May 15, 2009

CHICAGO – The Rev. Brooks Anderson is traveling to Iraq May 16 to extend a hand of friendship to the people there. "It's timely and feels Spirit-led," said Anderson, 76, Duluth, Minn., a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Anderson will spend six days in the northeastern Kurdish village of Raniyah. He's traveling with five others from Duluth in hopes of establishing lasting ties between the cities.

"Building friendships across boundaries that divide us is always a good thing, and sometimes critical to peacemaking," Anderson said. "We call it grassroots citizen diplomacy."

The goal may seem farfetched to outsiders, but less so in Duluth. Anderson accomplished a similar feat with Russia during the Cold War in 1986 when he led a group to Petrozavodsk.

The visit blossomed into a sister city relationship that led to hundreds of "people exchanges" in areas such as music, medicine and the arts. Each city alternates hosting an annual language camp.

"I could go through a half a dozen issues where Brooks got things rolling in the community," said County Commissioner Steve O'Neil, Duluth.

The Iraq visit mirrors the avenue taken with Russia. Citizens are reaching out on their own rather than in any official capacity. Rather than a "sister city project," the trip is dubbed an "exploratory visit." A youth center in Raniyah is hosting the Duluthians, who'll tour government centers, marketplaces, refugee camps and other sites to meet the Kurdish people.

"Meeting face to face is a great way to build bridges and dispel fears between people," said Tom Morgan, a Russian studies and literature professor making the trip. He also traveled to Petrozavodsk on the initial trip, but only after much arm- twisting by Anderson.

"I thought it was crazy," Morgan said. "The idea that anyone from the West could travel to Russia and say, ‘We want to be your friends' wasn't realistic. Well, look what happened."

Anderson, ordained 50 years ago, is a member of First Lutheran Church, Duluth. He helped the congregation establish relationships with communities in El Salvador and Namibia.

He arrived in Duluth as a Lutheran campus minister in the 1960s as civil-rights and anti-Vietnam war movements stirred. He marched in Selma, Ala., fought discriminatory housing practices in Duluth and led war protests. Colleagues say his activism often marginalized him in the church.

"He was looked upon with mixed feelings," said the Rev. Dan Bergeland, a retired ELCA pastor and First Lutheran member. "Some thought he was ‘out there.' He was often ahead of the issues and at the front end. People now see that he was right. At the time, there was resistance."

Anderson chaired the Duluth mayor's energy council and promoted energy efficiency in the 1970s. He opened a peace center in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he led forums on sexual orientation with his gay son and launched a local chapter of the support group PFLAG (Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

Nine years ago, he spent three months in prison after being arrested with a Catholic nun, Methodist minister and others protesting the School of Americas at Fort Benning, a U.S. Army military base in Georgia that trains Latin American military officers.

Anderson views himself as a peacemaker and that's why he's now headed to Iraq.

"Obama can't turn it around alone," he said. "The best way to bring about peace is not with angry rhetoric. We need people reaching out to people."

ELCA News Service