Christian Mythbusters

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myths surrounding the separation of Church and State and asks how the church more faithfully can live into its relationship with the state. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

On January 20, 2021, at noon, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. If you are listening to this episode on Wednesday, we will be just about 90 minutes from that inauguration. If you are listening on Sunday morning, it will be in the rearview mirror.

It is normal for religion to play a role in the inauguration of a president in, at least it has been normal since 1937, when the first inaugural invocation was offered. Since 1933 there has also been an associated prayer service the morning of the election, whether private or public, and often a major prayer service the following day or weekend. 

Before this year, the previous four private services, the ones for the inauguration of George W. Bush, both inaugurations of Barack Obama, and the inauguration of Donald Trump had been at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square in Washington, DC. In fact, of the twenty-two associated morning prayer services the day of the inauguration, fully half of them have been at St. John’s. It has also become customary for there to be a public prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, a church which is not only the seat of our Presiding Bishop in the Episcopal Church (since it is an Episcopal cathedral) but which has often served as a national house of prayer for all people in our nation. 

Now, as a country which has the separation of church and state as one of its founding principles, it bears notice the prominent role that churches usually play in the inauguration—especially my own Episcopal Church. And so, in light of the inauguration, I’d like this week to say a few words to break some of the myths surrounding the relationship between religion—especially Christianity—and our government. 

First, we are certainly not a Christian nation. We are a nation founded on the free exercise of religion, with the first amendment to the Constitution making it clear that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Furthermore, many of the founding fathers were actually not traditional Christians. Many were deists, people who rejected supernatural revelation while still affirming belief in some kind of supreme being. 

The principle of the separation of church and state comes from a phrase Thomas Jefferson used to express his own understanding of the intent and function of the first amendment. Though the principle has largely been upheld, including by the Supreme Court, it continues to be debated, even to this day.

This is all a particularly interesting question for my own tradition, The Episcopal Church. After all, as a province of the Anglican Communion, our own mother church is the Church of England, where the Archbishop of Canterbury serves as our own global spiritual leader (albeit, with no authority in our own country). And the English monarch continues to serve as the Supreme Governor of the church,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of Christian Resistance and explains why a resistance that is truly Christian should almost always be nonviolent. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1 WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

Like many of you, I spent much of last week shocked and saddened by what took place in our nation’s capital, as rioters and insurrectionists who believed the lies told them by our current president about the election, charged down the street to the Capitol building, broke past barricades, and—for the first time since the war of 1812—occupied that important civic space… even killing a brave Capitol police officer. I was particularly distraught to see some of the rioters carrying signs and Christian emblems, making it seem to those watching that this heinous and violent act had something to do with the Christian faith.

Let’s be clear. What happened last week on January 6 had nothing to do with Christianity. And those Christians who are planning to repeat that behavior in Washington DC and at state capitals around our nation on January 20th better think very carefully about the sort of witness they are providing to the watching world. 

Now, I want to be clear, there are times Christians are called to stand up and resist injustice, even to break unjust laws in the name of God’s calling to us—but that is not the case in this election. There was nothing stolen. There is no injustice that has taken place. Over 60 court cases have made it clear that the claims of fraud are baseless and without evidence. 

But, for future information, if you do want to resist what you perceive as an unjust act, this is not how Christians are called to do it. So today I’d like to break the myth of Christian Resistance and why that resistance should actually almost always be inherently non-violent, if it will be the resistance of Christ. 

One of the unfortunate results of the church becoming the legal religion of the Roman empire is that the early history and insistence upon Christian nonviolence began to slip away rather quickly. The church lost its way so entirely that in the middle ages we sent armies to invade the Holy Land in the misguided Crusades. It feels good, of course, to fight in the name of God, the problem is that God very rarely is asking us to fight. 

But that is not to say God doesn’t ask us at times to resist. 

A great example of this difference is found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, and its cousin in Luke, the Sermon on the Plain. In both of these important texts that contain the preaching of Jesus, our Lord urges us, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”

For far too long this text has been misused, it’s been seen as an example of being a doormat and letting people walk all over you. After all religious authorities have used these words to perpetuate systems of abuse and oppression. Jesus said to turn the other cheek and so I’ve actually heard pastors tell women in abusive situations they should continue to suffer under that abuse, that this is living into the love of Jesus. 

