The Episcopal Church has apparently reached another historic milestone, although perhaps not one Christians should be celebrating.
All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee recently installed the Very Rev. Micah Cronin as its new dean, believed to be the first transgender-identifying dean in the history of the Episcopal Church. Cronin is a biological woman who identifies as a man and is married to another biological woman who identifies as transgender and serves as a pastor at an LGBT-affirming Lutheran campus ministry.
If that description sounds confusing, perhaps that is precisely the point Christians should be considering.
This is no longer simply a disagreement over how churches should welcome people struggling with sexuality or gender. It represents a much deeper theological question: Is the church supposed to affirm the identity we create for ourselves, or call us to an identity defined by God?
A Church That “Receives Me As I Am”
Cronin explained the journey in an introductory message to the congregation, describing being raised Methodist before joining the Episcopal Church at 19, around the same time as identifying as transgender.
“The churches I was raised in were not able to receive me as I am,” Cronin wrote, contrasting those experiences with the acceptance found within the Episcopal Church.
There is something important buried inside those words because Christianity absolutely teaches that Christ receives sinners. Churches should be places where broken, confused and struggling people can walk through the doors without fear of being treated with contempt.
But receiving someone is not the same thing as affirming everything that person believes about himself.
Jesus welcomed sinners, but He also called people to repentance. Christianity has never historically taught that our feelings determine reality or that discovering our “authentic self” is the highest spiritual goal. Scripture instead calls Christians to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Christ.
Paul writes in Romans 12:2, “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
That is radically different from a Christianity that increasingly seems to tell people: Come as you are, define yourself as you wish, and we will affirm you as you have defined yourself.
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The More Relevant The Church Becomes, The Fewer People Show Up
There is another part of this story that deserves attention.
All Saints’ Cathedral reportedly draws an average of only about 70 worshippers on a typical Sunday. That small number reflects a much larger problem facing the Episcopal Church.
In 2010, the denomination reported just under two million active baptized members. By 2023, that figure had fallen to approximately 1.55 million. The denomination’s 2024 reporting did not provide the same comparable membership total, but other measurements continued to demonstrate the challenge. Baptisms, for example, numbered 19,624 in 2024, compared with more than 28,000 a decade earlier.
