Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a theological and political movement rather than a single church or organization, and has also circulated under the names “Identity,” “Kingdom Identity,” and “Kingdom Message.”[4] An offshoot of Protestantism found mainly in the United States and other English-speaking countries, it formerly occupied a dominant position among religious orientations on the American extreme right.[3] Its central identification of white Europeans with biblical Israel supplies a religious basis for white supremacy and the displacement of Jews from their own biblical history.[1][3]

The movement has no authoritative creed or centralized religious leadership, and its factions differ in the relative emphasis they place on antisemitism and anti-Black racism.[5] Recurring teachings present white people as God’s chosen race, portray Jews as enemies or counterfeit Israelites, and assign nonwhite peoples an inferior place in a racialized account of creation.[1][3] Some factions teach that Jews descend from Satan, while others reject that particular doctrine but retain other antisemitic beliefs.[1] A broader definition of the ancestry claim includes Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and related peoples among the supposed descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel.[6]

Christian Identity’s reach has extended beyond its own congregations into Aryan Nations, some Ku Klux Klan factions, neo-Nazi groups, racist skinhead circles, tax-protest organizations, sovereign-citizen networks, and parts of the militia movement.[1] This circulation has not produced an effective nationwide church structure: personal relationships, independent pastors, and doctrinal affinities have remained more important than formal coordination.[2][3] Catholic and Protestant leaders have condemned the movement, distinguishing its racist theology from established Christian traditions.[7]

British-Israelism, Christian Identity’s principal antecedent, emerged in nineteenth-century Britain as an interpretive tendency among Protestants rather than a separate church or sect.[3] Its advocates claimed that the biblical Lost Tribes had migrated to the British Isles and, in some versions, northwestern Europe.[3] Scottish writer and lecturer John Wilson helped formulate these ideas, while Edward Hine spread them in Britain and the United States.[2] Some British-Israelites interpreted British imperial expansion as a divine mission and evidence of God’s favor.[3] The British movement reportedly reached approximately 5,000 adherents at its peak in the 1920s.[1]

Early British-Israelism could be sympathetic toward Jews, regarding them as partners of Anglo-Saxon peoples in God’s plan rather than as the enemies depicted in later Identity theology.[3] Advocates supported Jewish settlement in Palestine and interpreted Britain’s League of Nations mandate there as evidence of predestined Anglo-Jewish cooperation.[3] Another account describes early Anglo-Israelites as regarding Jews as kin descended from Judah and Benjamin.[8] Hostility subsequently increased among some adherents, including Howard Rand’s followers, particularly when Zionists opposed British administration after World War II.[3]

British-Israelite ideas reached the United States by the late nineteenth century and appealed to Americans who believed their country possessed a special divine destiny.[1] In this setting, they intersected with Manifest Destiny and expanded through organizations that increasingly adopted racial and antisemitic rhetoric before World War II.[2][3] Howard Rand, a Massachusetts lawyer and leader of the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, organized chapters around the country during the movement’s 1920s and 1930s heyday.[3] His federation distributed thousands of pieces of literature, although the movement remained small and obscure.[1]

William J. Cameron, a Ford Motor Company executive and editor of Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, assisted Rand’s proselytizing.[3] Cameron’s newspaper published antisemitic articles in the early 1920s and promoted the antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.[1][3] His 1923 articles included “Are the Jews ‘God’s Chosen People’?” and “‘Was Jesus Christ a Jew?’—An Inquiry.”[8] By the 1930s, some American British-Israelites were advancing the claim that most Jews descended from medieval Khazars rather than ancient Israelites, using it to label European Jews “false” Israelites.[1] Reuben H. Sawyer was another figure associated with the movement’s development between the 1920s and 1940s.[8]

The first Christian Identity groups emerged on the U.S. West Coast in the late 1940s, following British-Israelite conventions held in the northern Pacific region between 1937 and 1947.[2] Relative separation from East Coast organizations and political disagreements created space for more extreme antisemitic, racial-conspiratorial, and apocalyptic teachings.[2] Wesley Swift’s church in Lancaster, California, dates to about 1948, initially as the Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation and soon afterward as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian.[2]

