholic. An apostle is someone who is sent, in its literal meaning of the word. This means that a bishop must be deeply committed to the evangelistic ministry, a leader in supporting new ministry and working to push the edges of the church into the places she is hesitant to go. Their apostolic role is also one of leadership and should model that in all ways. The apostolic nature of the church is one of its four marks in the Nicene Creed. 

As the chief priest, the bishop at the altar with her clergy and people is the fullest experience of Christian worship. The diocese must have a regular and sustained experience with their bishop at the altar, serving as the Presider of the sacrifice of Holy Eucharist. A bishop must take seriously priestly vows to lead worship according to the Book of Common Prayer and celebrations of liturgy by a bishop should be the fullest and best experience of the liturgy of our prayer book. Innovation is required at times when the prayer book does not envision a circumstance, but rather than cultivate novelty, a bishop should blend into the mass so that the liturgy of Eucharist in the prayer book is what carries the day. Bishops often, by nature of who is elected, have a very strong personality. Every effort must be made to sink into the liturgy, to make it clear that as presider you are not star but simply have one with a particular role... and to do that role well, with care, preparation, and reverence. 

Finally, the bishop is called to be a pastor. In the church of my upbringing, there was a movement toward the use of shepherd for an image, one that I liked. A bishop is a pastor to the clergy of the diocese in the same way I'm a pastor to the members of my parish. Ideally, the bishop is someone I would call when I'm scared or anxious. The bishop is someone who might come to my home for dinner on occasion. When I am experiencing struggle or crisis, the bishop comes alongside of me—not to fix things, every priest knows your job is a pastor isn't to fix things, but to be the presence of Christ in the wilderness. The Bishop as shepherd keeps any eye on the edges of community, always careful not to lose any of those God has entrusted to you... so far as that is in your power.

Apostle. Priest. Pastor. These are the three fundamental calls of a bishop. But, as I said, there are four other ministries the bishop has, ministries that are in many ways derivative of the first fundamental three:

• Guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the church – This is derivative of the role of apostle and pastor, I would say. That is, if you understand the pastor as being the shepherd, you know the importance of the task of guarding. It is the job of the bishop to guard the faith of the church, to ensure that what is taught is theologically and Scripturally sound. This means that, while a bishop need not be a theologian or scholar, a bishop should be theologically and Scripturally competent. The bishop should be able to exercise that teaching role well. The bishop guards the unity of the church by connecting us, through teaching and action, to our early church roots while also being attentive to those on the edges of the Christian community so that the unity of the church is not achieved only at the expense of those on the margins. The bishop also guards the discipline of the church by ensuring that things like canons and rubrics are followed. This is why a diocesan liturgy should be pristine and sound from a prayer book perspective. It is why policies surrounding finances and personnel should be kept zealously in a diocesan office, to model that practice for parishes. And it is why for a bishop to openly advocate for communion regardless of baptism, contrary to the rubrics of the prayer book, contrary to the canons of the church, and contrary to the express will of general convention is the height of episcopal  incoherence… Especially when many of those same bishops supported discipline against the Bishop of Albany. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the Bishop of Albany needed to obey his vows when it came to the discipline of the church and the life of LGBTQ Christians. I just also think that we need some more consistency on this as a church if we don’t want to look like a massive hypocrites
• Proclaim the word of God – A bishop needs to know how to preach. The bishop should have training and skill in rhetoric, the mother of homiletics, and must know the difference between traveling around the diocese doing a pitch for your vision for the church and studying carefully the Scriptures appointed for the day and preaching the Good News of God from those Scriptures as it relates to the life of the gathered congregation. 
• Act in Christ's name for the building up of the Church – The job of the bishop is not to ensure the diocesan structure continues to grow and expand. The job of the bishop is to ensure that the local parish, that each local parish, is being built up. True, that sometimes means a bishop must make a difficult decision that will be unpopular, but if the true goal of the bishop is the building up of the church, that decision will be made in good faith. A bishop should constantly be asking how his leadership and energy is helping to build up the local congregations of the diocese. 
• Ordain others to continue Christ's ministry – The discernment and selection of appropriate candidates for the Sacred Order of Priests and the Sacred Order of Deacons is how the ministry of Christ will continue. This means that you care deeply about the process being one of discernment of God's call—not a series of hoops for people to jump through or a hazing ritual. It also means that while people are in formation for ministry, you know that they are very much the babies of your flock. You care for them. You read their ember day letters and respond. When they are in crisis, you are present. And you ordain them to a vowed life where they will continue the ministry you have sought faithfully to embody.

