The Fight for the Southern Baptist Convention - and Strange (Racist, Antisemitic) Bedfellows
ANALYSIS: Dogmatic power seekers within the SBC have found common ground with characters whose controversial ideas were once seen as representing the face of hate in America.
"Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."
— The Tempest (Act II, Scene 2)
Borrowing from Shakespearean imagery of one who finds himself thrust by circumstances into the unexpected company of an odious character, it has often been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows.
But that adage barely begins to describe the politics currently engulfing the Southern Baptist Convention.
There, dogmatic power seekers within the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have found common ground with characters whose controversial ideas were once seen as representing the face of hate in America.
Among those leading that effort to push the Southern Baptist Convention even farther to the right is William Wolfe, a first-term Trump administration appointee and now executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership.
Wolfe recently joined a podcast to discuss “how to deal with being smeared as a racist”—just two days after the pseudonymous host of that podcast openly embraced affiliation with the Ku Klux Klan, affirmed his belief that “races of men are as distinct as breeds of animals,” and decried race mixing as “evil.”
As part of his campaign, Wolfe also took his case before a far-right group whose leaders have been denounced as “antisemites and racists.” At one of the group’s events, the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership also found himself in the company of a former neo-Nazi figure who is now pushing what, critics say, amounts to an ethnic cleansing of America.
But, rather than acceding to suggestions that such views represent “hate,” William Wolfe and his friends insist their efforts are about “love”— love of their country, their faith, and their people.
At stake in this ideological battle is the future of an evangelical denomination—with 47,000 congregations and some 13 million members—that separated from their Baptist brethren in the North in 1845 in defense of slavery and sat quietly through the worst abuses of Jim Crow. In 1995, the SBC passed a resolution in which it repented, asked for forgiveness and committed to “eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry.”
That was before broader cultural forces sweeping America led to fears that the Southern Baptist Convention was becoming, in the insult of the day, “woke.”
Now, Wolfe argues “White guilt” must be seen as a destructive “mind virus” and talk of diversity as “garbage” that must be kept “out of our convention.” And women must be told to keep their mouths shut when it comes to church matters.
Wolfe’s efforts—which include platforming ideological allies on the Center for Baptist Leadership’s podcast and using his X account to bully his enemies—are a project of the non-profit American Reformer. Although the group’s structure and its finances can be murky (see Blake Callens’ analysis), its donors include the Heritage Foundation, which birthed the controversial Project 2025.
The Center for Baptist Leadership’s website describes its desire “to revitalize SBC for the sake of its enduring gospel mission and the purity of its witness to a lost and dying world that needs Jesus Christ.”
But it also appears to be part of a broader effort by Wolfe to push a Christian nationalist agenda.
“America was founded as a Protestant Christian nation,” Wolfe said in one podcast. “It was a project of Protestant Christianity applied to a particular people, expressed in a particular political arrangement, and the character of our nation. And what made it great was Protestant, and we are losing that.”
He continued, “So, American Reformer wants to revitalize the Protestant tradition, and you can’t do that without dealing with the Baptists.”
Wolfe helped edit the 2023 “Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel,” which calls for the national government to implement “Christian Orthodoxy,” including treating abortion as murder. It leaves open the possibility of laws that prohibit public blasphemy against “the One, True, and Living God.”
Current Southern Baptist principles—the so-called Baptist Faith and Message—declare that “church and state should be separate” and “the church should not resort to civil power to carry on its work.” It opposes public blasphemy laws.
Still, in the America that William Wolfe hopes to achieve, men like him will impose their interpretation of Christian teachings on the rest of the nation.
“Yes, we are going to impose it on you,” Wolfe said earlier this year.
“If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but this is good and right and just—if it lines up with God’s standards. And I am going to enforce my morality on you, inasmuch as our morality is God’s morality.”
Wolfe, who makes it clear that he finds it critical to fight for a country where people who look like him will always be in the majority, defines a nation as “a common language, common religion, common customs, and ancestral land.”
On X, the would-be Baptist leader posted an image of three young Black men standing together in a city—two of them wearing safety vests—suggesting it portrays “American decline” and asking: “Minneapolis or Mogadishu?”
Yet, when critics find such views to be darkly reminiscent of the “blood and soil” nationalism that defined the cruelty of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, the Baptist leader chooses to embrace what he views as less toxic terminology.
“Sometimes, people use the term like ‘blood and soil’ nationalism—I’m not endorsing that term,” Wolfe said in one podcast interview. “It’s a scary term, but that speaks to the idea of a people and a place.”
