Christian Mythbusters

Fr. Jared C. Cramer
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Christian Mythbusters

Each week Father Jared Cramer, the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, MI, offers a brief 3-5 minute episode where he tried to unpack, debunk, and reconsider some of the ways we often think about Christianity and the church.

  1. 4 DAYS AGO

    Voting, Patriarchy, and Christianity's Complicity in Systemic Sin

    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. Speaking of playing whackamole with attacks on marginalized groups, we got a new one out of left field this past week. Republicans in the House of Representatives have reintroduced the SAVE Act, legislation originally drafted last year that purports to “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility,” hence the acronym “SAVE.” What it actually does is mandate that Americans show proof of citizenship when they are registering to vote. While that might seem reasonable, the way in which the act requires this proof to be demonstrated is through providing either a passport or a birth certificate with matching photo ID. If you still haven’t caught the difficulty here, let’s drill in a bit further. About a half of all Americans do not have a passports, so they will have to use the alternative option. The problem there is that anyone who has changed their name since birth (say, for example, a woman who got married) would not be able to provide sufficient documentation because their birth certificate name does not match the name on their photo ID. The bill does not mention a marriage certificate or name change document. While the law does require states to establish a process for additional documentation, but that would now vary state to state and who knows what would be determined to be acceptable. About one in ten Americans do not have ready access to documents to prove their citizenship. What do you think they will do under this bill? They probably just won’t bother registering to vote.Repeated studies have shown that cases of non-citizens voting are extremely rare and that laws like this tend to disproportionately impact minorities—not to mention that now every time a married woman wants to register to vote, she will have to dig out her birth certificate and her marriage license (and that’s assuming that would even be enough). And do you want to guess how this will be used in some states to keep trans people from voting, because their names also won’t match their birth certificate? This is not about safeguarding elections. This is about keeping women, minorities, the poor, and marginalized groups away from the polls by any means necessary.So, why, you may ask, am I going on and on about this act in an episode of Christian Mythbusters. After all, this series is about countering some common misconceptions about the Christian faith. I’m glad you asked. This bill is a perfect example of the blindness of patriarchy and the burdens of not having wealth and privilege. And, much to my dismay, Christianity has far too often been a pillar of patriarchy instead of the tool used to dismantle it. Christianity has far too often been used to protect those with wealth and privilege instead of being a driving force of Good News for the poor and suffering.I’m not surprised that a bunch of wealthy men with privilege, all of whom probably have passports, don’t think this sort of legislation is a burden. They don’t know what it’s like to live in a world were you have to change your name or where you barely have resources to put food on the table much less keep a lock box to organize things like a birth certificate and marriage license.And so it is essential that Christians are the first to speak up on issues like this. Followers of Jesus should be the voice of the voiceless, the first to respond when systems seek to push whole groups of people to the side. Stay tuned, next week I’ll tell you why. Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time,

    4 min

  2. FEB 20

    God, Creation, and Gender

    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. It feels a little bit like we’re all playing whack-a-mole right now, what with all the attacks on marginalized groups along with the promotion of hateful and harmful rhetoric. In this week’s edition of Christian Mythbusters, I’d like to take a hot moment to stand with my trans siblings and break the myth of the gender binary nature of God’s creation.One of the first things many Christians do when you get into conversations of gender and sexuality is they go back to the start of the Bible, in the book of Genesis, to insist that the structure of male and female in marriage was part of the way God ordained creation itself to exist. There are so many errors to unpack here. Let’s get started.First, what you have in Genesis one is what’s known as a series of merisms. This is a rhetorical device where you use two contrasting parts to refer to the whole. So, for example, instead of saying you searched everywhere for something, you might say you searched “high and low.” If you said you searched “high and low” no one would think you didn’t search in the middle or assume only high and low existed. It’s a figure of speech. So, God in Genesis one, we hear about water and land, light and darkness, morning and evening, sea creatures and wingèd birds in the sky, and so on and so forth. So, when it comes to the creation of humanity, we read that “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”But that doesn’t mean that only male and female exist within humanity any more than Genesis one might mean that there is only light and darkness and nothing in between.  The brilliant poet David Gate articulated this beautifully in a poem he wrote after the tragic death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary student who died by suicide after a year of bullying at school. The poem goes like this:If God created he night & the day& the dawn, of course& the dusk& the tangerine rosepink sunset& in the infant bright of morning& the deep amethyst of twilightThen to perceive the world in binary is to forego knowledge of the divineI couldn’t say it better myself. And, if both male and female were created from God and in God’s image, then we are reminded, of course, that God is neither male nor female. God is a non-binary entity, the divine source of all who holds all genders within God’s being. God is the original they/them. And when God created humanity, God made male and female and everything in between, God made people cisgender and transgender, nonbinary and genderfluid, agender and genderqueeer and intersex and bigender… God made all of these realities and expressions of gender, and just like when you look at the rich variety of daylight blending into evening, God looked at all those genders that came out of God’s own image… and God said they were very good.God said you were very good. And never let anyone tell you otherwise. 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.

