Christian Reformed Church dismissed Charlotte pastor two years before hate group designation

CHARLOTTE - Bret McAtee, the pastor of Christ the King Reformed Church of Charlotte, was dismissed as an ordained minister with the Christian Reformed Church in North America two years before the Southern Poverty Law Center identified his church as a "white nationalist" hate group.

After his dismissal, McAtee's church, then named Charlotte Christian Reformed Church, left the denomination — which includes more than 1,000 congregations in the U.S. and Canada. The church's name was changed to Christ the King Reformed Church of Charlotte after leaving.

McAtee taught and wrote about Kinism, a theology that holds to a belief that races should be kept separate and that people should not marry outside their race, said Ken Bieber, pastor of outreach and discipleship at River Terrace Church in East Lansing, a congregation in the Christian Reformed Church.

The denomination's pastors knew what McAtee was teaching in 2016 and made efforts to address it, Bieber said.

The Christian Reformed Church's leadership declared Kinism a heresy contrary to the denomination's doctrine in June 2019. 

McAtee's actions prompted the move, said Reggie Smith, its diversity director.

It came after Smith visited Christ is King Reformed Church himself. His visit "solidified where McAtee was going with his teachings," Smith said.

McAtee's dismissal from the CRC

Christ is King Reformed Church's congregation has been in Charlotte since at least the 1970s, and although it never officially organized as a congregation within the denomination it was part of the Christian Reformed Church, Bieber said.

Before it left in early 2019 its congregation belonged to Classis Lake Erie, a group within the denomination that includes River Terrace Church and extends to Detroit and includes churches in Ohio, Bieber said.

Pastors in the Christian Reformed Church knew about McAtee's teachings on Kinism in 2016 when they put his congregation under the supervision of another church within the group, Bieber said.

The move was an attempt to address what McAtee was writing and speaking about, he said.

"Both River Terrace Church and Christian Reformed Church grieved that any person or congregation would hold to teachings that are clearly against the teaching of the scripture and we are grateful for the culture and diversity that is in the CRC," Bieber said.

McAtee "would write several thousand-word blog posts, and Kinism and other things would be laced throughout," Bieber said.

When pastors within the denomination asked McAtee about them "he would hide behind ambiguity," he said.

McAtee asked to be “honorably released” as an ordained minister with the denomination in September 2018, Bieber said.

Pastors within Classis Lake Erie met to discuss McAtee's teachings and status as an ordained minister in the denomination in December 2018, he said.

McAtee didn't attend the meeting, Bieber said.

Bieber presented his research on Christ the King Reformed Church and McAtee during the meeting.

According to the research, which Bieber shared with the State Journal, Simon Roche spoke at the Charlotte church in July 2017. Roche is the founder, promoter, and fundraiser for the white nationalist group Suidlanders of the Republic of South Africa.

His visit to Christ the King Reformed Church came a month before Roche attended the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, where a vehicle drove into a crowd of counter-protesters killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and leaving 19 others injured.

McAtee was dismissed from his ministry with the Christian Reformed Church at the meeting, Bieber said.

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'It wasn’t done in a vacuum'

Christian Reformed Church Diversity Director Reggie Smith said McAtee's teachings at Christ is King Reformed Church was and still is a wake-up call for the denomination.

"What made a church like the one in Charlotte feel comfortable enough to say these things, do these things, if there wasn’t an environment where it could grow unimpeded?" he said.

Smith attended a service at the Charlotte church after pastors within the denomination voiced concerns about McAtee's teachings and blog "Iron Ink."

During the 90-minute service, Smith said he was "the only Black person there."

McAtee's sermon was like "any other traditional church until the prayer time came," Smith said, and a woman in the crowd of about 20 asked for prayers for the white people living in South Africa.

"There was this supposedly false rumor that white people were being killed by Black people in South Africa, which was totally untrue," Smith said.

Smith said McAtee "embraced" her sentiment.

"That’s when I knew this was not what I thought it would be," he said. "There’s something wrong here."

Smith went alone to the service "but, he said, 'if I had taken my wife Sharon, who is white, we would have been heretical in the eyes of this pastor," according to a June 2019 news release from the Christian Reformed Church.

Leaders in the denomination must be on the lookout for other pastors teaching the same racist theology, Smith said.

"It wasn’t done in a vacuum," he said. "We need to bring this to the forefront of people’s radar screens and really say unequivocally, this is wrong."

Contact Rachel Greco at rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.