Letter from Dan Ford to those attending the Listening Event

To: All those attending the “listening event”, the anti-racism task force, and the NID congregations of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

Please listen,

The leader/facilitator of the program/process, Rev. Joseph Barndt, an ELCA minister mocks God’s great act of liberating Israel from Egypt, in his 1991 book DISMANTLING RACISM, published by Augsburg Fortress.

History shows that when people are pushed to the bottom, they refuse to stay there. From the time when Moses led the uprising of the Hebrews, through the rebellion of oppressed people all over the world in our own day, those who are stripped of dignity and their basic human rights will rise in strength demanding that which God has promised to all people. (25 Barndt).

This great deliverance of Israel, by God alone, is the subject of thousands of verses of Scripture. To this very day, all true believers worship and glorify God for this gracious act.

The most important point of the “listening event” is that the task force has—in fact—two very different presentations. The first presentation is a slide show you will see tonight. The slide show correctly calls racism a sin—this is from the LCMS’s CTCR study done in 1994, Racism and the Church, and this is the definition our congregations are totally familiar with.

The goal of the “listening event” is to get our congregations to agree to encourage individuals to participate in training. A fifty page Participant’s Workbook has already been prepared for this training and is-very carefully-being kept from you. Please read these quotes from the Participant’s Workbook attached to see the to see the second-very different-definition of racism that will be used in those training sessions.

Race Prejudice + The misuse of power by systems and institutions = Racism (4 Participant’s Workbook).

All salespeople recognize this practice as “bait and switch”.

Your congregation has never used, or perhaps never seen this definition of racism before and it would not be acceptable to the vast majority of our members.

The workbook definition comes from Barndt’s book. His confused thinking has lead him to conclude: “In the United States, racism is a white problem, and only a white problem.” He also pontificates that “In the United States, people of color cannot be racist because they lack the power to enforce their prejudices.” Please read the quotes from pages 34,35,36,37 of his book.

Racism Is a White Problem
If we define racism as prejudice plus power, the obvious question is, who’s got the power? And the answer is equally obvious. In the United States, only one racial group has the power to impose its will upon and exploit other racial groups. Only one racial group has the power to pretend that racism does not exist. Therefore, in the United States, racism is a white problem, and only a white problem.

This conclusion will be traumatic for many readers of this book. The first difficulty is the assertion that racism is only a white problem, that it is exclusively a disorder of white people and not of people of color. The second and most important difficulty is that if racism is a white problem, it changes dramatically the way we look at and attempt to solve it. (34-35 Barndt).

Does this mean that people of color are not racist? In the United States, people of color cannot be racist because they lack the power to enforce their prejudices. (35 Barndt).

The racial problem of the United States is not a minority problem. It is a majority problem. The cause is in the white society. The effects are felt in the communities of color. The problems of African American, Native American, Hispanics, and Asians are only the symptoms of European America’s sickness. (37 Banrdt).

To turn Rev. Barndt’s thinking into something acceptable to thinking Christians is a fool’s errand. To invite this mocker of our Lord and His deliverance into our Church and expect our Lord to bless our work is even more foolish.

Dan Ford