Now, you may notice a few things that are not on this list...

A bishop is not called to be the CEO of a diocese. I say this as someone who deeply loves administration, someone who is currently pursuing an Executive Masters in Nonprofit Administration from the University of Notre Dame. I take very seriously the administrative nature of my job as rector. But a bishop is not called to be a CEO. That model, that sees the diocese as a corporation and the bishop as the CEO, is a model that must die. The bishop must have a competent administrator at the center, one who will keep the complex organization of the diocese functioning efficiently. But the bishop's focus should be being an apostle, priest, and pastor. 

A bishop is not called to be a manager of institutional decline. If your solution to the Episcopal Church today is that more churches are going to have to close, then you have lost the apostolic vision of the church catholic. If you continue to think we need to get rid of and let go of our buildings, you have misunderstood one of the biggest lessons of this pandemic. Sure, sometimes churches close. It's been happening for a couple thousand years. But the church persists because of her apostolic tenacity—because of the apostolic work of planting new communities and building up existing ones. The bishop is called to be the leader of that apostolic vision. 

A bishop is not called to be the the priest's boss. I have made a vow of obedience to my bishop, but this massively different than the bishop being my boss. Bishops shouldn't micromanage their clergy in their cures. I have been particularly uncomfortable with the readiness with which so many of our bishops have used pastoral directives to force very specific and limited responses to the coronavirus, for instance—responses which are sometimes even contrary to the actual recommendations of health professionals. I remain unsure if a bishop can truly close a parish in a pandemic—circumventing the canonical right of the rector to use and control of buildings. Once this pandemic is done, we need to think about the way we have allowed bishops to exercise authority and how several of them have related to their clergy.

Finally, a bishop is not called to be a systems agent. Once again, I say this as someone who finds family systems theory tremendously helpful in my own life and in my vocation as a priest. But if you think your job is to play with the system to move it in a certain direction, then my guess is that you do not spend a lot of time as apostle, priest, and pastor. 

What might this mean for the Episcopal Church of the twenty-first century?

Well, it means I think we actually need more bishops and not less. I think more of our dioceses should structure collaboratively when it comes to the administration of ministry (central offices for finance, communication, children & youth ministry, etc., run by a solid administrator as a canon) but should then push the episcopate back down to the grassroots level when it comes to the ministry of a bishop. A Bishop, like a shepherd, should smell like sheep. A bishop shouldn't have oversight over more congregations that can be adequately led and pastored by one person. We must reverse the trend of bishops holding multiple jurisdictions. Rather than the increase in a multiplicity of diocesan staff, I would rather we saw two or three bishops (an ordinary and suffragans—but suffragans with true oversight over their part of the diocese) who are able to be the apostle, priest, and pastor to Episcopalians in that area and who are supported by a strong central office.

This also means we need to fundamentally rethink episcopal compensation. I know this is verboten, but I do not see how Episcopalians can preach with a straight face about income disparity and at the same time approve compensation packages for a bishop that approach three to even four times the minimum salary for a priest. Does offering less than $150K for a salary package mean you won't get candidates? No, it just means you'll get different candidates... and you might get candidates with a keener interest in being, you guessed it, an apostle, priest, and pastor to a geographic gathering of Episcopal congregations. 

Finally, we need to restructure our approach to discernment of episcopal and discipline. The current model of a packet of information followed by videos and (the unfortunately named) "walkabouts" means that you often wind up electing the person who is best at the soundbite. I fail to see how this model enables you to discern who has the skills to be an apostle, priest, and pastor. And there have been a handful of examples over the year of the most electable candidate proving to be far from the most gifted apostle, priest and pastor. Also, our discipline model continues to treat bishops as above the fray from true consequences for their actions. Bishops who commit misconduct often wind up with a year of paid leave... something unheard of in the larger world, including the world of normal parochial ministry. Compensation and terms for discipline must be removed from the bishop's peers and placed in the hands of the broader church. 

