Christian Identity
Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or the Aryan race and kindred peoples, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people". It is a racial interpretation of Christianity and is not an organized religion, nor is it affiliated with specific Christian denominations. It emerged from British Israelism in the 1920s and developed during the 1940s–1970s. Today it is practiced by independent individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs.
No single document expresses the Christian Identity belief system, and some beliefs may vary by group. However, all Identity adherents believe that Adam and his offspring were exclusively White. They also believe in Two House theology, which makes a distinction between the Tribe of Judah and the Ten Lost Tribes, and that ultimately, European people represent the Ten Lost Tribes. This racialist view advocates racial segregation and opposes interracial marriage. Other commonly held beliefs are that usury and banking systems are controlled by Jews, leading to opposition to the Federal Reserve System and use of fiat currency, believing it to be part of "the beast" system. Christian Identity's eschatology is millennialist.
Christian Identity is characterized as racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Estimates of the number of adherents in the United States in 2014 ranged from two thousand to fifty thousand.
Origins
Relationship to British Israelism
The Christian Identity movement emerged in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s as an offshoot of British Israelism. Early British Israelites such as Edward Hine and John Wilson were philosemites. The typical form of the British Israelite belief held that modern-day Jews were descended from the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, while the British and other related Northern European peoples were descended from the other ten tribes. Christian Identity emerged in sharp contrast to British Israelism as a strongly antisemitic theology, and by the 1940s to 1970s, it was teaching that contemporary Jews were either descendants of Eurasian Khazars or literal descendants of Satan.Early influences
British Israelism can be traced back to Great Britain in the 1600s, but in terms of its relationship to Christian Identity, a key text was Lectures on Our Israelitish Origin by John Wilson. Wilson was the first to formalize a distinction between the northern and southern kingdoms of Israel. Although Wilson's views were not originally antisemitic, they came to have great significance for modern Christian Identity adherents who believe that the northern tribes were carried off by the Assyrians and remained racially pure as they migrated into modern Europe, while the southern kingdom eventually became allied with Satan.In the 1920s, the writings of Howard Rand began to have an influence. Considered a transitional figure from British Israelism to Christian Identity rather than its actual founder, Rand is known for coining the term "Christian Identity". Rand's father raised him as a British Israelite, introducing him to J. H. Allen's work Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright by offering him five dollars if he would read it and write a report on it. Around 1924, Rand began to claim that the Jews are descended from Esau or the Canaanites rather than the tribe of Judah, although not going so far as to advocate the "serpent seed" doctrine.
During the late 1920s, Anglo-Israelite writers began to compile research from 19th century writers Dominick McCausland, Alexander Winchell, and Ethel Bristowe, using them to develop five basic beliefs that would become the core tenets of Christian Identity doctrine. These were that Adamites represented Aryans as the chosen, that nonwhites were tainted through race-mixing, that the serpent in the story of the Fall was not a reptile, but the Devil himself, that the seedline of Cain came through a union of Satan and Eve, and that the Jews were descended from this unholy line and thus had a natural propensity for evil.
In 1933, Rand founded the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, an organization which began to promote the view that the Jews are not descended from Judah. Beginning in May 1937, there were key meetings of British Israelites in the United States who were attracted to this theory, and these meetings provided the catalyst for the eventual emergence of Christian Identity. By the late 1930s, the group's members considered Jews to be the offspring of Satan and demonized them, and they also demonized non-Caucasian races. Rand, however, rejected the satanic origin theories. This doctrine came to confirm the explicit separation between British-Israelism and Christian Identity.
Links between Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan were also forged in the late 1930s, but by then, the KKK was past the peak of its early twentieth-century revival.
Emergence as a separate movement
Christian Identity began to emerge as a separate movement in the 1940s, primarily over issues of racism and antisemitism rather than over issues of Christian theology. Wesley Swift is considered the father of the movement; so much so that every Anti-Defamation League publication which addresses Christian Identity mentions him. Swift was a minister in the Angelus Temple Foursquare Church during the 1930s and 1940s before he founded his own church in Lancaster, California and named it the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation, reflecting the influence of Howard Rand. In the 1950s, he was Gerald L. K. Smith's West Coast representative of the Christian Nationalist Crusade. In addition, he hosted a daily radio broadcast in California during the 1950s and 1960s, through which he was able to proclaim his ideology to a large audience. Due to Swift's efforts, the message of his church spread, leading to the founding of similar churches throughout the country.Eventually, the name of his church was changed to the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian, today this name is used by Aryan Nations. One of Swift's associates was retired Col. William Potter Gale. Gale became a leading figure in the anti-tax and paramilitary movements of the 1970s and 1980s, beginning with the California Rangers and the Posse Comitatus, and he also helped found the American militia movement.