    3 min

  3. FEB 14

    There Is Enough for All

    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 tried to break some of the myths that have been cropping up about the “Order of Love” in Christian theology and ethics, particularly the way that Vice-President JD Vance and his supporters have used that concept to insist that Americans should take care of their own first because your own people rank ahead of other people in the “Order of Love;” You love your own people and then strangers and foreigners. Some have said that the problem Vance is identifying isn’t a desire to exclude some people from love, but that this is really all about a limitation of resources, that this was the point Vance was trying to make: you feed your family before you feed the stranger. The problem with that idea is two-fold. First, you cannot extrapolate the responsibilities of the individual onto the responsibilities of the most powerful country in the world. Surely, we, as a society and a people, have greater responsibilities than any of us could hold individually. While I, as a husband and father, have very distinct responsibilities to my wife and child, responsibilities I cannot shirk while I run around the world helping others, it’s different when you are talking about a nation… especially a nation like ours. One of the big reasons it’s different is because the idea that we have limited resources and so have to take care of our own before we help the vulnerable in the world is just patently false. There is no scarcity of resources here. We are by far the wealthiest country in the world, holding over 30% of all household wealth. Second behind us is China with 18.6%, then Japan with 5%, Germany with 3.8%, and the UK with 3.5%. Did you catch that, we have over 30% of all household wealth and our siblings in the UK only have 3.5%. So, for leaders in our country to say we do not have the resources to help those fleeing violence and poverty is not just false, it is obscenely false. So, let’s be clear, our country can absolutely reach out in support of others, we can follow international law for the welcome and resettlement of refugees, we can build a new rational immigration policy that is not based on racist quotas, we can do all of that and absolutely still care for our families. Nothing is stopping us. (Other than, perhaps, the wealthy and powerful who would prefer the system keeps benefitting them.)To say that we have to take care of our own people and stop doing our part to take care of the vulnerable elsewhere in the world is the ultimate false choice. We have enough to do both. As a country, we have resources to help the vulnerable. And to insist that the order of love requires us to take care of our own and turn our back on the rest of the world is a twisting of Augustinian and Thomistic theology of the highest order. It is contrary to the very basic teachings of Jesus Christ himself, who calls us to remember that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him. Rightly ordered love, in truth, orders us to extend our love, our resources, out from our own people to heal a world broken by sin, violence, and injustice. Love orders us out, not in. 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.

    3 min

  4. FEB 4

    The Order of Love

    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, it’s not every day that the latest in politics gets people debating about Augustinian theology or the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, but we do indeed live in strange times.Last Thursday Vice-President J.D. Vance gave an interview where he claimed that the concept of ordo amoris(the order of love, or, love rightly ordered) was what lay behind his views on immigration and refugees. He said the concept was “that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” Now, Vice-President Vance is correct in one thing, order amoris does exist as a theological and ethical concept in the Christian religion. However, as a relatively new convert, the way he is using it in this context demonstrates that he is lacking in catechetical instruction about this concept and how it applies in the life of the follower of Jesus. St. Augustine wrote about this in De Doctrina, when he talked about holiness of life involving keeping your affections under control and loving rightly. That is, not loving things you ought not to love, nor loving things more (or less) then you should. This concept was picked up by Aquinas in Summa Theologica, where he defined the ordo caritatis (the order of charity, or, rightly ordered charity). In that work, he cited Augustine to insist that Christians must love all people equally, but that the manifestation of that love runs out in concentric circles of interconnectedness. Since then, many have taken to social media, either in defense of or in criticism of how Vance is interpreting the application of the order of love, particularly with regard to the policies of our country. One of the best responses I have read came from Mark Clavier, a priest and theologian whose doctoral work was on St. Augustine of Hippo. As Mark so aptly articulates, the point actually being made by Augustine and Aquinas is that to love rightly we must begin by loving that which is the highest good—God. In Mark’s words, “This does not mean rejecting the love of family, place, or work. Rather, these loves only find their true form when they are rooted in the love of God and a generous love of neighbor. Left to itself, love folds inward and becomes possessive, seeking to claim rather than give.”What Vance has unfortunately missed is the starting point of the order of love. It’s not your family. It’s certainly not yourself and your people. The starting point is the love of God as made manifest in our love of Christ, his Son. When Christ is at the center, our love will indeed pour out in concentric circles, pushing beyond the natural boundaries we tend to create. It will push us beyond our family and friends, our own country and people. It will propel you into love for the marginalized and vulnerable. Because Jesus told us clearly in Matthew 25 that loving them was how we love him—and remember, love of him is at the center. It will propel you into love for the immigrant and stranger, because the love of Jesus crossed those lines in his own ministry, often to the discomfort even of his own disciples. It will propel you even into love of your enemy, a love that Jesus said was the new teaching he brought in the Sermon on the Mount.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,

