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. 

I believe one of the most profound challenges facing Christianity, facing our society in America right now, is a misunderstanding of the fundamental ideals that should guide us. I see this particularly in the ideal and virtue of freedom. 

Of course, in one sense our country was founded on the ideal of freedom, of liberty for every human being… and yet, at our founding, what that actually meant was the freedom of every white, land-owning, man in the country. There has also been this persistent idea, particularly on display during the pandemic, that freedom means I get to do whatever I want, without regard to the impact it will have upon my neighbor. 

So, since you’re hearing this either on Ash Wednesday or the First Sunday in Lent, I thought this would be a good week to allow Lent to break some of the misconceptions people have about what freedom means for a Christian. 

One of the Scripture readings for Ash Wednesday, comes from Isaiah 58. In that reading, the people are trying to rebuild their nation following the destruction of the Babylonian exile. They are fasting and worshipping God but are perplexed because their worship, their piety, does not seem to be producing any response from God. “Why do we fast, but you do not see?” they cry out to God. “Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” It feels almost as though God doesn’t care, like God isn’t even listening when they pray. 

The prophetic word in Isaiah, though, makes it clear that the problem is not with their ritual actions. The problem is with the way they live their lives outside of worship. They do not practice righteousness, only focused on themselves on the days they fast. They come out of their times of fasting and repentance but persist to oppress their workers and engage in quarrelsome behavior. And so, the prophet declares that the fast God wants is not to lie yourself down in humility but instead “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.” 

True freedom is not doing whatever you want. True freedom for the Christian is living in line with God’s call in your life, focused not on getting what you want but on how you can lift the burdens and break the yokes that hold others down. 

When the eminent twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth sought to describe human freedom, he said that human freedom is God’s gift that enables us to obey God. The great theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo, said it differently. You can only be free, Augustine believed, when God has healed all of creation and all of you, when you are no longer able to sin. He drew a distinction between liberum arbitrium (free choice) and libertas (freedom). If we keep the end of God’s desire for us and the world in mind, we will eventually, though God’s grace, reach a point when we can only ever choose to do what is right and good. Think of it as the perfection of an athlete who is not worried about getting to hit the ball however she wants, but an athlete who is incapable of hitting the ball poorly. That is freedom, according to Augustine. 

If you are a Christian who practices Lent, or perhaps has been thinking about taking it up, today is a good day to ask what kind of Lent you want to practice. After all, the danger of Lenten rituals, just like any other religious ritual, is that you can enter into this season concerned only for your own relationship with God. This creates a ritual that is not only inauthentic to the call of God in your life, but also creates a sort of blindness where your ritual has made your neighbor invisible to you. 

Engaging or participating in economic oppression, quarreling with others for the sole purpose of proving you’re right, speaking evil things about your sibling who is created in the image of God, all of these are individual pursuits. But the fast that God chooses is one that helps to bring about the new humanity inaugurated in Jesus Christ, one where you aren’t interested in freedom of choice or your own spiritual fulfillment but are instead deeply concerned with how you can love God and your neighbor more faithfully. 

Just ask yourself this simple question: how is what you are doing for Lent, what you are taking on or what you are giving up—how is what you are doing going to help you love God and your neighbor with more faithfulness? 

God is not interested with convenient offerings, offerings that fall short of the moral challenges posed by violence, poverty, and injustice. That is what the people were willing to offer in the time of Isaiah. No, God is interested in the sort of sacrifice and discipline you can offer, a sacrifice and discipline that will heal the world.

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. 

In last week’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, I talked about the dangers fascism poses to our country right now, including where I live here in Grand Haven, MI. I talked about how Christians are increasingly comfortable with fascist perspectives and ideology, something that should concern all of us, conservative and liberal alike.

This week, I’d like to drill down to one specific point—book banning—and to explore some of the uncomfortable history Christianity has with this common tactic of fascists.

First, we have to acknowledge that Christianity has often sought to suppress literature which it has perceived as contrary to the dominant view at the time. The original book burner himself was 15th century priest Girolamo Savonarola whose “Bonfire of the Vanities” burned art and books that he believed were morally lax or questionable. 

In 1517, the Nine Five Theses from Martin Luther were condemned by Pope Leo X. Later in the sixteenth century, the Holy Inquisition began compiling its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, a list of books and authors that Catholics were not allowed to print or read. The system remained in place for the next several hundred years, not abandoned until the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. 

