in Genesis as created before God formed Adam from dust and Eve from Adam’s rib. The essence of Christian Identity theology thus becomes this: the satanic, imposter Jews manipulate people of color in a two-thousand-year cosmic conspiracy against the true Chosen People, white Europeans.4
Embraced at first by a very small group of people, this radical theological interpretation had far-reaching consequences—ultimately producing a unique motive for Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The motive grew out of Christian Identity devotion to their own view of End Times—God’s final judgment on humanity, before the righteous are saved and Jesus returns to earth in a thousand-year reign in a paradise on Earth. Like other fundamentalist Christians, Identity believers look for guidance from the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, to understand what God has in store for the world. They share a belief that the prophecies in the Book of Revelation will signal the pending End Times. Notably, Identity Christians, like many fundamentalist Christians, believe that God will impose a series of enormous calamities on the Earth, during a period known as the Tribulation. A false prophet—the antichrist—will seemingly solve the world’s problems but, in reality, he is Satan’s minion. The forces of Satan will amass an army and terrorize humanity until Jesus, and the army of God, vanquish them at the final battle—the Battle of Armageddon. God will then bless his faithful followers with a thousand-year reign, with Jesus as king.
But Swift and his devout followers interpret the End Times differently than do conventional Christians, differences largely rooted in their reinterpretation of the origins of mankind. The antichrist, in their telling, is not just one man, but the entirety of world Jewry. Moreover, since the birth of Cain, these minions of Satan have been working against mankind. Swift’s sermons frequently asserted that Jews, using international communism as their tool, manipulated everything from the American government to the United Nations to the civil rights movement for satanic ends; he referred to this as “the Beast system,” a description of what other Christian Identity followers (and other fundamentalist Christians) believe is the rule of the antichrist implied in the Book of Revelation. The End Times is simply an accelerated period where their true intentions are exposed, and where God ultimately saves his Chosen People, white Europeans. The foot soldiers for the army of Satan, in this scenario, are the subhuman people of color who operate at the whims of the imposter Jews. And the Battle of Armageddon, in essence, is a holy race war.
Another distinctive feature of Christian Identity theology explains why so many of its members, as it will become clear, engaged in provocative acts of violence to incite this holy race war. A large number of conventional fundamentalists believe that faithful Christians will be spared the Tribulation through something known as the Rapture. Devout Christians will literally vanish before the world experiences plagues, earthquakes, and related horrors. But Christian Identity believers reject the Rapture. To the contrary, they believe that good Christians—for example, white Europeans—will have to fight the forces of Satan during the Tribulation. Christian Identity zealots stockpiled weapons at alarming rates throughout the 1960s (and beyond) in part because of this understanding. And when they began to see signs of End Times, in the social upheaval that marked the mid- to late 1960s, they increasingly became willing to use them.5
And it fell to Swift, from his pulpit at the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, to interpret and convey those beliefs to Christian Identity followers, a group that included some of the most well-known and violent racists in the country, several of whom had already conspired to assassinate King in multiple plots. The charismatic Swift’s influence derived from his radio ministry. Swift began his racist and anti-
Semitic sermons in the 1950s; estimates suggest that by 1967 he reached tens of thousands of listeners on the West Coast. Those who could not get Swift’s signal could hear his sermons on tape, via an informal distribution network that included his most devoted followers. And Swift ordained a number of ministers in his Church of Jesus Christ Christian; they relayed his ideas to audiences across the country while Swift preached to a mostly female audience in Hollywood.6
In his sermons, Swift used a combination of astrology, current events analysis, biblical exegesis, and even ufology to divine evidence that the End Times were approaching. A key moment came in February 1962. An alignment of astrological and real-world international events convinced Swift that the world was entering the “zero hour,” the final period before the onset of the Tribulation. Swift told his parishioners:
Zero hour has come . . . We will watch the signs as they develop and we will watch the measures as they follow in the course of this year.
Do not forget the sign of the “son of man” in the heavens. It will only end when the skies are filled with the crafts of heaven to make your experiments of rocketry look like amateur experiments, when all the hosts of heaven join you in the greatest show of power, of glory in all the earth. When your race shall be elevated to its position with the smiling face of our Father in all His majesty and glory saying—these are my children with whom I am well pleased.7
Events in Mississippi that September convinced Swift his prognostication was accurate. Black air force veteran James Meredith challenged the University of Mississippi’s racial exclusion policy by enrolling in the institution, a court-supported action that nonetheless inflamed the citizens of Mississippi and provoked white supremacists from across the country who flocked to Mississippi to protest. Governor Ross Barnett personally and physically blocked Meredith’s entry into Ole Miss with the help of state troopers, forcing President John F. Kennedy to send National Guard troops to impose the court order and protect Meredith. Havoc ensued. Protestors and college students battled the federal troops, using everything from rocks to rifles. Several participants on both sides sustained injuries; a local man and a foreign reporter died in the melee. Things only settled after JFK sent hundreds of additional troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to impose order.8
The Ole Miss race riot inspired Swift, whose fellow Christian Identity minister, Oren Potito, helped incite the crowds to violence. In the immediate aftermath Swift told his audience:
I want you to know that you are in the latter days. “And as it was in the days of Noah” [refers to] a massive program of Satan’s kingdom which is to mongrelize your race. They want to implement this program with troops. They want to back it by every conspiratorial measure that Satan can dream up. And some of these brainwashed people lifting up a standard of self-
righteousness which is Satan’s own lie—behind this shield they march to destroy . . .
. . . I am going to tell you this. [The Lord] is coming in with a long sword and a sharp sickle. And He is coming in to reap the Grapes of Wrath. And to trample the Wine Press of Judgement. I want you to know tonight, that you are a part of this battle. So don’t surrender. Don’t give in. If they are going to try to force your Race with violence, then we shall meet them in like token. Let me assure you of this. That in this occupation, have no fear. For He said:—“I shall be like a wall of fire about you.” “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” . . .
Again, I say that we are not alone. As I said this afternoon, He said—“I shall never leave nor forsake you even until the end of the age.”9
Just as importantly, the events at Ole Miss appeared to confirm an important element of the Christian Identity worldview: that rank-and-file whites could be energized into violence against the federal government, whose leaders, as Swift indicated in his sermon, “worked” at the behest of their antichrist Jewish puppet masters. Before 1962, Christian Identity believers found little sympathy, even among aggressive racists, for their vitriolic anti-Jewish message. Raised on a very different version of Christianity from their youth, and focused on resisting integration, most Southern racists could not understand the call for genocidal violence against Jews. The Klan employed anti-
Semitic rhetoric since its second revival in the 1920s, but actual violence against Southern Jews and Jewish targets was rare in part because Southern Jews had largely assimilated into
