Christian Mythbusters

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

A couple weeks ago at the 10am worship service at my parish, St. John’s Episcopal here in Grand Haven, I did something I’ve never had to do before. I asked someone to leave our church property during a worship service. I've served in ministry in a few different areas around the country, including in the DC Metro area, so there have been times before that I’ve had to ask people to leave church property during the week because they were creating such a significant disturbance or danger, but I've never had to do it on a Sunday morning.

The people I removed were not members of the church but were visitors who I did not know.

The difficulty was that they refused to wear a face mask despite several reminders

from various volunteers at the church about our parish’s current policy. This was a particular problem because it was our first Mustard Seed Sunday since COVID-10—mustard seed Sundays are something we do where we put children at the center of the worship service—and we had told parents that they could bring in their unvaccinated children and know that every single person in the church, no matter vaccination status, would be wearing a facemask.

But this couple, only a few pews away from children I knew were not yet vaccinated because they were too young, continued to take their masks off until, during a hymn, I asked them to please join me outside for a conversation. Once outside they became belligerent and increasingly disrespectful, and I began to worry for my safety and the safety of my flock. Even then they would not leave until I went to get my cell phone and call public safety for help.

I tell this story because it is increasingly common right now to see people using their Christianity as a cover for blatantly disrespectful and dangerous behavior. And so, I’d like to try this week to break something I’m shocked is even a myth… the idea that it’s OK for Christians to abuse and harass people, to ignore the dignity of their fellow humans. 

In the prayer book of the Episcopal Church, we have something called the Baptismal Covenant. It is a series of promises that mark our understanding of the shape of the Christian life, the way of living we commit to follow as disciples of Jesus. The final question in the Covenant is this, “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?” To which the candidate for Baptism responds, “I will, with God’s help.”

There is a profound lack, right now, among Christians in America, when it comes to showing respect for the dignity of every human being. Something as simple as wearing a face-covering so that parents can feel safer bringing unvaccinated children to church should not result in you standing outside the church and shouting at the priest about your rights being violated. 

In Ottawa County, crowds of people claiming to be Christians descended on a Board of Commissioners meeting, saying prayers and singing hymns while in the same breath heckling and harassing those who disagreed with them to the extent that people literally felt unsafe, and several decided not even to speak. In Grand Haven, both our Superintendent and the Chair of the School Board—a devoted public servant who has served faithfully for over two decades—resigned due to the harassment they’ve been experiencing. In Kent County, the Health Director had someone try to literally run him off the road on the interstate. Someone else told him that they hoped someone abused his children and made him watch.

This is sickening. It is despicable. It is far from the call of a Christian to respect the dignity of every human being. 

In the third chapter of James, we read, “With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.”

In the midst of all of this vitriol and this violent language and violent actions, Christian leaders in our area have been uncomfortably silent. I know it’s been a hard year for many of them. I know they may be afraid of alienating segments of their congregation by speaking up and saying something. But what does it say that standing against this kind of bullying and violent behavior might alienate members of the church? What does that say about the state of Christianity right now? 

We must do better. Disagree, absolutely. Debate, please. But the hate speech, the violence, and the harassing even of the families of those with whom you disagree… this has nothing to do with the way of Christ. Christians and pastors must rise up and vocally denounce this sort of behavior or the cost to Christian witness (not to mention the cost to public servants just trying to do their jobs)… The cost will be incalculable.

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. 

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

The withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan, along with the collapse of the Afghanistan government and the resumption of control by the Taliban, has been a painful episode to watch play out over the past couple of weeks. So, as we all seek to respond to ongoing events in Afghanistan, I’d like to take this week to talk about the relationship of Christianity to war, maybe even breaking some myths you may have heard in the past.

First, I believe our country could have done all of this better. At the same time, I’m grateful for the insight of an American history professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, who has provided some helpful analysis I’d like to share with you.

The roots of the end of this war occurred when the Trump administration cut a deal with the Taliban in February of 2020, agreeing to release 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters and to leave the country by May of 2021. That’s right, this is the deal the previous administration cut. And it was a deal that did not involve conversations with the US-backed Afghan government.