In my own English Christian tradition, the leaders of the Church of England (when it was still part of the Roman Catholic Church) burned thousands of copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament, eventually burning Tyndale himself as well. 

And, as many of us know, several books that have been banned in history have wound up being regarded as classic works of literature by later generations. Daniel Defoe’s book Robinson Crusoe was on the Catholic Church’s Index Librorum. So was Le Misérables by Victor Hugo. Boston’s district attorney threatened to ban Walt Whitman’s book Leaves of Grass. Christians in the White Citizen’s Council urged the restriction of The Rabbits’ Wedding because they thought this illustrated book promoted the dangerous idea of racial integration. Other examples include Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, James Dickey’s Deliverance, The Diary of Anne Frank, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. 

And it’s not just questions of morals, Christians have also opposed books that might encourage people to understand the Bible and its teachings differently. Darwin’s Origin of the Species was banned from the library of Trinity College Cambridge, where Darwin himself had studied. In 1925, Tennessee banned the teaching of the theory of evolution in schools in any form, a law that remained in place since the late sixties. 

But we also have several modern day examples of conservative Christians urging the banning of books. When I was in college, the battle was against JK Rowling and her Harry Potter series, due to its supposed encouragement of witchcraft and the occult. It struck me even then that it was odd Christians couldn’t distinguish fictional magical powers from occult practices of worship and how many Christians missed the point in the first book that the most powerful thing of all was the self-sacrifice of Harry’s mother in love for her son… a decidedly Christian idea!

So much of the history of Christians censoring, banning, or even burning books is based on two elements: fear and the need to control. Christians have feared depictions of anything that they think might threaten their own conceptions of morality, anything that might send people down the wrong path. They believe that banning books will help them control people, ensure they are not exposed to anything to which their understanding of faith is opposed.

And yet, the early church was remarkably committed to ideals of freedom and openness of dialogue, believing that the Christian faith could not be coerced. They opposed any sort of attempts at control to get people to be Christians or to force people to adopt Christian ways of thinking. They believed that the Christian life has to, in the end, be chosen by each individual or it will be broken from the start..

I was struck by a verse from First John which was in the appointed Scripture readings for Morning Prayer this past Tuesday. In it, St. John wrote, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” 

I wish Christians would let go of fear and control and instead seek perfection in love. Neither of these are virtues for the Christian faith. Indeed, Christianity actually thrives much more when people live with attitudes of love, respect, and humility, when it doesn’t try to control what people read or how people live but instead when individual Christians choose to display in their own lives the love and sacrifice of Jesus, when Christians strive to be curious instead of judgmental.

Christians need to repent, once and for all, of this tendency in our tradition throughout history to ban or burn that which we deem inappropriate. Instead, let’s trust trained librarians to curate content that is age appropriate and, above all, let’s engage in conversation about difficult works of literature, asking why it is so unsettling to people… and, perhaps most importantly, asking if you are unsettled because the content is inappropriate, or because the content raises issues of sin, selfishness, discrimination, or control that are already present in your own heart. And maybe your heart is what you should focus on a little bit more.

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. 

One of the unfortunate difficulties of the past couple of years is that language has become increasingly polarized and manipulated, with people claiming certain words and concepts mean things that are absolutely divorced from reality. It’s like Humpty Dumpty talking to Alice in Wonderland. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

One of those words that has been increasingly misunderstood is the concept of fascism. So, this week I want to focus on breaking some of the myths surrounding fascism and also ask how Christians should respond to rising fascism in our own time.

Fascism comes from the far-right of the traditional political spectrum and is characterized by authoritarian ultranationalism, a preference for dictatorial power, and a forceful and often violent suppression of any opposition. Fascists want the nation to be entirely self-sufficient and so are often protectionist in policy. Many forms of fascism also include some form of white nationalism or other discrimination based on race, gender, sexuality, or religion—anything that will enable the fascist to scapegoat the problems of society and place the fault upon the other. 

Many of the actions of former President Donald Trump resembled fascist leaders from the twentieth century. He was clearly prone to dictatorial and authoritarian tendencies, regularly having to be told by his own administration that things he wanted to do were not legal. His support of violence against non-violent opposition, his protectionist economic policies, and his continued scapegoating of minorities all were indicators of fascism. 

Interestingly enough, after the insurrection and attacks on the United States Capitol on January 6, several conservative historians and legal scholars who had earlier resisted using the word fascism to describe Trump changed their mind and affirmed that he clearly had fascist tendencies, if not describing him as a fascist. These conservative scholars include Michael Gerson and Steven Calabresi, along with a historian of fascism, Robert Paxton. 

