Church of Israel

The Church of Israel identifies biblical Israel with present-day white populations, placing racial ancestry at the center of its understanding of election and religious identity.[2] Its Articles of Faith and Doctrine affirm the Bible, the Trinity, and historic Christian creeds, while its teachings on Israelite descent and salvation distinguish it from traditional Christian doctrine.[2] Gayman’s interpretation of Genesis also assigns Jewish and Black people a purported ancestry through Cain and Satan; these are the church’s racialized religious claims, not genealogical facts.[2]

The congregation’s institutional roots lie in a rural Missouri church descended from the Latter-day Saint tradition, although little, if any, of that background remained in the Church of Israel’s later theology.[2] Its subsequent development included schools, a home-study program, and a proposed diocesan organization named after Israel’s tribes.[2]

In the 1930s, about ten families led by Dan Gayman’s father, Leo, left formal Mormon communities to pursue a pastoral life.[3] Early members included people formerly associated with the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the community’s initial theology bore a Mormon influence.[3] After several difficult years in Colorado, the families moved to Vernon County, Missouri, in 1941.[3]

Leo Gayman sought to establish a self-sufficient Christian community.[3] In 1945, approximately a month before his death, he and four other members became officers of a charitable trust holding 441 acres; an additional tract brought the colony’s land to 511 acres.[3] The congregation became known as the Church of Christ at Halley’s Bluff, also called the Church of Christ at Zion’s Retreat.[2] It had separated from the Church of Christ (Temple Lot), which claimed to be the original Church of Christ founded by Joseph Smith Jr.[2]

Dan Gayman became a pastor during the 1960s and edited the congregation’s periodical, Zions Restorer.[2] His brother Duane also served as pastor.[3] Dan advocated observing the Saturday Sabbath and traditional Jewish feast days, reflecting the influence of Herbert Armstrong and the Worldwide Church of God’s Anglo-Israelite views.[3] Differences between the brothers over Dan’s increasingly radical beliefs eventually separated their followers.[3]

The institutional dispute came to a head in 1972, when Dan called a meeting at which two bishops were deposed and new officers elected.[2] The periodical was renamed Zion’s Watchman, and the priesthood was dissolved.[2] Litigation followed, and the court awarded most of the church’s property to the deposed bishops, leaving Dan and his supporters 20 acres and denying them use of the name Church of Christ.[2] The property settlement occurred in 1973, with Duane retaining all but 20 acres of the original 511 and keeping the Church of Christ name.[3]

Dan’s congregation incorporated as the Church of Our Christian Heritage in 1974.[2] A chapel was built in Nevada, Missouri, in 1977–78, and the group opened Christian Heritage Academy, an elementary school, as well as a ministerial training school.[2] Gayman also developed a home-study program that had approximately 125 enrollees by 1982.[2] The organization adopted the name Church of Israel in 1981.[2]

Following that name change, the church reorganized around 12 dioceses named for the tribes of Israel.[2] The arrangement included dioceses for Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Manasseh, but none for Joseph or Levi; Levites were regarded as a priesthood scattered throughout the church.[2] Only the Manasseh diocese had been activated at the time described in the historical account, with Gayman serving as bishop.[2] In 1988, the church had several hundred members in five congregations served by ten ministers.[2]

The church’s Articles of Faith and Doctrine accept the Bible as the infallible Word of God and affirm the Trinity, Jesus as both God and man, and the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds.[2] Its doctrine identifies the elect in Christ with Abraham’s seed and the Israelites of the Old Testament.[2] The elect are described as passive in salvation, made willing and repentant through Christ’s grace and made holy through his atoning blood.[2]

The church identifies biblical Israelites with white populations in Europe, Scandinavia, the United States, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, and with descendants of those populations.[2] Its diocesan symbolism identifies Manasseh with the United States and Ephraim with the British Commonwealth.[2] This racial interpretation of Israelite ancestry belongs to the broader British-Israelite or Anglo-Israelite framework from which Christian Identity developed.[4]

Gayman’s booklet The Two Seeds of Genesis 3:15 teaches that Anglo-Saxons descend from Adam and that Jewish people originated through a sexual union between Eve and Satan.[3] His fuller two-seed interpretation describes white people as descendants of Seth and Jewish and Black people as descendants of Cain, whom it portrays as the offspring of Satan and Eve.[2] Gayman also taught that Adam, Eve, and Jesus were white, that interracial marriage was forbidden, and that nonwhite people were soulless.[3] His writings portrayed Jews as having taken the Christian Israelite inheritance and anticipated an apocalyptic struggle between white Christians and an alleged international Jewish conspiracy.[3]

Members observe Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles.[2] The church recognizes seven sacraments: baptism, communion, confirmation, matrimony, ordination, repentance, and unction or healing.[2] Its stated organizational positions include opposition to social security, inoculation and vaccines, narcotics, women serving in the military, violence, and abortion.[2]

Gayman, a former high school principal, became a significant theological figure within Christian Identity.[3] The Church of Israel appeared among notable American Identity groups in a 2001 audit of antisemitic incidents, and Gayman was among prominent clergy associated with the movement’s use of names such as “Israel,” “Kingdom,” and “Covenant” rather than “Identity.”[5][1]

Christian Identity emerged in its modern form during the 1960s and was an important segment of the white-supremacist movement from the 1970s through the early 2000s.[6] Its size was difficult to measure because many adherents did not belong to organized groups, and its influence and activities declined after its peak in the 1990s and early 2000s.[6] In 2018, Gayman remained active at age 80 and was one of the few prominent leaders of his generation still present in the movement, following the deaths of other leaders during the 2000s and 2010s.[6]

The church added an explicit denial of white supremacy to its Articles of Faith in response to accusations against it.[2] It also denied seeking white separatism or hatred of other races, while affirming white people as biblical Israelites and supporting racial segregation in living, working, worship, and education.[2] During the earlier church split, other leaders accused Gayman of inviting white supremacists to a youth camp and using church facilities for weapons and military-defense training.[2]

In April 1976, Gayman and several dozen supporters entered Duane’s church, locked its doors, and displayed banners identifying the National Emancipation of Our White Seed.[3] Following a scuffle with law enforcement, Gayman and eight others were arrested for trespassing, and two others were arrested for assaulting an officer.[3] The trespass charges and Gayman’s subsequent civil-rights lawsuit against police were dismissed; Gayman maintained that his group believed it had permission to use the building and had not intended a takeover.[3]

In the early 1980s, Gayman joined other Identity leaders in establishing paramilitary training centers, including Our Heritage Academy in Missouri and the Arkansas-based Endtime Overcomer Survival Training School operated by The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, to prepare the purported “elect” for Armageddon.[3] Members of the latter organization credited his teachings with influencing them, although Gayman denied meeting its former leader James Ellison; it was never alleged that Gayman directed the group’s actions.[3] Gayman was not among the 14 defendants indicted in a 1987 federal seditious-conspiracy case, but the indictment named him as having received $10,000 illegally seized by The Order.[3] He testified for the prosecution, all defendants were acquitted, and he later denounced violence as incompatible with Identity teachings.[3]

Eric Rudolph and his brother Jamie also stayed at or near the church’s compound, although accounts differed about their accommodation and participation.[3] Former pastor Scott Stinson separately raised allegations concerning finances, business activity, and the handling of an alleged child-molestation incident; these were allegations rather than established findings.[3] Gayman denied that the church advocated tax protest or nonpayment and said the alleged molestation incident had been handled internally rather than denied.[3]