When Biden took office in January, only 2,500 troops were left in the country. Biden had to decide whether to go with Trump’s agreement or to begin a new troop surge in violation of the agreement, putting even more US service people at risk after twenty years of war. He delayed the exit date to the end of August (prompting Trump to publicly complain), but proceeded with the withdrawal.

And, as we all know, the Afghan army crumbled in the past weeks. The Taliban has been restored to power, claiming victory over the United States. And the United States government is working on evacuating the remaining Americans in the country, several of whom are Afghan-Americans who are still unsure whether they want to leave or stay.

The violence has not yet stopped. From the attack on the airport in Kabul to the United States attack on a suspected terrorist vehicle that killed ten civilians, including children, we are seeing more and more the horrible human cost of war, a cost that has been borne for twenty years by all sides in this conflict.

All of this gets us to the question of… how do Christians understand war? Far from thinking America needs to go to the ends of the earth to fight for democracy, as has sometimes been the apparent view in American Christianity, most modern Christian theologians hold to a “just war” view of the question.

Though Just War theory goes back to Greco-Roman philosophy, it was best laid out in in Christian understanding by Augustine of Hippo, and later by Thomas Aquinas. In “Just War” theory, there is a resistance to the required violence of war while also recognizing that sometimes it is the lesser of two evils. 

In the view of Aquinas, the war must be waged by a lawful government, for a just cause due to a wrong done by those attacked, and with those fighting having a just intent to promote good and avoid evil. Aquinas was also clear that war should always be the last resort, done in the pursuit of justice. Later developments also made it clear that there must be a probability of success and that non-combatants must be protected.

What is so difficult to me about the Afghan conflict is that the original reasons for the conflict have long since disappeared. The original reason for the war given by President George W. Bush was to bring the Al Qaeda leaders—who coordinated the 9/11 terrorist attacks—to justice. The Taliban refused to turn them over and so we invaded the country to go get them. Within months, however, Al Qaeda fled to Pakistan and the war turned into a battle against the Taliban and us as we sought to build a Western-style democracy.

In the years that have passed, almost all forms of this being a just war have evaporated. It no longer had anything to do with Al Qaeda and the wrong done on 9/11, particularly after the capture and death of Bin Laden. The war became a proxy battle, with the Taliban having not inflected any injury on our country other than fighting against our establishment of a different government in their country. Far from a last resort, war became the only tool we used. And as the probability of success dwindled the loss of non-combatant life continued to grow.

As a Christian, I think much of the past twenty years was an immoral use of violence and money with no backing or support in the Christian tradition. I wish we would have exited differently, but even more so I wish we would have exited so much earlier, before  the situation had become as bad as it did. And I think, in the end, exiting when we did was simply the lesser of two evils was the path we took.

And I hope we are chastened, as Americans and as a country, and that in the future we will give a much deeper consideration to whether the use of war is indeed the right, just, and proper solution to the issues that face us.

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. 

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

Welcome to week three of my series on Christianity and Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll. We’ve explored the relationship between Christianity and sex, emphasizing the importance of the virtues of respect and equality over principals of purity culture. We’ve explored the relationship between Christianity and drugs, emphasizing the racial implications of the so-called “War on Drugs” alongside of the importance of greater reflection upon the impact of anything we consume.

Now, it’s time to tackle the third: Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Of course, in  this day and age, there aren’t a lot of Christians who think Rock ‘n’ Roll is a sin. It’s instructive, perhaps, to remember the origins of this phrase, an article in a 1969 edition of LIFE magazine that listed sex, drugs, and rock as the “sacraments” of the counter-culture. So, some Christians in the 60s weren’t concerned about rock ‘n’ roll, per se, they were concerned about the moral implications of the content of rock ‘n’ roll.

This is clear because, as the historian Randall Stephens describes in his book The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll, the origins of rock are found in Christianity. The first generation of rock ‘n’ roll artists all had shared backgrounds in Pentecostalism, where they experienced something different than traditional church music at the time. This includes Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, James Brown, and the great B.B. King.