Swift, a former Methodist minister born in 1913, became a central figure in the transformation of British-Israelism into Christian Identity before his death in 1970.[1] His activity in extreme-right organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, and his friendship with antisemitic political figure Gerald L. K. Smith connected the emerging theology to far-right politics in Southern California.[1] Bertrand Comparet and San Jacinto Capt were among his associates, while Swift, Comparet, and William Potter Gale formed an important early leadership cadre whose ideas developed between the end of World War II and the late 1960s.[1][3] Swift’s rhetoric included an early-1950s declaration that “All Jews must be destroyed,” followed by a prediction of their destruction in the United States by November 1953.[2]

During the 1960s, Swift’s disciples included James K. Warner, Gale, and Richard Butler.[1] Warner led the Christian Defense League and New Christian Crusade Church, while Gale participated in the Christian Defense League and its California Rangers.[1] Gale founded Posse Comitatus in the 1970s, helping establish a current that contributed to the sovereign-citizen movement, and later created the Committee of the States.[1] In 1974, Butler moved Swift’s Church of Jesus Christ Christian to northern Idaho and recast it as Aryan Nations.[1]

Christian Identity reached what one account calls its “full stature” in the late 1970s and early 1980s and circulated through Aryan Nations, Posse Comitatus, and some Klan factions.[1][8] Aryan Nations built a network around its Hayden Lake, Idaho, compound, which became a gathering place for far-right leaders and organizations.[2] Butler promoted a future white polity in the Pacific Northwest, while Identity teaching identified Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Scandinavian, Germanic, and related peoples as descendants of ancient Israel.[2][6] Its compound became the movement’s most visible racist institution during the 1980s, although many practitioners continued to worship in small halls and private homes.[7]

From the mid-1980s, increased law-enforcement surveillance and prosecution reduced the movement’s visibility and slowed or stopped its growth.[3] Some clergy abandoned the “Identity” label in favor of terms such as “Israel,” “Kingdom,” and “Covenant”; examples included Dan Gayman of the Church of Israel and Pete Peters of the LaPorte Church of Christ.[3] The movement’s influence declined after the 1990s and early 2000s as older leaders died and younger leaders exercised less influence.[9] During the 2000s, many adherents returned to greater reclusiveness as prominent leaders died or became inactive.[10]

The “two-seed” or “seedliner” doctrine, developed by Swift and associates in the 1960s, gives Christian Identity’s antisemitism a supernatural genealogy.[1] In this teaching, Eve’s union with Adam produced Abel and, in some versions, Seth and a white Israelite lineage, while her encounter with Satan or a humanoid serpent produced Cain, whom adherents identify as the ancestor of Jews.[3] The doctrine therefore casts Jews as demonic adversaries rather than members of the biblical people Israel.[1] Other adherents reject this specific account without abandoning antisemitism.[1]

Related creation teachings identify Adam and Eve as the first white people and assign nonwhite peoples to an earlier or separate creation.[5] Many adherents, particularly seedliners, use the dehumanizing term “mud peoples” for those they place outside the Adamic lineage and deny them equal spiritual status.[1] Within this racial theology, the Bible becomes a history of the white race and a source of divine requirements for racial separation and preservation of white racial purity.[5] Some teachings depict Jesus as Aryan rather than Jewish, while others maintain that he came to save only white people.[8][11] Opposition to interracial relationships received increased emphasis amid the social and cultural changes of post-1960s America.[8]

Antisemitic conspiracy theories connect these religious claims to contemporary politics.[5] Identity texts accuse Jews of controlling U.S. media, industry, and government and use the conspiratorial label “Zionist Occupational Government,” commonly abbreviated “ZOG.”[5] Allied far-right groups likewise depicted the federal government as “ZOG.”[12] Holocaust denial has also been supported within Identity theology.[11] Adherents differ over Hitler’s status, interpretations of Jewish history, occult ideas, and whether political activism or violence should be pursued, while generally sharing a white-Israelite racial framework.[8]

