Sacramento Bee Looks at the Man Behind a California Church That Preaches a Whites-Only Gospel

Does a 9,000-year-old skeleton prove that Caucasians long ago settled Washington’s Columbia River valley? Nope, reports the Sacramento Bee’s Ryan Sabalow. Nevertheless, Sabalow has a fascinating (if unsettling) story about what these old bones meant to one man, the man behind a white-only church in rural Yuba County.

Stephen McNallen, 73, represents the Asatru Folk Assembly, which now has some 700 members nationwide. These Odin-worshipping, whites-only gatherings claim to be peaceful; McNallen protests that his church faces guilt by association with murderous white supremacists. He says the church’s message is “Don’t hate other people. Love your people. Fix your life.”

Yet Asatru Folk Assembly is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Writes Sabalow, the SPLC claims the Asatru Folk Assembly “cloaks their ethnic exclusivity in claims centering on the victimization of white people.” McNallen attended the “Unite the Right” Charlottesville protest: “I have Confederate ancestors who fought honorably and whose blood was shed defending their homes.”

Once McNallen ran what Sabalow calls “a lightly trafficked website from his home in Nevada City,” but now he’s expanding his church into Minnesota, North Carolina, and a third as-yet-undisclosed state. What happens next?

Read more on SacBee.com: “The racists next door: Inside a California church that preaches a whites-only gospel.”