In my own city of Grand Haven, we have our own home-grown fascist tendencies increasingly taking root. We have parents who continue to rail against the school board, trying to get them to ban any books that include LGBTQIA+ kids. They insist that they know better than trained librarians as to what sort of literature is appropriate in a library and, most unsettling, they think their own homophobic and transphobic views should determine what sort of literature is available to kids in our community. To be clear, they already can control what their own kids check out, but that is not enough for them. They want to control everyone else’s kids. That, my friends, is authoritarianism. 

These parents are also resisting any sort of curricula that teaches our children the ugly history and current reality of race relations in our country. Using the boogey-man phrase of “Critical Race Theory,” what they oppose is actually any curriculum that might make white students uncomfortable. In a time when we can clearly see that there are still profound issues with race in our country, they believe they should be able to dictate a white-washed curriculum for all kids in our schools. 

Ironically enough, they have also harassed government officials regarding public health measures like wearing masks in public in the middle of a pandemic, claiming mask mandates are authoritarianism. The fact that we have gotten to a point that laws with regard to public safety are claimed to be authoritarian over-reach shows just how far fascists have gone in changing the very meaning of words. If these fascists who oppose mask mandates were correct, then seat-belt law, rules against sending your kid to school with chicken-pox, and requirements that kitchens don’t serve food that could kill you would all be authoritarian. 

There is a difference between authoritarianism and reasonable laws and policies that protect public health, even the if the fascists refused to see it that way. But the fascist is only concerned with forcing those in power to obey his own views. 

So, what is a Christian to do in the midst of these threats? 

I believe Christians must resist these growing fascist tendencies in our country and our local communities. We must repudiate political movements that, under the guise of Christianity, move in authoritarian directions. We have been failing at this for years, currently allowing corporations to control their employees’ reproductive health, for instance. We must turn from this and once more embrace the tenets of liberty and the dignity of each person on which America was truly founded, not the fascist false narrative.

Christians also, believing in the dignity of every human being, must repudiate the ways in which these groups deal with race along with sexual and gender identity. The fascists want to scapegoat these people, calling Black Lives Matter protestors thugs and trying to pull books about queer kids from libraries. Christians must turn from those fascist tendencies and stand up on the side of minorities who are created in God’s image, just as much as anyone else. 

It's kind of a scary time in America right now. We must wake up to the threat posed by these growing fascist ideologies and join together, conservative and liberal, religious and non-religious, and resist these attempts to remake our country in the image of far-right fascism. In particular, as Christians, we must stand up and be advocates, otherwise those who have too small of a voice today may have no voice tomorrow.  

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. 

Like many of you, I’ve been watching the escalating events in Ukraine and Russia with a fair amount of anxiety. Russian President Vladimir Putin is demanding several things, including a promise for NATO never to expand eastward to countries like Ukraine. Tens of thousands of Russian troops have amassed on Ukraine’s borders, ignoring calls from the US and NATO allies to remove them. And, since it was only a few years ago that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine, the threat of a new invasion seems very real. 

So, I thought this week might be a good one to break some of the myths surrounding Christianity and war—and, in particular, to look at the theory of just war as it might apply to this situation. 

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

In the view of Aquinas, a just war must be waged by a lawful government, for a just cause due to a wrong done to those being attacked. The waging of a just war must also have 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. And later developments have also made it clear that there must be a probability of success and that non-combatants must be protected. 

When Putin invaded and annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, he sent unmarked troops into the region and fomented a civil war that cost over 14,000 lives. Russia was slapped with economic sanctions, but little else. The Minsk protocol effectively gave half of the Crimean region to Russia as reward for his belligerence. 

Not Putin wants the rest of the territory, the regions that were given back to Ukraine in 2014. As I said, he demands a promise that Ukraine never enter the NATO alliance and is further demanding that NATO withdraw all forces from Romania and Bulgaria, both NATO member countries. 

Under Just War theory, wars of conquest are illegal war, with Russia’s desire to control the entire Crimean region being an example of just such an attempted conquest. Ukraine is a victim of this aggression, and her allies are justified under Christian just war theory to use force to protect her, if negotiations fail and Russia does invade. 

In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Ukraine gave up all of her nuclear weapons from her Soviet days to Russia, in exchange for a promise from Russia that Ukraine’s borders and territorial independence would be protected. Russia has clearly broken those promises. 

