Fascism in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod? Yes; The Cross and the Swastika

Rick, I am SHOCKED there's gambling in the house of Matthew Harrison (pictured at right), and the people even more wingnut than him). And, sadly, in another sense, I didn't think of the addendum to the original headline, punning on a 50-year-old book that might be remembered by a few, until after the original post.

Vermont Digger has the details on a former distillery owner there who appears to be the owner of a podcast that pushes Lutheran fascism. 

Actually, a Rolling Stone article to which it links has the real details, about a Corey Mahler who co-hosts a podcast with who seems to be Ryan Woodie Dumperth, the Vermont guy, as well as an overview of LCMS President Matthew Harrison's attempts to douse? control? the flames without getting burned himself. (Harrison was just elected to another three-year term to run the denomination, at about 1.8 million, the main one in the conservative wing of Lutheranism, last month.)

A report on Mahler and others from outside the LCMS notes that young alt right are reportedly attracted to Lutheranism because of Martin Luther's own antisemitism. And, that is real, though not unique to Luther in his day, but not just a late-life issue, and sis and others I know, please don't try to explain it away. Martin Luther was antisemitic, not just anti-Judaism after he discovered he couldn't use Jews to do theological judo on the pope.

And, not-quite full-on Nazis in the LCMS didn't want to believe Mahler was who he is until Machaira Action's report forced the issue.

Update, March 22, 2024: Mahler's also some sort of conspiracy theorist. I ran into him on Twitter over a nutter idea he was proposing and ...

Confessional fascist (Lutefash) Corey Mahler spouting conspiracy theories.
Shock me.https://t.co/K8VDcKYC1i https://t.co/qpvdmrYvab

— TheRealSocraticGadfly 🥝☢️🌻🌲 (@real_gadfly) March 22, 2024

He later blocked me.

In detail, here are Part 1 and Part 2 of their report. Punning on Scandinavians and an alleged food delicacy, they call this movement "Lutefash."

That said, per the Rolling Stone piece, Matty Harrison's "excommunication warning," per this blog, appears to have become excommunication action. But, what about Dumperth? What about the other cockroaches that will operate more subtly, perhaps with the cooperation of willing pastors here and there?

Per comments at this "Occidental Dissent" site, there's probably a few parish pastors among the commenters, and others in the Wisconsin Synod, about one-fifth the size of the Missouri Synod, and both even more hardcore traditionalist on theology and further right politically than Missouri. One commenter references a YouTube by Rev. David Ramirez, a LCMS pastor from St. Paul's, Union Grove, Wisconsin. (I guess Hispanic counts as "White" in this world?)

Bethany Lutheran Church, Springdale, Arkansas, and Rev. Gregory L. Jackson another to watch, per this blog by either him or it. Here's Jackson's Goodreads authorial page. Interestingly, he's also a King James Version nutter. Dude took a deep dive in an empty pool, too. Went to the former Lutheran Church of America's Augustana in Rock Island. Then an STM at Yale. Then Notre Dame. Then that deep dive in the empty pool.

As for how this all happened? My sister notes that Matty played with fire by entangling church and state years back. He's been the LCMS president since 2010, and as in the previous presidential election, fended off far-right challengers. He's semi far-right himself, as I see today's Missouri Synod, which is like today's GOP, and just as it's laughable to hear a Republican (like Will Hurd just announced for president) called a "moderate," the same holds true whenever applied to Harrison. He's won on the first ballot every time since his first election, but he's never broken 55 percent. Tim Klinkenberg, a seminary classmate of mine, was the apparent semi-right challenger in 2019. The Wiki link has links to all election results in its footnotes.

It should also be noted that German-Americans broke harder for Trump than any other white ethnic group, apparently driven in fair part by their liking in 2016 his claims to breaking with the neoconservatives within the GOP and having a more isolationist stance in his "America First," and the LCMS' roots are primarily in German-Americans. The LCA, part of which eventually became the ELCA of today, had its roots in older German-Americans from 200-plus years ago who lost more their Germanness, but even more in Scandinavian Lutherans of the Upper Midwest. The ALC half of the ELCA merger had a mix of German-Americans of about the same migration date as LCMS Lutherans, but with a Scandinavian contingent at least half that of the LCA as leavening.

As for how this all plays out? Harrison is enough of a political chameleon to largely stay above the fray, despite the Lutefash pinpricks. To the degree he thinks its too much heavy lifting, he'll ignore the underground network of pastors and congregations, of which I've only scratched the surface. (For the unfamiliar, the LCMS is almost, but not quite, as "congregational" in its church polity as the Southern Baptist Convention. It has all sorts of "underground networks," as I'm sure the SBC does as well. I have family-related info on that as well.)

Beyond that, Harrison has big financial fish to fry, namely the Hot Chalk lawsuit and others (perhaps consolidated into one, I would think, on the student lawsuits) over the LCMS' abrupt closure a couple of years ago of Concordia University Portland. Harrison's mixing of secular politics and church governance was a factor in how the pooch was screwed in its closing, too. So, too, was his eye on the dollar signs CUP was generating with Hot Chalk, and of course, the LCMS, like many conservative wings of mainline Protestant denominations, has a "golden calf" problem as it and others lose members.

Add this to Matty's political chameleon behavior, too. The Boy Scouts of America recently voted to accept gay Scouts, but not leaders. So, Harrison is going down the Bill Clinton route of 30 years ago and saying it's "don't ask don't tell" on gay Scouts at troops affiliated with LCMS congregations, and beyond that, in a legal memorandum of understanding, individual congregations still have the right to boot Scout troops. And, contra Rev. Bart Day, no, sexuality was always an issue in the BSA, until it decided to do its split-the-difference bullshit, presumably on grounds that gay Scoutmasters would be "groomers." (This ignores the BSA's long history of tolerating sexual abuse by Scoutmasters, of course.) I have no idea of what this Trail Life USA alternative to the BSA is, and wonder what happened to the old Lutheran Rangers. As for the Lutefash? Teh gay was sometimes OK in the early days of the German swastika boys, but after the Night of the Long Knives it went pretty much deep underground.

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Update, Dec. 18, 2023: Matty's got new, and related, troubles since then. Like a pastor arrested as one of Fani Willis' "Dirty 19" Georgia election fraudsters. Said pastor, the Reeevvvvvv Stephen Lee, has gone on to likely violate LCMS doctrine about interfaith participation by appearing at a non-Lutheran church service to promote his part in the Trumpian cause.