Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president calls for excommunicating white nationalists

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president calls for excommunicating white nationalists


(RNS) — The president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has called for the excommunication of unrepentant white supremacists in the church’s ranks, rebuking an extremist effort to exert influence within the conservative Lutheran denomination.

In a letter dated Feb. 21, LCMS President Matthew Harrison said he was “shocked to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views via Twitter and other social media.” He noted far-right members were causing “local disruption” for congregations and alleged that LCMS leadership and deaconesses had fallen victim to online threats, some of which he described as “serious.”

“This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ,” Harrison writes.

Harrison went on to rebuke the “horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right,’” listing ideologies such as “white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide.”

He noted that while the LCMS is “not a top-down institution,” he would work with local pastors and district presidents “to address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it.” Citing Scripture, he called on those spewing hateful ideologies to repent.

“Where that call to repentance is not heeded, there must be excommunication,” he writes.

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