The future Aryan Nations founder Richard Girnt Butler, who was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, was introduced to Wesley Swift by William Potter Gale in 1962. Swift quickly converted Butler to Christian Identity. When Swift died in 1971, Butler fought against Gale, James Warner, and Swift's widow for control of the church. Butler eventually gained control of the organization and moved it from California to Hayden Lake, Idaho in 1973.
Lesser figures participated as Christian Identity theology took shape in the 1940s and 1950s, such as San Jacinto Capt, a Baptist minister and California Klansman, who claimed that he had introduced Wesley Swift to Christian Identity; and Bertrand Comparet, a one-time San Diego Deputy City Attorney and associate of Gerald L. K. Smith. Later Identity figures of the 1970s and 1980s include Sheldon Emry, Thomas Robb, and Peter J. Peters.
The Christian Identity movement first received widespread attention from the mainstream media in 1984, when The Order, a neo-Nazi terrorist group, embarked on a murderous crime spree before it was suppressed by the FBI. The movement returned to public attention in 1992 and 1993, in the wake of the deadly Ruby Ridge confrontation, when newspapers discovered that right-wing separatist Randy Weaver had a loose association with Christian Identity believers.
These groups are estimated to have two thousand members in the United States and an unknown number of members in Canada and the rest of the British Commonwealth. Due to the promotion of Christian Identity doctrines through radio and later through the Internet, an additional fifty thousand unaffiliated individuals are thought to hold Christian Identity beliefs.
While most of the Identity groups of the 1960s and 1970s relied on mailing lists, publications, and cassette recordings to disseminate their teachings, later figures promoted their ministries using radio and television. Pete Peters and his Scriptures for America program was considered to be one of the largest white supremacist radio ministries in the United States. Additionally, Peters was an early pioneer in promoting Identity via the Internet. Today, Christian Identity is promoted through the Internet by using blogs, podcasts, and other means. The most prominent Identity teacher today is William Finck.
Beliefs
Christian Identity theology promotes a racialist interpretation of Christianity. In his book, Gods of the Blood, Swedish historian and scholar of comparative religion Mattias Gardell has noted that "Christian Identity is best understood as an umbrella concept under which a variety of different theologies are found". He points out that there are considerable differences in dogma and religious practice between various ministries and groups. Some Christian Identity churches preach with more violent rhetoric than others, but all of them believe that Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or the Aryan race and kindred peoples are the true Israelites and that modern Jews have dispossessed them of their identity as God's chosen race. Identity beliefs are conspiratorial, believing that all of history represents a great cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. It is all part of a Satanic plot to take control of creation.Christian Identity beliefs were primarily developed and promoted by two authors who considered Europeans to be the chosen people and considered Jews to be the cursed offspring of Cain, the serpent seed, a belief which is known as the dual-seedline or two-seedline doctrine. Wesley Swift formulated the doctrine which states that non-Caucasian peoples have no souls and therefore they can never earn God's favor or be saved.
No single document expresses the Christian Identity belief system; there is much disagreement over the doctrines which are taught by those who ascribe to Identity beliefs, since there is no central organization or headquarters for the Identity sect. However, all Identity adherents believe that Adam and his offspring were exclusively White and they also believe that all non-white races are pre-Adamite races because they belong to separate species, a doctrinal position which implies that they cannot be equated with or derived from the Adamites. Identity adherents cite passages from the Old Testament, including,, and, which they claim contain Yahweh's injunctions against interracial marriages.
Christian Identity adherents assert that the white people of Europe in particular or Caucasians in general are God's servant people, according to the promises that were given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It further asserts that the early European tribes were really the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and therefore the rightful heirs to God's promises, and God's chosen people. Colin Kidd wrote that in the United States, Christian Identity exploited "the puzzle of the Ten Lost Tribes to justify an openly anti-Semitic and virulently racist agenda." According to Michael McFarland and Glenn Gottfried, Indentitarians developed their racist interpretation of Christianity because of its status as a traditional religion of the United States, which allowed them to advocate the belief that white Americans have a common identity, and because of the variety of possible interpretations of the Bible in the field of hermeneutics.
While they seek to introduce a state of racial purity in the US, Christian Identitarians do not trust the Congress or the government, allegedly controlled by Jews, to support their agenda. In their view, this means that political changes can only be made through the use of force. However, the failed experience of the terrorist group The Order has forced them to acknowledge the fact that they are currently unable to overthrow the government by staging an armed insurrection against it. Thus, the Christian Identity movement seeks an alternative to violence and government change with the creation of a "White Aryan Bastion" or a White ethnostate, such as the Northwest Territorial Imperative.
Being decentralized with no center of orthodoxy, individual pastors each have their own approach to biblical hermeneutics. However, the teacher-student relationship is how training and ordination occur, and is very important to an Identity congregation.