As John Davenport, professor of philosophy at Fordham University argued in a recent essay, the United States cannot betray and abandon Ukraine. We must demand the immediate removal of forces that threaten this country and be clear that if these forces are not removed by a hard timeline, Ukraine will immediately be invited into the NATO alliance. We must be clear that if Ukraine is invaded again, that the US and NATO will send in forces to protect the innocent citizens of that country. As Davenport says near the end of his essay, “Peace, as the aim of just wars, should not be the false peace of life under tyranny.”

As a Christian, like many of you, I have lived through a good amount of wars at this point, a good amount of conflicts that, in the end, many Christian leaders have regarded as unjust. Both the invasion of Iraq and the occupation of Afghanistan were deeply problematic from a just war standpoint. It has seemed at times that our country is not really concerned about protecting non-combatants and citizens. And so, Christians have spoken up and have urged an end to violence. I have joined them in those calls. 

But protecting the weak and the vulnerable is central to Christian teaching and our siblings in Christ in Ukraine are hoping their western neighbors will stand up and defend them, that we will not fall back in a fear of war that would enable the tyranny of Putin to expand. 

We must never forget that that it was the hesitancy of many Christians toward war against Hitler that enabled his aggression to go unchecked until it was almost too late. Putin has demonstrated he will not stop on his own. We must force him to stop, or the peace under which we live will be a false peace caused by massive injustice and oppression.

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 past Sunday, one of the appointed Scripture readings in the lectionary cycle of our church was from the book of Nehemiah. The Hebrew Bible has been a love of mine since my undergraduate major of Biblical Studies. It currently fuels my Monday Night Introduction to the Hebrew Bible class that I teach at the church and on Zoom (you can join us at 6pm on most Mondays at sjegh.com/zoom). So, I took the opportunity this past Sunday to tell some of the story of Nehemiah. 

And one of the key points of the story of Nehemiah is something I’d like to share with you this week, a myth I’d like to break. And it’s this: it’s OK to find out you are wrong. 

In the time of Nehemiah, the Jewish people had been spending decades trying to rebuild their nation, their capital city of Jerusalem, and their temple following their return from exile in Babylon. Nehemiah was sent by the king of Persia to be the governor of Judah and he was massively successful. One of my favorite parts of Nehemiah’s story is that when he discovered the Jewish nobility were oppressing the poor, he forced the cancellation of all debts and mortgages.

Thankfully, Nehemiah didn’t have to get a legislature of the rich to agree with him on that one.

In the readings from this past Sunday, from Nehemiah 8, the people of Judah gather, and the priest Ezra reads them the entire law once more. When the people hear the law, the weep and mourn because they realize how far they have strayed from God’s intentions for them. But Nehemiah tells them not to weep, he tells them to rejoice, to go on their way, to eat the fat and drink sweet wine, because the joy of the Lord is their strength. 

I think the experience of the people in Nehemiah’s time is something many of us can resonate with. It’s hard for anyone to realize you are wrong, but it seems particularly hard for religious people to acknowledge they had been wrong about something. It’s probably because your faith is so close to your heart, that it feels vulnerable and threatening to watch a piece of it change… but we have to remember what Nehemiah said, our strength can never be found in how perfectly we believe or how tightly we cling to our opinions. Our strength should be in the joy of a God who is always inviting us to ask if God’s love and justice are pushing us to think and act differently today. 

I think back to when I changed my mind about the role of women in the church. In my upbringing, the evangelical church I went to divided over whether or not a woman could lead prayers out loud in a home when men were present. I was deeply opposed to the arguments of those in the other side. I was raised in a house of just my mom and my sisters for much of my life, I knew the importance of the voice of women and requiring their silence just seemed fundamentally un-Christian. 

But at the same time, when I was in college, I was kind of a moderate. I was in favor of expanded roles for women but anxious about division in the church. Then I read Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” where he says the white moderate is the actual true obstacle in the fight for freedom, because the moderate prefers order to justice. 

I felt horrible. I felt like the people in Nehemiah’s time. Dr. King had helped me hear the law of God’s love and justice, and it was like I heard it for the first time and discovered that I was on the wrong side of God’s goodness in this world. I repented. I changed. And now I can say that the most powerful clergy in my own life have almost always been those who are women—their gifts have blessed me profoundly. 

The church tends to drag its feet when God calls it to reform… and there is a cost to this refusal to admit we are wrong and change.