That’s a lot of… I cannot say that word on the radio.

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth the idea that all Christians believe people in other faith traditions are condemned. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

In the life of the church, today is the Feast of the Epiphany (or Revelation) of our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.

The Feast of the Epiphany on January 6 is actually the more ancient Christian feast which celebrates the Incarnation. Christmas didn’t develop until later.  In Eastern Christianity, Epiphany celebrates the Baptism of Christ, but in Western Christianity, it celebrates the visit of the Magi from the East who brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the Christ Child. In some cultures, like the Mexican  community, this feast is actually the more significant, known as Día de los Tres Reyes, the Day of the Three Kings. It is the Three Kings who bring gifts on this day in Mexico , not the Santa Clause we are familiar with. 

And so, given this feast day which (in actuality) celebrates some Persian Astrologers worshipping Jesus, I thought today would be a great day to break the myth of what Christians actually believe when it comes to other world religions. The shorthand for this question is the Christian view on religious pluralism. 

Now, sure, every Christian tradition will nuance the question of its relationship to other faith traditions differently. Most think that there are either one of two approaches: a traditional approach that believes followers of other religions are condemned unless they come to faith in Jesus Christ (the exclusivist position) and an open one that basically says everyone is OK and goes to heaven in the end, Christianity is just one of many paths (the universalist position). 

By now you probably know me as someone often on the more progressive side of Christianity, but actually, as with many things, the teaching of the church is just more nuanced than either the entirely closed or entirely open side would lead you to believe. 

Writing in the third century, for instance, Origen was perhaps the first Church Father to fully engage the question of religious pluralism. Before Origen, those who wrote about pagan religions largely did so primarily in a dismissive fashion. Origen believed that eventually all people would be united with God through Jesus Christ, saying that even those who did not do so in this life would be given the opportunity following death to choose God. He said this was a possibility and certainly not definite but given eternity and God’s love he thought it was possible. 

Make no mistake, Origen was certainly no “liberal” or “relativist.” He argued strongly that if only local convention and custom are the standards of religious truth, then religion becomes merely a matter of “arbitrary arrangement and opinion.” You’re kind of saved—or not—depending on where you happen to be born. Instead of each locality worshiping the deity for that region or group, Origen insisted there must be one true God. As a Christian, Origen believed that Jesus directed people not to a local or tribal deity, but to the God of all people. He just also believed that in the end all people wo...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth the idea that Christians never really change, a particularly important question given the upcoming New Year’s holiday. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, that glorious night of the year when we get to burn the candle down to the nub and wish 2020 a hearty goodbye. Of course, as was pointed out to me on social media, our new year is literally pronounced 2020-won—as in the year 2020 has won and beaten us all, but we’ll try not to think of that as we celebrate in our homes with great hopes for a much better year to come.

One of the most traditional parts of the New Year’s holiday is the obligatory New Year’s resolutions, those commitments to change parts of our lives that are made with fire and fury on December 31 and only sometimes last through the entire month of January. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to have the crowd at the gym thin out a little as the weeks of January turn into February, but there is a slight sadness I think many of us bring to the knowledge that our New Year’s resolutions rarely bring fruit we had hoped.

And yet, hope springs eternal, and so this week I’d like to try to bust the myth that Christians never change.

One of my favorite lines from the Christian artist Rich Mullins, who died several years ago, was whenever people tell him they don’t go to church because it’s full of hypocrites, he loved to respond to them, “No we’re not, we always have room for a few more.” What Rich was playfully pointing out is that no person who goes to church follows Jesus with perfect faithfulness. Rather, we commit to the Christian community because we know we need to be changed.

Now, I’ll be quick to admit that not all Christians approach the church with a desire to be changed and to be shaped after the love, mercy, and justice of Jesus Christ. Lord knows I’ve heard people tell me in my days that they didn’t feel uplifted going to my church sometimes. But as another of my favorite Christian thinkers, CS Lewis, once said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

The fundamental message of Advent that we’ve heard for the past several weeks was the call to repent, to change our lives. In the days of Christmastide, we are invited to experience the light and grace of God and to let that love change us so that we can be the body of Christ on earth. As we move toward the Feast of the Epiphany, we are invited to change from a gospel only focused on those who look like us and to ask how God is being present in those strange and far away, like the three magi of old. And, of course, in just a couple months, in the Season of Lent, we will begin with Ash Wednesday, and we will repent once more in dust and ashes.

