The Anglican Catholic Church (ACC) has defrocked Father Calvin Robinson after the priest went viral for mimicking a recent gesture by Elon Musk that really, really looked like a Nazi salute.
In a statement released Wednesday, the leadership of the ACC wrote that “were made aware of a post made on X showing the end of a speech made by Calvin Robinson at the National Pro-Life Summit in Washington, DC. In it, he closed his comments with a gesture that many have interpreted as a pro-Nazi salute.”
In his closing remarks at the summit, Robinson quoted Musk, telling the crowd, “My heart goes out to you,” before tapping his right hand to his chest and extending his arm — palm down — in a salute to the crowd. Musk was embraced and celebrated by extremists and neo-Nazis when he performed the gesture twice while speaking to Trump supporters following the inauguration last week. Musk’s intention was unclear, but the gesture has been widely likened to a Nazi salute.
The crowd at the National Pro-Life Summit applauded raucously after Robinson delivered the same salute, in what was a clear homage to Musk.
“While we cannot say what was in Mr. Robinson’s heart when he did this, his action appears to have been an attempt to curry favor with certain elements of the American political right by provoking its opposition,” the ACC wrote. “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. Clearly, he has not, and as such, his license in this Church has been revoked. He is no longer serving as a priest in the ACC.”
The church, which Robinson had only been a member of since 2024, added: “This is not just an administrative matter … 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.”
In 2022, Robinson left the Church of England, into which he hoped to be ordained after completing his theological studies. Robinson was not offered a deaconship, and he accused the church of rejecting him due to his politics. He briefly served as a deacon in the Free Church of England before seeking a position with the Nordic Catholic Church, a traditionalist Catholic Norwegian church. He ministered at the church for less than a year before jumping to the ACC.
The church did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone.