He continued, “‘Blood and soil’ is just another way to say ‘people and place.’”
Watch clip from Reformation Red Pill below:
It is that worldview that Wolfe brings to the battle for control of the Southern Baptist Convention. The goal, he has explained, is to “bring political grassroots organizing and activism and apply it to these denominational fights.”
That fight will likely rear its head at the upcoming SBC annual meeting in Orlando. Wolfe has publicly announced his backing of Clearwater, Florida, Pastor Willy Rice to be the next SBC president.
As I lay out in more detail below, as Wolfe has prepared for that showdown, he has found strange bedfellows, including among KKK fans and other extremists.
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.
‘Go with the Ku Klux Klan’
In April, Wolfe appeared on the Greene Tavern podcast produced by the Nathaniel Greene Society, which describes itself as the North Carolina chapter of the Old Glory Club. A 2025 investigation by the Guardian described Old Glory Club as “a nationwide U.S. network of dozens of far-right, men-only fraternal clubs” whose members include “prominent antisemitic influencers.”
One of the hosts for that podcast was a pseudonymous extremist who goes by the name Kaiser von Lohengramm. The name appears to be a salute to a character in an anime series that, according to Kaiser von Lohengramm’s own posts, offers lessons about how democracy can be used to end democracy.
The Center for Baptist Leadership’s executive director follows the account on X.
While urging allies to avoid some of the worst antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control, Kaiser von Lohengramm argues that Jews “worship blacks” and ”support mass replacement migration because they are rootless foreigners who have minimal, if any, ties to the lands they live in.”
He openly mocks the historical consensus about the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust and calls Auschwitz “fake.”
In February, he responded to a post by Atlantic staff writer Tom Nichols that referred to “the GOP having a Nazi problem.”
“Nazi problem? Or perhaps, a Nazi solution?” Kaiser von Lohengramm asked.
Kaiser von Lohengramm has also argued that “being White should be a requirement for most citizen naturalization,” that “men and women should have different sets of rights, and that LGBTQ acts should be criminalized.”
And the person has openly embraced association with the Ku Klux Klan
Prior to Wolfe’s appearance on Kaiser von Lohengramm’s podcast, I had posted an analysis here on Hate Comes to Main Street headlined: “In Far Right’s Growing ‘Remigration’ Talk, Echoes of KKK America.” It argued, “Listen closely to what far-right figures are now saying about immigration, and you will find few differences from the xenophobic debates of the 1920s.”
Kaiser von Lohengramm responded with a video showing an anime figure in the white robe and hood of the Klan in front of a KKK flag. The audio accompanying the video was a KKK anthem that urges men to “go with the Ku Klux Klan.”
Responding to my suggestions of there being “echoes of KKK America,” the account declared: “Yes, and I’m tired of pretending it’s not.”
Kaiser von Lohengramm explained my analysis to his followers. “It simply says that the Far Right is making arguments similar to the KKK. In this, he is absolutely correct.”
“What Phil fails to realize as he is an out of touch liberal boomer with one foot in the grave, is that anyone under the age of 35 who is a patriot simply no longer cares, and guilt by association with the KKK is utterly irrelevant.”
He also reposted a 1925 article that I had dug up in which KKK Imperial Wizard Wesley Hiram Evans had argued that “races of men are as distinct as breeds of animals; that any mixture between races of any great divergence is evil; that the American stock, which was bred under highly selective surroundings, has proved its value and should not be mongrelized.”
“Nothing they say is untrue,” Kaiser von Lohengramm wrote. “It’s all there, it’s all accurate. And we must get to the point where we no longer shy away from this, because nothing they say is actually objectionable.”
On top of it all, he posted an image of the so-called Gigachad, the hypermasculine male figure embraced by white nationalists. In the background was a photo of hooded KKK members gathering around a burning cross.
Even though Wolfe routinely uses his X account to challenge ideas that he considers “leftist,” I could find no evidence that he has ever disputed Kaiser van Lohengramm’s controversial views or sought to distance himself from them.
‘This is make or break for their legitimacy’
Instead, two days after the account openly embraced the ideals of the KKK, the Center for Baptist Leadership’s executive director joined Kaiser von Lohengramm for the Greene Tavern podcast to talk about his SBC project.
Another of the podcast co-hosts during William Wolfe’s appearance was a pseudonymous figure, @Totally_Brandon, whose tweets are closely protected. Despite being introduced as a “fellow Baptist,” if the post below is any indication, it appears his views on race are equally extreme as Kaiser von Lohengramm.
