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Christian Identity Movement (CIM) from Encyclopedia of American Religious History

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The virulently racist and anti-Semitic religious movement known as Christian Identity (or Identity) began as a quirky theological movement within Victorian Protestantism. Originally known as Anglo (or British)- Israelitism, this group believed the 10 lost tribes of the Jews from the Northern Kingdom had migrated from Israel to the Caucasus (becoming Caucasians) and eventually settled in Britain and northern Europe, where they became the Anglo-Saxons. Jews, they believed, were descendants of the two tribes of the Southern Kingdom who, although captured by the Babylonians and exiled, were eventually allowed to return to Israel. In this view, the Anglo-Saxons and the Jews were related and together shared the right to be called the “ chosen people. “

By the early 20th century, however, this this vaguely philo-Semitic movement would be transformed into a virulent anti-Semitic and racist ideology. This hatred reached such extremes that some groups renounced all links to Christianity due to its Jewish roots and its message of love and forgiveness. For these groups, the essence of life lay in struggle, especially racial struggle, and anything hindering this struggle violated the laws of nature.

The transformation to an anti-Semitic movement began in the United States during the 1920s with William Cameron, editor of the Dearborn Independent, the Michigan newspaper owned by Henry Ford. Cameron published the first major American version of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Gerald L. K. Smith, one of the United States’ leading right-wing demagogues, also was a believer in the Christian Identity ideology. Perhaps the most visible and organized Identity movement in the United States for years was the Worldwide Church of God, founded by the science fiction writer Garner Ted Armstrong. The church taught that Jews were evil and that Anglo-Saxons were the chosen people of God. Since Armstrong's death, however, the church has struggled to bring itself in line with the teachings of mainstream evangelicalism and has renounced this doctrine. This turnabout paved the way for the group's entry into the National Association of Evangelicals in 1997.

In the 1940s to the 1960s, the anti-Semitic components of Identity were articulated most agressively by California lawyer Bertrand Comparet, Wesley Swift, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian, which for decades made Identity central to its beliefs, and William Potter Gale, a former aide to Douglas MacArthur and director of guerrilla operations in the Philippines during World War II, founder of the Christian Defense League.

In this version of Christian Identity, Jews were stripped of their Biblical roots and their connection with God. Initally the doctrines accused the two southern tribes (the “House of Judah “) of intermarrying with heathens, thus defiling themselves and God's law. Later versions separated them completely from the Jews of the Bible, claiming that the Jews were merely the descendants of the Khazars, a tribal people from southern Russia who converted en masse to Judaism in 740.

In the most prevalent versions of Identity, the white Anglo-Saxon-Celtic (brought in undoubtedly to incorporate the Scots) peoples are viewed as God's real “ chosen people, “ who descend in an unbroken line from Adam and Eve. By nature and divine design, they are the superior race. The modern Jews descend from Cain, who was born of a sexual liaison between Eve and the Serpent (the real original sin) in Eden. They are biologically evil, the “ synagogue of Satan. “

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Nonwhites are “ pre-Adamic “ beings. They have no souls and are the biblical “ beasts of the field. “ Cain mated with these peoples to produce today's Jews. As the spawn of Satan, the Jews are involved in a plot to unite the world under a single government, which will then be handed over to the rule of the devil himself.

In order to prevent this catastrophe, whites in America, who constitute the true “ House of Israel, “ must prepare for the bloody battle with the forces of evil, the people of color manipulated and led by the Jews, in a racial holy war. God's law on Earth can only be established through victory in this battle, Armageddon. There the forces of good—the white “ Israelites “ —will be pitted against the armies of Satan, represented by the Jewish-controlled federal government. Identity followers believe they must wage an all-out war against the ZOG (the Zionist Occupied Government), all those of color, white “ race traitors, “ and anyone else who stands in their way.

