Corey Mahler

NOTE: There are two articles in this singular posting.

He Believes Hitler Went to Heaven — and Wants to Take Over the Lutheran Church

March 3, 2023

By Tim Dickinson

Reprinted from Rolling Stone

On Ash Wednesday, the First Lutheran Church in Knoxville called the cops on a parishioner who was attempting to attend services. Corey Mahler — a white nationalist who has sought to transform the Lutheran Church into a bastion for young fascists — was removed from church grounds for causing what his pastor called “harm and division to the body of Christ.”

The move against Mahler in Tennessee was set in motion a day earlier in St. Louis. The president of the nation’s second-largest Lutheran denomination posted a denunciation of agitators “propagating radical and unchristian ‘alt-right’ views” and advocating the “destruction” of the church’s leadership. Addressing what he termed the “most bizarre” development of his tenure, Pastor Matt Harrison declared: “This is evil.”

Harrison is president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod; its midwest branding aside, LCMS is a nationwide denomination for 6,000 congregations and nearly 2 million members. Harrison insisted that LCMS churches “categorically reject the horrible and racist teachings of the so-called ‘alt-right’,” and that the punishment for those that refuse to renounce its ideology “must be excommunication.”

The LCMS is a bastion for conservative Christians. It takes an activist role against reproductive rights, condemns gay marriage, and does not allow women pastors. Yet this same veneration of “traditional” values has made LCMS vulnerable to infestation by reactionaries who believe the bible justifies their hate. The church’s struggle is increasingly common in our extremist age: How do you stop a conservative space from becoming a fascist one?

The LCMS’ fight against the ‘alt-Right’ has burst into the open on the heels of the mid-February publication of a damning research dossier by Machaira Action, a new anti-fascist group, that details Mahler’s role the rise of Lutheran fascism — or what it dubs “Lutefash.”

Mahler’s views are not covert. He’s is an unabashed white-Christian nationalist who — among other deplorable views — insists that Hitler went to heaven. As detailed in the dossier, Mahler has longstanding ties to Jason Kessler of Unite the Right, which sponsored the deadly, racist rally in Charlottesville Virginia in 2017. Mahler reportedly raised money for Kessler’s legal defense, and was slated to be a speaker — along with former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke — at short-lived Unite the Right II, which was drowned out by counter protestors.

In an interview with Rolling Stone Mahler insists that he’s at his core a monarchist — and that the fascism he promotes is just “the off ramp from democracy back to traditional government. Monarchy is the goal.” Mahler, 37, balks at being labeled “neo Nazi” but admits that he wants America to be a white ethnostate — suggesting that it is God’s will.

Raised in California, Mahler attended Chapman University law school, where Trump’s infamous election lawyer John Eastman used to teach. Mahler has a been an active member of the state bar since 2013.

In recent years, Mahler moved to Tennessee, where he’s led far-right agitation within LCMS — at one point becoming webmaster for the “Book of Concord,” the Lutheran Church’s manual of doctrine. Mahler has used that clout to build relationships with what he calls “faithful pastors,” while dreaming of “cleaning house” of the church’s current leadership, and leading an “influx of hardline young men” into LCMS congregations.(He claims to have personally recruited “dozens.”)

Mahler tells Rolling Stone he’s attempting to “save” LCMS  by “getting these young men back in the church.” But he’s also described these recruits as pawns a larger plot: “The Millennials who will replace the feckless, spineless, degenerate boomers will be sure to settle accounts and amend the errors of the past century,” he’s written, adding: “The LCMS will continue to get more and more conservative and more and more traditional — very soon, we will expel the liberals.”

The Machaira Action report argues that modern fascists are attracted to fundamentalist Lutheranism, in part, “because of Martin Luther’s own vehement antisemitism.” (Luther famously sparked the Protestant Reformation. But in less-reckoned-with with history he also called on Jewish schools and synagogues to be set ablaze “in honor of our Lord and of Christendom.”) Evoking the language of Hitler’s Germany, Mahler writes of Lutheranism as “the ancestral faith of my Volk” and insists LCMS has been in decline since it “gave up its explicitly German character.”

