Glossary Term

Christian Identity

Christian Identity is a religious sect and one of the longstanding segments of the white supremacist movement. Its beliefs center on a racist and anti-Semitic variation of British-Israelism or Anglo-Israelism, which teaches that people of European ancestry are actually descended from the so-called “Lost Tribes” of ancient Israel and are thus the chosen people of God. Identity believers claim that non-whites were created by God not when God made “man,” but rather when he created the “beasts of the field,” and they refer to non-whites as “mud peoples.” Many Identity adherents furthermore believe that Jews are descended from Satan through a sexual liaison between Eve and the serpent. They are not Christian fundamentalists, who strongly oppose their views.