The practice of examen, is what this is known in the spiritual traditions of the church. It is a practice best engaged in daily actually, asking yourself every day, “In what ways has my life not lived up to the call of Christ. How did I sin in what I did… or what I left undone?”

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of what Christian approaches to immigration should look like, particularly in light of the Holy Family at the center of our Christmas celebrations. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

One of my favorite things to do this year with my wife and four-year-old daughter has been to drive around the area and see some of the amazing Christmas decorations that our residents have put up. Truth be told, if I was in charge of it, my house would be about as decorated as that of Clark Griswold.  But marriage involves compromise and so I try hard to kind of hold  myself back.

Of course, the central part of many decorations, particularly at churches, is the nativity scene. In this artistic depiction, we see Mary and Joseph around a manger, a feeding trough really, where the baby Jesus lies asleep. Often these images of the Holy Family are surrounded by shepherds and angels and sometimes even the wisemen… though the feast of the wisemen is not really until Epiphany on January 6 (and biblical scholars think their visit was probably to a toddler Jesus instead of the infant), but I digress.

All of this focus on the holy family raises some interesting questions for today’s Christian. Because if we can resist the temptation to sentimentalize the Holy Family, I think we will find in them a profound critique of contemporary American Christianity… particularly when it comes to immigration. So, this week I’d like to take a moment and bust to the myth about Christians and immigration policy, particularly looking at it through the lens of the Holy Family

After the beauty and joy of the Christmas story, we learn of the murderous rage of King Herod, who was afraid this newborn Messiah will threaten his throne. And so, Herod commits an act of genocide, killing a bunch of children. The father of Jesus, Joseph, is warned in a dream about this violence and so the Holy Family flees to Egypt.

That is right, faced with a violent political situation at home they flee to another country for safety. They are political refugees and their flight under the cover of night means that they probably resonate much more with undocumented immigrants in our own country than many Christians realize.

In my own church, Episcopal Migration Ministries has supported immigrants and migrants of all kinds for decades. This ministry dates back to the 1930s, when our church works to resettle people fleeing Nazi Europe. A poster from 1938 that our church put out shows an image of the Holy Family fleeing Egypt. At the top of the poster it said, “In the name of these refugees” and at the bottom, “Aid all refugees.”

It’s very distressing to me that so much of American Christianity has been co-opted by nativism and anti-immigrant rhetoric, to the point that the supposedly conservative Christian viewpoint is to restrict immigration, and many Christian supporters of the current administration were in favor of its drastic reduction in the number of refugees our country would accept… a shameful change in our policies.

This is not only un-American—after all unless your blood comes from native people ...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of what Christians actually do—and actually should—believe when it comes to the death penalty. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

Now that the electoral college has voted, it is finally clear to almost everyone that we are in the lame-duck presidency of Donald J Trump, while we await the inauguration of

President-elect Joe Biden. The final weeks of a lame-duck president are always filled with final actions taken without regard for political ramifications, as there are now no more elections to be won… or lost.

One of the most troubling though,  and, frankly, precedent-breaking lame duck actions of President Trump has been his approach to the death penalty. Before the Trump administration, the federal government had not executed someone since 2003, nearly twenty years ago. In 2019, Attorney General William Barr announced a new execution protocol and dates for five executions of death row prisoners. After some legal back and forth, the federal government executed Daniel Lewis Lee on July 14, 2020. In these past five months, the administration has had ten people put to death with three more planned before President Trump leaves office. Just so you know, the last time an outgoing president did anything remotely similar to this was over a century ago, in 1889, when President Grover Cleveland ordered three—yes, not thirteen, just three—executions during his lame duck weeks. 

Since we have yet to hear an outcry of opposition to these killings by this lame duck administration—at least, not among Trump’s white Christian base, I think this is a good week to break the myth of what Christians really do believe—andreally should believe—when it comes to the death penalty. 

In the most recent polls, only 55% of our country supports its use and 43% oppose it. And while support in the US goes down slowly, the actual use of the death penalty has been increasingly disappearing around the globe. As of 2019, only twenty countries were known to have executed people, only nine of those countries executing more than ten people. What countries make that list, you might ask? In order of how many executions they have had, the list is: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, the United States, Pakistan, Somalia and South Sudan.