I don't know what to do with all of this. Heck, probably just writing this means I'm sealing the deal on being even MORE unelectable to the episcopate, should that opportunity ever come in the distant future. But, to be honest, I wouldn't really want to be a bishop in the way the vast majority of bishops are forced to function. Being an apostle, priest, and pastor has appeal and I could see a calling to that later in my life... but that just isn't what the many bishops get to be.

And that brings me to my last and perhaps most important point. The issues I have identified above are not the fault of the current or previous bishops of our church. They are the fault of clergy and lay people who have written these scripts and then expected bishops to follow along. We have created the systems in which our bishops currently function and when they try to break these systems they are broken down by the system in return. 

Our bishops cannot fix this. Only we can fix this. And we must if the Episcopal Church is ever going to reverse decline, turn from blind partisan allegiance, and become a true force of God's reckless love in an increasingly dark world. 

Coming back together after the 2020 election

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

Today marked the next public step of the 2020 public election, as Congress meets to count the electoral votes and officially declare the winner of the election. Then, 14 days later, we will witness the peaceful transfer of power as Joe Biden is inaugurated as president of the United States.

Normally, these final two weeks are not carefully watched by the media or the general public. However, “unprecedented” is President Trump’s favorite mode of operations and ever since the election he has launched a passionate (and, so far, completely rejected) campaign to claim the election was rigged. As leaders on both sides of the aisle have noted, his actions and the actions of those who support him are undermining the very foundations of our democracy, and they are doing so without having launched a single court challenge with evidence sufficient to change the election.

Given the news earlier this week of President Trump pressuring the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, telling him, “I just want to find 11,780 votes,” it seems the painful controversy and division of this presidency will continue right up until the final moment when Joe Biden places his hand on the Bible and swears an oath to serve as our president and to preserve, protect and defend our Constitution.

Given that the president’s challenge to the 2020 election has no legal standing, is without evidence, and is certainly doomed to fail in Congress just as surely as it failed in the courts of our country, I do not believe this fire and fury will result in a change, thankfully.

The real question, for me, is what will happen after the inauguration.

Our nation is bitterly divided, likely as divided as we were in the late 19th century when the contested election of 1876 motivated Congress to create federal law to govern the counting of electoral votes. Some even think we are as divided as when we were on the cusp of the Civil War. There is no way of knowing for sure, but we must find a way, as a people, to come back together.

The idea that all politicians are deceitful has now been brought to the full conclusion of the idea. We earnestly need a commitment on all sides of the aisle to bring debate back to demonstrable truths based upon evidence and facts. The world of social media, along with the social isolation of the 2020 pandemic, has meant that we are even more locked in our echo chambers of only hearing the voices of those who agree with us. We must find ways to listen to one another, to find the points of policy and ideology on which we do disagree and also to locate and cling to underlying convictions many of us share.

Most importantly, we must find ways to return to a commitment to issues that used to (in theory, at least) garner bipartisan support: policies which combat racism, laws and regulations to protect our planet and environment, help for the poor and struggling, support for free and fair elections, increasing the quality of education, particularly early childhood education and college for low- and middle-income Americans, safeguarding the important role of the press in holding our leaders to account, and cooperation with our international allies in building a more peaceful and just world. Our parties have always approached these questions from different angles, but over the years we have done tremendous work in all of these issues by focusing on what is best for our country.

I also hope our political leaders in the Capital can find agreements on other issues that already have strong bipartisan support among the citizens of this country. The number of Americans who want stricter gun laws has continued to rise, now standing at 60 percent. Specifically, 72 percent of Americans support the requirement for a license before a gun purchase and a national red flag law, and 83 percent of Americans support the requirement of a background check in private and gun show sales. In the area of health care, 68 percent of Americans support the creation of a “public option” in the health care marketplace, an essential change and one that should be bipartisan (particularly since 56 percent of Americans now support Medicare-for-all).

Republicans should also stop fighting the culture wars of the previous generation. To date, 67 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. Surely, we can stop having to fight for equal protection for our LGBTQ citizens.

