A white supremacist, Christian movement, with radically conservative political opinions, the Identity Movement teaches that the Anglo-Saxons—descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel said by the Second Book of Kings (chapters 17:6, 18:11) to have been enslaved by the King of Assyria in 721 BC—are the true Children of Israel. This movement preaches racial purity, and teaches that the Jews, the offspring of the illicit relationship between Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden, are the children of Satan. The Identity Movement is vehemently opposed to racial integration and interracial marriage and to immigration. It categorizes Africans as pre-Adamites in origin and, therefore, with no part in the divine covenant made by God with human beings. The mission of Jesus Christ is limited to the salvation of white, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and related peoples. ‘Israel’ is taken to mean a federation of white, Christian nations. It is predicted that there will be an End-Time battle between whites and Jews ending in victory for the former.
Its prominent spokespersons include the defrocked Methodist minister Wesley Swift (1913-70) who established the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Other Identity churches include the Christian Identity Church, founded in 1982 by Charles Jennings in Harrison, Arkansas. This fundamentalist Christian Church teaches the Identity message as outlined above. It also believes that the one true God, YHVH, has become manifest as the Father, Son (Yashua), and Holy Spirit, and that the Bible is infallible. The problems of the world, it maintains, are the result of failure to obey the laws of God. One of its pastors was Thorn Robb, the highly controversial chaplain of the Ku Klux Klan.
The movement derives many of its ideas from British or Anglo Israelism which dates back to the seventeenth century and was given a new lease of life in the late nineteenth century. Its three main tenets are: that God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis, 17:3-8) that he would father a great nation was to be fulfilled literally and physically, that the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel continued to exist as a nation during the reign of King David (2 Kings, 17:6., 18:11) and that Britain and America are descended from the lost tribes and constitute the ‘New Israel’. Unlike the British Israelites the Identity Movement is active in pursuit of its goals and many of its members endorse the use of militant means to achieve these. It is also anti-government claiming that its laws are inspired by Jewish interests and are for the sole benefit of the Jews.