Mahler spews his repulsive ideology on Twitter and Telegram. A review by Rolling Stone finds Mahler claiming that Jews “worship Satan.” He weaves Jesus into his white supremacy: “Hatred of Whites is virtually always thinly veiled hatred of Christ.” And he insists that his racism is an essential component of conservatism: “Anyone who is not explicitly pro-White is not actually a member of the Right, but an enemy agent.” Mahler also writes that fascism is a response to the “Marxism” of modern society: “You will be Fascist or your will be Marxist,” he writes. “There are no other options.”

The Machaira expose appears to have sparked LCMS’ thunderous condemnation of alt-right members. But the church has been grappling with Mahler’s corrosive influence for months. In a blog post where he details his side of recent events, Mahler reproduced a June, 2022 complaint letter by three LCMS pastors to the leader of the Knoxville church Mahler attended, sounding the alarm about Mahler’s “sinful behavior.”

In the letter, the pastors warned: “Mr. Mahler engages in regular hateful and racist behavior… and promotion of Nazi Germany and its ideals. He does so in a manner than makes him appear as a sanctioned representative of the LCMS.” It records that Mahler had been booted from his webmaster role (“the Synod saw fit to remove him from oversight of the bookofconcord.org”) but noted that “this in no way has deterred him.”

Mahler claims that his pastor took no action at the time, and that Mahler remained in good standing within the church. The pastor did not respond to an interview request; neither did LCMS president Harrison. Since that time, Mahler and his followers continued to wield significant clout in the broader LCMS — including waging a successful campaign to stymie an update to the church’s statements of doctrine that Mahler & Co. lambasted as too “woke.”

In his February excommunication warning, Harrison explained that “‘alt-right’ individuals were at the genesis [of that] controversy” over doctrine, which they’d used promote “their own absolutist… racist and supremacist ideologies.”

Mahler has created such a stench that even arch-conservative LCMS voices are eager to see his ilk cast out of the church. “I’ve been disheartened in recent weeks to encounter posts from LCMS Lutherans expressing admiration for Nazi Germany,” tweeted Rev. Chrisopher Neuendorf, an LCMS hardliner from North Dakota.

“I had always thought the neo-Nazi menace was largely a fantasy concocted by Communists… to justify extreme measures against the Right,” he added. “Turns out there are at least some who are… exactly what the Communists need them to be.”

The Surprising Truth About False Teachers

August 8, 2026

By David Mathis

Reprinted from desiringGod.org

The question is not whether you ever hear the voice of false teachers. You do — probably every day. The question is whether you can discern which messages are false.

If you watch any television, listen to any radio or podcasts, keep up on the news, or interact at depth with just about anyone in modern society, you are being exposed to some form of false teaching. If you cannot identify any voices you hear as false, it’s not because you aren’t being exposed, but because you’re falling for it in some way.

For most of church history, it took extraordinary energy and effort to influence the masses. Messages had to be copied by hand, and teachers had to travel by foot or horseback. There were no cars or airplanes, and no printing presses, websites, or Facebook pages. But today just about every false teacher has a Twitter account.

How, then, does the church discern true teachers from false ones in a world like ours, where it’s easier than ever to spread false teaching?

False Teachers Will Arise

“If you cannot identify any voices you hear as false, it’s not because you aren’t being exposed, but because you’re falling for it in some way.”

We begin by acknowledging not just the possibility of false teaching, but the certainty of it. We should not be surprised to find false teaching in the church today. Jesus and his apostles are very clear that false teachers will arise. They promise it. As Jesus says,

“False christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But be on guard; I have told you all things beforehand.” (Mark 13:22–23; see also Matthew 24:24)

Likewise, Paul warns the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:29–31) and his protégé Timothy (2 Timothy 4:3–4) that false teaching is sure to come (also 1 Timothy 4:1 and 2 Timothy 3:1–6). If we had any doubts at this point, Peter joins the refrain to add another voice: “There will be false teachers among you” (2 Peter 2:1).

So, we should not be caught off guard that false teachers have arisen throughout church history and likely have multiplied in our day.

Watch Their Doctrine — and Lives

What we might find surprising — both from Jesus and his apostles — is how revealing the everyday lives of false teachers are about their falseness. They are not just false in their teaching, but also in their living.

