McLean County Times

Illinois State University Campus Minister Phil Grizzard of Normal says white Republicans in McLean County who oppose policies he says will lead to “racial justice” are “worse than the KKK.”

Grizzard made the comments in a letter to the editor of the Bloomington Pantagraph.

“In his letter from Birmingham jail, Dr. King said that even the KKK was not as much an obstacle to racial justice as the white moderates who say ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action.,’ Grizzard wrote.

“He said people like that are worse than the KKK. Those are not my words. If you don’t like them, then you don’t like the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King,” he said.

Grizzard’s letter was his second in four weeks attacking the McLean County Republican Party for running an advertisement in the Pantagraph honoring Martin Luther King on his birthday.

In his first, Grizzard said Republicans will remain “the party of white supremacy” until they agree to “radical changes in the structure of our society,” including higher taxes and “immense federal government intervention” to defund police and prisons and ban states from requiring voters show proof of identification.

“White supremacy is the notion that our white privileged society is just fine as it is and does not need any structural changes that would make things fair for Black people and all people of color,” he wrote. 

Grizzard, a Normal native, is a frequent commentator on political issues.

In January 2021, he said U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Peoria) "can no longer be considered a respected leader" and that he was a "stain on central Illinois and indeed the United States" for his support of investigations into reports of voter fraud in the 2020 election. 

Last September, Grizzard chastised McLean County residents "who claim it is their 'personal choice'" not to get a COVID-19 jab, saying he prefers they be the first to die of COVID-19.

"I hope that every single person who has to die of COVID is an adult who has flouted the CDC directives. Then at least their death would have been their own personal choice," he wrote.

Along with Matt Geerdes, Grizzard is a campus minister at the Illinois State University Agape community, "a partnership of the Lutheran Student Movement and Judson Fellowship" that targets "Baptists, Lutherans, Jews, Disciples of Christ and Seventh Day Adventists."

AGAPE is based on "love that is universal, unconditional, that transcends all things, that serves regardless of circumstances," the group said.

Grizzard told WGLT-FM that he is focused on outreach to the Bloomington-Normal gay community.

“We have started to more and more explicitly talk about our inclusion, particularly in the LGBTQ community,” he said. “That’s a community that has often been excluded from faiths and it’s really tragic how some students have been excluded from that.”

Grizzard's ministry is supported by both private donations and taxpayer funds provided via ISU.