The Fight for the Southern Baptist Convention - and Strange Bedfellows, Part 2
ANALYSIS: Center for Baptist Leadership figure William Wolfe defended Jeremy Carl whose controversial views were denounced as 'racist' and led to him losing his battle for Senate confirmation.
In Part 1, I laid out the associations by William Wolfe, executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership, with people who have embraced the Ku Klux Klan, as well as figures who have been labeled as “antisemites and racists.” This part examines other controversial figures in Wolfe’s orbit.
When right-wing political commentator Jeremy Carl’s nomination to be an assistant secretary of state went before the U.S. Senate, members of the Senate Foreign Relations committee confronted him with harsh words.
Some of those harsh words were his own.
And William Wolfe, the man now attempting to steer the Southern Baptist Convention farther to the right, was watching what his friend was facing as he appeared in February for his Senate confirmation hearing.
Despite vociferous condemnations that would be aimed at Carl as the proceedings unfolded, Wolfe refused to disavow him.
“I avow @realJeremyCarl,” Wolfe tweeted after the hearing had concluded. “He’s an American Christian patriot through and through. One of the best of us.”
Among Carl’s provocative statements that senators questioned during the confirmation process:
“The Jews love to see themselves as oppressed.”
“Jews have often loved to play the victim, rather than accept they’re participants in history.”
“Hitler is always the convenient kind of bad example.”
‘The Holocaust dominates so much of modern Jewish history…. Everyone has traumas in their past. How much are we going to re-litigate them?’’
‘‘The Capitol riot defendants had it worse than Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.’’
“If you’re a white person celebrating Juneteenth, you’ve already surrendered.’’
A nation that treats the claims of George Floyd’s partisans as serious arguments is a nation that is dying.”
‘The great replacement is real. And they’re going to try to make you pay for it.”
‘There is a pathological war on white people in America. It’s time decent people wake up and fight against it.’’
Such comments seemingly reflected a worldview where White people had become the real victims in American society.
“Some may try to excuse Mr. Carl’s remarks, claiming his words were taken out of context, that he never said them, and that his own heritage protects him from criticism,” said Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat.
As she spoke, Rosen—a Jewish woman and former synagogue president—sat in front of a sign displaying one of Carl’s quotes about Jews. (See photo above.)
"So, let me be clear,” she continued. “Identity does not excuse antisemitism. Identity does not excuse racism. Identity does not excuse hateful rhetoric regardless of who says them. Words matter.”
Sen. Cory Booker, the New Jersey Democrat, agreed.
“I have never seen such a blatantly racist individual who does not even deny that he has made these statements but wants to tell us that he regrets them,” Booker told the committee.
Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, ultimately announced he too would oppose Carl’s nomination, calling his “insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated.”
That announcement by a fellow Republican would ultimately force Carl to withdraw his name from consideration.
Wolfe: Jeremy Carl ‘crucified by the Left’
But rather than seeing his friend as a flawed nominee, Wolfe—the executive director for the Center for Baptist Leadership—saw Carl as a White martyr being “crucified” on the cross of diversity.
Wolfe, a first-term Trump appointee who brought his political background to the denominational fight that has enveloped the SBC, has vigorously attacked efforts within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to address its racist history. He has labeled diversity initiatives within the SBC as “White guilt,” a “mind virus,” and “garbage” that “must be kept out of our convention.”
In January, Wolfe had tweeted out praise for Carl as being among a “handful of good Christian men who never demonized White Americans/Christians and opposed the anti-White hate even when it was costly.”
That praise of Jeremy Carl was attached to the post below, which showed Elon Musk retweeting an openly racist and antisemitic account.
Then, the day after the confirmation hearing, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership lashed out.
He had watched the Senate debate and found fault, not with his friend’s controversial statements, but with his critics.
“The attack on @realJeremyCarl is a major mask off moment: If you don’t hate White people, they will smear you as a racist,” Wolfe tweeted.
“Jeremy isn’t a racist, of course, he just doesn’t hate White people and wish for their destruction.”
Wolfe continued, “In fact, now we see that the only way to NOT be called a ‘racist’ by the Left and the Media is to be a racist, just against Whites.
“Once you see it you can’t unsee it.”
