Reformed Presbyterians Excommunicate ‘White Supremacist Minister’
One of the oldest denominations in the United States has deposed and excommunicated a 42-year-old minister for his white supremacist views.
Delegates from 17 congregations of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA) heard five hours of argument in a church outside of Pittsburgh on Jan. 24. They determined Samuel Ketcham, a self-described “race realist” who says white supremacy is a historical fact, is guilty of “serious sin, contrary to the Word of God and to the profession of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.”
The Allegheny Presbytery convicted Ketcham of violating his ordination vows, including the vow to promote the “peace, unity and progress of the church,” to “love and bless” people and avoid “provoking words.” Delegates found that a series of essays he posted online misapplied Scripture, perverted the truth and spoke the truth “to malicious ends.”
By standing vote, the church representatives decided to censure Ketcham, defrocking the Alabama minister and kicking him out of the denomination. Lesser punishments could have included admonition, rebuke or suspension.
Church prosecutor Drew Poplin, an associate pastor in Durham, North Carolina, has previously said he hopes clear church condemnation of racism will effectively stamp out white supremacy and “kinism” in Reformed circles.
“This is the craziest thing, to have to talk about why the Nazis were the bad guys,” Poplin said on a podcast in November. “When the church speaks on this, and I think she has … I think that will put to silence much of this.”
During the hearing outside Pittsburgh on Saturday, Ketcham accused Poplin of being “a tool of the Jews,” according to a minister who was present.
On social media after his conviction, Ketcham accused the men leading the RPCNA of serving Satan.
“I rebuked you for your generational liberalism and you shut your ears,” Ketcham wrote on X. “You men (like so many in today’s churches) refuse to address the greatest and most obvious sign of God’s judgment upon His church and the west—mass immigration of foreigners and the amalgamation and replacement of Whites.”
Conviction condemned as ‘Jewish lies’
White supremacists and antisemites celebrated Ketcham online. Michael Spangler, a minister pushed out of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for racism, praised the minister for his refusal to yield to church authority.
Spangler called the trial a “terrible abuse of church power.” Spangler acted as Ketcham’s informal counselor during the five-hour hearing. He has also invited Ketcham to join his independent, 29-member Presbyterian church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
“We condemn the Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America,” Spangler wrote on X. “They have proven their craven conformity to Jewish lies and worldly egalitarianism. We solemnly warn all sincere Christians within her midst to depart from her in fear of God.”
Ketcham said on a podcast in November that he probably would have left the RPCNA, even if he weren’t excommunicated.
He was ordained in a church in Fresno, California, in 2017 but voted out by the congregation three years later. He returned to Alabama around the time the COVID-19 pandemic began and has not worked in a church for more than five years. Ketcham, a father of eight, is currently a salesman for a home security company.
Ketcham said he has come to believe the RPCNA is full of “pretend conservatives promoting liberalism.” He also noted his concern for white supremacy put him at odds with the history of his denomination.
The Reformed Presbyterian Church, founded in the U.S. in 1774, is mostly known as a denomination that rejects all modern worship music and hymns, insisting that Christians should exclusively sing psalms from Scripture. The church has also a notable history of abolitionism. Reformed Presbyterians always held that “all men are created equal,” regardless of race.
Church members who enslaved people were forbidden Communion starting in 1800, according to synod minutes. A few years later a minister in South Carolina noted there was “no dissenting voice in condemning the nefarious traffic in human flesh.”
The minister urged Christians who did own human beings to “sacrifice the property … on the altar of religion” and recognize Black people as their equals, calling that “the rank, which God has assigned them.” After that, he said, “none either practicing or abetting slavery in any shape, has been found on the records of our ecclesiastical connection.”
A church synod required support for abolition as a matter of faith in 1856. Other synods, in response to current events, made statements for racial equality in 1927, 1961, 1970 and 2025.
Support for slavery
Ketcham never agreed with any of that.
“I didn’t vow to uphold egalitarianism and abolitionism,” he said on the podcast with Spangler. “I’ve always been a Southerner. I always knew the Confederacy was right in the main, that slavery wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone was saying … and it’s biblical.”
Ketcham said he became more concerned about race issues after seeing an interracial marriage in a Presbyterian church. He started reading more Southern Presbyterians, especially Robert Lewis Dabney, a theologian who served as chief of staff to the Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Ketcham became more convinced, as Spangler said, that “egalitarianism is, at bottom, atheism,” and people opposed to white supremacy are “raising their fists against the God who did not make all men equal.”
Ketcham said he decided to speak out after the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September. Though Kirk’s death was not clearly related to Ketcham’s concerns about race, and the man accused of killing Kirk is also white, the violence fed Ketcham’s sense that America was facing an existential crisis.
“Our country is in a race war,” Ketcham posted online one week after Kirk died.
“Christians in America have a duty to fully grasp the real ‘systemic racism’ of American society. It is anti-White racism.”
Ketcham published eight more pieces on race and racism in the next two months, going so far as to argue protecting the white race should take priority over proclaiming the gospel around the world.
“My people are White Southerners,” he wrote. “I love them and I want to see them prosper and be saved more than any other people.”
Vote to excommunicate ‘overwhelming’
The racist writing was reported to the RPCNA in November and the church assigned Poplin, who had recently published a pamphlet on the topic, to investigate. A judicial commission of five men determined there was enough evidence to forward with an ecclesiastical trial.
The trial began at 8 a.m. on Jan. 24 with each side given 15 minutes to make opening arguments. The prosecution was then given 30 minutes for each charge, followed by 30 minutes for the defense, and five minutes for each side for rebuttal.
The hearing lasted until 6 p.m. Delegates then prayed, deliberated and voted. The final vote totals have not been made public but a minister who was there said the decision to convict and censure was “overwhelming.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for the presbytery.
everal conservative evangelicals from other denominations praised the decision.
Denny Burk, a Southern Baptist pastor and president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, called Ketcham’s excommunication “important” and urged other churches to follow the example of the RPCNA.
“These errors must be likewise repudiated wherever they are found,” Burk said on social media.
This article was originally published by The Roys Report.
Daniel Silliman is senior reporter/editor at The Roys Report. He began his two decades in journalism covering crime in Atlanta and has since led major investigations into abuse and misconduct in Christian contexts. Daniel and his wife live in Johnson City, Tennessee.