Unchurched Christians and Anti-Semitic Ones

The last time I hung out with Richard Spencer, back when he presented himself as a movement conservative, back before we knew he was a white supremacist, he and I got in a fight about the Catholic Church.

Spencer and I were at a house party on Capitol Hill full of young conservatives, and some topic of discussion—maybe it was immigration, maybe it was abortion, or maybe euthanasia—spurred Spencer to attack the Catholic Church with vitriol. I had recently come into the Church as an adult, and I defended the institution.

I had been warned by a fellow Catholic that Spencer held some views closer to Peter Singer than to Saint Peter. (“Conservatives try to save dying cultures!” my friend had paraphrased Spencer’s argument. “We should be pushing them off the cliff!”) That was in the Bush years. I was not that surprised, then, when in the Trump era he became the most prominent white supremacist in America. His argument against pro-lifers at this point became more explicit too, calling the pro-life movement “dysgenic.”