A recent Facebook post by the Southern Cultural Center, a Neo-confederate group based in Wetumpka, revealed that the Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Ozark hosts monthly meetings for members in its region.
Pastor Chad Ingle confirmed to APR that he is aware of the monthly meetings taking place in his church. When asked whether he was aware of the group’s recent interest in an all-white settlement and how the SCC mission aligned with church doctrine, Ingle insisted APR come meet face-to-face at the church to discuss the matter. Ingle did not respond to multiple requests for a video call instead.
Prince of Peace is a member of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, the second-largest branch in the U.S. with about 2 million members. While it is more conservative than the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—the largest Lutheran branch with more than 5 million members—it takes a clear stance against racism.
“The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod condemns racism and asks its members to combat it in the Church and in society, as recorded in eight convention resolutions,” the church’s official website states.
The Southern Cultural Center does not profess itself to be a racist entity, but just last month invited as its featured speaker Eric Orwoll, the man building an all-white community in Arkansas with hopes to bring a similar settlement here to Alabama.
Its “national conferences” have also featured an array of speakers who have openly espoused views that white people are either superior to Black people, or that the two races cannot coexist in a peaceful state.
The primary mission of the SCC is to create a new independent Southern confederacy with certain “traditional” values including “stigmatizing perversity and all that seeks to undermine the marriage and the family.” The group’s website does not mention race but simply refers to “Southerners.”
A recap of its most recent national conference last year says that every group is protected by the federal government except for the “Southern white Christian” and added “REMEMBER THAT OUR ANCESTORS WERE NOT ONLY HERE IN THE SOUTH BUT ALSO IN GREAT BRITAIN, AND WERE CAUCASIAN.”
Neo-confederate pastor John Weaver was a speaker as the group’s inaugural national conference in 2022. A profile on Weaver by the Southern Poverty Law Center states “Weaver was a leading member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group that opposes interracial marriage and has described black people as a ‘retrograde species of humanity. He also long served as chaplain to the Southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans at a time when its leadership was largely controlled by racist extremists.”
The group has also hosted Jared Taylor, publisher of American Renaissance magazine. According to the Anti-Defemation League, the magazine pushes psuedo-scientific ideas “that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies.”
“Blacks and whites are different,” Taylor said in a 2005 edition of American Renaissance. “When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization—any kind of civilization—disappears.”
James Edwards, the founder and host of the far-right radio program The Political Cesspool, is another former speaker to the group. His radio program lists as one of its principles “We wish to revive the White birthrate above replacement level fertility and beyond to grow the percentage of Whites in the world relative to other races.”
