A top Lutheran church official is calling for the excommunication of unrepentant white nationalists, attacking their beliefs as "evil."
“This is evil. We condemn it in the name of Christ,” Matthew Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, wrote in a open letter last week in the Reporter, the official newspaper of his synod.
He and all leaders of the synod "categorically reject the horrible and racist teachings of the so-called 'alt-right' in toto (including white supremacy, Nazism, pro-slavery, anti-interracial marriage, women as property, fascism, death for homosexuals, even genocide)," Harrison wrote.
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He said he was “shocked" to learn recently that a few members of LCMS congregations have been "propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views" on social media.” Some of the posts even threatened church members and leaders online, he noted.
Harrison vowed to work with local pastors and district presidents to "address this matter wherever it arises among us and reject it.”
A tenet of the Lutheran religion is “You shall not murder,” which includes the "prohibition of 'hating, despising, or slandering other groups of people,'" Harrison wrote.
In condemning "racist and supremacist ideologies," Harrison also cited scripture declaring that that "every human being is precious to God." and as valuable as the very blood of Jesus Christ shed for all."
Harrison called on white nationalists to repent. "Where that call to repentance is not heeded, there must be excommunication,” he warned.
Harrison's letter followed a report earlier this month by the antifascist group Machaira Action. The report highlighted the “rise of a white supremacist faction within the Lutheran faith," and singled out a racist member who also boasts that he's a Christian nationalist.
