The Southern Baptist Convention - and Its 'Horrific, Un-Christian' Race Problem
ANALYSIS: For SBC influencer William Wolfe, “racism” is denouncing racism and white supremacy.
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 and who have been labeled as “antisemites and racists.” Part 2 examined other controversial figures. This post reviews Wolfe’s racial agenda and the people coming to his defense—or not speaking up against him.
More than 30 years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention decided it was time to come to terms with its racist past.
Formed in 1845 in defense of slavery, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination had stood with Jim Crow through the decades. And on the 150th anniversary of its founding, the SBC passed a resolution at its annual meeting in which it “unwaveringly [denounced] racism, in all its forms, as deplorable sin.”
“Be it further resolved,” the statement continued, “that we apologize to all African-Americans for condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime; and we genuinely repent of racism of which we have been guilty, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Just eight years ago, the SBC’s preeminent educational institution, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, joined in the reckoning for its own role.
“We have been guilty of a sinful absence of historical curiosity,” wrote the seminary’s president, Dr. Albert Mohler Jr. “We knew, and we could not fail to know, that slavery and deep racism were in the story.
“We comforted ourselves that we could know this, but since these events were so far behind us, we could move on without awkward and embarrassing investigations and conversations.”
That was then.
Now, William Wolfe—the head of the Center for Baptist Leadership, an outside far-right group with a Christian nationalist agenda—is on a mission to convince the SBC’s 47,000 congregations and 13 million members that their 181-year-old denomination has a new kind of race problem that must be rooted out.
Wolfe is lobbying SBC messengers—delegates to next week’s annual meeting in Orlando—to elect conservative Florida Pastor Willy Rice to be the next SBC president. And, in a February post on X, Wolfe singled out Rice’s opponent, South Carolina Pastor Josh Powell, as a purveyor of that racist agenda.
Josh Powell’s views on race, Wolfe argued, are “horrific” and “un-Christian.”
William Wolfe: ‘This is horrific’
The focus of Wolfe’s ire was a statement Powell had published during the racial reckoning of 2020. In it, the pastor described his personal resolution to respond to the country’s racial divisions “as a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking nothing more than to be faithful to the Word of God….”
Wolfe’s post on X seemingly highlighted the specific commitments by the South Carolina pastor that he found most egregious.
Powell committed:
“To denounce racism and white supremacy not just in its most glaring instances, but also in its subtle forms, which are more rampant and pervasive than we often realize.”
“To plead with my white brothers and sisters to speak out and act out, empathizing when they see someone hurting, no matter what they look like.”
“To follow the example of the good Samaritan, helping to bandage wounds and care for the hurting.”
“To use our voices to proclaim the beauty of God’s multi-colored creation and the equality of every man and woman before the Lord.”
“This whole thing is really, really bad,” Wolfe tweeted. “This is horrific, woke, and shaming of White Christians. It’s deeply anti-White. Un-Christian.”
Un-Christian?
To denounce racism and white supremacy?
To plead with Christians to empathize with those who are hurting, “no matter what they look like”?
To follow the example of the good Samaritan?
To proclaim the “equality of every man and woman before the Lord”?
That is what Wolfe considers to be “horrific” and “un-Christian”?
Wolfe’s post is perhaps no better example of the racial politics—critics would call it a white nationalist agenda—the former first-term Trump administration official has brought to the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years.
Still, SBC leaders have largely been silent about Wolfe’s very public campaign to portray White people as the real victims and to argue that efforts to promote diversity represent “garbage” that must be kept “out of our convention.”
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.
‘Some of my best work’
In Part 1 of this series of essays, I highlighted how William Wolfe had ‘found common ground with characters whose controversial ideas were once seen as representing the face of hate in America.” Part 2 described his ties with other Dissident Right figures who have faced accusations of racism and antisemitism.
While not responding directly to my post, Wolfe pulled out what he seemingly considers one of his greatest hits. It was a tweet that went viral in the rough-and-tumble world of X, where he does battle with his ideological enemies.
“Just to be 100% clear, I absolutely still avow this post of mine which was reposted by @elonmusk,” the Center for Baptist Leadership’s executive director boasted. He shared the post, which he called “some of my best work.”
That original post, from December 2025, declared: “White Guilt has been one of the most destructive forces of the 21st century to date. If Western Civilization falls in our lifetime, it will be because we allowed this mind virus to destroy us.”
Musk—who regularly embraces white supremacist narratives—shared Wolfe’s original post to his 240 million followers, adding: “It ends now.”
Soon after getting amplified by Musk, Wolfe was basking in his viral moment—a moment that produced disturbing reminders of the dark world of social media.