Yes, that is right, we rank sixth in the world for killing our own citizens. And look at the countries on that top ten list with us. Yikes.

Increasingly, various Christian traditions around our country have become more vocal in their opposition to the death penalty. Historically pacifist groups, like Quakers, have opposed it for years. They are now joined by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and my own Anglican Communion, represented by the Episcopal Church in the US, whose Lambeth Conference of bishops wrote in 1988, “This Conference… urges the Church to speak out against: …all governments who practice capital punishment, and encourages them to find alternative ways of sentencing offenders so that the divine dignity of every human being is respected and yet justice is pursued.” Other groups, like the Southern Baptist convention,

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of what Christian Freedom looks like, particularly during the Coronavirus Pandemic. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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.

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.

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that there is some kind of “War on Christmas.” You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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. 

Well, with Thanksgiving now behind us, we have fully entered the holiday season. There is pumpkin-spiced everything, more emails to buy stuff in my inbox than I know what to do with, and both lay leaders and pastors all over are trying to figure out how in the world we are going to do Christmas in the middle of a global pandemic—and still keep everyone safe. 

This also means that are now fully in the season of Christians claiming there is some kind of war on Christmas going on. So, this week, let’s try to bust that myth. After all, the only war on Christmas is the one that exists in the minds of a strange few. 

The first thing to know is the so-called “War on Christmas” was the invention of  conservative commentators like Bill O’Reilly. With others, he claimed that the use of Christmas was being censored or discouraged in favor of the egalitarian term “happy holidays,” and this constituted a war on Christianity itself. The foolishness of this peaked  when people object to the “X” in X-mas, a common abbreviation for Christmas.

That X, though, is actually just a Greek letter, chi. It is the first letter for Christ in Greek and is a common abbreviation for the name of Christ, particularly in Orthodox iconography. So, X-mas, is just as Christian as Christmas. Let’s put that silliness to bed.

As to the idea that the use of “Happy Holidays” is somehow is an attack on Christmas and Christianity itself, let’s be clear. It’s not. After all, I am a Christian priest, one who is deeply devoted to Jesus and the church, one who finds profound meaning in the celebration of Christmas… and  yet, I don’t wish people a Merry Christmas during this time of year. The big reason why? Well, it’s not Christmas yet.

Christmas falls on December 25th and for the majority of Western Christians, we are not yet in the “Christmas Season,” we are in the Season of Advent, a time of prayerful watching and preparation for the coming of Christ—not only the celebration of his coming as a baby in Bethlehem but also a prayerful watching for his coming again at the end of time when he will set all things right.

Advent is a time of darkness, a time of looking honestly at the dark places in our world, the dark places even in our lives. When the rest of society is wrapping itself in tinsel and consumerism, Christians who observe Advent are trying to ask how they need to, in the words of one of our Advent prayers, cast off the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, how we need to join with God in bringing light into a dark world. 

Once Christmas does arrive on December 25th, I will wish my fellow Christians a warm and robust “Merry Christmas.” I’ll also keep doing it, though, for the entire Christmas season, which lasts twelve days actually, just like the song, until January 5th.  

And I personally don’t just prefer Happy Holidays because it preserves my own freedom to observe the sacred time of Advent instead of celebrating Christmas early. I also like Happy Holidays—both before and during an...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth of the First Thanksgiving and American Christian complicity in the genocide of native people. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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.

Tomorrow many families in our community will be finding ways to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It will certainly be a Thanksgiving unlike many of us have had before. At least I hope it will, given that there is still a global pandemic killing thousands of people. Please, please make good decisions.

Around this time, I’m always struck by posts on Facebook and social media of happy Native Americans giving large plates of food to kindly Puritan colonists, a kind of general nostalgia for a world now gone. And so, this week I would like to bust the myth of that original Thanksgiving.

If you actually do want to know more about this story, I’d commend to you an excellent book by David Silverman, called This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. In it, Silverman lays out much that we have learned about that original Thanksgiving, much that had been covered up by myth and historical inaccuracy. He’s also clear about how the continued retelling of the Thanksgiving myth wounds not only the still existing Wampanoag Indians (and yes there are still some), but all Native people who see their history erased by quaint and invented stories.

