For sixteen hundred years, the Jewish people have been persecuted and

murdered by people who worship a Jewish man as their savior: the

Christians. Why did Christian anti-Semitism, a seemingly illogical belief

given that Jesus himself was a Jew, develop? How did it evolve, and why has

it persisted for centuries? In the Biblical gospels, despite three of the four

being ostensibly written by Jews, enemies of Jesus are referred to as the

Jews. Early Christians found themselves in a quandary. The savior they

worship, himself a Jew, supposedly was killed by Jews. Since at least the

fourth century, some groups of Christians have actively practiced anti-

Semitism, taking revenge on Jewish people for murdering the God of

Christianity. Christians have called Jews devils, demons and antichrists.

Persecution by church officials, both Catholic and Protestant, was consistent

and deadly for over a thousand years. Hundreds of thousands, possibly

millions of Jews, were massacred by so-called Christians centuries before the

Holocaust. Emperor Constantine the Great converted to Christianity in 312

A.D. Attributing his military successes to God, he issued the Edict of Milan,

making Christianity the Roman Empire's official religion. It was here in the

fourth century that open anti-Semitism emerged. A great number of

superficial converts (wanting to be on the winning side) joined the church,

which was placing overwhelming emphasis on the sacraments. The

sacraments were thought by many to have a magical content, supernaturally

protecting against attacks from the devil. Those outside the sacramental

community -- primarily unconverted Jews -- became seen as people through

whom the devil could work his evil purposes. (1) Jews were thought to be

sorcerers, cannibals, and child-murderers. Attacks by "church fathers"

became increasingly venomous. Gregory of Nyasa, a Cappadocian bishop,

wrote that Jews are "Companions of the devil, race of vipers, informers,

calumniators, darkeners of the mind, pharisaic leaven, Sanhedrin of demons,

accursed .... " (2) St. John Chrysostom (354-407) urged Christians at

Antioch to avoid the synagogue and curb their curiosity about Judaism:

Brothel and theater, the synagogue is also a cave of pirates and the lair of

wild beasts.... Living for their belly, mouth forever gaping, the Jews behave

no better than hogs and goats in their lewd grossness and the excesses of

their gluttony. (3) In 1095, the Crusades began when Pope Urban II called

upon Christians to save the Holy Land from the infidels; he promised the

remission of sins to all who participated. Huge armies gathered. For two

centuries these armies, while making their way to the Middle East,

persecuted or slaughtered any Jews they happened to encounter. (4) One

mob, according to an eyewitness, "...decided to avenge Christ upon the

pagans and the Jews. This is why they killed 900 Jews in the city of Mainz

without sparing the women and children...." (5) The slaughter of Jews by so-

called "Christians" is historical truth, not the invention of anti-Christian

humanists and historical revisionists. Hal Lindsey, the fundamentalist Bible

teacher and best-selling author of The Late Great Planet Earth, admits:

When the Crusaders ... captured Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, they first

entered the city through the Jewish quarter. A terrible slaughter took place.

The surviving Jews were sold as slaves. The Jewish community of Jerusalem

was obliterated. In all, tens of thousands of Jews were massacred in the

name of Christianity as a consequence of the first Crusade. (6) Another mob

of Jew-killers wandered from city to city in the German districts of Rottingen

and Bavaria in the year 1298, burning Jewish communities and slaughtering

any Jew who would not forcibly "convert" to Christianity. One historical

chronicler suggests that they killed as many as 100,000 Jews. (7) Beginning

in 1320, a group of peasants in northern France, led by friars, set out for the

Holy Land in what would become known as the Shepherd's Crusade.

Pillaging as they went, they spilled Jewish blood throughout the province of

Aquitaine. Hundreds were slaughtered at the village of Verdun-sur-Garonne.

