The Anti-Racism Project
This article discusses the collaboration of the Northern Illinois District of the LCMS with Wheat Ridge Ministries, Crossroads Ministries, and the Reverend Joseph Barndt in formulating and implementing an anti-racism project.
In 2001, the Northern Illinois District received a three-year grant from Wheat Ridge Ministries for a project entitled “Mobilizing Against Systemic Racism in the Church.” The grant was designed to enable the District to engage Crossroads Ministries as facilitators for the program. The Crossroads training program follows the ideas of the Reverend Joseph Barndt. It can best be understood by reading his books, the most recent of which is “Dismantling Racism: The Continuing Challenge to White America” (Augsburg-Fortress, 1991).
This is not the first time that Wheat Ridge has funded a project involving Crossroad Ministries and it is instructive to refer to an earlier project. In November 1995, Crossroads received a three-year grant from Wheat Ridge entitled “Crossroads Anti-Racism Network.” Crossroads’ final report for this project mentions contacts made with two denominational anti-racism projects, “Damascus Road” of the Mennonite Church
and “Journey Toward Wholeness” of the Unitarian Universalist Association. [1] The involvement by Crossroads in these two projects led to controversy within the two bodies.
The Continuum tool, a summary sheet provided by Crossroads for the projects, included “gays and lesbians” among the “socially oppressed groups” that it champions. [2] By December 1998 the Damascus Road project decided to delete such statements, in response to concerns about homosexuality expressed by the African-American and Hispanic communities within the Mennonite Church. [3] In the late fall of 1999, the
project decided to stop using Crossroads Ministries staff in any of their training events. As one of the project leaders, Conrad Moore, described it “the training needed to reflect our faith-based perspective.” They were gratified that responses from participants to their new model indicated fewer references to being “fed a party line” and none about the new faith based material feeling like an add-on. [4] Conrad Moore later described the decision to end their contract with Crossroads in these words. “We felt a real urgency that the
process be spiritually grounded, that the framework for dismantling racism would be Biblical, rather than having a secular framework draped with Bible verses.” [5]
Crossroads’ involvement in the Journey Toward Wholeness project led to major conflict in the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Criticism of Crossroads training was expressed in a lecture at the 1999 UUA General Assembly by Thandeka, a faculty member at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School, a UUA seminary. A woman of African descent, Thandeka described what she learned at one of these training sessions. “I learned three things: One. All whites in America are racists. Two. No blacks in America are racist. … Three. Whites must be shown that they are racists and confess their racism.” Her most basic objection is that this violates the covenant to “actively affirm and promote the inherent dignity of every person.” She criticized Barndt’s book “Dismantling Racism” for insisting that whites are slaves to “the original sin of racism.” “In short they need a savior.” she continued. “And in the Barndt theology, this savior
isn’t Jesus but, in a brash leap, ‘people of color.’ ” [6]
Reverend David E. Bumbaugh, responding to Thandeka, agreed with her analysis and said it helped him understand why he was “unmoved and unimpressed” by the “anti-racism agenda.” Having been involved in the movement for racial justice since the 1950s, he was disturbed to realize how the conflict over “issues of race” had come to be used to transfer power from the General Assembly of the UUA to its leadership and staff. The General Assembly had once been a “powerful body” but the conflict had been used to “declare
that the actions by the Assembly were to be understood as advisory, not mandatory.” The Assembly lost its power. “And the General Assembly became a pep-rally rather than a governing body. Distracted by race, we quietly surrendered power. And as it is in our tiny little association, so it is in the larger world.” [7]
A UUA report in spring 2000 reported on the results of replacing Crossroads training with their own. “The first staff-led training received uniformly positive reviews, unlike the contentious responses to the Crossroads-led trainings.” [8]
Perhaps the sharpest conflict resulted when Crossroads was hired to conduct anti-racism workshops at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2000. A statement issued by eight professors at the University describes the workshops as “a program for thought control.” It gives a description of Barndt’s book “Dismantling Racism,” in which racism is described as “exclusively a disorder of white people.” It describes the claims made in the book as “paranoid fantasy that cannot satisfy even minimal standards of scholarship.
Reverend Barndt has written a jeremiad having nothing to do with fact or logic.” [9]
Critics cited above include people who have long been active in the movement for racial justice, including the Mennonite leader Conrad Moore, the Reverend Bumbaugh of the UUA, and several of the signers of the University of Alabama statement. It is precisely from this perspective that they find Reverend Barndt’s analysis and the Crossroads Ministries programs so offensive. It is noteworthy that the further from Christianity the critic, the sharper the criticism. One reason for this is given in Conrad Moore’s description
of the Crossroads program as having “a secular framework draped with Bible verses.” The analysis by the university professors is the so acute precisely because they treat Barndt’s book as primarily a secular analysis.