The church continues to drag its feet in bringing about a truly anti-racist society, and so Sunday remains the most segregated hour of the year and systemic racism still plagues our nation, claiming the bodies of people of color to hate and fear. 

The church continues to drag its feet on ensuring women have a full and equal place in the church and the world. And so, the Equal Rights Amendment that was first proposed in 1923, that was sent to states for ratification nearly fifty years later in 1972, that amendment has still not been ratified as the 28th Amendment to the constitution. I mean, heck, there are still states in our country where a wife does not legally have to consent to sex with her husband.  

And the church continues to drag its feet on LGBTQIA+ Christians, resulting in a whole generation which has rejected the church as clearly immoral on basic grounds of the way you treat a fellow human being, a dragging of feet which has claimed the lives of countless young people who have died by suicide after the hate they heard in their church. 

A Christian should never be afraid of being wrong. Indeed, Christians should always be asking if God is calling them to repent, to change, if God’s calling for their church to reform closer to God’s love and justice in this world. After all, the path to true joy in this world is the path of trust in God’s call to you to make that joy manifest in the lives of every human being. 

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. 

At my congregation we have a tradition on Martin Luther King, Jr.,  Day that we’ve kept for several years now. We invite people to sign up to read from his sermons, letters, and other writings, with half-hour shifts all day long from 9am until 7pm. Members of the community are then invited to come to the church throughout the day and listen to the words of Dr. King, or to watch the readings happen live on our church Facebook page.

One of the gifts of this practice to me is that it has exposed me much more to the depth of Dr. King’s writings. Whereas before, like many, my greatest familiarity was with his “I have a dream” speech and his profound and convicting “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” In reality, though, Dr. King wrote on many other subjects, including capitalism,  socialism, the military industrial complex, nuclear proliferation, and the war on Vietnam, just to name a few.

I’m also aware that probably most everyone in our own day and age has some respect and even reverence for Dr. King. But he was actually a controversial and even polarizing figure before his death. So I would imagine that if many people, particularly those on the right, read more of his works they might find themselves uncomfortable with the positions he took, maybe they might even ask themselves whether their own politics align with justice as Dr. King understood it. 

So, in honor of Dr. King’s holiday, this week I’d like to break the myth of the gentle Dr. King of mythology by sharing with you some of his quotes that I have found particularly compelling and insightful, quotes that might even encourage you reconsider some of your own views on important questions that still face us today.

The first is from his speech, Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution, “I am convinced that [the Vietnam] is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. It has played havoc with our domestic destinies. This day we are spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill every Vietcong soldier. Every time we kill one we spend about five hundred thousand dollars while we spend only fifty-three dollars a year for every person characterized as poverty-stricken in the so-called poverty program, which is not even a good skirmish against poverty.”

How prescient his words proved to be, as the military-industrial complex is far stronger now than it was in Dr. King’s time. After all, in fiscal year 2021, we had a total defense budget of $753.5 billion. That means we are spending $2,287 per year per citizen on defense spending in our country. By contrast, we spend less than a third of that, only spend $212 billion dollars on programs that provide assistance to those in poverty. This point is particularly important as we watch Washington DC refuse to extend a Child Tax Credit which lowered the poverty rate among children by 16%-13%, effectively keeping 3 million children out of poverty, particularly Black and Latino children. 

Finally, as we continue to wrestle with the demands of the Black Lives Matter movement, I’d like to draw your attention to this quote from The Other America, “But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay.”

I’d encourage you to take some time and read from these and other lesser-known works of Dr. King. He has much to teach us, so much to say, particularly when it comes to, as he put it in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice. We have much more to learn from him… and much more to do.

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. 

Let’s talk about weed. Yep, just when you thought your local progressive pastor couldn’t move any farther to the left. Here I am.

Now, I bring this question up because of a local medicinal facility in our own community here in Grand Haven, New Standard. They are asking for the city to move forward with allowing recreational marijuana. City leaders are debating the question (and you can guess I weighed in, never one to keep my mouth shut). But as these sorts of changes continue in our country, I thought this would be a good time to break some of the myths surrounding marijuana and what Christians might think about its use and the law surrounding it.

Interestingly enough, the question of recreational marijuana use is increasingly one of the few issues in our country that is not really based as much on a partisan divide anymore. Instead, individual views seem to be based much more upon generational perceptions. 