(8) One priest, Peter of Cluny, wrote, "God does not want them to be

destroyed, but like Cain, who murdered his brother, they are to continue to

exist under great suffering and in great shame so that life may be more bitter

for them than death." (9) In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council of Pope

Innocent III institutionalized the Inquisition, issuing the following decree: In

the countries where Christians do not distinguish themselves from Jews and

Saracens by their garments, relations are maintained between Christians and

Jews or Saracens, or vice versa. In order that such wickedness in the future

be not excused by error, it is decreed that henceforth Jews of both sexes will

be distinguished from other peoples by their garments, as moreover has been

prescribed unto them by Moses. They will not show themselves in public

during Holy Week, for some among them on these days wear their finest

garments and mock Christians clad in mourning. Trespassers will be duly

punished by the secular powers, in order that they no longer dare flout

Christ in the presence of Christians. (10) In Poland, Jews were required to

wear a pointed green hat; in England, strips of cloth sewn across the chest

were mandated. (11) By the middle of the twelfth century, rumors and

superstitions emerged accusing Jews of ritual murder, usually the murder of

Christian children in alleged mock re-enactments of the crucifixion. It was

believed that Jews needed innocent Christian blood for use in Satanic/Jewish

rituals. For centuries, the unexplained murder of any Christian child could

set off waves of rioting and persecution. The first recorded ritual murder

allegation occurred in England in 1144. On Good Friday of that year, the

body of a young Christian was found in the woods near Norwich. Accusers

charged that a group of rabbis located in Narbonne had conspired to kill a

Christian child every year on Good Friday in mockery of the crucifixion.

Anti-Jewish riots in Norwich led to the murder of one of the city's prominent

Jews. The murdered Christian youth was canonized, and for centuries

pilgrimages to his tomb were encouraged by the Church. (12) Three years

later, the corpse of another young Christian was discovered in Wurzburg.

Jews were hunted down and lynched. Alleged child murders led to the

burning at the stake of thirty-eight Jews in Blois in 1171; twenty years later

nearly one hundred Jews were burned at Bray-sur-Seine. For centuries the

pattern continued. Murdered children were canonized, pilgrimages were

recommended and miracles were alleged. Nine Jews were executed at Trent

in the Tyrol in 1473 for the murder of a little boy named Simon. The Church

named him St. Simon of Trent in 1582, a chapel was erected at his tomb and

miracles were reported by Catholic pilgrims. Historians have records of more

than one hundred similar cases right up to the 1800s. (13) The myth of the

Jew as ritual child-killer has never faded. Thomas E. Watson, a Southern

Baptist attorney and politician, publicly proclaimed that ritual murder was a

common Jewish practice. This type of rhetoric gained Watson a million votes

as a third-party vice-presidential candidate in 1896, and it won him election

to the U.S. Senate in 1920. (14) In 1928, when a four-year-old girl

disappeared in Massena, New York, two days before Yom Kippur, the

mayor of Massena publicly speculated that the child had been murdered by

Jews who wanted to use her blood in a Yom Kippur ritual. (15) Christian

anti-Semites spread the rumor that Jews had kidnapped Charles Lindbergh's

baby in 1932 for use in a ritual sacrifice. (16) When the Black Plague swept

through Europe in the fourteenth century killing millions the Jews

were blamed. It was believed they had poisoned the sources of drinking

water. (17) Hal Lindsey suggests that suspicions were raised because

Orthodox Jews, obedient to Mosaic laws of handwashing and hygienic food

handling, seldom contracted the disease. (18) Simultaneously, anti-Semitism

in medieval satires, legends, ballads, sculptures and paintings was universal.