Identity followers also believe that America is the New Jerusalem and that the U.S. Constitution was given to their ancestors, the white Christian Founding Fathers, by God. They claim that the authentic Constitution consisted of just the first 10 amendments of the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) and the Articles of Confederation. Only white Christian men are “ true sovereign citizens “ of the republic. Other Americans are merely “ state citizens, “ illegally created through the Fourteenth Amendment by an illegitimate “ de facto “ government. Since the modern American government is illegitimate, Identity followers believe the Internal Revenue Service, civil rights legislation, and abortion rights are also unlawful.

For nearly 50 years, the virulent racist theology of Identity has made inroads into racist and antigovernment groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Posse Comitatus, and racist skinheads. Currently, it commands a large following beyond traditional white supremacists, including inside the patriot movement.

Explicit Identity groups such as the Covenant, Sword and Arm of The Lord (CSA), the White Patriot Party, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations, and the Order have been responsible for the racist right's most violent incidents since the 1970s. Murder, robbery, and savage attacks on individuals have characterized their methods. Timothy McVeigh, who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, placed two calls to Elohim City, Oklahoma a private city esablished in 1973 by an Identity Movement leader named Robert Millar, just days before the attack.

Millar had close ties to some of the most violent Identity adherents. In April 1995, Millar personally supervised the transfer of the body of Richard Wayne Snell from Arkansas to Elohim City. Snell, an Identity adherent and CSA member, had been executed in Arkansas for the 1983 murder of a pawnshop owner he mistakenly thought to be Jewish. Previously, Snell had been convicted of murdering a black Arkansas state trooper in 1984.

Millar, who had brought both Snell and CSA founder James Ellison into the movement, believes that someone will soon be resurrected from the dead to lead the white Israelites in battle against the satanic federal government. After Snell's body arrived at Elohim City, the casket was left open for several days in anticipation of the possibility that Snell might be this “ savior. “

The Identity movement promotes anti-Semitic paranoia and hatred through numerous methods, including books, newsletters, audio cassettes, videos, shortwave and AM radio, satellite and cable television, camp meetings, far right Patriot rallies, and church meetings. The Internet has been a

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successful medium for promulgating the movement's views. Identity has also been particularly active in prisons. Still, in 2016 all the various Identity groups combined had an estimated membership between 25,000 and 50,000.

Beginning in the 1990s and continuing into the 21st century, the movement became increasingly violent, with members bombing abortion clinics, clubs and bars catering to gays and lesbians, and even the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Additionally, shooting sprees by Identity members targeting Jews, Asians, African Americans, and police officers have taken place in Los Angeles, Kansas, and Charleston, South Carolina.

One source of the increasing violence of the Identity Movement was the idea of the “Phineas Priesthood” concocted by Richard Kelly Hoskins in his 1990 book Vigilantes of Christendom. Drawing on the Biblical character Phinehas who, “jealouse for his God” (Numbers XXV:11,13) slew an Israelite and the Midianite woman with whom he had sex (Numbers, XXV:6-7), Hoskins called for the creation of of “Phineas Priests,” a group of self-anointed elite warriors willing to undertake violent attacks on gays and lesbians, abortion clinics, Jews, and people of color, as well as what he termed “race-mixers.”

For some, however, even these views are insufficiently extreme. For them, the Christian Identity movement is tainted by Christianity's Jewish roots and its false message of love, when the true law of nature is struggle, the struggle for the victory of the species, the race.

The most visible of these groups is the Creativity Movement. Established in 1973 as the Church of the Creator (later the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC)), with a theology known as “creativity,” by Ben Klassen, a onetime Florida state legislator born in Ukraine and raised in Canada, it rejected “ the Judeo-democratic-Marxist values of today “ and desired to supplant them “ with new and basic values, of which race is the foundation. “ The WCOTC attacks Christianity as the “ tremendous weapon in the worldwide Jewish drive of race-mixing. “ Creators assert that Jews “ concocted “ Christianity in order to mongrelize and destroy the white race. Much of WCOTC's hatred and energies are directed against Jews, whom it accuses of being “ parasites “ who “ control and manipulate the finances, the propaganda, the media and the governments of the world.” The goal is to make the United States “an all white nation and ultimately an all white world.” Its slogan is “RaHoWa,” an abbreviated form of “ Racial Holy War. “

