Most people have never heard of Identity theology. But they have heard of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the 1992 Ruby Ridge siege, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, Cliven and Ammon Bundy’s 2014 and 2016 standoffs against the US federal government, the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the 2017 Unite the Right rally and the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. And how many of us were unable to look away on January 6, 2021, when our televisions showed live footage of white supremacists attacking the U.S. Capitol and waving a Confederate battle flag in its rotunda?
Identity theology (Identity) is a through-line of these American tragedies, and most of us don’t understand it or the real and present danger it poses to democracy.
Identity theology is a set of beliefs and practices that has been animating acts of violence and terror by white supremacists for nearly a century. Its fundamental tenet is a pseudo-historical teaching known as Anglo-Israelism, which claims that the true people of Israel, as spoken of in the Old Testament, migrated from the Levant into Europe and, ultimately, into the British Isles.
As such, white people—not Jews— are the true Israel spoken of throughout the Bible, and they are central in what Identity followers believe are prophecies about the “end times.” If that belief sounds inconceivably outlandish, it is. But at the same time, not entirely so.
Dan Brown’s 2003 bestselling novel “The DaVinci Code” drew heavily on a parallel belief system known as Franco-Israelism. Franco-Israelism claims that the French people particularly the Merovingian dynasty that ruled from the fifth through eighth centuries, are the true descendants of Israel. When used as the storyline for an action-packed novel-turned-movie, Franco-Israelism became not only palatable to a mass audience, but also highly believable.
Similarly, Anglo-Israelism and, by extension, Identity Theology, do not need to be historically verifiable to be highly influential.
So, if Identity claims that white people are the true Israel, what do Identity followers make of today’s Jewish people? One of the most unrelenting themes of Identity theology is profound and violent antisemitism.
When white supremacists carried tiki torches and marched through the streets of Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us,” they were drawing on this Identity trope. When the shooter who murdered 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue claimed that Jews were the “enemy of white people” and posted on social media, “I can’t stand by and watch my people get slaughtered,” he was also operating out of Identity-based antisemitism.
This particularly virulent hatred emerges from a heterodox doctrine known as the “two-seed theory.” Two-seed theory claims that the original sin committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is not that the couple ate the forbidden fruit, but instead that Eve had sex with the serpent. She became pregnant with Cain, who was the literal spawn of Satan and the father of the Jewish people. To Identity followers, Jews are less than sub-human; they are pretty literally incarnations of Satan and must be eliminated.
In the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas attack, the world has become divided over support for the liberation of Palestine versus the security of the Jewish state. This disjuncture has turned into a proxy war across university campuses in America, as presidents are forced to step down, valedictorian speeches by students who support Palestine are canceled and on-campus vitriol against Jewish students reaches new highs.
Both sides have very legitimate concerns about the wholesale destruction of Israelis and Palestinians. Yes, Israel has been engaging in humanitarian atrocities against Palestinians for decades, and this savagery must stop. Yes, Hamas fighters brutalized children while their parents had to watch and murdered family members in front of each other.
That barbarism cannot be condoned.
Yet there are rogue elements that cannot be accounted for in this binary, Israel-versus-Palestine approach to the violence in the Levant. They include Christian Zionism, Identity-fueled antisemitism, conspiracy theories that have institutionalized antisemitic tropes, understandings of biblical prophecy and governments around the world whose priorities do not include the cessation of violence in the Levant.
Also on this list is the legacy of the Holocaust, something of particular significance given that Adolf Hitler’s occultic belief system paralleled Identity Theology in significant ways. Identity theology and white supremacism must be understood, and faith-based alternatives to the never-ending cycle of terrorism must be explored.
Editor’s Note: In the coming weeks, Keri Ladner, author of End Times Politics: From the Moral Majority to Qanon, will share some ways Identity Theology manifests in our world and how people of good faith can recognize and stand against it.
Keri Ladner received her doctoral degree from the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of End Time Politics: From the Moral Majority to QAnon.