The initial criticisms of Rock ‘n’ Roll were because Christians were upset about how artists like Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin were taking sacred music like spirituals and turning those forms into secular music. Stephens points to one Pentecostal youth pastor who said that rock ‘n’ roll was “Satan’s Pentecost” and who also portrayed rock ‘n’ roll concerts “as a kind of inverted Pentecostal worship.”

As the genre developed, the criticisms of rock ‘n’ roll in white churches began to have racial undertones, being called “jungle music” or “savagery.”

When the Beatles came to America, Christians were concerned about their long hair and the hysteria they seemed to inspire in some young girls. Their hair was based on the styles of beatnik existentialists in Germany, and Christians were sure their music would corrupt the youth of today.

Now, it’s easy for us today to poke fingers at these fears and criticisms. There aren’t many Christians I know of who think the music of the Beatles is a danger to young people, but what’s interesting is that it did not stop there, of course.

When I was a kid, Christian leaders were warning about the Satanic influences of artists like KISS, Alice Cooper, and eventually, Marilyn Manson. What these fears missed was the performative aspect of the genre of “shock rock.” The artists sought to perform outlandish and shocking acts so as to push the edges, to get people to question their assumptions, and, of course, sometimes just for the attention Christian leaders were only too happy to give them.

Perhaps one of the best current examples of a musician pushing the boundaries (and freaking out some Christians at the same time) is Lil Nas X, the American rapper and singer-songwriter. When his country rap single “Old Town Road” achieved viral popularity and hit number one, he came out as gay—the only artist to come out while having a number one record.

His song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and the accompanying video has been claimed to be sacrilegious and devil worship by some. His video for the song is also uncomfortable, but that’s largely because of the discomfort many Christians have with male homosexuality… with male bodies. He released a modified pair of Nike’s that he called “Satan’s Shoes.” The shoes are black and red with a bronze pentagram, filled with "60cc and 1 drop of human blood."

What some Christians often miss about Lil Nas X, along with other musicians that have pushed the boundaries over the decades, is that they push the church to ask what is and is not actually OK, what is and is not actually sin.

Early rock ‘n’ roll confronted the sins of racism and war, pushing boundaries about hairstyle and language in ways that were important, in ways that helped several Christians begin to question what the church had told them about race, about the war in Vietnam, about people who look different than them.

Lil Nas X is doing the same thing today, his artistry is satirizing the demonization of LGBTQ people, asking Christians to question if they really think being gay is of the devil… something Lil Nas X was told by the church growing up.

In the end, Christianity shouldn’t be afraid of Rock ‘n’ Roll or modern forms of music that push the edges. Rather, we should be curious about the artistry and message, humble about our own hang-ups and pre-conceptions. And this priest, for one, thinks the artistry of musicians like Lil Nas X is fantastic for the way it forces some parts of the church to confront its own homophobia.

Rock on, Lil Nas X.

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.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

Last week I talked about how many people think that the big things the church is opposed to are “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” I tried to start breaking that myth by tackling the relationship between Christianity and Sex. This week, we’re talking the next item on the list: Christianity and Drugs.

First off, we have to acknowledge that the word “drugs” is actually pretty broad term. After all, good luck finding a Christian church that doesn’t give people coffee—which contains a stimulant known as caffeine. You may have heard of it. You can move out from that to acknowledge the Christian use of alcohol in traditions that permit it and the increasing acceptance of marijuana use in Christian communities.

In the end, a drug is defined as a substance or compound that is either administered or eaten with the goal of a certain effect. Neuroscientist William Struthers talks about how drugs begin as a taboo (yes, caffeinated tea and soda are still seen as taboo in some religions).

But then, over time, people understand that a drug has a medical or therapeutic property. So, if it can alleviate suffering or disease without too much danger from side effects, it begins to be seen as a possible therapeutic. We’ve seen marijuana move from taboo to therapeutic over the past couple of decades.

