Christian Identity is characterized as racist, antisemitic, and white supremacist by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
[9] British Israelism can be traced back to Great Britain in the 1600s, but in terms of its relationship to Christian Identity, a key text was Lectures on Our Israelitish Origin by John Wilson (1840).
[13] Raised as a British Israelite, his father introduced him to J. H. Allen's work Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright (1902) at an early age by offering him five dollars if he would read it and write a report on it.
[18] Links between Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan were also forged in the late 1930s, but by then, the KKK was past the peak of its early twentieth-century revival.
[23] The future Aryan Nations founder Richard Girnt Butler, who was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, was introduced to Wesley Swift by William Potter Gale in 1962.
[28] The Christian Identity movement first received widespread attention from the mainstream media in 1984, when The Order, a neo-Nazi terrorist group, embarked on a murderous crime spree before it was suppressed by the FBI.
The movement returned to public attention in 1992 and 1993, in the wake of the deadly Ruby Ridge confrontation, when newspapers discovered that right-wing separatist Randy Weaver had a loose association with Christian Identity believers.
[3] While most of the Identity groups of the 1960s and 1970s relied on mailing lists, publications, and cassette recordings to disseminate their teachings, later figures promoted their ministries using radio and television.
Colin Kidd wrote that in the United States, Christian Identity exploited "the puzzle of the Ten Lost Tribes to justify an openly anti-Semitic and virulently racist agenda.
[38] While they seek to introduce a state of racial purity in the US, Christian Identitarians do not trust the Congress or the government, allegedly controlled by Jews, to support their agenda.
However, the failed experience of the terrorist group The Order has forced them to acknowledge the fact that they are currently unable to overthrow the government by staging an armed insurrection against it.
[40] To support their theory on the racial identity of Adam, Christian Identity proponents point out that the Hebrew etymology of the word 'Adam' translates as 'be ruddy, red, to show blood (in the face)' often quoting from James Strong's Hebrew Dictionary and from this they conclude that only Caucasians or people with light white skin can blush or turn rosy in the face (because hemoglobin is only visible under pale skin).
[42][non-primary source needed] An influence on the Christian Identity movement's views on pre-Adamism was Charles Carroll's 1900 book The Negro a Beast or In the Image of God?
[43] In his book, Carroll sought to revive the ideas which were previously presented by Buckner H. Payne, he described the Negro as a literal ape rather than a human being.
According to the "dual seedline" form of Christian Identity, Cain then became the progenitor of the Jews in his subsequent matings with members of the non-Adamic races.
[46][non-primary source needed] Identity adherents also assert that disease, addiction, cancer, and sexually transmitted infections (herpes and HIV/AIDS) are spread by human "rodents" via contact with "unclean" persons, such as "race-mixers".
The apocrypha, particularly the first book of Enoch, is used to justify these social theories; the fallen angels of Heaven sexually desired Earth maidens and took them as wives, resulting in the birth of abominations, which God ordered Michael the Archangel to destroy, thus beginning a cosmic war between Light and Darkness.
[41] Some followers claim that the Identity genealogy of the Davidic line can be traced to the royal rulers of Britain and Queen Elizabeth II.
"[52] The first documents which advocated Christian Identity's views on racial politics and economics were written by Howard Rand and William J. Cameron after the Great Depression.
"[53] While Rand never formally named the groups which he was specifically referring to, his hatred of Jews, racial integration, and the country's economic state at that time made the direction of his comments obvious.
"[56] Identity doctrine asserts that the "root of all evil" is paper money (particularly Federal Reserve Notes), and that both usury and banking systems are controlled by Jews.
Christian Identity advocates the belief that the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 shifted the control of money from Congress to private institutions and violated the Constitution and the monetary system encourages the Federal Reserve to take out loans, creating trillions of dollars in government debt, and allowing international bankers to control the United States.
Emry promoted abolishing the banks, which he suggested would solve most of society's ills, including unemployment, divorce, and women working outside the home.
[60] Christian Identity eschatology is dispensational premillennialist, including a physical return of Christ to earth and the final battle of Armageddon.
[62] Their predictions vary, and some include a race war or a Jewish-backed United Nations takeover of the US, and that they should wage a physical struggle against individuals and groups which serve the forces of evil.
[79] According to the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism, "Christian Identity has developed a deep accelerationist current as a result of an active desire among CI adherents to expedite the Battle of Armageddon.
[85] The Order, whose main objective was to start a white supremacist revolution against the United States, was almost entirely made up of individuals who were associated with various Christian Identity groups.
[86] Timothy McVeigh called the compound prior to the Oklahoma City bombing and he is linked to community resident Andreas Strassmeir.
[90] Byron De La Beckwith, the assassin of NAACP and Civil rights movement leader Medgar Evers, was also linked to the Phineas Priesthood.
[91] Immediately prior to entering prison, De La Beckwith was ordained as a minister in the Temple Memorial Baptist Church, a Christian Identity congregation in Knoxville, Tennessee by Reverend Dewey "Buddy" Tucker.