LCMS president calls for excommunicating White nationalists

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 February 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 wrote.