The next stage is recreational acceptance. It is socially acceptable (and also acceptable in many churches) to drink alcohol for the pure enrichment of lives, for simple recreational sake.. I think of Psalm 114:5, where the psalmist reminds us that God gave us “wine to gladden the human heart.”

The final stage is when a drug is seen as a right: that is, something that I don’t only get to choose to have for the fun of it, but that is my right to have if I want it.

When it comes to drugs that are illegal or socially taboo in some quarters, I think Christianity needs to have a careful and reflective conversation. It’s not just about what they do to our bodies. After all, everything we take in affects our bodies. It’s about how what we take in affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

A lack of reflective thinking is why we have a society where 20% of all incarcerated people are there for a drug related offense… but doctors overprescribing opioids legally creates the public health crisis we now face.

Critical reflection on history and purpose is also important.  Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, John Ehrlichman, claimed in 2016 that Nixon “knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.” Now, Erlichman’s claim here should be scrutinized (after all, he never really forgave Nixon for letting him go to prison as a result of Watergate), but there is likely some truth to this.

It is undeniable that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected minority communities. Drug enforcement often targets locations of poverty, which tend to have more minority populations, and to spend less time targeting wealthy or suburban communities. The difference in penalties for crack and powder cocaine had clear racial implications given the different levels of use for each in different communities.

So, the war on drugs has had profound racial implications that Christians must grapple with, that Christians must work to make right.

In the end, Christianity must be more reflective about how it considers drugs, what it believes is healthy and unhealthy. Effort must be made to encourage people not to self-medicate with drugs (or food or alcohol for that matter), when the deeper symptoms could be better treated through mental health therapy, for instance. Concern must be raised about any drugs or chemicals that have addictive qualities and can create a state of dependence. These are the questions a person of faith should ask her or himself when trying to understand what  a Christian view of drugs must be.

Because “just say no” is clearly not enough.

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.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

If you asked the average person what the church is opposed to, you’d probably get some variation on the phrase “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The phrase was first used in a 1969 edition of LIFE Magazine to describe the, in the words of LIFE magazine, “sacraments” of the counter-culture movement of the late sixties. It was then popularized even further in 1977, when British musician Ian Dury released a song using a version of the expression as its title.

But I’ve long thought the idea that the church is against sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll is not an idea that is terribly helpful, or even really true for that matter. And so, this week I’d like to start a three-part series breaking the myth of the Christianity and Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Let’s take them one at a time. So, this week we’ll start with Christianity and Sex.

You would be forgiven for thinking Christianity is against sex. In America, in particular, Christianity has long been connected to the puritanical movement that fled England before the American Revolution. Many evangelical traditions still have puritanical ideas about sex. I know when I was growing up, it was called “purity culture.” It made boys and girls feel very guilty for thinking about sex and also tended to blame girls for boys’ bad thoughts. Neither came away from the purity culture with a healthy understanding of sex or their body, much less questions of sexuality and gender identity. The purity culture was kind of horrible.

Alongside the puritanical impulses of much of evangelical Christianity is the moral theology of the Roman Catholic church (which of course is the largest denomination in our country), where sex is seen as the mechanism by which original sin is passed on and, technically, is only allowed when there is an intent to procreate children.

Now, you and I both know that neither evangelicals nor Catholics really practice much of that in their own lives, but that just means they spend a lot of their lives feeling guilty about their experience of sex and sexuality.

And I’d say, contrary to these widely held views, the church is not actually not really opposed to sex! At least, not the text of Holy Scripture or Christian theology or the Christian tradition when it is considered carefully.

In the Song of Solomon, for example, highly sexualized imagery of two lovers is used to describe the epitome of romantic love. There is a clear delight in the body of both people in the relationship. And rather than finding the book scary, Judaism believed that the passion in that book reflected the passion with which God loved Israel. Christianity finds within the Song of Solomon the passion that Jesus has for the church as the bride of Christ.