NOTE: This is my analysis of the public controversies that have been whirling around Wolfe online. For more of his perspective—and to judge his beliefs for yourself—I strongly urge you to check out his X account, and CBL account. For other perspectives from Christian nationalism critics, I would suggest the X accounts for Blake Callens, Janet Mefferd, Eli McGowan, Neil Shenvi, and Youke.
‘SBC leadership knows this’
While William Wolfe positions himself as a heresy hunter, looking for evidence of Southern Baptists deviating from SBC orthodoxy, he works in circles of people determined to ignore a central tenet of the so-called Baptist Faith and Message:
“Church and state should be separate.”
Wolfe served as an editor of the Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel, released in 2023, which calls for the national government to implement “Christian Orthodoxy.” It includes potentially outlawing public blasphemy—a use of government power that the Baptist Faith and Message specifically condemns.
One of Wolfe’s co-editors was Texas-based Pastor Joel Webbon, who has quickly become one of the most controversial figures in Christian nationalist circles, even drawing rebukes from more-established figures in the movement.
Among Webbon’s views:
“Those of Jewish descent are generally marked by subversion, deceit, and greed.”
”The “leading cause of antisemitism” continues to be Jewish behavior.”
Jews should not be allowed to hold public office in America. As he has put it, “They can be in the car, they just can’t drive.”
Nick Fuentes was justified in mocking the Holocaust “because Holocaustianity has been weaponized as a false religion to ensure that White people cannot have a country.”
The Holocaust was “probably not as bad as we’ve been told,” and Hitler probably “didn’t even know” about it all.
Gender equality is part of a Jewish plot to “eradicate White people.”
Women should be put to death for making false sexual assault allegations, claiming “#MeToo would end real fast” if that occurred.
”There are not enough Black men in America, Christian men who know enough theology to be qualified to pastor Black churches.” As a result, Black Americans need to “go find a good, God-fearing White church” to attend.
If Christians are “not being called a Nazi, an antisemite, a racist, a misogynist, and a bigot, then they are simply not fighting hard enough.”
While Wolfe has extensively purged his X timeline, including interactions with Webbon, there is no evidence the Center for Baptist Leadership executive director has ever called for the Texas pastor to renounce any of those views.
Instead, he expressed agreement earlier this year with Webbon’s accusations against Christian nationalism critic Eli McGowan.
“Yes, Eli is of his father (the devil),” Wolfe posted.
Webbon responded, “Amen.”
And, as Christian nationalism critic Blake Callens reported, Wolfe was photographed with Webbon and his equally controversial sidekick Wesley Todd earlier this year at a GOP event in Plano, Texas.
“What Wolfe did,” Callens wrote, “was publicly fellowship, and allow himself to be photographed, with two men who have become infamous in Christian media for actively spreading the type of racism most Americans associate with figures like David Duke”—a reference to the former KKK grand dragon.
Callens described Wolfe’s work as being “to lobby the Southern Baptist Convention towards the extremist ideology shared by his employer.” Wolfe’s Center for Baptist Leadership is a project of the non-profit American Reformer.
The critic noted that “much, if not most, of SBC leadership knows” about Wolfe’s relationships and agenda, but “have said nothing publicly.”
That, he concluded, “is shameful.”
I could find no evidence that Wolfe ever publicly responded to that criticism.
Then, there’s the ‘Nazi pornographer’
In 2023, Jake Meador, editor of the Christian publication Mere Orthodoxy used his X account to explore the relationships between the principals behind American Reformer—the group funding William Wolfe’s SBC efforts—and a pseudonymous extremist that Meador characterized as a “Nazi pornographer.”
That extremist, who goes by the name “Raw Egg Nationalist” or REN, published a magazine known as Man’s World that sometimes included softcore pornography.
The deal with REN was struck by New Founding, a so-called “venture firm focused on critical civilizational problems, founded by Dallas-based investor Nate Fischer with Joshua Abbotoy serving as managing partner. American Reformer was founded by the same men, and the entities share an address.
Meador noted New Founding had invested in an herbal team company owned by REN. As described by Baptist Global News, Raw Egg Nationalist—his real name is Charles Cornish-Dale—is “a far-right influencer and conspiracy theorist with a Nazi aesthetic that New Founding claims is just ‘tongue-in-cheek.’”
Still, Raw Egg Nationalist was published by Antelope Hill Publishing, a company best known for its distribution of Nazi material. And Meador noted that REN routinely posted content like the image below. The Christian editor added, “Note that the quote he shares here is an excerpt from Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler.”
