New TV Report Raises Question: Why is American Reformer Practicing to Deceive?

I’ve often wondered: How much deception can American Reformer’s Woke Right leaders get away with before all their naive Christian supporters catch on and send them packing? After this week’s scathing report on AmRef by NewsChannel5 Nashville’s Phil Williams, I now wonder if the organization is finally near the tipping point.

Specifically, I am referring to Joshua Abbotoy, AmRef’s executive director and managing partner of New Founding, and Nate Fischer, AmRef chairman and founder/CEO of New Founding. Both men also are behind RidgeRunner, an affiliate of New Founding, which is building “town & country charter communities in Appalachia” and “pioneering what we believe to be a new model for local life in the digital age.”

Not only are these men working on building a creepy Christian Nationalist “aligned community” in Jackson County, Tenn., but now they’re beginning to sink their Woke Right teeth into Celina, Tenn., where they’ve purchased a 3,600-square-foot storefront building. And local residents are none too happy about it, as Williams reports.

The story is definitely news, and not just because of all of Abbotoy’s and Fischer’s maneuvers and myriad and intentional ties to multiple vile Christian Nationalists, such as Contra Mundum podcasters Andrew “Jews Shouldn’t Have a Seat at the Table” Isker and C. Jay “Protestant Franco is Inevitable” Engel.

What really stood out to me in the latest report, though, wasn’t the fact that AmRef leaders are furthering their goal of trying to establish ideologically white-nationalist beachheads in Tennessee. Williams exposed something even more important than that: he demonstrated how both Abbotoy and Fischer have deceived people about the project, its partners and its true “goals.”

From Williams’ report:

One of the developers, Josh Abbotoy, recently appeared before the Celina board of aldermen, asking for recommendations about what they should do with the building. Abbotoy — who is associated with two companies involved in the project, New Founding and RidgeRunner — also tried to distance himself from the podcasters who were initially described as his company's partners and who work out of the same office space as his company's offices. “I think a lot of the stuff down in Jackson County was about a couple of my customers, you know, people who aren't connected to my company, but bought land from me,” Abbotoy said. “They don't speak for my company. You know, I have various disagreements with them on things." Yet, Abbotoy, who appeared on an election night podcast with Isker and Engel, has refused to repudiate anything the podcasters have said.

Mere “customers” somehow ended up working out of Josh’s company’s office space and wrote articles for the AmRef website? Is it typical for the AmRef podcast to do “mashups” with “customer” podcasts? Also, if these men are so far removed from AmRef, why did its website review “The Boniface Option,” “customer” Isker’s horrible book, saying that it “recovers a hatred for evil” and “Isker does not need academic argumentation because all sensible Christian men know what he is writing is true?”

Williams’ report also cited some key differences between what Abbotoy told a Celina alderman about his building purchase and what he and Fischer actually say away from the eyes of the local government:

Back at City Hall, Abbotoy was asked by one alderman about the fear that “you move into a town and get into offices and start taking the town over." "We've never done that, and we don't plan to," Abbotoy insisted. But, as NewsChannel 5 Investigates has previously revealed, on their podcasts, Abbotoy and his partners tell a different story. Abbotoy himself said, “It's more attainable to get into civic and cultural leadership in a small town. It's more attainable to change the local market to make your presence felt.” Nate Fischer expressed similar notions. “Our goal is something where we actually have the concentration where we can control the town – or, in this case of the people there, it's already values aligned,” he said.

That’s strange. If Abbotoy and Fischer admit that this small-town move is all about “get(ting) into civic and cultural leadership” and having the concentration where the Woke Right can “control the town,” then why didn’t Abbotoy say so when the Celina alderman asked him that direct question? What’s to hide? Well, as more long-term observers of this movement know, there’s a lot to hide.

But given the deception, it’s no wonder the Celina residents interviewed for the report are nervous, angry and determined to “kick them out eventually.” People in small towns don’t take too kindly to radicals coming into their communities with a goal of “controlling the town.” Nor do they like being deceived about such plans. All that does is rightly raise a lot of red flags.

What’s even more important to understand is that deception and AmRef are far from newfound friends. In fact, the men of AmRef have long shown they’re comfortable playing fast and loose with the truth. It’s part and parcel of their ideology and key to implementing their long-term political plans.

AmRef’s website, for example, has featured multiple articles openly defending the idea -- incredibly, even the alleged morality -- of practicing deception to achieve political ends. To wit:

• AmRef’s editor-in-chief, Timon Cline, wrote a 2024 article at its website, called “Good Deceit,” in which he justified the need to “be shrewd, prudent, and even, at times, deceitful, concealing the truth and feigning myths but without losing our souls,” noting further: “sometimes, being aware of the times in which we live, we must use crude means out of necessity with prudence according to good ends.”

• Ben Crenshaw also published an article last year at the AmRef website, “Nietzscheans in Negative World,” writing: “Politically-active American Christians who defy the enemies of God and wage war against evil, and who necessarily employ crude memes, subterfuge, and even deception toward these ends, will likewise be commended for their faith.”

• Another writer AmRef has published, podcaster Josh Daws, notoriously posted this diatribe on X last year: “It’s okay to use deception in service of defeating the left. It’s not sinning in order to do good. It’s being righteously shrewd in order to do good. It’s also okay to enjoy it. Lighten up.”

• Earlier this year, AmRef additionally published “A Second Look at Lying and the Ethics of the New Christian Right.” In it, author James Clark claimed that enemies are not “neighbors” to whom we owe the truth: “When we encounter enemies, it is not only permissible, but righteous, to deceive them, for in doing so we love them as Christ commanded us.”