On X, Wolfe urged his followers to tune in to the podcast for a conversation about “how to deal with being smeared as a ‘racist’ by insane leftists.”
“Our enemies are morally reprehensible troglodytes, and all they can do is to try to spin up essentially scare word attacks on us,” Wolfe told the podcasters, referring specifically to my post on the “echoes of KKK America.”
Wolfe explained his goal was “a better future for the sons and daughters of America and that better future absolutely has to include mass deportations, denaturalizations, and remigration.”
As I have previously reported, “remigration” is a term originally popularized by a former European neo-Nazi as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. It generally understood as an effort that includes potentially revoking the citizenship—denaturalization—of people who have been in the United States for decades.
“It’s not out of hate for anybody, it’s out of love for the American people,” Wolfe has argued.
In the movie playing in the head of the Center for Baptist Leadership’s executive director, he and his Greene Tavern allies will one day be celebrated as heroes.
“Eventually Phil Williams will be forgotten,” Wolfe insisted. “But if we are able to turn this country around, everybody who fought for that will be remembered.”
The next day, Wolfe’s appearance on the KKK-friendly podcast was called out by an X account operated by a woman, known only by the name Youke, who frequently highlights the racism, white supremacy, antisemitism, Nazism, and misogyny of Christian nationalists.
“Have you also noticed,” Youke asked, “that for these guys racism is a made-up sin unless it’s anti-white racism, then it suddenly becomes very real and very sinful? Don’t ask me how that logic works. They make the rules.”
Other Christian nationalism critics quickly weighed in.
“Fellow SBCers: we need to keep this garbage out of our convention,” wrote Southern Baptist thinker Neil Shenvi.
Shenvi’s post echoed Wolfe’s criticism of former SBC president J.D. Greear’s commitment to increasing diversity in the convention. (See below what Wolfe considers to be “garbage” that needs to be feared by Southern Baptists.)
Blake Callens, who penned The Case Against Christian Nationalism in response to the writings of political thinker Stephen Wolfe, agreed.
“Will there ever be a more blatant example of something demanding the SBC remove someone from its convention than AmRef’s William Wolfe going on an openly-racist Klan-promoting podcast and, with zero remorse, mocking a worthy rebuke?” he asked on X. “This is make or break for their legitimacy.”
Wolfe never responded to the criticisms and, when I publicly asked if he had any comment, the would-be Baptist leader replied as he often does—with insults.
Meanwhile, the person with whom Wolfe associated recently celebrated the notion that “the KKK is alive and well in Tennessee.”
‘TTP’s leaders are antisemites and racists’
In February, William Wolfe spoke at a Houston-area conference hosted by the far-right True Texas Project, a group so extreme that many mainstream Republicans have publicly denounced them and boycotted their conferences.
”TTP’s leaders are antisemites and racists. Their horrible statements are enshrined on the internet for all to see,” said Hunter Bonner, chair of the Marion County Republican Party in Texas, in a recent post on X.
Bonner continued, “You cannot call yourselves ‘Christian Conservative’ and then hold galas and anniversary parties that invite white supremacists and people who hate Jews to speak.”
In fact, multiple news reports have noted how many mainstream Republicans have steered clear of the True Texas Project, formerly known as the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, since its leaders appeared to embrace the arguments of a gunman who slaughtered 23 people at an El Paso Walmart.
His manifesto blamed a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
“I don’t condone the actions, but I certainly understand where they came from,” commented Julie McCarty, who now serves as the True Texas Project’s CEO.
Her husband Fred, who serves on the True Texas board, was even more emphatic, writing in a Facebook post: “You’re not going to demographically replace a once proud, strong people without getting blow-back.”
In 2021, Julie McCarty also questioned a pastor’s call “to bless Israel.”
“I’ll admit I struggled with that,” she wrote on Facebook. “Some of our toughest battles today, including LGBTQ, gambling, media, news, movies, etc, are against corporations run by Jews.”
On X, Fred McCarty posted a meme that echoed similar antisemitic tropes.
“Kanye West has been in the news recently for claiming the jews ‘control the banks and media platforms,’” it read. “The jews have denied those accusations before immediately banning him from the banks and media platforms.”
But the executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership apparently felt no qualms about associating with the group.
Speaking at a Valentine’s Day gathering, Wolfe had what he portrayed as a horror story of having gone into a DMV in North Carolina where, as he remembered it, he was “the only person in line that day speaking English.”
“That just rubbed me the wrong way because I have three boys and I’ve got a fourth boy on the way, and my boys all look like me—and I want my children to grow up in a country where they’re not minorities,” Wolfe continued.