Meador also reported that Raw Egg Nationalist account “sometimes posts ‘HH,’ which is a social media shorthand for ‘Heil Hitler.’” In another post, REN had claimed there were “zog chemicals” in shampoo—an apparent reference to antisemitic conspiracy theories of a “Zionist Occupied Government.”
In 2024, REN was featured in an Atlantic magazine cover story about “The Men Who Want Women to Be Quiet”—and, on his X account, REN celebrated the following quote that he called a “zinger”:
“Someone asked me the other day—I think it was a girl, actually—she was like: ‘So would you take away the vote from women?’ I was like, ‘I would take away the vote from the vast majority of men as well.’”
These days, REN’s posts on X are filled with slurs against women (warning of the threat posed by “utterly unf*ckable women”) and immigrants (claiming a ferret serves a “more useful purpose than virtually all the immigrants … combined.”)
Last month, he insisted there was no reason to be bemoaning—in his word, “blackpilling”—the fact that “Confederate states are rushing through rigged maps to erase Black districts off the map.”
Meanwhile, his Man’s World continues to distribute what, by Baptist standards, would be considered highly inappropriate content.
Among Raw Egg Nationalist’s followers on X is the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership.
As far as I can determine, William Wolfe has never publicly commented on the controversy, although a now-deleted post appears to show him mocking the furor over Raw Egg Nationalist’s much-discussed use of “HH.”
Other William Wolfe bedfellows
The executive director for the Center for Baptist Leadership also moves in Dissident Right circles with other figures known for their controversial views on democracy, on race, and on the role of Jews in America.
As I have previously reported, Christian nationalist podcasters Andrew Isker and C.Jay Engel are part of an effort to build an “aligned community” in Jackson County, Tennessee. That effort is being financed by Nate Fischer and Josh Abbotoy, the principals involved in New Founding and American Reformer.
On election night in 2024, Wolfe appeared on the pair’s Contra Mundum podcast, celebrating the possibility that Donald Trump might win both the Electoral College and the popular vote, leading to the authoritarian “Red Caesar” that some Christian nationalists hope will arise to impose their worldview.
“If he does that then, you know, Red Caesar, mandate from heaven, rock and roll, let’s go,” Wolfe said.
Isker and Engel have argued America should be reserved “Heritage Americans,” mainly those of European descent.
They have celebrated images of Whites-only diners in the 1950s, with Engel proclaiming “the 1960s ruined everything.” They have defended racial discrimination as “freedom of association,” denouncing the efforts of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement, in general.
“You cannot have both MLK and Heritage America,” Engel wrote in one social media post.
They have also platformed people with antisemitic views and individuals who question the Holocaust. Engel himself has argued that "the Jews as a collective have largely operated at odds with the Old American way of life, rooted as it is in European Christendom." And, on a series of podcasts with the controversial Christian nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon, Isker has argued that Jews should not be treated as full-fledged Americans because “this country belongs to Jesus.”
“My job is to normalize dissident right-wing talking points to the normies,” Engel wrote in a post on X. “This is the function of the vanguard; this is the strategy of instilling a counter-revolutionary ethos in Middle America.
“We will tear off Liberal scales from their eyes and radicalize Main Street.”
Isker has argued, “The institutions matter. The mainline churches matter. One day we will retake them. By force if necessary.”
By all appearances, Wolfe considers both Isker and Engel to be ideological allies.
Still, no comment from Wolfe
Part 1 gained considerable attention as Southern Baptist delegates, known as messengers, are preparing for their annual meeting in Orlando.
William Wolfe still has not responded directly to my inquiries, although the following post may have been a backhanded acknowledgement of my reporting.
Wolfe did share a post on X from a lay churchman from Bowling Green, Kentucky, who expresses similar views on immigration, multiculturalism, and what he calls “gay race communism.”
“These types of hit pieces will become more & more like a badge of honor as our culture slips further into multicultural chaos & as we continue to revert back to historical Christian theology,” Eric Salmons posted.
”William doesn’t need to be vindicated but both history & the future will be on his side.”
Christian nationalism critic Eli McGowan had a considerably different reaction regarding Wolfe’s role in the upcoming SBC annual meeting:
“In a healthy denomination, he would not be allowed to serve as a Messenger.”
And there’s even more…
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The Southern Baptist Convention - and Its ‘Horrific, Un-Christian’ Race Problem