Apocalyptic expectations supply another major connection between doctrine and conduct.[1] Adherents anticipate Jesus’ return after a period of tribulation and frequently interpret the final struggle between good and evil as a racial battle.[1] The movement rejects the Rapture and premillennial dispensationalism, in part because of that tradition’s support for Jewish prophecy and the State of Israel.[3] Some followers expect race war, economic collapse, or the failure of secular institutions, and prepare through survivalism, paramilitary or self-defense training, weapons practice, and stockpiling supplies.[5] An account from 1986 described teachings that placed Armageddon in America as a military confrontation between adherents and the forces of Satan.[4]

These expectations have sometimes encouraged separation and self-sufficiency in isolated compounds.[3] A 1987 account identified Aryan Nations in Idaho, the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas, and Elohim City in Oklahoma as compound-based groups where Bible study and religious instruction could accompany paramilitary and survivalist training and storage of weapons and food.[12] The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, also called Zarephath-Horeb, was founded as an Ozark paramilitary commune in 1976 and remained insular until a law-enforcement raid in 1985.[3]

Anti-government interpretations also treat the Bible as the basis of U.S. government and the Constitution as divinely inspired.[5] Some adherents dismiss amendments beyond the Bill of Rights as invalid, alleging that a Jewish conspiracy corrupted the constitutional order.[5] This outlook intersects with Posse Comitatus arguments that county authorities and local people should act when state authorities fail to uphold what adherents regard as the original Constitution.[5] Belief that divine law outranks human law, together with expectations of institutional collapse, has contributed to anti-government sympathies and reclusiveness.[1]

Religious observance can include practices drawn from the Hebrew Bible despite the movement’s hostility to Jews.[3] Some groups celebrate Passover and Sukkot, observe selected biblical dietary rules, and use the divine names Yahweh, YHWH, or YHVH.[3] In other liturgical respects, congregations often resemble nondenominational evangelicals.[3] Independent ministries range from small churches and Bible-study groups to publishers and audio, video, and online outreach operations.[3] Archival materials include publications associated with Sheldon Emry’s Lord’s Covenant Church, Warner’s New Christian Crusade Church, Gordon Winrod’s Our Saviour’s Church, and Gayman’s Church of Israel.[11]

Personal relationships and doctrinal similarities link these ministries, but attempts at even minimal coordination have failed partly because pastors resist limitations on their autonomy and often compete with one another.[3] A 1986 account described hundreds of small groups, including ministries selling tapes and booklets, ministers broadcasting on AM radio, and congregations in Los Angeles and Spokane.[4] Aryan Nations distributed sermons and Identity material nationally from Idaho, while its annual gatherings brought together members of other far-right organizations.[12] Its summer World Congresses attracted several hundred people and offered opportunities for recruitment, coordination, ideological discussion, and paramilitary training.[2]

In 2015, nearly 100 U.S. groups and about 120 active preachers had been identified, although physical churches were relatively rare because followers were geographically dispersed.[10] Websites increasingly replaced shortwave broadcasts and cassette ministries as means of outreach.[10] In a 2019 account, Gayman remained among the prominent surviving leaders of the older generation, whereas Paul Mullet’s Ohio-based Divine Truth Ministries consisted of a small group with a handful of mostly online followers.[9] Areas of particular prevalence included the Appalachians, Ozarks, and Pacific Northwest, with another account identifying the Pacific Northwest and Midwest as historical strongholds.[1][9]

Christian Identity was an important component of American white supremacy from the 1970s through the early 2000s, connecting religious racial doctrine with organizations involved in extremist politics and crime.[9] In the 1970s it became a significant variant of neo-Nazism by combining racialized British-Israelism with theories of racial superiority and depicting contemporary Jews as impostors.[7] Its influence extended into the 1990s militia movement, including some important militia leaders.[13] Community groups’ exposure of militia leaders’ white-supremacist and Identity affiliations helped undermine that movement.[13]

Christian Identity nevertheless remains distinct from the related ideology of Christian Patriotism, which treats the United States as a biblical Promised Land for whites and the Constitution and Bill of Rights as scripture.[13] Terry Nichols, one of the Oklahoma City bombers, was identified as a Christian Patriot rather than as a Christian Identity adherent.[13] The distinction matters when identifying the ideological affiliations of individuals in overlapping far-right networks.[13]