Jesus himself didn’t actually have much of anything to say about sex. He warned against using other people’s bodies for your own pleasure through lust. He also warned against discarding people through divorce. But in both of those, the ideal he is speaking to is how you honor another human being. And he is speaking contextually. So, clearly, not all forms of sexual passion are the lust he condemned and, furthermore, clearly there are times when divorce is about saving yourself from a damaging situation and not about simply discarding someone.

In the New Testament,  it is clear that the apostle Paul had some resistance to sexual excess, even urging people to remain chaste rather than get married. Paul allowed marriage as a sort of necessary second-best choice for those who would otherwise burn with lust. But when you consider Paul’s context, you need to remember that Paul truly believed (as did many of the first generation of Christians) that Jesus would be coming back literally any day. So, for them, marriage didn’t seem terribly important. It wouldn’t last.

In our own time, when sex within marriage is basically the only rule many Christians have, we’ve seen problems with that being the only thing you worry about. Because of that approach, we’ve seen the church turn a blind eye to issues of sexual violence and coercion within marriage. In our country, approximately 10-14% of women are raped by their husbands at some point during their marriage… and I would wager a fair amount of those are Christian men who think it is OK because they’re married and that’s all that really matters.

But that clearly cannot be all that really matters.

So, what should Christians do when it comes to an ethic of sex? Well, Jesus said that all the law and the prophets hang on two principals: love of God and love of neighbor. So, I would suggest that a Christian sexual ethic is one that promotes those aims: love of God and love of neighbor.

That means that abuse and coercion are clearly out of line because they are contrary to love of neighbor. A Christian sexual ethic honors the body of the other and the consent and mind of the other. A Christian sexual ethic would not engage in promiscuity because it creates such profound risk for emotional pain and damage as people become objects to be used instead of humans to be loved.

Most importantly, a Christian sexual ethic is reflective about how sex affects each person involved and strives for a relationship that is mutual, one that honors the other, and one that is not afraid to delight that is healthy and doesn’t do damage.

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.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

Someone in our church’s confirmation class this year asked me about my five favorite books, books that are easy to read and which impacted me as a Christian. It was a super fun exercise and the list I came up with dated me just a bit, with many of them being published over a decade ago, when I was beginning to move from the evangelical fundamentalism of my youth into a different understanding of faith.

I made the list by walking my library in my study at the church, and so the list wound up in Library of Congress catalog number order. (Yes, I am enough of a nerd to catalog my books using the Library of Congress system. Be nice.) Here are the books I wrote down:

· The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out by Brennan Manning 

· Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller 

· Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony by Stanley Hauerwas & William H. Willimon

· The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society by Fr. Henri J. M. Nouwen

· The Gospel and Catholic Church by Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey

It’s the first book in that list, though, I want to talk about today, because I think the message of that book remains so important for people to hear, both Christians and those who may find themselves outside the Christian faith. All that to say, this week I’d like to break the myth that Christians are people who have it all together. 

I regularly meet people who stay away from church because they have a sense they’re simply not good enough, that they should get themselves together before they decide to show up for church. I always try to tell them that getting your self together is what going to church is supposed to help you do, that you go precisely because you are not good enough… but people always remain hesitant.

Now, the other side of this reality is when people walk away from Christian community because of the sins or failures of people in that community. This can particularly happen when you are disappointed in your pastor. A wise priest once told me that when new people would join his parish, he would say that he looked forward to the first time he disappointed them… because it was after that they could start to form a real and true relationship. 

The truth is, we are all of us, priest and parishioner, pastor and congregation, devoted member and curious seeker, we are all of us a work in progress. And Brennan Manning’s book was written specifically for those who know this is the case. And so, he says, early on in the book, that he is writing “for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.”

Brennan writes in The Ragamuffin Gospel about how one of the significant differences between the Christian understanding of God and other understandings of God in the world is that the Christian God is the only God that humans have ever encountered who loves sinners. He insists that the people who most filled with God’s light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence. 