So, let’s start by clearing up a few things. First off, for at least 12,000 years, if not longer, the Native American people lived in this country. By the time the Mayflower arrived, this was not first contact. There had already been a century of contact between Native American people and the Europeans. And it wasn’t a kind and gentle engagement of brave explorers and Native People. Instead, it was more often bloody slave raiding by the Europeans. When the pilgrims arrived, some of the Wampanoag already spoke English and had even been to Europe and back.

The Wampanoag reached out to the English at Plymouth in the hope of an alliance to help them in their ongoing battles with the Narragansett. They had already been decimated by a pandemic and this was one of their last hopes. Unfortunately, the Europeans responded to this kind overture by the Wampanoag by over the next fifty years by stealing Wampanoag land, spreading European disease, and exploiting their natural resources.

As tensions increased, the Europeans insisted that the Wampanoag surrender all their guns. They hung three members of the Wampanoag tribe on accusations of murder, raids began, and before long the differences between the Narragansett and Wampanoag were erased as both found themselves fighting for their lives in what became known as King Philip’s war, a war so named because the Wampanoag chief, Metacom, adopted Philip as an English name when relationships were friendlier, long, long ago.

By the end of King Philip’s war, 1,000 colonists had died, but 3,000 Indians were killed. Many that survived, including Metacom’s son, were enslaved and sent to Bermuda. Several of the smaller tribes were entirely destroyed, including almost all of the Narragansetts and the Wampanoags. And Rhode Island itself was devasted, its principal city of Providence destroyed… all because European Chr...

In this episode of Christian Mythbusters, Father Jared debunks the myth that the Bible doesn’t have any “Me Too” moments of its own. You can hear Christian Mythbusters in the Grand Haven area on 92.1, WGHN, on Wednesdays at 10:30am and Sundays at 8:50am.

The transcript of the episode is below, or you can listen to the audio at the bottom of the post.

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.

So much of our attention as of late has been focused on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the presidential election and its aftermath, and other recent conflicts, that one of the most significant moments in our society seems, at times, to have been entirely forgotten. I’m talking about the “Me Too” movement.

I want to be clear, as a Christian priest, that the church has often failed to support those who have experienced harassment or abuse, particularly and most unfortunately in the church. The church must do better. And for that reason, this week I’d like to bust the myth of the idea that the Bible doesn’t have any “Me Too” moments of its own. Because it does.

In Judges 4 and 5, we hear the amazing story of Deborah, the only woman of all the judges of ancient Israel, which concludes with a woman named Jael violently killing Sisera, the Canaanite general, by drilling a tent peg through his head while he sleeps. In doing this, Jael breaks the peace that her clan, the Kenites, had made with the Canaanites. Yes, this is not a common Sunday School story.

I don’t have time to tell you the whole story, but I’d really would encourage you to read it. In particular, because there is an important reversal that happens in the story, once you get to the end of chapter five.

In the song of chapter five, Deborah basically sings the story that a later author will set to prose in chapter four. But the story ends in a different way. After telling of the death of Sisera, the song imagines his mother looking out through the window, wondering why her son, the Canaanite general ,has not yet come home from battle. Her friends, other ladies in her house answer her, “Are they not finding and dividing the spoil?—A girl or two for every man…” the spoils of war.

The custom of soldiers raping or abducting women in the community of the defeated army was a common one in the ancient near east, just like it is in our own time. Women are particularly vulnerable to victorious army collecting the so-called spoils of war, something Sisera would have done had he defeated the Israelites, even though, of course, the prophet Deborah led the charge that defeated him. And so, it is perhaps for every woman who would have been vulnerable to the Canaanite soldiers that Jael breaks the peace treaty of her own clan of Kenites, letting who she is as a woman be more important as she stops the murderous Sisera.

Who knows, maybe Jael had at one time been spoils of war, given to the Kenites by Canaanites like Sisera, and now Jael is getting justice. In fact, though the text is translated as her driving the tent peg through his temple, the Hebrew could also be translated as her driving the tent peg through his mouth—a clear reversal of the sexual violence that victorious armies would wreak upon the women of the defeated.

And I think it is important for us to hear this entire story, this profound ancient narrative where women overcome sexual violence and warfare through the power and might of God. I think it is important for us to know that even in patriarchal times like back then,