    3 min

  5. JAN 28

    Myths of Christianity & Immigration, Part Two

    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 my last segment, I unpacked some of the history behind our current immigration laws, pointing how they were developed in service of white supremacy and that their current manifestation still is predicated upon a preference for one group of people over another. So, telling people to get in line and follow the law is not only rather ignorant of the reality of the law and the line (remember, the line is twenty years for Mexico and less than one for a country in Europe), but it misses the reality that these laws are antithetical to central tenets of the Christian faith, especially the importance of the sacred dignity of every human being. This week, as we continue to try to chip away at the myths of a Christian response to immigration, I’d like to offer an alternative perspective. First, while conservative Christians like quoting some parts of Leviticus they oddly enough miss others. For example, in chapter 19 the law clearly states: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”There’s a billboard on I-96, near where I live, that warns of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. I would love to put up a billboard right after it, quoting where the Bible itself tells us what the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah actually was. (Hint, it had nothing to do with homosexuality). Rather, Ezekiel 16:49 says, “This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”That was the problem in the story when the two angelic visitors came the house of Lot. The people of the city wanted to rape the foreign visitors instead of giving them the hospitality that is at the core of Ancient Near Eastern (and Biblical) ethics. So, yes, I do oddly enough agree with people who warn we are once more living in the days of Sodom. We are because the United States of America has pride, food and prosperous ease and yet when people in the world are fleeing poverty and violence, Christians are refusing to do anything to aid the poor and needy.A Christian understanding of immigration is one that seeks to respond to the real and cruel circumstances around the world, many of which our own country caused, that have provoked such continued unrest. A Christian understanding knows that we must help people now even while we work on those systemic issues. And a Christian understanding certainly doesn’t raid schools and churches because people broke an unjust law doing something that’s only been seen as a criminal act for less than one hundred years. We must demand better of our country. We must demand better of ourselves. 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.

    3 min

  6. JAN 15

    Myths of Christianity & Immigration, Part One

    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.