Beneath their doctrinal error, however subtle and deceptive, we will find ethical compromises in tow. And those don’t usually come out overnight; they take time. But they will come. Here’s how Jesus prepares us in Matthew 7:15–20:

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (see also Luke 6:43–44)

Jesus says it twice so that we won’t miss it: You will recognize them by their fruits. His warning may sound clear and simple at first, but as we all know, trees don’t bear fruit overnight. Eventually, however, the fruit (or lack thereof) will be manifest. And so it is with ethical compromise. What may begin as mere whispers in a private room will soon enough be proclaimed from the housetops (Luke 12:3). And so Paul instructs leaders not only to pay careful attention to their people and to their teaching, but also to their own lives (Acts 20:28; 1 Timothy 4:16).

No doubt, false teachers may be difficult to recognize in the moment. If we don’t have access to their personal lives, or their doctrinal compromises haven’t yet been manifest publicly in their behavior, we may find it difficult to know whether they are true. But time will tell. They will be known by their fruit — not the fruit of ministry quantity and numbers, but quality and endurance — and ultimately the quality of their own lives.

Allure of Money, Sex, and Power

In particular, 2 Peter 2 is remarkable in how it fleshes out Jesus’s warning about the fruit of false teaching. Peter has very little to say about compromised teaching, but he gives a litany of descriptions about compromised lives.

“False teachers are not just false in their teaching, but also in their living.”

Verses 1 and 3 mention the generalities “destructive heresies” and “false words” — which indeed relate to teaching — but then, nothing further in this chapter focuses on their teaching. Everything else is about their lives.

We can boil it down to three essential categories — and all three are about character and conduct, not teaching:

• Pride, or defying authority (verse 10) — verse 1: they deny “the Master who bought them” (also verses 12–13 and 18).
• Sensuality, which typically means sexual sin — verse 2: “many will follow their sensuality” (also verses 10, 12–14, and 19).
• Greed, for money and material gain — verse 3: “in their greed they will exploit you” (also verses 14–15).

Again and again, Peter’s descriptions relate to greed, sensuality, and pride — or money, sex, and power. What false teachers throughout history have shared in common is not the specific nature of their doctrinal error, but the inevitability of moral compromise in one of these three general areas.

Another way to see it is that their falseness comes out in sin against themselves, against others, or against God. In their greed, they fleece the flock for material gain. Or in their lust, they compromise sexually (whether fornication, adultery, or homosexuality, which 2 Peter 2 suggests). Or in their pride, they “despise authority” (2 Peter 2:10), and the greatest authority, who upholds all authorities, is God himself.

You Can’t Study All the Counterfeits

If false teaching, then, is not only about what our leaders say and write, but also how they live, how is the church to recognize and expose false teaching today? It’s easy to hear someone’s teaching online or at a large conference, but how can we know their lives are true?

The greatest defense against false teaching is a local church community that knows, enjoys, and lives the word of God — and holds its leaders accountable. Little, if anything, can be done to hold teachers accountable who are far away, but much should be realistic and actionable in the life of the local church.

“We need shepherds who know themselves first and foremost as sheep, and only secondarily as leaders and teachers.”

Our leaders need to be held accountable, and not held in such high esteem that we give them a pass on the normal Christian life. Pastors should be with the people. Shepherds should smell like sheep, because they live and walk among the sheep, and are not sequestered from the flock. We need pastors who know themselves first and foremost as sheep, and only secondarily as leaders and teachers — pastors who are manifestly more excited to have their names written in heaven than they are to be used as vessels in mighty ministry (Luke 10:20).

Jesus Will Rescue His Church

But you know what? We can have our systems of accountability (and we should), and we can do our best to watch both the lives and the doctrine of our leaders (and we should), but in the end there is no foolproof human system or effort. This is why 2 Peter 2:9, the apex of this chapter on false teaching, serves as such a sweet assurance — “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials.”

No matter how twisted the teaching, no matter how publicly shamed the church may feel over the exposé of an unethical leader, no matter how dark the days become, no matter how helpless we may feel in guarding gospel doctrine and preserving gospel-worthy lives, we have this great sustaining hope: Jesus knows how to rescue the godly.

Jesus is not only the greatest and truest teacher who ever lived, but he also is the great rescuer, who has redeemed us from sin and will keep those who are truly his from soul-destroying error. No matter how small a minority the church becomes, and no matter how fragile we feel, the very one who is both the subject of true teaching and the model of true living is also our life-and-soul-preserver.

As God preserved Noah (2 Peter 2:5) and rescued Lot (2 Peter 2:7), so the Lord Jesus will rescue his true people from the false teaching — and false living — of false teachers.