# William Wolfe A former Trump-administration national-security and policy official (DOD, State Department, Senate) who in his post-government career has emerged as the most influential figure translating [[Christian Nationalism]] into Southern Baptist Convention politics and Washington-policy circles. Founder and executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership (2023), a movement-conservative pressure organization aimed at pushing the SBC further into explicit CN-aligned positions, and senior policy analyst (religious liberty) at the [[Heritage Foundation]] (2024–), where his portfolio overlaps directly with the [[Project 2025]] policy infrastructure. Wolfe's significance in the CN ecosystem is structural rather than primarily intellectual. He is the figure who actually moves between the executive-policy world ([[Russell Vought]]'s [[Center for Renewing America]] and the broader Trump-era policy operation), the SBC institutional politics ([[Founders Ministries]], the [[Conservative Baptist Network]], the [[Tom Ascol]]-aligned faction), and the public-facing think-tank world (Heritage). Most CN intellectuals have one or two of these access points; Wolfe has all three. He is also a vocal defender of [[Stephen Wolfe]]'s *Case for Christian Nationalism* (no relation) — the William Wolfe / Stephen Wolfe pair functions as the policy / theory pole of academically-credentialed CN inside Southern Baptist circles. For the Right Wing KB, William Wolfe represents the Reformed-Baptist-CN crossover — the figure who is simultaneously a credentialed Trump-administration alumnus, a Heritage Foundation policy operator, and a Southern Baptist insurgent attempting to push the SBC out of its longstanding Two-Kingdoms theology and toward explicit Christian Nationalism. The combination is unusual and disproportionately consequential: it bridges three of the seven functional layers in the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] (Theology Producers, Political Operations, State-Power Vehicles) in a single career. ## Biography **William E. Wolfe** attended **Covenant College** (Lookout Mountain, Georgia — a Presbyterian Church in America-affiliated institution) for undergraduate studies and earned a **Master's degree from [[Liberty University]]** (Lynchburg, Virginia). His educational background bridges the Reformed-Presbyterian academic tradition (Covenant) and the politically-engaged evangelical-conservative institutional pipeline (Liberty), a combination that prefigured his later career spanning Reformed theology and Republican policy operations. ## Trump Administration Service (2017–2021) Wolfe served in multiple national-security and policy roles during the first Trump administration: **Senior Advisor, U.S. Senate** — Wolfe worked as a staffer in multiple Senate offices prior to and during the early Trump era, building congressional-relations experience. **Senior Policy Advisor, U.S. Department of State** (2018–2019) — working on international religious freedom and related policy portfolios. **Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense** (2019–2021) — a sub-cabinet-level appointment in the Trump DOD, placing Wolfe in the executive-branch national-security apparatus. This DOD credential distinguishes him from most SBC-internal CN advocates, who typically lack executive-branch policy experience. ## Center for Baptist Leadership (2023–) Wolfe founded the **Center for Baptist Leadership** (CBL) in **2023** — a movement-conservative pressure organization aimed at pushing the [[Southern Baptist Convention]] further into explicit CN-aligned positions. The CBL functions as the public-advocacy vehicle for the SBC's most explicitly Christian Nationalist faction — complementing [[Tom Ascol]]'s [[Founders Ministries]] (theological recovery + institutional politics) and the **Conservative Baptist Network** (Jurkovich/[[Mike Stone]]) with a Washington-policy-fluent communications and advocacy operation. CBL's positions include: explicit endorsement of the **"Christian Nationalism" label** (unlike Ascol, who is more guarded, and Mohler, who rejects the label while supporting aligned policies), opposition to women preaching in SBC churches, opposition to SBC engagement with racial reconciliation or CRT-adjacent frameworks, and alignment with the Trump-era policy agenda on immigration, religious liberty, and education. ## Heritage Foundation (2024–) Wolfe joined the [[Heritage Foundation]] as a **Senior Policy Analyst (Religious Liberty)** in **2024** — placing him within the institutional infrastructure that produced [[Project 2025]]. His Heritage portfolio overlaps directly with the education, religious liberty, and family-policy sections of the Project 2025 playbook, connecting his SBC-internal advocacy to the federal-policy-implementation pipeline. ## Public Commentary Wolfe writes regularly for ***American Reformer*** (the online journal of the explicitly-CN-aligned Reformed intellectual orbit), ***World Magazine***, and other conservative-Christian outlets. His podcast appearances and social-media presence have made him one of the most visible advocates for the position that Southern Baptists should embrace rather than shy away from the "Christian Nationalist" label — a posture that directly challenges the [[Albert Mohler]]-style approach of supporting CN-aligned policies while rejecting the CN label. ## The William Wolfe / Stephen Wolfe Dynamic William Wolfe and [[Stephen Wolfe]] (author of *[[The Case for Christian Nationalism]]*, 2022) are **not related** — a fact that generates persistent confusion. The two have operated as complementary figures: Stephen Wolfe provides the academic-theological framework (political science PhD, Canon Press publication, TGC/Reformed-establishment debate engagement), while William Wolfe provides the Washington-policy-and-SBC-institutional-politics application. Together the two Wolfes function as the theory/practice pole of explicitly-labeled Christian Nationalism within the Reformed-Baptist orbit. ## KB Significance William Wolfe represents the **Reformed-Baptist-CN crossover** — the figure who bridges three of the seven functional layers in the [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] (Theology Producers via CBL and American Reformer, Political Operations via Heritage and Trump-admin credentials, and State-Power Vehicles via DOD/State Department alumni status) in a single career. His explicit embrace of the "Christian Nationalism" label, combined with Heritage institutional positioning and SBC-internal pressure-campaign work, makes him the most operationally consequential SBC-internal CN advocate — more publicly aggressive than [[Tom Ascol]], more Washington-connected than the CBN faction, and more explicitly CN-labeled than [[Albert Mohler]]. ## See Also - [[Christian Nationalism]] - [[Christian Nationalism Ecosystem]] - [[Stephen Wolfe]] - [[Russell Vought]] - [[Founders Ministries]] - [[Heritage Foundation]] - [[Project 2025]]