An X account that regularly produces antisemitic themes shared Wolfe’s post with a cartoon suggesting Jews were using the Holocaust for that “White Guilt.”
Natural Law Theonomist—another X account that routinely posts racist, antisemitic, anti-immigrant, and homophobic themes—congratulated Wolfe on the retweet , giving him the one-word salute of the far-right: “Patriot.”
Another account, calling itself “Freedom Fighter,” responded to Wolfe with a cartoon depicting Barack Obama as a cobra, adding: ”It started with this snake.”
But rather than being deterred about triggering a string of vile reactions, the would-be Baptist leader celebrated his achievement.
“So thank you, @elonmusk for buying a platform and making it possible for a total nobody like me—just a kid from a lower middle class family from North Carolina—to reach over 200 million people with my commentary and thoughts in a year.” He added, “And thanks for the buzzer beater repost!”
And he used the attention to drum up support for his effort to remake the Southern Baptist Convention into his preferred image.
“If you want to help drive the poison of ‘white guilt’ out of the American church, check out our effort to do just that,” he posted.
“Christians, in many ways, are the worst offenders on this. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Help us put the work away for good.”
Friends in low places
One of the first people to call out William Wolfe on X for his recent association with a Ku Klux Klan-praising podcaster was Christian nationalist critic Youke, who later noted some of the vile accounts coming to Wolfe’s defense.
“Based af,” said an anonymous account known as Marcus Tullius. “I already like William Wolfe. You don’t have to sell me.”
Youke posted a screenshot, urging her followers, “See a few examples of this anon’s posts. This is the kind of account praising William.”
She provided evidence of some of the racist and antisemitic messaging routinely produced by the right-wing account.
And Youke noted some of the Wolfe-adjacent accounts that follow Marcus Tullius: Among them, Joshua Abbotoy, co-founder and CEO of American Reformer, the non-profit entity funding Wolfe’s Center for Baptist Leadership.
Nathan Halberstadt is a general partner in New Founding, a for-profit firm started by the American Reformer principals, and Christian nationalist podcaster C.Jay Engel, travels in those same Dissident Right circles.
‘Demonic anti-White racism’
Wolfe does appear to have the ear of some of the Southern Baptist Convention’s most conservative figures, and more moderate voices seem fearful of the online army that Wolfe can deploy to lambast those pastors and other SBC activists who are deemed to be insufficiently orthodox.
One of the few vocal critics within the SBC has been Dwight McKissic, the senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.
McKissic, one of a relatively small number of Black pastors within the SBC, was featured in a 2021 article in The New Yorker describing increasing racial tensions within the SBC during the MAGA era of American politics.
The article was titled, “The Fight for the Heart of the Southern Baptist Convention.”
That is a battle that McKissic continues to wage, with William Wolfe often appearing to be the face of the problem that he sees.
In a 2024 on X, the outspoken pastor accused “the William Wolfe wing” of the Southern Baptist Convention of “pushing a cultural, politically conservative, southern, red states agenda…as opposed to a Kingdom agenda.”
Just in the last few days, McKissic condemned Wolfe’s post on X in which he claimed that Josh Powell’s personal resolution to oppose racism—the one I described at the beginning of this essay—was “horrific” and “un-Christian.”
“William Wolfe is opposed to [Josh] Powell, a candidate for SBC president, because Powell powerfully, persuasively, and publicly opposes racism,” McKissic tweeted. Regarding Wolfe’s original post, McKissic noted, “Opposing racism is now called ‘shaming of White Christians.”
The Texas pastor added, referring to Josh Powell, that he was “grateful to have a candidate for president of the SBC who unapologetically opposes racism and discipline[s] his congregation to do the same.”
And McKissic later reposted Wolfe’s boast of his viral tweet about “white guilt”—the one shared by Elon Musk and that Wolfe called “some of my best work.”
“There is no sense of guilt or shame in the blatant racism and sexism that’s been exhibited periodically throughout SBC history,” McKissic said.
The executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership responded to the Black pastor:
“Please repent of your demonic anti-White racism, Dwight.”
With the current dynamics within the Southern Baptist Convention in 2026, no SBC leader has publicly come to the McKissic’s defense—nor have they called out William Wolfe for his racial agenda and what my first essay described as his “strange (racist, antisemitic) bedfellows.”
And if SBC pastors are too afraid of the backlash to take a stand, has William Wolfe not already won?
Please tell me what you think in the comments below.
Organized religion for the most part lacks the vital, important quotient- personal relationship with the most High- which means there is personal accountability for behavior, words, and actions. This is what’s missing in many churches today. There is little personal accountability and a lack of true biblical standards.