Medieval plays cast Jews in the role of villain, devil and antichrist. In a

Middle Ages version of historical revisionism, one playwright reinvented the

pagan Roman leader Titus as a Christian knight who destroyed Jerusalem to

kill its Jews in the name of the Virgin Mary. (19) In the 1600s, Pierre de

Lancre executed a large number of Jews alleged to be witches by burning

them at the stake in southern France; he wrote that Jews are "more

perfidious and faithless than demons." (20) Persecution of Jews continued

right into the Reformation and became more vicious. Identification of Jews

with Satan became increasingly explicit. Erasmus (1466-1536), the Dutch

philosopher and theologian, wrote, "If it is the part of a good Christian to

detest the Jews, then we are all good Christians." (21) Lest one should place

all this anti-Semitism at the door of the Catholic Church, no less a Protestant

hero than Martin Luther denounced Jews as children of the devil. In 1542

Luther published Against the Jews and Their Lies, a 200-page rant which

includes the following: Know, O adored Christ, and make no mistake, that

aside from the Devil, you have no enemy more venomous, more desperate,

more bitter, than a true Jew who truly seeks to be a Jew.... Now, whoever

wishes to accept venomous serpents, desperate enemies of the Lord, and to

honor them, to let himself be robbed, pillaged, corrupted, and cursed by

them, need only turn to the Jews. (22) Later, Luther added, "In short, they

are children of the devil, condemned to the flames of hell .... " (23) German

writers in the 1500s and 1600s followed Luther's lead, producing pamphlets

with titles such as The Sack of Jewish Serpents. (24) Centuries later, Hitler

quoted Luther to justify his "final solution" to the "Jewish problem."

Unfortunately, Christian anti-Semitism cannot be assigned entirely to the

past; anti-Semitism has always lurked inside Christianity, sometimes at its

center, sometimes at its fringes. The 1930s, for example, was a period of

rising international anti-Semitism which ultimately resulted in the Holocaust,

and nominal Christians were active participants. Kansas evangelist Gerald

Winrod (1900-1957), founder of the Defenders of the Christian Faith, and

third-party presidential candidate Gerald L.K. Smith (1898-1976), who

called himself a Baptist minister, preached vicious anti-Semitism in a decade

when Americans were looking for scapegoats to make sense of suffering

caused by the Depression. In Smith's magazine The Cross and the Flag, he

taught that Jews are in fact "sons of Satan." (25) Smith continued preaching

and publishing until his death in 1976. Winrod and Smith were both sons of

evangelical preachers, but both ended up as supporters of Hitler and

opponents of American participation in World War II. Smith, who began his

career as an organizer for Louisiana populist Huey Long, argued that Jews

hated Hitler because the fuhrer was a devout, Bible-believing Christian. (26)

After Long's assassination, Smith moved back to his native midwest and

received 32,000 votes in Michigan's 1942 U.S. Senate election. He ran for

president in 1944. Three years later, Smith founded the Christian Nationalist

Crusade, moving in 1953 to Los Angeles, home of the nascent Christian

Identity movement in the 1950s, where he published tracts with titles such

as "Jews Strive for World Control." (27) Gerald Winrod believed in a Jewish

conspiracy to control the world and dabbled in electoral politics. In 1938

Winrod gained 22 percent of the vote as a candidate for the U.S. Senate from

Kansas. His Defender magazine reached 100,000 readers in the 1930s. A

fervent supporter of Hitler, Winrod was indicted for sedition in 1942, but the

case ended in a mistrial. (28) Unfortunately, Christian anti-Semitism did not

end with Hitler's defeat; even today, vicious anti-Semitism persists among

some Christians. Right-wing preacher David Chilton, who is not a Christian

Identity preacher, says, "Israel has become a demon possessed." (29) Dr.

Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist and founder of the Institute for

Christian Economics, looks forward to the day when Israel is "pushed into

the sea by the Arabs...." (30) Christian Identity doesn't have a single,

"charismatic" leader. Almost everyone in the movement, including its

"pastors," comes from a traditional Christian background. (31) Hundreds of

small Identity churches have popped up all over the United States. The

Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group which keeps track of such

things, reports that Identity churches are in thirty-three states as well as

Canada, England, South Africa and Australia. (32) Identity claims 30,000

hardcore believers and possibly has 400,000 sympathizers. (33) It reaches

millions across North America through the Internet and shortwave radio.

