Lutheran Church Rejects Pro-Hitler Member’s Takeover Attempt – Rolling Stone

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On Ash Wednesday, the First Lutheran Church in Knoxville called the police on a parishioner who was trying to attend services. Corey Mahler — a white nationalist who sought to turn the Lutheran Church into a bastion of young fascists — was removed from the church grounds for causing what his pastor called “harm and division in the body of Christ.”

The move against Mahler in Tennessee was set a day earlier in St. Louis. The president of the country’s second-largest Lutheran denomination posted a denunciation of agitators who are “spreading radical and unChristian ‘alt-right’ views” and advocating the “destruction” of church leadership. Responding to what he called the “weirdest” development of his tenure, Pastor Matt Harrison declared: “It’s bad.”

Harrison is president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; aside from its midwest branding, the LCMS is a national denomination of 6,000 congregations and nearly 2 million members. Harrison asserted that LCMS churches “unequivocally reject the horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right’,” and that the punishment for those who refuse to renounce its ideology “should be excommunication.”

The LCMS is a bastion for conservative Christians. It requires an activist role against reproductive rights, condemns gay marriage, and disallows female pastors. However, this same worship of “traditional” values ​​made the LCMS vulnerable to reactionaries who believed the bible justified their anger. The church’s struggle is increasingly common in our extremist age: How do you prevent a conservative space from becoming fascist?

The LCMS’s fight against the ‘alt-Right’ comes on the heels of the mid-February publication of a damning research dossier by Machaira Action, a new anti-fascist group, detailing Mahler’s role in the rise of Lutheran fascism. — or what it calls “Lutefash.”

Mahler’s views were not secret. He is an unabashed white-Christian nationalist who — among other deplorable views — insists that Hitler went to heaven. As detailed in the dossier, Mahler has long had ties to Jason Kessler of Unite the Right, who sponsored a deadly, racist rally in Charlottesville Virginia in 2017. Mahler reportedly raised money for the legal defense of Kessler, and was scheduled to be a speaker — along with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke — at the short-lived Unite the Right II, which was drowned out by counter-protests. Editor’s pick

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Mahler insisted that he was at his core a monarchist — and that the fascism he espoused was “the removal of democracy back to traditional government. Monarchy is the goal.” Mahler, 37, rejects being labeled a “neo Nazi” but admits he wants America to be a white ethnostate – suggesting it is God’s will.

Raised in California, Mahler attended Chapman University law school, where prominent Trump election lawyer John Eastman taught. Mahler has been an active member of the state bar since 2013.

In later years, Mahler moved to Tennessee, where he led far-right agitation within the LCMS — at one point serving as webmaster for the “Book of Concord,” the Lutheran Church’s doctrinal manual. Mahler used that power to build relationships with what he called “faithful pastors,” while dreaming of “cleaning house” of the church’s current leadership, and leading “an influx of stubborn boys” into LCMS congregations. recruited “dozens.”)

Mahler told Rolling Stone that he was trying to “save” the LCMS by “bringing these young people back to the church.” But he also describes these recruits as pawns in a larger scheme: “The Millennials who will replace the feckless, spineless, and degenerate boomers will surely settle the accounts and amend the wrongs of last century,” he wrote, adding: “The LCMS continues to become more conservative and more traditional – soon, let’s kick out the liberals.” Related

The Machaira Action report argues that modern fascists are drawn to fundamentalist Lutheranism, in part, “because of Martin Luther’s own intense antisemitism.” (Luther famously started the Protestant Reformation. But less carefully-historically, he also called for Jewish schools and synagogues to be burned “to the honor of our Lord and of Christendom.”) In evoking the language of Hitler’s Germany, Mahler wrote of Lutheranism as “the ancestral faith of my Volk” and asserted that the LCMS had declined since it “gave up its overtly German character.”

Mahler spewed his vile ideology on Twitter and Telegram. A Rolling Stone review found Mahler saying that “Jews worship Satan.” He weaves Jesus into his white supremacy: “Hatred of Whites is almost always disguised hatred of Christ.” And he insists that his racism is an essential part of conservatism: “Anyone who is not openly pro-White is not actually a member of the Right, but an agent of the enemy.” Mahler also wrote that fascism was a response to the “Marxism” of modern society: “You will be a Fascist or your will will be a Marxist,” he wrote. “There is no other choice.”

Machaira’s exposé appears to have sparked strong condemnation of the LCMS among alt-right members. But the church has been grappling with Mahler’s damaging influence for months. In a blog post detailing his side of recent events, Mahler reproduced a June, 2022 letter of complaint by three LCMS pastors to the head of the Knoxville church Mahler attended, which sounded the alarm. about Mahler’s “sinful behavior”.

In the letter, the pastors warned: “Mr. Mahler engaged in regular hateful and racist behavior… and promoted Nazi Germany and its ideals. He does this in a way rather than presenting him as a sanctioned representative of the LCMS.” It notes that Mahler was booted from his role as webmaster (“the Synod saw fit to remove him from overseeing the bookofconcord. org”) but noted that it “didn’t stop him in any way.”

Mahler said his pastor took no action at the time, and Mahler remained in good standing within the church. The pastor did not respond to an interview request; by LCMS president Harrison. Since then, Mahler and his followers have continued to wield significant power in the wider LCMS — including waging a successful campaign to prevent an update to the church’s doctrinal statements that Mahler & Co. criticized. as too “awakened.”

In his excommunication warning in February, Harrison explained that “alt-right” individuals are at the beginning [of that] controversy” over doctrine, which they used to promote “their own absolutist… racist and supremacist ideology.” Trending

Mahler has created such a stink that even the arch-conservative voices of the LCMS are eager to see his ilk kicked out of the church. “I have been disheartened in recent weeks to come across posts from LCMS Lutherans expressing admiration for Nazi Germany,” tweeted Rev. Chrisopher Neuendorf, an LCMS hardliner from North Dakota.

“I have always thought that the neo-Nazi threat was largely a fantasy of the Communists… to justify extreme measures against the Right,” he added. “It turns out there are at least a few who are… exactly what the Communists need them to be.”

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