Purchases will be donated to congregations and schools in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS), with initial shipments prioritizing locations in southeastern Wisconsin. Please expect two weeks for distribution. (If you'd like a copy of this text for yourself, please make a note at checkout.)
 
In response to the recent shooting in Utah, LCMS President Harrison issued a Facebook statement and then a formally published statement via the Lutheran Reporter. One of several troubling assertions came in a section written to young Christian men, in which he seems to use Christian as a synonym for white and frames these young men as victims: "DEI has cost you academic advancement and employment."
 
The claim is especially damaging in the context of Milwaukee as the LCMS operates schools with significant populations of Black students. At the same time that voucher payments linked to Black students make these school operations financially feasible, President Harrison seems to believe that these very students are somehow the obstacle limiting the success of white Christians. 
 
In response, we're donating reading material to local congregations and schools. We believe wholeheartedly that growth and change is always possible. 
 
About the text: Lenny Duncan is the unlikeliest of pastors. Formerly incarcerated, he is now a black preacher in the whitest denomination in the United States: the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Shifting demographics and shrinking congregations make all the headlines, but Duncan sees something else at work -- drawing a direct line between the church's lack of diversity and the church's lack of vitality. The problems the ELCA faces are theological, not sociological. But so are the answers.Part manifesto, part confession, and all love letter, Dear Church offers a bold new vision for the future of Duncan's denomination and the broader mainline Christian community of faith. Dear Church rejects the narrative of church decline and calls everyone -- leaders and laity alike -- to the front lines of the church's renewal through racial equality and justice.It is time for the church to rise up, dust itself off, and take on forces of this world that act against God: whiteness, misogyny, nationalism, homophobia, and economic injustice. Duncan gives a blueprint for the way forward and urges us to follow in the revolutionary path of Jesus.Dear Church also features a discussion guide at the back -- perfect for church groups, book clubs, and other group discussion.
 
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