One of his most insightful lines in the book is this: “Many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend to believe we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo repentance and pseudo bliss.” But what if, Brenna suggests, what is we stop pretending to believe we are sinners and begin honestly to acknowledge our sin? Maybe instead of being overwhelmed by guilt and shame we might be set free to experience the deep and abiding love God has for us… and how God does forgive us. 

Brennan describes this Gospel of mercy and love for sinners this way, ““This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who, out of love for us, sent the only Son He ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for His milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.” 

And Brennan insists, much to the chagrin of more exclusivist approaches to Christianity, that something is radically wrong when the local church rejects someone who has been accepted by Jesus—a statement that should give us all pause.

So, know you are loved, you are fiercely loved, child of God. And if you’ve never heard that message before, I hope you’ll go find a church that will not only be a place for you hear it, but a place you can actually begin to believe it. 

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. 

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

This morning, as I was driving to work, I was listening to NPR and heard a powerful story about advocates working to change the incarceration laws in our country, particularly as they relate to juveniles. As a part of that conversation, they also discussed issues surrounding the practice of solitary confinement. In our country’s penal system one out of every five inmates are put in solitary confinement at some time during their period of incarceration. This is a far higher rate than anywhere else in the world and is something that the United Nations has called out as a profound human rights issue.

All of this broke my heart, thinking of the mental pain and trauma these inmates are put through. And it got me thinking of the history of the Christian church when it comes to prisons, a history that is very different than what Christians assume today. So, this week I’d like to break the myth of Christians and the prison system.

You see, something fundamentally shifted in our country in the 80s and 90s. After the turn of the twentieth century, practices like solitary confinement were seen as unethical and cruel and so they were phased out. But the “tough on crime” and “law and order” movement that began in the 60s and reached a crescendo in the 80s and 90s fundamentally changed our criminal justice system, the way Christians think about all of this—and none of this for the better.

First off, we need to remember that the first person to campaign on a “law and order” platform was Alabama governor George Wallace, who used this phrase as a racist dog whistle in his 1968 campaign. Nixon transformed the phrase into a message that sought to discredit Democrats, insisting that they were soft on crime, they responsible for riots… riots at the time that were against significant racialized violence by the police.

Yes, this playbook has been around for a while. And, given the rise of the religious right at the same time, the “law and order” mentality also began to pervade churches as well.

The result of the policies that came out of this movement is that the number of prisoners tripled in fourteen years, from 500,000 in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1994. The United States now has both the largest prison population in the world and the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world at a cost of $81 billion dollars annually to taxpayers.

But there is the human cost as well. Crime rates in New York City dropped under the “law and order” policies of then mayor Rudy Giuliani but reports of police brutality increased significantly. Whole lives have been lost, and recidivism rates have actually increased. And all of this is not really making us people safer. After all, half of all incarcerated people in state jurisdiction are in prison for non-violent offenses. At the federal level, nearly half of all those incarcerated are in prison due to drug offenses.

And the Christian church has said very little on this issue, which is has gotten worse and worse. This is a tremendous break from tradition.

After all, one of the hallmarks of the Messiah in the book of Isaiah was that the Messiah would “proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners,” a promise Jesus said in Luke was made manifest in his own ministry. Jesus told us in Matthew 25 that when we visit those in prison, we visit Jesus himself. In Hebrews 13, we are told to “remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them.”

When Constantine made Christianity legal in the 4th century, he also began a reform of the Roman system of imprisonment. St. Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century took up the cause of continuing reform for how those in prison were treated, arguing that criminal punishment should aim for moral and spiritual rehabilitation of the criminal. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was Christians who led the work of reforming the prison system in England and the United States. And much of that reform was, ironically enough, seeking to get rid of practices like solitary confinement. Practices which are now so pervasive with Christians saying nary a word.

It is time for Christians to repudiate the “tough on crime” mentality of the late twentieth century and return to our heritage of advocacy for the incarcerated. It should be particularly important because 55% of those incarcerated are Christians, they are our siblings in Christ. But even for those who are not Christians, they still are humans with the image of God on their soul. Our justice system should be working for their rehabilitation and their healing.