According to a 2021 study by the Pew Research Center, 91% of Americans now believe marijuana should be legal, either for medicinal use only (31%) or for both medicinal and recreational use (60%). True, progressives generally do favor legalization more, with 95% of Democrats in favor of either recreational or medicinal use, but that is not much more than the 87% of all Republicans who agree. Indeed, nearly half of all Republicans (47%) explicitly  favor the legalization of recreational marijuana use.

As I said, the disagreement in our country right now is much more based upon age and generation. For example, 70% of adults under 29 favor legalization of recreational marijuana. That number decreases by age, until you get to those who are over 75, of whom only 32% support the legalization of recreational marijuana.

Personally, I believe the current status of marijuana in our country can be likened to another ban on an intoxicating substance one hundred years ago: the prohibition on alcohol. Prohibition then didn’t stop people from drinking, it instead drove alcohol underground where it fostered a criminal empire of producers meeting a demand that would not be stopped. 

The worry expressed by some in our own city leadership is that approval of recreational sales in Grand Haven will make it easier for marijuana to get to area kids. This concern, though, doesn’t really make sense when you look at the evidence. From 1975-2012, 80-90% of 12th graders consistently reported that marijuana was either “fairly easy” or “very easy” to obtain. However, oddly enough after legalization began, those numbers began to drop and for the first time the perception of availability has now dropped below 80%. 

Which actually makes sense if you think about it. If you walk into New Standard in Grand Haven, you will meet a friendly person at the welcome desk who will check IDs (and, currently, medical cards) before you can go through a second door into their show-room. However, when the mechanism for purchase is illegal and on the black market, there is nothing to keep it away from teenagers. There is also no government data to indicate that reformed marijuana laws have led to any increased use by teenagers. There is really only fear. And we must make decisions based upon facts, not upon fear. 

Before I close, I’d like to say a little bit as to why I, as a Christian priest, am talking about this issue. First, all of the data I’ve said seems reasonable and compelling to me, no matter someone’s faith commitments. However, as a Christian, I am concerned about more. In particular, I am concerned with equity and justice. And the current system is unjust. A study by the ACLU found that African-Americans are 3.6 times more likely than whites to be arrested for possession, despite similar usage rates. 

Beyond that, marijuana is far safer than many other medications people take on a regular basis, particularly when it comes to chronic pain, mood disorders, and the effects of chemotherapy. As a Christian, compassion would urge me to make that access by adults easier, not harder. 

To me, marijuana is similar to alcohol—it’s a mind altering substance that can be abused and misused, but which should not be illegal. Even St. Paul encouraged a little wine now and then for his protégé, Timothy’s, stomach. And, to be honest, I have a feeling he would have said the same thing about gummies. 

Let’s finally get rid of the approach of prohibition, an approach that has failed and is actually more dangerous to kids. Instead, let’s talk about responsible adult use. Let’s support studies about the long-term impact of marijuana use, particularly when it comes to regulated and consistent commercial products instead of street drugs. Let’s do that so that we can know what risks are involved.

To be clear, I’m not promoting the use of marijuana. Like with any mind-altering substance, there are risks. I do, however, think it is a decision—like the use of alcohol or other important choices—that’s  best left in the hands of responsible adults. 

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. 

As the church continues walking through the Twelve Days of Christmas (yes, despite what you may assume, given the number of Christmas Trees already thrown to the street for recycling, we are still in the midst of Christmas), much of the world has turned its sight toward the New Year. Depending on whether you hear this on Wednesday or Sunday, you will either be hearing this a few days before New Year’s or a few days afterwards. 

If you’re like me, maybe you struggle a little bit with your New Year’s Resolutions, perhaps having entirely given up on them. You wouldn’t be alone, that’s for sure. 

But, whether or not you make New Year Resolutions, I wanted to take a moment this week and break some of the myths surrounding the resolve we have when it comes to making changes in our lives. 

Whatever resolution I come up with, in the years I do make a resolution, whether it is consistently to go to the gym at least three times a week, to cut down on fast food, or to take a shot at a dry January… Man, I sometimes feel like the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Romans. In Chapter 7, he writes, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

The struggle with choosing the good and avoiding the wrong is one that has perplexed Christians and engaged theologians since the first century. 

An English monk in the fourth century named Pelagius dealt with the struggle by insisting that what was needed was, quite simply, for Christians to try harder. He was disappointed by the moral laxity of other Christians, particularly in Rome, blaming their moral laxity on their understanding of divine grace. He insisted they were using grace as a ticket not to try to be better Christians, that humans actually could, through their own nature, choose the good and resist the bad, that we had the strength within us, the resolve, to do what we should do. 