Similarly, only 20 percent of Americans believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. Surely we can come together and work constructively on policies that will continue to lower the abortion rate instead of fighting for its legality.

It just takes one leader in a political party to bring people together, one person willing to stand up and then to do the hard work of committing her or his colleagues to work together to solve the problem in front of us instead of lobbing attacks at the other side. After all, when the new Food Stamp program seemed bound to fail in the 1970s, it was Republican Sen. Bob Dole joining with Democratic Sen. George McGovern that led to the compromise which enabled the proposal to become law.

Given the past several years in our country, I know my hopes for bipartisan work to rebuild our country in a manner that is more just is unlikely. There is too much money to be made and power to be gotten by keeping the partisan battles going. But we, as citizens, no matter what your party, must demand more from our leaders in the year to come than we got from them in the years that are past.

Christian Freedom

Today's column in the Grand Haven Tribune. 

For quite a while now I have been concerned about what some Christians seem to think religious freedom entails in our country. Over the past few years increasingly people seem to think religious freedom is the freedom to force others to follow your own personal religious beliefs, or those of your organization or company. This is people claiming, for instance, that they shouldn't have to bake cakes for same-sex couples if they object to that sort of marriage—even though I've yet to see a baker refuse to bake cakes for an opposite-sex couple whose marriage might not meet their same moral qualifications. We see businesses and corporations insisting that they should be able to make decisions about what sort of medical needs are and are not covered under insurance, not given the religious conscience of their employees but given the religious conscience of the owners of the organization or the Board of Directors.

And, as I've said over and over again, religious freedom isn't about telling other people how they should live, religious freedom is about the choices you make in your own life.

But during this coronavirus pandemic the claims of religious freedom have taken a truly insidious and dangerous turn, with people insisting that it infringes upon their religious freedom to require them to wear a mask or maintain social distance or not hold in person worship services… Even when doing all of those things would literally kill people.

And so, this week I want to break the myth of religious freedom in our country, particularly for the follower of Christ.

There is a group in Ottawa County right now calling itself “Ottawa Values,” they claim to exist to uphold the values of Ottawa County residents and to protect families from government overreach. They are encouraging people in our county to write letters to the Ottawa County Commissioners and helpfully provide a sample of what they suggest you should say to our Commissioners.

They insist that the Ottawa County Health Department is inflicting harm upon them and upon parents and children in our county by not allowing parents, businesses, and Christian schools to exercise their “constitutional rights.” They say that this is not reflective of Ottawa County's traditional values and urge the commissioners to direct the health department to stop interfering with their God-given rights. They claim the citizen simply want to exercise their God-given rights to raise their families in the manner they deem best.

And I don't know if I've ever read a message from a group of Christians that has made me more angry and more embarrassed to be associated with these sorts of people. Nearly 300,000 people have died in our country. Just last week, I donned full protective gear so that I could enter the ICU and hold the hand of the priest associate at my church while he died from COVID-19. 

Health officials around our country are trying to stop a deadly and dangerous disease and some Christians are upset because they think this is an intrusion upon the rights.

So, let's be clear. Religious freedom is not your freedom to live life the way you want to when the choices you want to make will result in the death of other people. That has nothing to do with the message of Jesus. Religious freedom is not lying to the government about whether or not your school is following proper health guidelines. Religious freedom is not putting people into an enclosed space so that a deadly virus can easily infect and murder people who were trying to worship God. And shame on those Christians who would claim this is what religious freedom looks like.

One of the best descriptions of religious freedom in the Bible comes from Philippians chapter 2, where St. Paul urges Christians, “In humility, regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” He goes on to urge those who would follow Jesus to put on the mind of Christ, to empty themselves, to be willing to take the form of a slave, to give up everything that is supposedly rightfully yours so that other people might find life.

Religious freedom for the Christian is a commitment to be a servant of the love of God and love of neighbor. And in the middle of this vicious and dangerous pandemic the best way to love your neighbor is by wearing a mask and staying 6 feet away from your neighbor, by not being in an enclosed space with your neighbor. To put it simply, the best way to love your neighbor is to ensure you don't do anything that might kill your neighbor.

