Free Grace and Transphobes
A Brief Reflection on Our One Proclamation and Hope
About the author: Rev. Micah Cronin (M.Div., Princeton Theological Seminary) is an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of New Jersey. He is the Associate Rector at St. George's By the River in Rumson, New Jersey.
On Thanksgiving Day this year, I participated in that age-old American tradition: arguing about politics while eating turkey and mashed potatoes. Except, it was not my house or even my relatives. I was the guest of some friends, and along with one of them, I was fighting his relative by marriage. (The relative started it, I might add.)
However, since he started it, I sought to finish it. I will not belabor the reader with a play-by-play, but the highlight reel includes, “Dude, it’s time for you to live in reality.”; and “Do you even know how tariffs work?”; and “That’s nice, but I care about morality and truth.”
Which I do. But one could allege that the choices presented by both major parties in this year’s election cycle amounted to little more than a choice for who would bear the brunt of fascistic horror. And I really cannot argue much with that. This last wretched election cycle has made it crystal clear to me that, more than someone in a righteous search for morality and truth, I am a person who is as self-centered and fearful as the next, and more than anything, I desperately want Jesus to set me free and give me life.
This desire drives me to the core of my faith and to the one proclamation of the Church: that God, out of God’s freedom and grace, chose humanity by taking on flesh and blood in Jesus of Nazareth. On the cross and in his resurrection, he defeated sin and death for our sake so that we, too, may taste God’s freedom and life.
This one single message of the Church is what Karl Barth calls the proclamation of God’s free grace.1 When we, as Christians, focus our energies on this one proclamation, we are free to live into our calling to be Jesus’ hands and feet in the world, unencumbered (or at least less encumbered) by other agendas that so easily go off the rails or are co-opted for evil purposes, or at best distract from the person of Jesus Christ who is our only hope.
I was pondering this last week when I was invited to a private group for parents of trans kids to provide support as a clergy person. These families have been caught in the crosshairs of nasty reactionary politics, in which trans children are pawns in a high-stakes game for power over peoples’ bodies, minds, and freedom. They are facing the strong possibility that their children will lose the right to life-saving healthcare based on medical myths that have been disproven over and over again by doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists. Heaped on top of this are mountains of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, and willful ignorance about trans peoples’ needs and hopes. If anyone needs freedom and the real possibility of life, it is trans children and their families.
So, while I appreciate Barth’s understanding of the Church’s task, I also struggle a bit with how he frames it:
Because [God’s free grace] is free grace, the proclamation of the Church cannot begin with some sort of human need, concern, care, lack, or problem, nor may it take from these its content or direction. Rather, in the face of all these, it may and must announce God’s glory, His justice, wisdom, and kingdom.2
My college theology professor told me he liked Barth’s work, though it often seemed to float off the ground. I have not always agreed with him, but I am quite tempted to now. “Rather, in the face of” politicians who demand that a 16-year-old trans boy taking testosterone to align his body with his gender cease hormone therapy, who legislate that he must develop breasts and menstruate, because they simply do not like that he gets to exist with any measure of comfort, I am supposed to “announce God’s…kingdom”? God’s kingdom? Here and now? Really? Is the Kingdom of God in the room with us?
I doubt Barth would have been a trans ally. Regarding gender and sexuality, he was largely a man of his time. However, Barth was not blind to the material realities in which the Church is situated and which the Gospel encounters. His understanding of the proclamation of God’s free grace assumed that work toward real, material justice would follow it as a precursor to the full justice being ushered in by God.3 What he warned against was the temptation to “retreat”4 from prayer into good works for those who suffer, as well as worship that does not lead into work for the good of our neighbors.5 The Church’s proclamation must contain work and prayer, each deriving its meaning from Jesus’ resurrection, not our efforts to fix, adjudicate, or control reality. This is to say, the Church truly can proclaim God’s free grace for us even in the face of all the horrors of reality. The real question for me is not, “where is God?” but “where is my prayer? Where is my work?” It is in these that God’s kingdom will draw near. Jesus is drawing near to me in my relationships with these families in that they are a sign that he is alive. I cannot live as if any person or thing other than God has full power over trans peoples’ life and death. To do so would be crediting a lie exposed on that first Easter. To live and proclaim Jesus’ resurrection today means to press on in love, care, and resistance relationships in Jesus’ name.
We are still waiting to see what these next four years will bring. My heart aches for all those who find themselves even more vulnerable under the incoming administration. I am enraged on behalf of those who are terrified. But I am also alive and free even in my mortal body because of who God is to God’s very core.
I have a message to proclaim from this God in my prayers, words, and actions, and because Jesus is alive, I will not give up that proclamation for anything.
Karl Barth, “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace,” in God Here and Now, trans. Paul Van Buren (Routledge, 2003), 37.
Barth, “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace,” 37.
Barth, “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace,” 45.
Barth, “The Proclamation of God’s Free Grace,” 50.
Karl Barth, “Christian Ethics,” in God Here and Now, 113.
Thank you, this is beautiful. As an Episcopalian and the mother of an adult transgender child who transitioned only recently, I too see it as my prayer, my privilege actually, to be a voice for these families and to offer love, support and resistance against the coming storm, knowing that’s what Jesus would do.