These Are Not Illinois Nazis
By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:
Published June 18, 2026
At Synod Calgary, held June 8–11 by the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA),1 as delegates debated whether or how to adopt a statement that had been adopted by several other sister churches, one pastor rose to say that three families of his congregation were attending a conference in Ogden, Utah, being put on by Christian nationalists. One of the sponsors of the conference is Antelope Hill Publishing, and their display featured Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, The Essential Speeches of Adolf Hitler, and The Rise of the Third Reich; R. Walther Darré’s The Peasantry as the Lifeblood of the Nordic Race; the notorious volume The Turner Diaries; and other titles such as The White Man’s Bible and The Declaration of White Independence.2 This conference was reportedly attended by one thousand people or more. Further, in the last few months a member and former deacon in a NAPARC congregation was placed under discipline for impenitently advocating antisemitic, kinist, and even pro-Nazi sentiments.3 There are other indicators of trouble on this front.At the January 2026 meeting of the Presbytery of the Southwest (OPC) Carl Miller and Phil Lovelady (minister and a ruling elder, respectively, of Heritage OPC in New Braunfels, TX) said on the floor of presbytery that they have kinism in their congregation. At that same meeting Presbytery voted to remove a statement against kinism from an overture to be sent to General Assembly. After that meeting of presbytery, the session of Covenant OPC in Ft. Worth, TX overtured presbytery to condemn the sin of kinism. That overture passed with a strong majority at the May 2026 meeting of presbytery.
Also, on January 23 of this year, the Presbytery of the Alleghenies (RPCNA) “excommunicated Samuel Ketcham for his advocacy of kinism, the belief that insurmountable differences between races exist and justify some type of discrimination.”4 Ketcham was convicted of violating the third, fifth, sixth, and ninth commandments of God’s holy law.5
The Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church was also moved by ecclesiastical cases against kinists to produce a report on “Kinism and Race Realism.”6
On April 5, 2024, Michael Spangler, whom regular readers of this space might remember from the 2020 controversy surrounding the online forum, Geneva Commons,7 was divested of the office of minister by the Presbytery of the Southeast (OPC). With Samuel Ketcham, Spangler has formed the so-called Piedmont Presbytery (apparently consisting of two congregations).8 In the wake of the controversy surrounding the Ogden, UT conference, Spangler on June 14, 2026 declared, “We need a Protestant Hitler.” On June 15, he opined, “Sensible segregation in the midst of a race war is not heresy, it is prudence. Decades of free social mingling with non-Whites have brought much more harm than good. It is heartless for a White pastor not to care about this.”
So serious are these threats to the peace and purity of the Reformed churches that, in response to an overture, the Synod of the United Reformed Churches in North America, meeting in Calgary, AB, Canada, June 8–12, 2026, adopted the following statement:
That the 14th Synod of the United Reformed Churches in North America join with the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and condemn without distinction any theological or political teaching which posits a superiority of race or ethnic identity born of immutable human characteristics and call to repentance any who would promote or associate themselves with such teaching, either by commission or omission.9