Violence associated with Identity adherents has included attacks on Jews, Black people, law-enforcement officers, and other targets.[1][8] In 1983, Gordon Kahl killed two U.S. Marshals attempting to arrest him for a parole violation; after a four-month manhunt, he killed a sheriff in another shootout and was himself killed.[1] The Order’s crimes included the 1984 murder of Jewish radio host Alan Berg, while Richard Wayne Snell murdered a Black Arkansas state police officer that year and was executed in 1995.[3][8] In 1985, Order member and Identity adherent David Tate killed a Missouri state trooper while attempting to reach the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound.[1]

Later cases included Oklahoma minister Willie Ray Lampley’s attempted bombing campaign in 1995 and the involvement of Identity adherents among Montana Freemen leaders during their 81-day confrontation with federal authorities in 1996.[1] The Freemen employed tactics described as “paper terrorism.”[1] Eric Rudolph, associated with Identity ministers, became a fugitive in 1998 after bombings attributed to him.[1] In 1999, former Aryan Nations security guard Buford Furrow shot people at a Los Angeles Jewish community center, wounding four children and an adult, and subsequently killed a Filipino-American postal worker.[1] Identity beliefs have also sometimes circulated through neo-Nazi prison gangs, including the Aryan Brotherhood.[8]

The self-appointed “Phineas Priesthood” illustrates how biblical interpretation could be used to authorize individual extremist violence.[1] Richard Kelly Hoskins’s 1990 book Vigilantes of Christendom drew on the biblical Phinehas narrative to describe white warriors employing extreme measures against targets including interracial couples, gay people, and abortion providers.[1] A group using the label committed bombings and bank robberies around Spokane, Washington, in 1996; four members were captured and received lengthy prison sentences.[1]

In 2014, Larry Steven McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds in downtown Austin, Texas, at targets including the Mexican consulate and police headquarters.[10] Investigators found Vigilantes of Christendom in his vehicle and a handwritten note identifying him as a “high priest” of the Phineas Priesthood.[10] The book had inspired some violent extremists, although the priesthood concept described self-appointed actors rather than a conventional religious office.[1][10]

The movement’s violent factions should be distinguished from its wider membership, most of whom appear to have been law-abiding.[3] A study of far-right political violence identified 66 attacks linked to Identity groups between 1990 and 2011, the smallest total among the ideological streams compared; approximately half were attributed to Aryan Nations members.[2] Two-thirds occurred before 2001, and 1994 was the only year with a double-digit count.[2] That dataset concerned violent incidents rather than a comprehensive assessment of the political causes supported by far-right extremists.[2]

The movement’s numerical reach has been harder to establish than the histories of its prominent organizations.[3] Published estimates include approximately 5,000–30,000 adherents and as many as 50,000 in the United States by mid-2005.[3][8] A separate estimate put the number of North American believers at 25,000–50,000, with the actual figure considered likelier to fall near its lower end.[1] Secrecy, distrust of outside scrutiny, dispersed membership, and numbers too small for reliable measurement in large religious surveys complicate counting.[3] A 2019 assessment likewise emphasized that many adherents belonged to no organized group.[9] At the start of the twenty-first century, small churches and groups remained dispersed, especially in the Pacific Northwest, and used publications, recordings, and the Internet to proselytize.[1][3]

Christian Identity’s assertions about Israelite ancestry and human origins are religious and racial doctrines, not established historical or biological findings.[3][14] Its biblical interpretations differ from mainstream religious interpretations, and the absence of an authoritative creed makes generalizations about every faction inappropriate.[5] Descriptions of it as “fundamentalist” also differ: one major study uses that characterization, while another rejects it as inaccurate.[2][14]

Membership estimates refer to different dates, geographical areas, and measures and should not be treated as a present-day census.[1][3] Accounts of violence likewise distinguish political violence, terrorism, criminal affiliation, and the movement’s broader membership rather than treating these categories as interchangeable.[2][3]