    4 min

  7. JAN 6

    Christianity: Not Just for the Religious

    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 am excited to be back with you for this series. I originally started airing these short segments in 2020, during the COVID-19 Pandemic and they continued through 2022. After taking a couple years off—and hearing so much kind feedback from many of you regular listeners who missed them, our parish worked to build funding back in the budget for the series to start up again. So here I am with you for episode 89! I’m recording this segment on the Feast of the Epiphany, a feast in the church that falls each year on January 6. And, as I reflected on this feast in preparation for my own parish’s celebration tonight, I found myself thinking about how this Feast actually breaks a myth—the idea that Christianity is only for religious people. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a Christian priest and so clearly I’m a pretty religious person. And I’m not one of those people who thinks religion is a bad thing or a dirty word. The word itself comes from the Latin ligare which means to bind or connect to something. So anyone who adopts practices, customs, or ways of living that seek to bind you or connect you to something is practicing some form of religion—for good or ill.In my own life, both as a priest but also just as a Christian, I have found binding myself to the teachings of Jesus, teachings of love, compassion, and mercy to be an important part of who I am. I keeps me from focusing on my own perspective or desire too much , it helps me grow as a person. But, not everyone’s as religious as a priest and that’s OK! And, as I said, the Feast of the Epiphany reminds us of that.If you know the story of the Epiphany, it’s the story of the magi from the East who came to worship the Christ child, bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrhh. Depending on how the Greek is translated, you may have heard them descried as the Three Wise Men, the Three King, or the Three Magi. The word in Greek, though, is magos and that was the same word used to refer to the Iranian priestly caste of Zoroastrianism, a group who gained an international reputation for the ancient science of astrology. A few things here are essential. First, unlike the Jewish shepherd who visited the Holy Family after the birth of Christ, the magi were certainly not Jewish. They were from another nation entirely and practiced another religion entirely. And yet, something in their own religion drew them to Jesus, leading them to offer their own gifts. Second, though it says that they worshipped the child Jesus, it doesn’t actually specify that the converted to Judaism. It’s even less likely that they would have converted to Christianity—that religion wouldn’t be founded for another thirty-some years, after Jesus died and rose again. And yet, their witness and presence is honored, both in the Biblical text and the tradition of the church.To put it another way, when Jesus was born some Persian astrologers showed up and brought gifts. They weren’t told to change their beliefs and they weren’t turned away. Their gifts were accepted and God even protected them on the way home so that Herod wouldn’t come after them.So, when I say that this day reminds us that Christianity is not just for religious people, what I mean is that one of the fundamental points of Christian belief is that the child whose birth we just celebrated, Jesus of Nazareth, came to earth for all people, to offer all people God’s transforming and merciful love. Some people respond to that love by binding themselves to it,

    4 min

  8. 11/01/2022

    The Gifts of Transgender People

    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 local PAC, “Ottawa Impact” which is currently trying to take over our school boards,  has listed as one of their core values, “A boy is a boy. A girl is a girl.” On its face, this might seem to be an innocuous statement. But it is not. It carries with it an agenda. And it is, quite literally, deadly. So, this week in Christian Mythbusters, I’d like to talk a little about gender identity, including from the perspective of the Christian faith.The problem with claiming gender is as simple as a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl is that this seeks to erase the reality of any person who does not fit within the gender binary. It literally seeks to pretend that the trans community doesn’t exist—and thus only continues the marginalization and discrimination towards those who identify as anything other than cisgender (this is the term for those whose sense of gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth). First, just from a scientific and realistic standpoint, the idea that “a boy is a boy, and a girl is a girl” ignores the reality of people who are intersex. That is, those who are born with ambiguous g******s, or genitals that do not clearly match their chromosomal gender identity due to a variety of scientifically identified conditions. Most scientists believe that somewhere between .02% or as many as 1.7% of births fall under this identification. Yes, these adults (and children) are real. And to pretend they do not exist is to participate in the culture of stigmatization and discrimination that has led to the high rates of infanticide and abandonment these people experience within their own families. Second, the true attack of this claim, I imagine, is not on the intersex community (I’m willing to allow that people may be ignorant and unaware of that scientific reality). Rather, it is directed at those who might have a clear biological gender externally but who cannot identify with that gender internally. This could be someone born as a boy who identifies as a girl, someone born as a girl who identifies as a boy, or someone who is nonbinary and does not identify as either male or female. The Mayo Clinic (clearly not a secrete cabal of liberalism) even has a helpful article for parents entitled “Children and Gender Identity: Supporting Your Child.” In that article, the staff of the Mayo Clinic stress that it is common for children to go through periods of gender exploration when it comes to clothes and toys and even the roles they adopt in play. For some kids, however, as they get older this sense that they identify as a different gender persists. They encourage parents, “Listen to your children's feelings about gender identity. Talk to your child and ask questions without judgment.” People can become aware and able to articulate their gender identity at any age. In a non-discriminatory environment, many adults who identify as transgender can point to an awareness of that reality as young as even seven years old. Some can identify it even younger. For others, they may live for years with a vague sense that they don’t really fit in and it’s not until later in life they realize it is because of their gender identity. The reality of children and adolescents who don’t fall into the “boy/girl” categories of cisgender is an essentialreality for educators and school board members to recognize. The American Psychological Association advises “Parents of gender-nonconforming children may need to work with schools and other institutions to address their children’s particular needs and ensure their children’s safety.

    5 min
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About

Each week Father Jared Cramer, the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, MI, offers a brief 3-5 minute episode where he tried to unpack, debunk, and reconsider some of the ways we often think about Christianity and the church.

Information

  • Creator
    Fr. Jared C. Cramer
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    92
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2025 Christian Mythbusters
  • Show Website
    Christian Mythbusters

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