Christian Identity

Christian Identity (also known as Identity Christianity) is a racist, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist interpretation of Christianity which holds that only Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Nordic, Aryan people and those of kindred blood are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and hence the descendants of the ancient Israelites.Once on American shores, British-Israelism began to evolve. Originally, believers viewed contemporary Jews as descendants of those ancient Israelites who had never been 'lost.' They might be seen critically but, given their significant role in the British-Israel genealogical scheme, not usually with animosity. By the 1930s, however, in the U.S., a strain of anti-Semitism started to permeate the movement (though some maintained traditional beliefs - and a small number of traditionalists still exist in the U.S.).Two beings had intercourse with Eve, and she conceived from both and bore two children. Each followed one of the male parents, and their spirits parted, one to this side and one to the other, and similarly their characters. On the side of Cain are all the haunts of the evil species; from the side of Abel comes a more merciful class, yet not wholly beneficial – good wine mixed with bad.PeopleOther related topics Christian Identity (also known as Identity Christianity) is a racist, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist interpretation of Christianity which holds that only Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Nordic, Aryan people and those of kindred blood are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and hence the descendants of the ancient Israelites. Christian Identity is not an organized religion, nor is it connected with specific Christian denominations; instead, it is independently practiced by individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs. Its theology promotes a racial interpretation of Christianity. Christian Identity beliefs were primarily developed and promoted by authors who regarded Europeans as the 'chosen people' and Jews as the cursed offspring of Cain, the 'serpent hybrid' or serpent seed (a belief known as the two-seedline doctrine). White supremacist sects and gangs later adopted many of these teachings. Christian Identity holds that all non-whites (people not of wholly European descent) will either be exterminated or enslaved in order to serve the white race in the new Heavenly Kingdom on Earth under the reign of Jesus Christ. Its doctrine states that only 'Adamic' (white people) can achieve salvation and paradise. Many adherents are Millennialist. The Christian Identity movement emerged in the United States in the 1920s and 1930s as an offshoot of British Israelism. The idea that 'lower races' are mentioned in the Bible (in contrast to Aryans) was posited in the 1905 book Theozoology; or The Science of the Sodomite Apelings and the Divine Electron by Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels, a volkisch writer seen by many historians as a major influence on Nazism. Adolf Hitler, however, did not subscribe to the belief that the Israelites of the Bible were Aryans; in a speech he gave in Munich in 1920 titled 'Why We Are Anti-Semites', he referred to and disparaged Abraham as racially Jewish. While early British Israelites such as Edward Hine and John Wilson were philo-semites, Christian Identity emerged in sharp contrast as a strongly antisemitic theology. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) describes the emergence of Christian Identity from British Israelism as an 'ugly turn': Another source describes the emergence of Christian Identity from British Israelism as a 'remarkable transition', while also noting that traditional British Israelites were advocates of philosemitism which paradoxically changed to antisemitism and racism under Christian Identity. In fact, British Israelism had several Jewish adherents, and it also received support from rabbis throughout the 19th century; within British politics it supported Benjamin Disraeli, who was descended from Sephardi Jews. However, Christian Identity, which emerged in the 1920s, began to turn antisemitic by teaching the belief that the Jews are not descended from the tribe of Judah (as British Israelites maintain), but are instead descended from Satan or Edomite-Khazars. The British Israel form of the belief held no antisemitic views; instead its followers held the view that Jews made up a minority of the tribes of Israel (Judah and Benjamin), with the British and other related Northern European peoples making up the remainder. Christian Identity can be traced back to 1886 with the publication of the book Lost Israel Found in the Anglo-Saxon Race by E.P. Ingersoll. This was followed in the 1920s by the writings of Howard Rand (1889–1991). Rand was a Massachusetts lawyer who obtained a law degree at the University of Maine. He was raised as a British Israelite, and his father introduced him to J. H. Allen's work Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright (1902) at an early age. While Rand's father was not an antisemite, nor was Rand in his early British Israelite years, Rand first added an antisemitic element to British Israelism in the 1920s. He claimed as early as 1924 that the Jews were not really descended from the tribe of Judah, but were instead the descendants of Esau or Canaanites. However, Rand never claimed that modern Jews were descendants of Satan, or that they were in any way inferior; he just claimed that they were not the true lineal descendants of Judah. For this reason Rand is considered a 'transitional' figure from British Israelism to Christian Identity, but not its actual founder. Rand is known as the first person to coin the term 'Christian Identity'. Rand had set up the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America in 1933 which promoted his view that Jews were not descended from Judah; this marked the first key transition from British Israelism to Christian Identity. Beginning in May 1937, there were key meetings of British Israelites in the United States who were attracted to Rand's theory that the Jews were not descended from Judah. This provided the catalyst for the eventual emergence of Christian Identity. By the late 1930s the group considered Jews to be the offspring of Satan and demonised them, as they did non-Caucasian races. William Dudley Pelley, founder of the clerical fascist Silver Shirts movement, also promoted an anti-semitic form of British Israelism in the early 1930s. Links between Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan also emerged in the late 1930s, although the KKK was past the peak of its early 20th century revival.