The Very Rev. Micah Cronin stepped into a role no openly transgender person had held before in the Episcopal Church — senior priest and chief executive of a cathedral. At 30 years old, Cronin became dean of All Saints’ Cathedral in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, last August, making history as the first known out transgender dean of any Episcopal cathedral.
At a glance
- Historic appointment: Cronin is the first known out transgender person to serve as dean of any Episcopal cathedral in the United States.
- All Saints’ Cathedral: The Milwaukee congregation averages about 70 people on a Sunday, giving Cronin an intimate community from which to lead.
- Episcopal leadership: A dean carries the honorific “Very Reverend” and functions as the senior priest and chief executive of a cathedral, overseeing daily life, management, and worship.
A winding path to the altar
Cronin did not begin his faith journey in the Episcopal Church. He was raised in conservative Methodist congregations, later attending Wesleyan churches and a Wesleyan college — a more conservative Methodist denomination — where he said he did not feel accepted as a trans man.
An acquaintance eventually told him the Episcopal Church was more welcoming, and Cronin began attending Episcopal services. He was drawn to the Eucharist, the sacrament in which bread and wine are consecrated and shared to commemorate the Last Supper.
“I just kind of felt this pull toward Holy Communion, toward the altar,” he told the Episcopal News Service.
He went on to attend Princeton Theological Seminary, where he served as a lay chaplain at a psychiatric hospital in Trenton, New Jersey. He was later ordained as a deacon and then a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey. He married a Presbyterian pastor and relocated to Wisconsin before accepting the deanship at All Saints’ Cathedral.
Why the moment matters
Cronin’s appointment arrives at a time when transgender people face escalating political pressure across the United States. He sees his role as an act of witness that extends well beyond the cathedral walls.
“Trans people are kind of being used as a sort of bogeyman,” he told the Episcopal News Service. “Just by me existing as a trans person and as a priest, I get to have conversations with people that very few people get to have. I think we have a chance to preach the Gospel in places it wouldn’t otherwise be heard.”
Aaron Scott, the Episcopal Church’s staff officer for gender justice, framed the appointment in scriptural terms, citing Romans 14:13 — a verse urging believers neither to judge nor to block others. “It’s powerful for The Episcopal Church to be able to live that scripture out, especially in a time when discrimination and scapegoating of transgender people is escalating,” Scott said. “They are showing what it looks like when Christians remove those stumbling blocks, so that God and the people can simply call the right person for the job.”
Cronin’s appointment is one of many LGBTQ+ rights wins that signal shifting norms inside institutions long considered resistant to change.
The Episcopal Church’s longer arc
The Episcopal Church has moved gradually but meaningfully on LGBTQ+ inclusion over recent decades. It ordained its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in 2003 C.E., and has since adopted liturgies for same-sex blessings and marriage. Cronin acknowledged that arc directly.
“I am really proud of how far The Episcopal Church has moved to welcome and include,” he said.
Still, the path is uneven. Not every diocese or congregation within the Episcopal Church has embraced the same degree of inclusion, and some remain in ongoing tension with the church’s national leadership over questions of gender and sexuality. Cronin’s cathedral averages a congregation of about 70 on Sundays — a small community, not a flagship institution — which means the work of cultural change ahead of him is real and local, not just symbolic.
Read more
For more on this story, see: LGBTQ Nation
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- New Zealand lifts blood donation ban on gay and bisexual men
- Cuba lets trans people update gender markers through self-identification
- The Good News for Humankind archive on LGBTQ+ rights
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