He added, “I want my boys to grow up in a country where they don’t look like they’re the foreigners here—and that’s a good and normal and reasonable thing.”
It was a line that drew applause from the True Texas Project attendees.
Then, in a follow-up podcast interview, Julie McCarty asked Wolfe to help Christians feel less guilty about wanting “my kid to go to a school where kids look like him” or choosing “to go to a church where people look like me.”
“There is this guilt that is put on us, and maybe we don’t want to even admit that we feel this way because then we have to admit the guilt,” she said.
Wolfe’s response: “I think it’s just pretty natural. It’s just natural.”
‘Give all these (non-White) people a little push’
Among William Wolfe’s fellow speakers at the True Texas Project event was Cyan Rose Quinn of the aptly named White Papers Policy Institute. While WWPI tries to present itself as a right-wing think tank of sorts, it selectively touts statistics on the harm of immigration while refusing to analyze the benefits.
Quinn’s 30-minute talk focused on the white nationalist group’s proposed plans for remigration.
“So, the phrase comes from migrating here—they can remigrate back just as easily,” Quinn told the audience.
Read the White Papers Policy Institute’s website carefully, and it becomes clear that they are indeed pushing an agenda for ethnic cleansing in America. For example, articles on the group’s website propose:
Reviewing citizenship applications going back more than 30 years, deporting anyone who received any government assistance prior to becoming citizens—no matter how productive they may be today.
Cutting ties with the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, revoking the citizenship of its people. It argues, “The island has a distinct language (Spanish), distinct faith (Catholicism), and distinct national and ethnic identities that are not shared with the ethnic American nation.”
Keeping Hispanics who are considered White, but offering financial incentives for the descendants of American slaves—what they call “Foundational Black Americans”—to relocate to Africa. It estimates the country could get rid of 18 million Black Americans through that process.
Part of Quinn’s presentation was a pseudoscientific argument that harkened back to the bogus eugenics debates of the 1920s. Her implication was that people with non-European DNA might corrupt American culture
As an example, she bizarrely argued—with no real evidence—that people in West Virginia are more likely to oppose historic zoning overlays that prevent them from having chain-link fences because of their Scotch-Irish bloodlines.
Watch an excerpt below:
“Essentially, what we’re getting at is that people create the culture that they live in, and biology creates people who then create that culture that we know and love and really enjoy to visit,” Quinn claimed.
As I have previously reported, according to a December 2023 podcast posted on the white-nationalist Counter Currents website, the creation of the White Papers project was the work of a man who identified himself as James Karlsson.
The antifascist Anonymous Comrades Collective later outed him as James William Kreger from Howell, Michigan.
Kreger’s name surfaced, according to the collective, in a leak from the short-lived neo-Nazi organization known as the Nationalist Coalition. The group also unearthed documentation linking Kreger to the neo-Nazi National Justice Party.
Now age 27, Kreger enlisted Quinn, another white nationalist activist, in 2023 to become the spokesperson for the effort. The 36-year-old White blonde presents an unexpectedly pleasant face for the white nationalist project.
Antifascist researchers have previously linked Quinn to the American Identity Movement, an offshoot of the neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa. She later went to work for the white nationalist Counter Currents website, where she wrote positively of her interactions with confirmed white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
During that 2023 Counter Currents podcast, Kreger and Quinn outlined their plans for the White Papers Policy Institute.
“The entire project of White Papers is to convince White people that we just have to give all these people a little push, and they’ll walk out the door,” Kreger told the white nationalist podcasters.
And Quinn agreed. “Overall, I’m definitely in favor of the secession of the non-White population back to their countries of origin,” she said.
Listen to clips below
It is not known whether Wolfe, who follows the White Papers Policy Institute on X, knew about Quinn’s background.
William Wolfe’s response?
Because of my determination to be absolutely accurate in this analysis, I have attempted to link to all key details in this post.
In addition, several days prior to publication, I reached out to Wolfe through an X direct message and an email to the Center for Baptist Leadership to give him a chance to comment on questions about what I have characterized as his strange bedfellows. I also followed up with a tweet urging him to look for my messages.
So far, I have not received any response from the man who has labeled me as “far worse than anyone on the Christian nationalist ‘right’ by a country mile.”
And, putting himself up on a pedestal, Wolfe has included me among the “ankle-biting” accusers who are “beneath [him] and not worth engaging.”
Still, the offer for him to respond to my questions remains on the table.
But there’s more…
Subscribe below to get notified about my next post:
The Fight for the Southern Baptist Convention - and Strange Bedfellows, Part 2
