A British priest who delivered an Elon Musk-inspired, straight-armed salute during his address to a pro-life gathering last week has been kicked out of his church.
The Anglican Catholic Church announced Wednesday that Father Calvin Robinson is “no longer serving as a priest” in the denomination.
The removal of Robinson’s license came after he delivered a speech on Friday to the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, D.C. At the end of his speech, he mimicked the language and gestures that Musk, the billionaire Donald Trump adviser, used during an Inauguration Day event last week.
Like Musk, Robinson said “My heart goes out to you,” touched his chest and made the straight-armed salute. A clip of the moment went viral. Many observers have said the gesture is tantamount to a Nazi salute, and Robinson’s now-former church endorsed that view.
“We condemn Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism in all its forms,” the church’s statement said. “And we believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of those who fought against its perpetrators.”
Robinson’s gesture has fueled ongoing debate over whether Musk intentionally meant to deliver a Nazi salute. Extremists who saw his gesture as a dog whistle, meanwhile, have begun adopting his words as a new slogan.
Robinson’s actions were met with laughter and applause from the gathering of an estimated 100,000 student anti-abortion activists. Other speakers at the event included former Trump cabinet member Dr. Ben Carson and pro-Trump commentator Charlie Kirk.
Robinson had overseen a parish in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and his social media bio says he is affiliated with a far-right British political party. Facing criticism on Wednesday, he offered an explanation for his gesture
“I am not a Nazi,” he said on X, Musk’s social media platform, explaining that he had made the gesture and comment as “a mockery of the hysterical ‘liberals’ who called Elon Musk a Nazi.” He insisted that his gesture “was not a joke at the expense of WWII, nor an admission of my membership in the Nationalist Socialist Party. “
“Context is key, but sometimes people ignore context to confirm their own prejudices,” he added. “People see what they want to see.” To his detractors he also wrote, “I forgive you for your ignorance. My heart goes out to you,” adding a salute emoji.
The church said it had cautioned Robinson, who has a long track record of provocative and antisemitic comments, not to engage in such behavior.
“Mr. Robinson had been warned that online trolling and other such actions (whether in service of the left or right) are incompatible with a priestly vocation and was told to desist,” it said. “Clearly, he has not, and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked.”
Robinson has also embraced beliefs that are associated with a strain of conservative Catholicism entwined with contemporary right-wing politics. On X, he has called Vatican II, the 1960s council at which the Catholic Church reformed its practices and declared that Jews did not kill Jesus Christ, “divisive”.
He declared the Latin Mass, a traditional pre-Vatican II service that has caused Catholic-Jewish tensions, “true, beautiful and good.” He said efforts to restrict it are “wicked.”
On X recently Robinson also discouraged Christians from becoming Zionists, writing, “Christians should not make an idol of the geographical Israel. The Church is the new Israel.”
In the same post, Robinson both said Christians should not hate Jews — and seemed to encourage proselytizing to them.
“We do not hate people based on their ethnicity or religion,” he wrote. “We can and should discourage people from following evil/false religions. But that is not because we hate people; it is because we love them and want them to get to heaven. The only way to the Father is through the Son.”
He has also expressed support for supersessionism, the belief that Christians have replaced Jews as God’s chosen people.
“Modern Judaism is a post-Christian religion born of the rejection of Christ,” he wrote. “Jews of the Bible are now Christian.”
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