So, if you are a follower of Jesus who believes that religious freedom as a Christian compels you to forgo your own rights in service to the oppressed and the vulnerable, maybe write a different letter this week. Maybe write a letter to the health department thanking them for using the best of science and medicine to save lives. Maybe write a letter to your pastor, thanking her or him for trying to be careful and keep people safe when others are encouraging reckless behavior. 

Or maybe, if you're one of those Christians who signed onto this so-called letter from Ottawa Values before you truly thought it through, write another letter rescinding what you wrote. Otherwise, you're going to have to write a few letters of apology to families who died because you thought religious freedom was getting your own way. And for the Christian, that's never what religious freedom means. 

It is Time to Move from the Symptom to the True Sickness of our Country

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

It is always a little tricky to write a column that you know won’t be published for a couple of days. That’s been particularly true this year, given the pace at which things have changed even within a forty-eight-hour period. But this column, in particular, submitted the day before Election Day and scheduled to be published the day after Election Day, required some deeper pondering than most.

In the end, though, I think that what needs to be said in our common life will remain true no matter who is elected on Tuesday, November 3. Indeed, by the time you read this column, it is very likely we still won’t know who the winner of the election is. I hope that is not the case, I hope the election is decisive and the candidate who loses concedes gracefully. But we all know that a very different set of events could play out.

But here is where I am, after four years of President Trump.

President Trump has not been the problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I have profound disagreements with President’ Trump’s administration. I believe he is unfit for office, that his administration is perhaps the most corrupt in history, and that his rhetoric and the way he has exercised his authority has eroded much of what actually makes this country great.

But he is not the problem. And that means that if he loses this election, we will have a problem. And if he wins, we need to dig even more deeply into the real problems that face this country.

President Trump is a symptom of a deep sickness that is currently infecting much of the world and much of the United States, a sickness not as deadly as the coronavirus, but one that also has dead bodies at its feet. For far too long, we have not dealt with festering issues in our country and Trump’s presidency has been the raising up of all those issues, embodying them in a man who would do anything to get and maintain power, including take all the worst of America into himself.

But, even then, he’s not the problem.

The problem, my fellow citizens, is that we have become a country that seems to thrive on hate. For years politicians have used hatred and fear of the other to stoke the passions of the public and secure power and control. This is as old as the Republic itself.

But hatred seems to have become woven into the very identity of so many of our citizens. This is true in some relatively easy to point out ways—the resurgence of white-supremacy, for example. The epidemic of violence against people of color by law enforcement—and the refusal of a good portion of our society to hear their cries begging for their lives—has been shameful. The scapegoating of immigrants has made those who came here to find a better life sometimes afraid to leave their own home.

This hatred is also evident in the rise in hate crimes against LGBTQ people. In 2018, the last year for which the FBI has data available, there was a 15% increase since 2016 in hate crimes against people due to their sexual orientation. Even more unsettling, there was a 42% increase in hate crimes against people due to their gender identity, whether they were transgender or simply gender non-conforming.

Don’t get me wrong, hatred knows no political ideology. We have certainly an increase in those driven to the edges of both parties, with some of those on the right hating those on the left, calling them communists who are trying to destroy America… and some of those on the left hating those on the right, calling them fascists and traitors to the American dream. And while those claims may be true for segments of each party, they are not representative of the parties as a whole—at least not when it comes to the majority of Americans who claim those parties for their own political identity.

So, there are two things we need to do. First, we need to come together—those on the right and those on the left—and start getting serious about building a better America than the one we have contributed to over these past four years. If President Trump retains power, then we must refuse to give in to his desire to stoke hatred and violence. Since he will not face another election after this one, hopefully leaders in the Republican party would be a little less beholden to him. If Vice-President Biden captures the election, we need to get serious about undoing the damage of these past four years—not only the damage to our nation, but the damage even to the Republican party itself.

We must come together because the first hatred I mentioned, the hatred and violence against people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ Americans, this hatred and violence must be stopped. Opposing this hatred and violence with every ounce of our being must become a bipartisan issue, one in which we can all work together to tell those who would participate in these kinds of hatred and violence that there is no place for this in the America we love.