Now I know it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and like there is nothing you, as an individual, can do as a response to all of this, but that’s not true. You can make a difference. You can raise these issues with those in your social groups. You can make it a part of your discernment when it’s time to vote, pressing politicians for reform.

And, if you’re local to West Michigan, you can do a search online for an organization called “Humanity for Prisoners.” This is the only organization in our state doing one-on-one advocacy work among the incarcerated. I used to serve on their board and know the work that they do is profoundly important and is changing lives every day. Whether it is contributing financially to the work of HfP or contributing your time, there is much to be done. You can find out more about them at humanityforprisoners.org.

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.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. 

I hope the fireworks from the Fourth of July holiday have finally calmed down in your neighborhood. I know it seemed to me like this year’s observance was a little more… exuberant than most years. That’s probably because there were limited public celebrations this year, the lifting of COVID-19 regulations coming too late for plans to be made. I think it also just felt good, after the year we’ve all had, to blow some things up.

And so, as a late fireworks display of my own, in this week’s episode of Christian Mythbusters I would like to tackle the myth of our country’s founding being about creating a Christian nation. You might say, I want to blow the whole idea up, if you’ll forgive the pun.

I always find it amusing when people insist that the United States is a Christian nation because that’s kind of the opposite of the point of the whole revolutionary war. After all, the pilgrims, for example, who came to America (indeed, many of the early colonists), were coming from England—a nation that is an explicitly Christian nation with the Church of England serving as the state church and the  monarch serving as the supreme governor of the church. Many of the colonists came here seeking religious freedom, especially freedom from an established Christian nation.

Now, this is an awkward point to make as an Episcopalian. Our church, after all, is the daughter church of the Church of England, with whom we are still in relationship as part of the worldwide Anglican Communion. It was awkward after the revolutionary war as well, as many colonists who were devout members of the Church of England were also loyalists to the crown. This includes Samuel Seabury, who some of you know as the loyalist cleric in Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical Hamilton, a person who is taken down by the title character for his loyalist views.

After we declared and then won our independence from the Christian nation of England, the founders were explicit that they did not want to create a similar arrangement here in the United States. They did not want any church, denomination, or religion to consider itself established.

The same was actually true in the Episcopal Church because, in a great second act, our newly independent Anglican churches elected Samuel Seabury to be the first bishop of our church. Seabury set sail for England but was refused consecration because—get this, even though he had been a loyalist—he refused to swear allegiance to the monarch. He was a citizen of a newly free country and church and just couldn’t do it. He turned to Scotland where, in a story that is much longer than I have time for here, he was consecrated a bishop and able to return home and serve the new Episcopal Church in the United States.

The point of all of this is that our country was not founded to repeat the oppressive “Christian nation” from which we many of the colonists had come. Instead, the founders set to create boundaries and walls to keep that very sort of thing from happening.

In the book The Myth of a Christian Nation, theologian Greg Boyd explores this myth and not only argues that it is inaccurate, he insists that it is corrosive to Christianity itself. Boyd reminds us that, as Christians, our first loyalty should always be to Jesus Christ and his calling for us to love of God and neighbor. The longing for a “Christian Nation” is really about a longing for the church to have power in society… but the church has a pretty bad track record when it comes to power. In fact, in general, it is when the church eschews power and focuses on love, justice, and mercy that it is far more faithful to the teachings of Christ.

The problem with wanting us to be a Christian nation is that it would shift, not only how we engage with non-Christians in our country who then somehow don’t become real Americans, but it would shift how we exist with Christians outside our country. Our unity in baptism is surely more important than our citizenship.

Don’t get me wrong, I celebrated the Fourth of July with my family. We even lit off some fireworks in the driveway (though I tried to ensure they weren’t too loud or obnoxious). But the celebration for me was that our country was founded as a place with a dream of liberty and justice for all people, no matter your faith or even if you don’t have faith. We have often not lived up to that ideal, but we continue to strive. And I truly believe America is at her best when she ensures all people—and all religions—have the freedom to worship and believe as they believe their God calls them. Just like you. Just like me.