Clearly, this kind of thinking is completely unbiblical and wrong. But AmRef leaders do more than defend the concept of deception. They’ve also shown a continual disdain for operating in truth:

• AmRef, doing business as The Center for Baptist Leadership, falsely claims at CBL’s website that CBL is “a national nonprofit.” A search of the entire IRS nonprofit database shows no record of a national nonprofit called “The Center for Baptist Leadership,” but the Texas Secretary of State’s office has issued paperwork showing that CBL is merely a legal “assumed name” for American Reformer. Operating under another nonprofit group’s EIN is permitted, but according to the IRS, that subordinate group also must have its own subordinate EIN. Yet neither CBL’s executive director, William Wolfe, nor any of the advisory board members or other AmRef leaders have ever answered the multiple direct questions they’ve received online about whether or not CBL has its own subordinate EIN. Are they just refusing to furnish it to so-called “enemies” (with whom they’re obsessed), or is CBL actually in violation of IRS tax rules? Either way, they’re acting mighty shady about it. The most ironic part of it all is that CBL has continually pressed the Southern Baptist Convention for “transparency,” while evading transparency itself.

• In a further act of defiance, Wolfe openly claimed online in March that “Almost a year ago … I launched a Christian nonprofit …” Not according to the IRS or the Texas Secretary of State’s office, he didn’t. Wolfe’s statement is just dishonest.

• Williams reports that neither Abbotoy nor Fischer would grant him an interview for this week’s story about Celina. To show how angry Fischer was about the coverage, Williams posted online a direct message that Fischer had sent to him after he requested the (declined) interview. “Your on-camera delivery sucks, Phil,” Fischer responded. “It’s clear why you never made it big in broadcast. You’re reduced to tabloid-level gossip in your hunt for clicks.” Tabloid-level gossip? Not at all. So far, Williams has done nothing but repeatedly report accurately, with all the receipts, on the men of the Woke Right. It’s rather odd to baselessly smear a reporter who’s done his homework as a “gossip,” with no evidence, unless he really got under your skin with the truth. Furthermore, as Williams reported, “Neither Abbotoy nor Fischer have ever responded to any of NewsChannel 5’s questions, except to occasionally hurl insults by text or through social media.” This, from the “Christian” guys who want to take over evangelical denominations and ultimately run America. AmRef also has a track record of hiding from scrutiny. To give just a few recent examples, AmRef conducted a host-approved-only, secret-location gathering at the PCA General Assembly this summer and also imposed similar stealth measures at a recent “Camp American Reformer” event, which stated: “All registrants will be screened, and the guest list will be kept private. OpSec is a priority for cultivating friendships IRL and for free discussions.” Really? OpSec? Why so paranoid, AmRef?

• Lashing out online also has been stock-in-trade for Wolfe. Unable to identify a section of the Baptist Faith & Message presented to him online, for instance, Wolfe ignorantly posted that the section “isn’t Baptist, let alone Christian.” His truth aversion also extends to multiple posts in which he has lied about his critics and disparaged their characters – yours truly included. Among them? That because several of us reposted a Right Wing Watch article criticizing Wolfe (which he favorably posted), we critics were “making it clear” that we “will help the Regime load (our) fellow Christians onto the train cars – as long as (we) go last.” (For the record, I don’t even know who “the Regime” is!)

• But perhaps AmRef’s most overt form of deception is seen in its willingness to employ the Motte & Bailey fallacy. On the one hand, AmRef platforms seemingly “conservative” front men like William Wolfe to push the milder Motte, consisting of platitudes like “biblical truth must prevail, which is why we must save America, de-trans the kids, end abortion and stop the pastrixes,” even as Abbotoy and Fischer reveal the Bailey elsewhere. Abbotoy has posted on X: “As good conservatives we all value the rule of law, but the other side’s willingness to bend the rules combined with the increasing importance of the issues at stake militates for, in my opinion, a more flexible/Machiavellian approach to federal politics.” Added Fischer: “In fact, recognizing the limits of any current constitution – and not binding ourselves to procedures that no longer remain governing – is actually part of operating within the current system, and is an alternative to more revolutionary action.” So are they just mild-mannered conservatives, as Wolfe would like Southern Baptists and other evangelicals to believe, or really something way more radical? The social-media posts, the articles, the podcasts and Williams’ news reports all tell the tale.

I just don’t get why any Christians trust any of these men about anything at all, when it’s so obvious that they’re not biblical conservatives and have no problem with the ungodliness of dishonesty, just as long as it helps further their authoritarian pipe dreams. And try though they might to cite Rahab as an excuse for lying, they’re not being forced in unusual moments of history to deceive evil men to save innocent lives. They’re just not honest and don’t appear to have the consciences to be bothered by that.

The truth is that the Woke Right of AmRef deceive in order to achieve. They obfuscate, distract and fool gullible Christians because of what they want out of us: control of the SBC, control of the PCA, control of America. This all ends, in their imaginations, with “remaking” America into a nightmare authoritarian country that no normal, Constitution-respecting American wants!

And as Blake Callens, author of “The Case Against Christian Nationalism,” has pointed out about these men: “‘Our opponents break the rules, so we should, too,’ is standpoint epistemology. Peak Woke Right. This is how Italy, Spain and Germany went authoritarian, pre-WWII – an overreaction to leftist action, with the right abandoning core ethics.”

Christians who still see these AmRef men as would-be reformers who will finally put the Left in its place need to understand, once and for all, why so many of us call them the “Woke Right.” The dishonesty, the sneaky tactics, the overall rotten fruit – it’s all reminiscent of the Woke Left and arguably just as dangerous. Maybe even more so.

“No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes.” (Psalm 101:7)