President Trump has been like a bad cough, an obvious symptom that something is wrong. But no matter who wins the 2020 election, we must stop focusing only on the symptom and start getting to the heart of the sickness which infects our country. If we don’t, I fear America never will be the great country imagined by so many of us. If we don’t, I fear continued decline is inevitable.

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.

Marriage Equality in the Cross-Hairs of SCOTUS

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

On Monday, we had the first gathering of the Supreme Court without Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and things are already going downhill. 

On Monday, the Supreme Court denied a petition from Kim Davis, the county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, insisting that it was her religious liberty which enabled her to make that choice. While the Supreme Court declined to hear the Davis’s case (which means the rejection of her claims of qualified immunity by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit stands), two justices used the case to take aim at the Obergefell v. Hodges decision which brought marriage equality to our nation. 

In the opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas (and joined by Justice Samuel Alito), Thomas claimed that Obergefell was an unconstitutional bypass of the democratic process. Thomas insisted that Davis was a “devout Christian” and “one of the first victims of this Court’s cavalier treatment of religion its Obergefell decision.” He continued, “Since Obergefell, parties have continually attempted to label people of good will as bigots merely for refusing to alter their religious beliefs in the wake of prevailing orthodoxy.” 

As a Christian priest and as an American citizen, I am distraught to see two justices on the highest court in the land making such a spurious argument. Marriage equality does not force anyone to alter their religious beliefs, it simply says you cannot inflict your religious beliefs on others. 

During the oral arguments for Obergefell, Justice Antonin Scalia asked the counsel for the LGBTQ couples whether conservative churches would be forced to celebrate same-sex marriages. She was explicit that the Free Exercise Clause would always protect churches from that kind of interference. Both Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor agreed and  no one objected to this consensus. That understanding was reiterated by Justice Kennedy when he wrote the opinion in Obergefell. 

What Obergefell did do was remove the ability of the government to exclude same-sex couples from the rights and privileges of legal marriage. And, since Obergefell, courts have generally (though not consistently) agreed that non-religious business cannot discriminate against same-sex couples. Even when the Supreme Court ruled two years ago that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission had showed anti-religious bias in their sanctions of a baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple, they did not rule on the larger question of whether a business is allowed to invoke religious objections and refuse service to LGBTQ persons. 

Baking a cake for a couple doesn’t mean you personally support their marriage. It just means you are providing a service to the general public, which means you cannot discriminate and refuse service on the grounds of race, color, national origin, disability or—in many states—sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. To be refused service for who you are or who you love is a dehumanizing and demeaning action. I sincerely doubt that any baker does a moral inventory of a straight couple’s marriage before deciding to work with them. 

The history of religious exemptions from civil rights laws is an embarrassing one cor Christianity. Christian business leaders have claimed that they should be able to pay women less because men are the head of the household. Christian business leaders refused service to people living with HIV because they believed they were sinful. Christian business leaders insisted they had the right to segregate service between black and white Americans. Thankfully, the courts have rejected these claims.

Three years ago, our current President signed an executive order encouraging federal agencies to amend their regulations to allow for religious objections to women’s healthcare needs. His administration continues to trumpet the idea of religious liberty being the freedom of religious people to tell other people how to live their life. And, without Justice Ginsburg on the court, and with a nominee like Amy Coney Barrett, the future of marriage equality and LGBTQ rights is on the line. Barrett has criticized the Obergefell decision. She has suggested Title IX should not project transgender students. She has even intentionally misgendered them in her language, a rhetorically violent act against a transgender person. 

I am deeply concerned for the religious freedoms of the LGBTQ members of my own parish, St. John’s Episcopal Church. I am concerned the court might not only take away their right to be married, but will also embolden conservative Christians to discriminate against them in housing, restaurants, and commerce. As a priest in a church that believes LGBTQ Christians and their marriages have enriched our common life, and as an American who believes no one should be able to use their religion to discriminate against someone, I hope that Barrett’s nomination will not be confirmed. And if she is confirmed, I hope that Americans who believe in real religious liberty will raise up and demand equality for our LGBTQ siblings.

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.