WCOTC quickly became one of the most virulent, violent, and quickly growing hate groups in the United States. Members were implicated in numerous racially motivated assaults and arsons and several murders. One of these murders led to the conviction of several members and a civil judgment against the church that awarded nearly all of its assets to the family of the victim, a black veteran of the Persian Gulf War. This event led to Klassen's suicide in 1993. The church went into decline until it was revived by Matt Hale, who declared himself pontifex maximus of the church in 1996.

Despite this the WCOTC was unknown to most Americans until 1999. During the Fourth of July weekend of that year, a WCOTC activist Benjamin “August” Smith went on a shooting rampage throughout Illinois and Indiana, killing two people and wounding nine wounded before killing himself. All of Smith's victims were either black, Jewish, or Asian American. In the previous January, Hale had named Smith “ Creator of the Year “ because of his success in distributing the church's anti-Semitic and racist tract, Facts That the Government and the Media Don't Want You To Know.

Although the incident's national impact was not as great as that of the Oklahoma City bombing, Smith's

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rampage was a clear reminder that religion in the United States manifests itself in numerous ways, not all of them positive. Sadly, many of those shot on the first day of the rampage were Jews on their way to services, and the final victim was a Korean man on his way home from church.

Although the Identity Movement historically has been a fringe group, it received a tremendous amount of visibility during the 2016 presidential campaign particularly in the guise of the “alt.right.” Numerous white supremacist and racist groups and individuals grabbed on to the coattails of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, whose attacks on immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, and others seemingly meshed with their views. Trump's rhetoric throughout the campaign often reflected traditional anti-Semitic and racist tropes, including claims that internation bankers were conspiring to destroy the country and that immigrants overwhelmingly contributed to criminality and violence. Additionally, anti-Semitic and racially tinged attacks were directed against journalists and authors deemed critical of Trump.

Further Information

Aho, James, The Politics of Righteousness (University of Washington Press Seattle, 1990). Barkun, Michael, Religion and the Racist Right (University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill, 1997). Blee, Kathleen M., Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement (University of California

Press Berkeley, 2002). Davis, Danny W., The Phinehas Priesthood: Violent Vanguard of the Christian Identity Movement

(Praeger Security International Westport CT, 2010). Wexler, Stuart, America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United

States (Counterpoint Berkeley, 2015).

Edward L. Queen II

Copyright © 2018 Queen, Edward L., II, Prothero, Stephen R. and Shattuck, Gardiner H., Jr.

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APA Queen, E. L. (2018). Christian identity movement (CIM). In E. L. Queen, P. II, S. Stephen R., & J. Gardiner H. (Eds.), Facts on File library of American history: Encyclopedia of American religious history (4th ed.). Facts On File. Credo Reference: https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/fofr/christian_identity_movement_cim/0

Chicago Queen, Edward L., II. "Christian Identity Movement (CIM)." In Encyclopedia of American Religious History, edited by Edward L. Queen, Prothero II, Shattuck Stephen R., and Jr. Gardiner H.. 4th ed. Facts On File, 2018. https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/fofr/christian_identity_movement_cim/0

Harvard Queen, E.L. (2018). Christian identity movement (CIM). In E.L. Queen, P. II, S. Stephen R. & J. Gardiner H. (Eds.), Facts on File library of American history: Encyclopedia of American religious history. (4th ed.). [Online]. New York: Facts On File. Available from: https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/fofr/christian_identity_movement_cim/0 [Accessed 16 August 2023].

MLA Queen, Edward L., II. "Christian Identity Movement (CIM)." Encyclopedia of American Religious History, edited by Edward L. Queen, et al., Facts On File, 4th edition, 2018. Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/fofr/christian_identity_movement_cim/0. Accessed 16 Aug. 2023.

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