You may be surprised to find out that the church responded to the teachings of Pelagius by insisting they were heretical, contrary to the fundamental claims of the Christian faith. 

One of the strongest critics of Pelagius was the great African bishop, St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine insisted that, contrary to the teachings of Pelagius, God does not redeem us according to our own merit but instead out of God’s love and forgiveness for us. Furthermore, Augustine insisted that we are not capable of living a sinless life on our own but that, instead, it is only the grace of God which enables us to grow and change and become more Christlike.

So, what does this all have to do with New Year’s Eve? Well, a few things. First off, the fact that you find it so hard to do the good you want and avoid the bad is because of the brokenness of your human nature. It’s not you yourself that’s somehow worse than everyone else. We were created good, but from the beginning humanity has chosen poorly. So, it’s  not surprising that few resolutions last much past those first weeks of January.

And if you are doing a New Year’s Resolution because you view yourself as deficient, or somehow less than… I’d caution you against that. I mean, remember, despite our inner will being somewhat broken, God looks at you and declares you as beloved. Yes, God looks at you, with all your struggles and failures, and loves you precisely as you are. There is nothing you can do to make God love you less, and there is nothing you can do (including keeping all those resolutions) to make God love you more. 

Now, at the same time, resolutions to change your life, not only at New Year’s but anytime, these are a fundamental part of Christianity. Christianity is indeed about all of us trying to be more like Jesus. But changes in your life come after you are able to accept how much God loves you, that God forgives you when you fail. 

It is when we exit the shame spiral that we so often put ourselves in, that we are able to approach resolutions differently. Because then you are approaching your resolutions, not just with the resolve of your own will, kind of white-knuckling it, but instead you are approaching your resolutions with the grace of the Holy Spirit active in your life, strengthening your will when it becomes weak. 

You cannot do this on your own. But with the grace of God working within you, and with a supportive community of faith that calls out the best in you, you can, little by little, bit by bit, become more like Jesus, become more merciful, more just, and more faithful. The trick isn’t to try harder, though. The trick is to open yourself more fully to God’s love and grace, and to trust that God’s love and grace truly are 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. 

In his Christmas Message, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Michael Curry, drew our attention to a campaign that  our church put out in the late 1930s. Refugees were fleeing tyranny, evil, injustice, bigotry, and hatred in Europe in the lead-up to World War II. Our church, alongside of other Christians and Jewish people in the United States, worked to save as many refugees as they could—though history is clear that we failed in doing as much as was needed.

To generate support for the work, our church created a poster of the Holy Family. Mary is holding the baby Jesus in her arms while riding a donkey, with Joseph walking with them. The line at the bottom of the poster said, “In the name of these refugees, aid all refugees.”

With that in mind, I thought this special Christmas Mythbusters would be a good time to try to break through some of the sentimentality of Christmas to get at the heart of the matter—particularly as it relates to refugees.

After all, Christians often forget that the Holy Family was indeed a refugee family. They lived under an oppressive and violent regime and fled across borders to Egypt in the hope of finding safety from the murderous rage of King Herod. 

Our Lord told us, once he grew up, that what we do for the least of these we do for him, which means our faithfulness as disciples of Jesus rests, in part, in our ability to perceive Christ in the vulnerable, oppressed, and marginalized, and to do something about it.  

The United Nations Refugee agency has tracked 82.4 million people around the world who have been forced to flee their home, with 26.5 million of them being identified as refugees. Of that number, about half are children under the age of 18. Eighty-six percent of all refugees are hosted in developing countries and sixty-eight percent of all refugees come from just five countries: the Syrian Arab Republic, Venezuela, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and Myanmar.  

Before the Trump Administration, our country was a leader in responding to refugees around the world, offering refuge to more people than all other nations combined. However, the previous administration drastically reduced those numbers and imposed new security vetting which leaves many refugees in dangerous situations for prolonged periods of time as they wait for their applications to be processed. 

President Biden increased the cap that President Trump had set, moving it from 15,000 refugees to 62,500 refugees. In September, he pledged to increase that cap to 125,000 refugees. However, President Biden has not yet reformed the policies and practices of our refugee system, nor has he dedicated significant resources and personnel to streamline the application process. For that reason, only 7,500 refugees have been resettled under his administration as of this past fall, far below his initial cap of 62,500. 

As we consider the celebration of our Lord’s Nativity on Christmas, we would do well to reflect upon the point of the incarnation. In the Christ-child, God chose not only to take on human nature, but also to located himself among the vulnerable. 