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.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

During Pride month, I’ve been talking about the relationship between Christianity and the LGBTQIA+ community. This week, I’d like to talk about the problems surrounding the traditional teaching of the church on these questions—and the harm it can do.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the Scriptural questions surrounding the place of LGBTQIA+ people in the church can get thorny. Very easily, people fall into their own sorts of proof-texting, each person coming up with Scripture that justifies their own view. Part of the reason for this is that Scripture is not a monolithic witness. Rather, Scripture is the unfolding story of God’s grace—and our growing apprehension of God’s grace and design for us and the world.

Sometimes, there are just different ways of telling the story in the Bible. In Genesis one, for example, humanity is created last, as the pinnacle of creation. In Genesis two, however, humanity is created before animals and given stewardship. If the point of the creation narratives is a newsreel retelling of the events, this is a problem. But if the point is not about specific order, but theological principals revealed in myth and ancient story, then we can find the inconsistencies helpful for understanding the text.

At other times the Bible simply disagrees with itself. When the Jewish people returned from captivity in Babylon, Ezra commanded them to divorce their foreign wives. However, this is contrary to the prohibitions on how you treat foreigners in Leviticus 19 and is in direct contrast to the story of Ruth, a Moabite, who marries Boaz and becomes the great-grandmother of King David. The prophet Malachi, writing after Ezra, also argues against putting away a foreign wife simply based upon her ethnicity.

In short, the old saying, “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it,” simply does not really work in practice. 

But there is a deeper reason why using those seven verses people claim are about homosexuality to exclude and discriminate against LGBTQIA+ people is wrong—because that reading of the Bible comes at a cost

If you are opposed to people of different sexual and gender identities expressing themselves honestly according to their own understanding of themself, then the question becomes… what is the message of the church to the gay Christian? And does that message sound like Jesus?

Most conservative Christians respond that the message is “Go and sin no more,” echoing Jesus in the Gospel of John. But what does that look like?

For some people, the message of the church has been that God’s grace can change you and make you straight or cisgender. This has been the claim of so-called reparative or conversion therapy. However, there is no reliable evidence that this is actually possible. Indeed, there is actually reliable evidence that it is not only ineffective but can cause significant harm, leading to suicide, this is why it is deemed to be an unethical practice by the American Psychological Association and is illegal in several jurisdictions. One of the largest proponents of this approach, Exodus International, disbanded in 2013 the board published a statement repudiating their use of reparative therapy and apologizing for the harm they had done. So, neither prayer nor psychology can turn a gay person straight or a transgender person into a cisgender person.

The next offering I’ll usually hear is that the message of the church is that gay people should live celibate lives. This is the stance the American Association of Christian Counselors took when they removed their promotion of conversion therapy from their code of ethics. However, the church has long understood celibacy as a gift some people may be called to but never as something that can be imposed upon a class of people due to their biology.

We’ve already established that you don’t choose to be gay. Requiring someone who happens to be gay to be celibate would be a violent imposition of a manner of life on a whole class of people without regard to God’s calling in their lives. Some might respond that straight people are also called to chaste lives until they’re married. I’d counter that even that view is a shrinking one these days, but that at least straight people are told to be chaste until they find someone. Gay people are not given that chance by much of the church.

So, what is the message of the church to LGBTQIA+ people. It must be two-fold. First, that you are the way you are through no choice or fault of your own. Indeed, this is your natural state of existence—a state that is found in the rest of God’s creation at times. Second, you are called, just like anyone else, to holiness of life: by living in covenanted relationship with the person you love, should you so chose. The affirmation of same-sex marriage is indeed the best graced response to gay Christians, an avenue that enables them to be who they are, while also to receive the gifts of the sacrament of marriage just like straight people.

And, one more time, if you’re LGBTQIA+ or an ally, and you live in West Michigan, I’d invite you to join me on Sunday, June 27, at 10am at the downtown Waterfront Stadium in Grand Haven, for a special pride worship service to celebrate all of God’s beloved children.

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.