First for TEC: The Episcopal Church Installs a Transgender Cathedral Dean

The hollowed-out Episcopal Church has demonstrated for all to see that the less you believe, the faster you dissipate.

COMMENTARY

By David Virtue, DD | www.virtueonline.org | September 8, 2026

The Episcopal Church and the United Methodist Church are in a race to the bottom. The only question is who will get there first?

The Episcopal Church has just installed its first transgender cathedral dean in the Diocese of Wisconsin — a diocese that was three dioceses and is now one, for the simple reason that if you cannot make new converts, the next best thing is death by a thousand cuts. That may answer the question.

All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee recently installed the Very Rev. Micah Cronin as its new dean. He — formerly she — is the first transgender-identifying dean in the history of the Episcopal Church. Cronin is a biological woman who identifies as a man, married to another biological woman, the Rev. Elias Henry, who also identifies as transgender and serves at a Lutheran, LGBT-affirming campus ministry at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

So from two genders we briefly jumped to four, and now we are back to two. Confused? Stay with me.

The Breadcrumbs of Orthodoxy

Progressives now feed off the breadcrumbs of Anglican orthodoxy — a little creed, a touch of liturgy, coupled with a sermon on inclusion. Wrap it in Anglo-Catholic Eucharist, garnish it with smells and bells, and hey presto, the new reforming Episcopal Church emerges from its chrysalis into a new sexual dawn, hopefully blessed by the Trinity. If god were not dead, maybe she wishes she were.

The hollowed-out Episcopal Church has demonstrated for all to see that the less you believe, the faster you dissipate. Thus it ever was. The feeding of the Episcopal 2.5 million is now down to just over 400,000 — faithful, or is it faithless, souls; Boomers longing for a columbarium to relieve themselves of the pain of spiritual cancer.

African Methodists came to the rescue of North American Methodism. African Anglicans came to the rescue of North American Episcopalians. God is not mocked; He never is. The stones would cry out, but not this week, despite newfound sexualities for the Episcopal Church to embrace. A remnant of the faithful remains. The Episcopal Church will not end with a bang, but a whimper.

This new historic milestone will undoubtedly be received with joy by Anglicans in Canada and by the Church of England as it heads, Gadarene-like, into the Thames over same-sex marriage.

The Episcopal Church doesn’t want you to be confused. Sit back and relax; it’s all part of the plan. God loves absolutely everybody, regardless of who you think you were, now are, or want to be in the future. Don’t let sexual confusion get in the way. If you didn’t choose it, you can always say you were born that way, and that will get you off the hook. In the end you can blame God for messing up your genes, so just carry on.

The church of confusion has become the church of affirmation. Be All You Can Be is the Episcopal Church’s new motto. Come as you are, stay as you are, just bring the wine and wafers.

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 in the Episcopal Church.

It is ironic that the more the Episcopal Church keeps screaming that God loves and accepts absolutely everybody, the more the pews empty. Why did gays not come rushing in when they learned that the red doors could swing both ways? Nope. They never came. And don’t look for transgender Americans to fill pews; there are not that many of them to start with.

The Restless Heart

Jesus indiscriminately welcomed sinners — from a Gentile woman at a well to a short Jewish man up a tree who collected taxes. He called them to repentance. They complied.

Historically, Christianity has never said that our feelings matter or that they determine what is true. Looking for your “authentic self” can lead you into some pretty nasty corners of yourself. You might not want to go there. People who go in search of themselves tend to deserve exactly what they find.

Our identity is defined by God; it is not shaped by our sexual preferences. Our “authentic self” is not the highest spiritual goal. Scripture instead calls Christians to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Christ.

For one of the great fathers of the church, St. Augustine, the self is not an autonomous, self-defining entity but a soul whose true identity and peace are found only in God, revealed through inward reflection and confession. His famous line — “our heart is restless until it rests in you” — names an ache that no reinvention of the self can cure. Mr/Mrs/They Cronin hasn’t figured that out.

The Empty Math

A little arithmetic helps here. All Saints’ Cathedral reportedly draws an average of only about 70 worshippers on a typical Sunday, most of them Boomers, in a Gothic-Revival building of the kind that seats between 300 and 350 when full. That empty math is the whole church in miniature. The median Episcopal parish now draws just 38 people on a Sunday, and 92 percent of all parishes report an average Sunday attendance under 150 — in buildings whose median seating capacity is 165.

Churchwide, in-person Sunday attendance in 2024 stood at 413,034, essentially flat and still more than a quarter below where it was before COVID. Baptisms — the surest sign of a church replenishing itself — fell to 19,624 in 2024, down from more than 28,000 a decade earlier. The median age of an Episcopalian is now 60. A church that cannot baptize its way even to replacement is a church quietly arranging its own funeral.

Wisconsin itself is a parable of the decline. In 2024, three Episcopal dioceses — Milwaukee, Fond du Lac, and Eau Claire — were folded into a single Diocese of Wisconsin, the ecclesiastical equivalent of merging three failing branches to keep one storefront open. The reunited body launched with, on paper, some 11,500 baptized members across 101 congregations. The paper flatters it. As recently as 2015 those three dioceses counted 15,902 members between them; by 2023 the figure had fallen to 10,535 — a third of the flock gone in eight years.

For 2024 there is no official membership number at all, because the Episcopal Church, unable to make sense of its own redesigned questionnaire, simply declined to report a churchwide total. What can be counted is who actually turns up: across the entire state, all 98 remaining congregations of the Diocese of Wisconsin together drew an average of 3,997 worshippers on a Sunday in 2024. Not quite four thousand souls — in a state of nearly six million.

For decades, progressive Christian leaders have argued that churches must rethink historic teaching on sexuality, marriage, and gender in order to remain relevant to modern society. If cultural accommodation is supposed to make Christianity more attractive, where are all the people?

Evangelicals Should Not Gloat

Evangelicals should not gloat. Several big-time names have gone soft on the subject, and among the worst was a father-and-son team, Richard and Christopher Hays. Richard B. Hays was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of the past forty years; though a United Methodist who taught at Duke, his work long furnished conservatives with their most-cited scholarly case against same-sex relationships. His 1996 book, *The Moral Vision of the New Testament*, was for a generation the traditionalist’s standard authority. His son, Christopher, is an Old Testament scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary. In 2024 the two jointly published *The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story*, which reverses Richard’s earlier position and argues for a fully LGBTQ-affirming ethic — framed, in Richard’s own word, as a *metanoia*, a repentance for the very work that had made his name. He died in January 2025, months after the book appeared, his recantation his last public act.

The Apostle Paul’s charge in Romans 12:2 — “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” — is not a text you will hear exegeted from a progressive pulpit. Were anyone to try, the walls would likely cave in.

David W. Virtue, DD, is founder and managing editor of VirtueOnline. His writings can be found at www.virtueonline.org, where you can subscribe to receive his free biweekly VIEWPOINTS. His Substack on the Middle East is at davidvirtue2.substack.com.