Noah Franklin/Staff Writer PNW News
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.
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.
Wisconsin itself offers an extraordinary illustration. In 2024, three Episcopal dioceses were reunited into a single Diocese of Wisconsin after years of membership decline. The reunited diocese began with roughly 11,500 baptized members spread across 101 congregations.
For decades, progressive Christian leaders have argued that churches must rethink historic teachings on sexuality, marriage and gender to remain relevant to modern society. If cultural accommodation is supposed to make Christianity more attractive, where are all the people?
When The Church Looks Like The World
The Episcopal Church is hardly alone. Across progressive Christianity, doctrines once considered basic Christian teaching are increasingly being reconsidered through the lens of modern cultural values.
Same-sex relationships are blessed. Gender identity is separated from biological sex. Pride flags hang outside churches. Biblical passages dealing with sexuality are reinterpreted or dismissed as products of another culture, while social activism increasingly becomes central to the church’s public identity.
The intention is often described as compassion and inclusion. But there is a theological danger when compassion becomes indistinguishable from affirmation and affirmation becomes more authoritative than Scripture.
There is also an obvious practical problem. If churches continually reshape themselves to resemble the surrounding culture, they eventually have very little distinctive to offer it.
People looking for progressive politics can find them elsewhere. They don’t need stained-glass windows to hear messages about inclusion, identity, climate activism or social justice. Universities, corporations, entertainment companies, government agencies and countless advocacy organizations already provide those messages.
The church was commissioned to offer something different: the Gospel.
A Warning For Evangelicals
It would be easy for conservative Christians to look at the Episcopal Church’s decline and simply say, “Thank goodness people are leaving.”
There is reason to be thankful when Christians recognize serious departures from biblical teaching and seek churches committed to Scripture. But there should also be humility, because evangelical churches face exactly the same temptation.
Every generation of Christians feels pressure to soften whatever biblical teachings its culture finds most offensive. Today that pressure surrounds sexuality and gender. Tomorrow it may involve other doctrines entirely.
The lesson of the Episcopal Church may ultimately be much bigger than one transgender dean in Wisconsin.
Churches do not save themselves by becoming more like the world. And Christianity does not become more compassionate by withholding truths people desperately need to hear.
The world already has the world.
What it needs from the church is truth.