The harmful effects of draping a radical secular description of racism with theological language is evident from Professor Thandeka’s address to the UUA. She noted that Reverend Barndt has used the classical Christian Trinitarian language of original sin and the need for a Savior in his anti-racist rhetoric. In rejecting his analysis she was led quite naturally to reject Christian Trinitarian theology as well, since they come together in the Crossroads approach.
In the Northern Illinois District, Pastor Mark Hein raised theological objections that challenged Reverend Barndt’s definition of racism. President Ameiss responded that “Crossroads is not determining our theology. They are serving as a consultant on racism only. The definition used by Crossroads is essentially the same as the definition of racism used by the 1994 CTCR document, Racism and the Church.” [10] The Planning and
Design Task Force for this project had created a subcommittee to draft a Theological Statement. The draft released in January 2002 contains a description of racism from the CTCR document. The very next paragraph contains a statement that comes straight out of the Crossroads definition of racism: “Racism is racial prejudice plus power.” As Pastor Hein has correctly observed, this contradicts the description of racism drawn from the CTCR document.
It also refutes the claim that “Crossroads is not determining our theology.” The radical ideology of the Reverend Barndt has not only entered the Theological Statement, it is embedded in the training that Crossroads has been conducting in the District. The Mennonites removed all references to oppressed groups from the Continuum tool provided by Crossroads because it had placed “gays and lesbians” along side
African and Hispanic Americans. This was not enough. A program to combat racism that can also be used to promote the gay and lesbian agenda is incompatible with Christian theology, as the Mennonite program recognized when it subsequently separated from Crossroads altogether.
Wheat Ridge staff have undergone training by Crossroads. With its May 2001 funding of the “Latino Anti-Racism Strategy,” Wheat Ridge continues to fund Crossroads projects. [11] The NID continues to employ Crossroads in its anti-racism project and has already submitted a final report for the project. [12] The original NID proposal to Wheat Ridge calls for promoting this project throughout the Synod. According to this document NID executive staff are to present this project to organizations in Synod like The district
Mission executives, the district executives of Evangelism chairmen, and the Council of Presidents. They are to convene a national conference in the District to which the people from the Synodical office and various districts will be invited. They are then to visit Synodical executives at a conference in the National office, urging them to get their departments involved in this project.
This program of the Reverend Barndt and Crossroads is typical of radical ideological programs that have gained ascendency in mainline denominations. The end result, well described by the Reverend Bumbaugh, is that the national convention becomes a “pep-rally rather than a governing body.”
Professor Charles Ford
Saint Louis University
Member of Timothy Lutheran Church (LCMS)
St. Louis, MO
Notes:
1. Crossroads Anti-Racism Network Final Report.
http://www.wheatridge.org/grants/nov_1995/crossrds.shtml
2. Continuum on becoming an Anti-Racist, Multicultural Institution.
http://www.uua.org/ga/ga98/jun26antirace.html
3. Damascus Road Newsletter, Vol. 1 No. 3, December 1998 (Issue #3)
http://www.mcc.org/damascusroad/newsletter/3.html
4. Damascus Road Newsletter, Vol. 3 No. 2, June 2000
http://www.mcc.org/damascusroad/newsletter/june2000.html
5. Damascus Road founders reflect on history, future.
http://www.charitywire.com/00-01523.htm
6. Why Anti-Racism Will Fail, by Thandeka.
http://www.uua.org/ga/ga99/238thandeka.html
7. Why Anti-Racism Will Fail: A Response, by Rev. David E. Bumbaugh.
http://www.uua.org/ga/ga99/238bumbaugh.html
8. Racism, by Tom Stites, UU World, March/April 2000
http://www.uua.org/world/0300feat1.html
9. Racism Workshops at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa long version. Professors Davis Beito,
Lawrence Clayton, Dwight Eddins, George Rable, Max Hocutt, Lawrence Kohl, Charles Nuckols and John
Swain
10. Meeting Notes, One Faith One Lord Planning and Design Task Force, May 29, 2001
11. Latino Anti-Racism Strategy.
http://www.wheatridge.org/grants/May_2001/latino.shtml
12. Mobilizing Against Systemic Racism in the Church – Final Report.
http://www.wheatridge.org/grants/Nov_2000/racism_fr.shtml
