¶ … motivations of the Christian Identity movement?
The Christian Identity movement in the U.S. uses religion as a means to justify its members' espousal of both racist and anti-Semitic sentiments. Followers are fundamentally motivated by distorted views of Christian beliefs towards advocating violence and opposition towards Jews, minorities, liberals, feminists, homosexuals and others.
The movement's core beliefs include Anglo-Israelism which states that white Christian Americans are the true children of Israel, the Pre-Adamite theory which states that people of other races are descendants of subhuman creatures that existed before Adam, the Serpent's Seed doctrine which states that present-day Jews are descendants of Cain the supposed offspring of Eve and Satan the serpent, and Armageddon that is basically a race war between Whites and Jews and Non-Whites1.
These religious beliefs further motivate followers to engage in politics, community isolation, and paramilitarism. Christian Identity followers generally have a deep distrust of the federal government, which they believe is overrun by Jews and liberals. The movement's issues in politics include such ideas as introducing biblical law, such as health and property laws, into the American legal system and supporting political candidates like David Duke who espouse the movement's views.
The movement's issues regarding community include such notions as living in isolation from society and governing based on local laws and religious traditions. Finally one of the movement's issues regarding paramilitarism is that eventually its members wish to overthrow the federal government through terrorist and guerilla tactics. The second paramilitarist issue has to do with territorial secession, in which followers want to someday secede territory, mainly from the mid western part of the U.S., for purposes of forming a nation exclusively for Christian Identity members2.
"Christian Identity." Watchman Fellowship Profile. 1999. Available at http://www.watchman.org/profile/Identitypro.htm Accessed April 30, 2007.
Javaid, Nida. "The origins of the Christian Identity Movement by Michael Barkun." March 9, 2006. Available at http://web.syr.edu/~nnjavaid/christianidentity.html Accessed April 30, 2007.