Explaining Identity can be somewhat like nailing Jello to a tree. Identity

churches and pastors differ over the most minute doctrinal details. They

prize their independence of each other; no single church or leader has the

power to impose doctrinal orthodoxy. Some believers wear suits and ties;

others wear combat fatigues. Some appear on Christian television while

others are wanted by the FBI. Yet the movement is united in its essential,

bizarre beliefs: that white, Anglo-Saxon people are the true Israel chosen of

God; that black people are animals without souls; and that Jews are

descended directly from Satan himself and are not human. They believe that

Satan, through Cain, is the father of the Jews, who are a hybrid, demonic,

non-human race. "True" Israel is the white, Anglo-Saxon peoples, who

supposedly moved north and west from Old Testament Israel after the

Assyrian conquest in 722 B.C. Adam, Noah, Abraham, David and Jesus

were white Anglo-Saxons. Identity cites John 8:44, where Jesus tells his

enemies, the Jews, that they belong to "their father," the devil. Identity

teachers believe this applies to all Jews, not merely the handful of Pharisees

Jesus was addressing (John 8:13). Because Jews are descended from Satan,

Identity believers reason, Jews are not human, and they don't have souls.

Identity provides theological unity and justification to paramilitary groups

such as the Aryan Nations, the Posse Comitatus, and many but not all neo-

Nazi, Klan and militia groups. As a religion underpinning and uniting these

militant and terrorist groups, Christian Identity provides violent racists and

anti-Semites with the dangerous illusion that they are on a mission from

God. Both Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City Bomber) and Eric

Rudolph (the Atlanta Olympic/Birmingham abortion clinic bomber) were

exposed to and familiar with Christian Identity. McVeigh had contacts with

an Identity paramilitary compound in the Ozarks, while Rudolph is thought

to be a full-blown believer. In one sense, Identity is a "brand new thing."

Formal Christian Identity doctrinal statements and organization into

churches is barely thirty years old. On the other hand, all the elements of

Identity beliefs are ancient. The identification of Jews with the devil goes

back at least to the Middle Ages. For sixteen hundred years, anti-Semitism

has persisted in some branches of Christianity, and there is no evidence to

indicate that it will cease at any time in the forseeable future.

1. Hannah Vogt, The Jews: A Chronicle for Christian Conscience, trans.

Peter Jacobsohn (New York: Association Press, 1967), p. 47. 2. Quoted in

Leon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism, Volume One: From the Time

of Christ to the Court Jews, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vanguard

Press, 1965), p. 25. 3. Ibid. 4. Vogt, p. 36. 5. Quoted in Poliakov, p. 52. 6.

Hal Lindsey, The Road to Holocaust (New York: Bantam Books, 1989), p.

21. 7. Poliakov, pp. 99-100. 8. Ibid., pp. 102-103. 9. Quoted in Vogt, p. 58.

10. Quoted in Poliakov, p. 64. 11. Poliakov, p. 66. 12. Ibid., p. 58. 13. Ibid.,

pp. 62-63. 14. Vogt, pp. 121-122. 15. Leonard Dinnerstein, Antisemitism in

America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 101. 16. Glen

Jeansonne, Women of the Far Right: The Mothers' Movement and World

War II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 32. 17. Richard

Abanes, American Militias: Rebellion, Racism & Religion (Downers Grove,

IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), pp. 135-136. 18. Lindsey, p. 21. 19. Poliakov,

p. 128. 20. Quoted in Poliakov, p. 153. 21. Ibid., p. 123. 22. Ibid., p. 218.

23. Ibid., p. 219. 24. Poliakov, p. 24. 25. Quoted in Michael Barkun,

Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity

Movement (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994),

p. 56. 26. Jeansonne, p. 34. 27. John George and Laird Wilcox, American

Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists & Others

(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 38. 28. Ibid., pp. 34-35. 29.

Quoted in Lindsey, p. 25. 30. Ibid., p. 111. 31. Barkun, p. 187. 32. Jack

Levin and Jack McDevitt, Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and

Bloodshed (New York: Plenum Press, 1993), p. 111 33. Abanes, p. 155.