The 9th Commandment
On Friday, journalist Janet Mefferd wrote an excellent, detailed piece on her personal experience with SBC pastor and Director of Expository Workshops for G3 Ministries Tom Buck, who, within the last year, has very publicly allied himself with the Christian Nationalists circling around American Reformer (doing business as The Center for Baptist Leadership). In the article Mefferd explains why she can no longer stay silent as he abandons biblical truth, and his ethical obligations as a Christian, for his political tribe. I highly recommend you read the whole thing, because it’s a window into how the pop-Reformed podcast and conference set conduct themselves when not in the public eye.
One of the facts that Mefferd revealed was that, in February of 2024, Buck sent her a social media post from a neo-Nazi libeling me as a pervert, and tried to use it to get her to denounce me, after she had endorsed my book. To say that Buck’s source, URC deacon Ethan Holden (The Jolly Brawler on X), is a neo-Nazi, is in no way an overstatement. He openly supports his brother, when he splices Nazi propaganda into his Christian Nationalist videos, defends George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party, and, last weekend, posted this:
The libel had been written, because, the week before, I exposed that there was an open white-nationalist church in Doug Wilson’s denomination, housing the primary compatriots of Michael Spangler and Stephen Wolfe1 (to my knowledge, at the time of this writing, it still is housing them and no public action has been taken against the church by the CREC). Wilson’s response was to write a blog post denouncing me, but admitting there was smoke—which means he also stared into a camera and read out his denouncement, a surreal experience, if you’ve never been on the receiving end. This was not enough for the kinists he still very much publicly courted at the time, including the disfellowshipped white-nationalist pastor, Bret McAtee, who wrote a post (that I will not link to) denouncing Wilson for stopping short of explicitly naming me antichrist. Wilson caved to the pressure, and wrote a second post accusing me of slandering the church as white nationalist and called me a “messed up dude” in response to a letter to the editor. The man who gave Wilson the church’s “Statement on Ethnic Balance” that he used as “evidence” that I was guilty of slander was Shane Anderson, Spangler’s compatriot in the church, who has since gone on to, among many other things, promote Spangler’s essay series for the kinist Pactum Institute, in which Spangler, like Holden, calls for the resegregation of America.
Like the many, many people who have been publicly calumniated by Doug Wilson, I’m smart enough to not hold my breath waiting for a very well-earned apology. I’m certain I will have to take the same stance with Buck, who didn’t address a single one of Mefferd’s factual claims—I’ve had the screenshots of his texts about me for quite some time, and alluded to them in a previous post. Instead, Buck decided to engage in ad hominem character assasination, which was joined in by his media allies, Tom Ascol, James White, Chris Holnholz and Megan Basham. It seems these people are so self-centered and oblivious to the point Mefferd made in her article, that the supposedly “conservative” Christian media class has abandoned truth for pure tribalism, that they’re determined to prove her correct.
Ultimately, this should be your takeaway from this tale of ridiculously unethical behavior: The industry driving “Reformed” discipleship is chock full of clout-chasers sacrificing their dignity, and actively bearing false witness, to maintain alliances with the most malignant people imaginable, in hopes of building and maintaining tiny, inconsequential, earthly empires. Why would any self-respecting Christian want to be shaped, in any way, by such an ecosystem?
For references to Spangler, Wolfe and Thomas Achord directly promoting white-nationalist ideology, see this post. Last Friday, Achord posted the following on X:
Good article Blake. I'm so disgusted in how people like Chris and Megan have treated Janet. Also, that quote from Thomas Achord is just unbelievable. What a hate filled man.