And throughout his ministry, when Jesus encountered injustice and marginalization, he acted. He told an oppressed people that when somebody smacks you on the cheek, you stand up and offer the other cheek, claiming your own humanity and dignity against those who would demean you. He sent the religious away in shame when they tried to make him complicit in the stoning of a woman caught in adultery (notice, they didn’t bother bringing the man). Jesus cleansed the temple when the Court of the Gentiles was turned into a marketplace, insisting it should be a house of prayer for all nations.

As we celebrate a holy family who lived as refugees, I hope that Christians of all traditions will find themselves inspired to work anew for the plight of refugees in our world today. After all, Democrats do like to campaign on moral issues like these, but it will take the will of the people pushing them hard to get those in leadership to make substantive changes to the systems that contribute to the current refugee crisis. 

In the name of these refugees—Joseph, Mary, and Jesus—let us aid all refugees. 

And if you’d like to take some time right now to make a difference in the life of refugees you can go to episcopalmigrationministries.org and find a variety of ways that you can take action and make a difference. 

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 United States Supreme Court has decided to let stand an abortion law in Texas which bans abortion after six weeks and allows any private citizen to sue a doctor or other individual helping someone get an abortion. The Court did agree that abortion providers could sue the state for this law, but as that works is way through the judicial system, abortion in Texas is now effectively banned after six weeks, which is before may women even know they are pregnant. 

At the same time, we are also awaiting a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a suit based on a law in Mississippi that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, contrary to prior Supreme Court precedent which has long held the point of viability of the fetus as the point at which abortion can be banned. 

All of this makes today a good day to break some of the myths out there about what Christians can and cannot believe when it comes to abortion. This is important because much of the so-called “right-to-life movement” rests upon modern political and philosophical arguments and not upon the actual Biblical witness.

Now, I want to be clear; abortion is a massively tragic choice that women face. My own denomination, The Episcopal Church, spoke clearly in a 1994 resolution that “all human life is sacred from its inception until death.” At the same time, the resolution was clear that legislation will not address the root cause of abortions. Our church expressed “its unequivocal opposition to any legislative, executive or judicial action on the part of local, state or national governments that abridges the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to safe means of acting on her decision.”

The position  of my church rests upon an acknowledgement that the biblical witness on the question of abortion reflects a nuance when it comes to the questions of personhood and the sanctity of life. Those who claim that a fetus is the equivalent to a human being from a moral and ethical standpoint cannot make that claim based on Scripture. Exodus 21:22–25, for example, is clear that if violence causes a miscarriage, the penalty is different than if you murder someone. Numbers 5 describes a ritual a woman must go through if she is accused of adultery, where the priest gives her something called “the water of bitterness.” And if she has committed adultery, the water will “make your uterus drop, your womb discharge.” 

Both of these texts absolutely reflect the patriarchy of the time. In the Exodus text, for example, the husband determines the punishment for the loss of the fetus and there is not any corresponding violent ritual a for a man accused of adultery in the book of Numbers. Thankfully, given the fulfillment of the law through Jesus Christ, we are no longer bound by these commandments. Instead, Jesus told us that love of God and love of neighbor is the principle upon which all laws must rest. 

So, the question for the Christian is what does love of God and love of neighbor require of us? What does a true respect for the sanctity of life require? 

First, it requires respecting the sanctity and personhood of every woman. That means that when a woman is faced with a tragic and difficult circumstance, the church should support her , help her make her own informed decision about what is best. And then, after she makes that decision, the church should walk alongside of her. 

The second thing a Christian should do is advocate for policies that reduce the number of abortions in our country. I mean, let’s be clear, countries with the most restrictive laws on abortion also actually have the highest rates of abortion. Instead it is policies like increased access to healthcare and birth control that actually results in far fewer abortions. For example, a Contraceptive CHOICE project in St. Louis gave women free contraceptive counseling and the contraception of their choice and the average annual abortion rate among participants was .97%—compared with the 4.2%, the rate of sexually active teens. 

If this court does strike down Roe v. Wade, the lives of women in our country will be put at risk. Abortions laws will immediately take effect that will restrict access, which will increase the danger to women. And Christians will be complicit in the lives lost by this change. 

Make no mistake, a true value of the sanctity of all life—including the lives of women—means that we must not use laws or courts to strip women of the ability to make this incredibly difficult choice. It’s cruel and the cost will be high. 

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.