Christian Identity

Christian identity is a racist religious philosophy and a way of translating Christianity within the racist framework understood by some white supremacists, Identity Christians (followers of the movement), Klansmen, some neo-Confederates, some anti-Semites, and some Neo-Nazis.

So, basically, it's bastardized Christianity that horrible people have twisted into a justification for being assholes. (That's a great description for the Religious Right in general, but it's especially true here.)

Tenets
In a nutshell, here is all you will ever need to know about these loony-tune whackjobs. They believe the following:


 * 1) The nation of Israel and the Ten Lost Tribes in the Old Testament of the Bible is the Celtic, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, Slavic, Scandinavian peoples and their descendants.
 * 2) Jews are not the true Israelites of the Bible, but impostors to the claim. Some versions of Christian Identity teach that the Jews are literally the offspring of Cain, the result of the devil having sexual intercourse with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Others regard Jews merely as impostors who aren't real Israelites, but converts from the Khazar tribe during the Middle Ages (some Khazars converted to Judaism, but they left few traces in modern Jewish genetics). Both versions are still pure whackjob wingnuttery, regardless. Also, the Jews cannot be descended from Cain according to the bible, because the Bible says that all of Cain's descendants were killed in the flood (since they were not on the ark).
 * 3) Some versions of Identity follow a strict chronological reading of the creation story in the book of Genesis, resulting in the bizarre (even for creationism) belief that there were two different creations of humans. Non-white people were created out of mud along with the animals on the sixth day in . Adam and Eve, the "first white people" according to Identity, were created out of clay after the original 7 days of the "creation" in . Thus Identity types often refer to non-whites as "mud people", claiming that they have no souls and that it's okay for the pure ones to rule over them. (Ruling over mud counts as a worthwhile and special privilege, apparently…) This usage of "mud people" is not exclusive to Identity, and has spread to other white supremacists. Compare racial polyphyletism.
 * 4) Some versions of Identity see the United States as the promised land that God promised to his people in Bible prophecy. However, the current U.S. government is ungodly and controlled by the Jews, so the U.S. government is called the Zionist Occupation Government, or simply "ZOG" — another term that has passed from Identity into broader white-supremacist usage.
 * 5) Racial integration and homosexuality are crimes worthy of death.

"Evidence"
Identity believers, when they try to make a case for their wingnuttery at all, rely heavily on British Israelism, a long-discredited 19th century quack archaeological hypothesis pushed by people trying to make a connection between the lost tribes of Israel and the people of the British Isles. More often, they don't even go that far and just string a few Bible verses together out of context to back up their claims. One of their favorites is to use a phony etymology of the name Adam, claiming it means "one who can show blood in the face" (i.e. a white person), to "prove" Adam and Eve were pure white Aryan types. Instead, as any Biblical scholar will know, 'Adam' is a Hebrew pun — 'Adam' (which is also the word for 'man') was made from 'ha adamah' — the earth. In other words, all humans come from "mud races", whites and blacks alike.

Debunked
The very notions of Christian Identity are easily debunked by the very book they (claim to) read: the Bible, ironically. The truth is the Bible pretty much rejects the concept of race and the Jews are considered to be "god's chosen people" (at least not by name) in these verses:
 * Which explicitly states "There is neither Jew nor Greek"
 * It states that "For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile" (or Greek depending on some versions)
 * The verse reaffirms the statement in Galatians 3:28 that there's no racial difference between a Jew and Gentile.
 * The verse states that the power of God's salvation goes to "first to the Jew, then to the Gentile"
 * "For we are all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body — whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free — and we were given the one spirit to drink". In other words, anyone regardless of race is baptized under one God.
 * While the verse does not explicitly mention the Jews, it does at least make reference to them as God's chosen people out of the other tribes and their experiences as slaves in Egypt by the Pharaoh.

Followers

 * Lawrence Blanchard, author of the racist "Covenant Heritage" screeds
 * Mark Downey, Kinsman Redeemer Ministries
 * Don Elmore, Fellowship of God's Covenant People
 * William Finck, Christogenea web site
 * Mike Hallimore, Kingdom Identity Ministries
 * Peter J. Peters, founder of La Porte Church of Christ and Scriptures for America, a somewhat notorious extremist who shared their beliefs but tried to distance himself from the Identity label
 * Eric Robert Rudolph, convicted terrorist responsible for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and the bombing of an abortion clinic
 * James Paul Wickstrom, American radio talk show host, minister, white supremacist and staunch antisemite based in Linwood, Michigan