Gord's Notebook : The Potent Mix Of Theology & Racism :" Christian Identity " & " The Embassy of Heaven Church "

" These are not simply isolated instances. Rather they represent the tip of a social movement that is completely alienated from the culture, society and government of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic American people. Their allegiance is to another set of laws and values, one in which the color of their skin is a badge of their national identity. Not all are violent, and many hope to someday win a following among a majority of white people and reclaim the country that they believe belongs to them alone."

Quote from Leonard Zeskind commenting on Scott Roeder & others like him

" Christian Identity theology has its roots in a 19th century doctrine called British Israelism. That doctrine asserted that British people were descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel who did not return from Assyrian captivity in 741 B.C., making them the true people of "Israel." The concept was picked up in the United States earlier this century and given a more racist and anti-Semitic twist by Ku Klux Klan leaders and others who circulated the anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." "

Quote from: Laurie Goodstein The Washington Post, April 9, 1996

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Dr. George Tiller's murderer is Anti-abortion, homophobic, anti-semitic, racist & anti-Government. The church & racist organizations & extremist anti-abortionist he associate with gave him justification for taking the law into his own hands. He believed as others do in these groups that God's Law is above any man-made law & that the government of the United States is not a legitimate body & that it is controlled by immoral perverts & by a "Jewish cabal" & others who are not "real Christians" or "Real Americans". They believe that God granted the land of America to the "White Race" & all others do not have the same rights as "Pure Aryans" do.

" Was Suspect in Tiller Case a "Lone Wolf"? " by Judy L. Thomas, Kansas City Star (& Truthout)June 13, 2009

...Documents from his 1996 divorce case indicate he was affiliated with the Embassy of Heaven Church in Stayton, Ore., during much of the 1990s. The group’s leader, who goes by the name Paul Revere, wrote letters to Johnson County court officials in 1999 offering to pay Roeder’s back child support debts.

...Revere told The Kansas City Star on Thursday that the Embassy of Heaven was “a country.”

“We represent the kingdom of heaven, God’s government on earth,” he said. The group issues its own driver’s licenses, identity cards and passports for members. Over the years, followers have found themselves in legal trouble for rejecting government authority.

... After checking Roeder’s file, Revere said Roeder during the 1990s had been training with and receiving materials from the Embassy of Heaven but never “made his statement of citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

...Leonard Zeskind, a Kansas City expert on right-wing extremism and author of the recently published book "Blood and Politics," said Roeder had all the characteristics of a Christian Identity follower.

"He was anti-tax, he declared himself to be a sovereign ... immune to the laws of government," Zeskind said. "While he may seem to be a militia guy one day, a tax protester the next and anti-abortion the next, it's not a fragmented personality. It's one theologically driven personality, and that theology stakes out the establishment of God's kingdom on earth and the laws as they see that God established them."

Roeder's other ties included the Freemen movement, which claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under its own legal system, prosecutors said. Associates said he also was involved in a Topeka-based militia group, the Kansas Unorganized Citizens Militia.

" Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Murder of Dr. Tiller " by Leonard Zeskind at Huffington Post, June 2, 2009

Scott Roeder, who is being held in a Wichita jail as a person of interest in the murder of Dr. George Tiller, is widely known for his anti-abortion zealotry. Less understood is his connection to the so-called Christian common law courts and the militia movement. In the mid-1990s, Roeder associated regularly with both Kansas militiamen and he declared him self a "sovereign" citizen, immune from the responsibilities of paying taxes or driving with a registered license plate.

The notion of "organic sovereigns" was first promoted by the Posse Comitatus, best known for its tax protest politics, but imbued also with the racist and anti-Semitic ideology known as Christian Identity. According to this doctrine, Jews are satanic creatures and people of color are less-than-fully human. And the Posse found a number of devoted followers in Kansas. At an August 1983 outdoor meeting in Cheney Lake State Park, farmers mixed with Wichita residents who believed that white Christians who renounced their ties with the "Zionist-controlled" government were "sovereigns." Their rights trumped those they declared to be "Fourteenth Amendment" citizens -- meaning people of color and non-Christians. It was an arcane theory which promoters sometimes used to justify tax protest, embezzlement and larceny. But its central tenets placed it at the heart of the white nationalist movement, which contended that the United States was, or should be, a white Christian republic rather than a multi-racial democracy.

...The same confluence of white nationalism with anti-abortion zealotry showed its faced in the first murder of an abortion doctor, Dr. David Gunn, in 1993 in Pennsacola. In that instance the triggerman was a Joe Regular Guy named Michael Griffin. But Griffin was heavily influenced, indeed completely under the spell of a local leader named John Burt, who admitted that he was "very active" as a Klansman in St. Augustine in the 1960s. With Burt also, attacks on Dr. Gunn were of a piece with the racist violence of a previous era.

These are not simply isolated instances. Rather they represent the tip of a social movement that is completely alienated from the culture, society and government of the multi-racial, multi-ethnic American people. Their allegiance is to another set of laws and values, one in which the color of their skin is a badge of their national identity. Not all are violent, and many hope to someday win a following among a majority of white people and reclaim the country that they believe belongs to them alone.

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Freemen & Christian Identity- The combination of Racism & Theology & anti-Government is a Potent Mix & they like to stock-pile weapons .

" 'Freemen's' Theological Agenda "
By Laurie Goodstein The Washington Post, April 9, 1996

Christian Identity theology has its roots in a 19th century doctrine called British Israelism. That doctrine asserted that British people were descended from the 10 lost tribes of Israel who did not return from Assyrian captivity in 741 B.C., making them the true people of "Israel." The concept was picked up in the United States earlier this century and given a more racist and anti-Semitic twist by Ku Klux Klan leaders and others who circulated the anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion."

( and Christian Identity) ...traces the migration of the 10 tribes from Palestine north over the Caucasus Mountains to Europe and later to North America, concluding that the descendents of the 1- tribes are the modern-day Anglo-Saxons. The Jews, therefore, are impostors who stole the birthright - the "identity" - of the real Israelites. In his treatise, Skurdal wrote that he is "from the Tribe of Dan, being a 'Scandinavian,' one of the lost sheep of the House of Israel."

...A core Christian Identity belief is the "two seed" creation story, which asserts that whites are descendents of the biblical Adam, and nonwhites and Jews are the offspring of Cain, who was born when Satan impregnated Eve.

"In reading the Bible, one must understand that there are 'two seed lines' within Genesis," ( Freemen spokesperson Rodney )Skurdal wrote. "IT is the colored people, and the Jews, who are the descendants of Cain…when We move into a new land, We are to kill the inhabitants of all the other races…nor are We to allow the other races to rule over us."

And then he laid out the theological justification for the Freemen's rebellion against a government that dares to grant rights to nonwhites and Jews. He writes, "We, Israel, must obey God only; not man made laws by our purported congress and state legislators and/or the United Nations, under the purported 'new world order' i.e., 'Satan's laws.'" Dkurdal added that taxes, marriage licenses, driver's licenses, insurance, electrical inspections and building permits are all instruments of Satan's law.

According to Skurdal, the "land of milk and honey" bequeathed by God to whites is actually the territory now considered the United States, and he writes, "If we the white race are God's chosen people…why are we paying taxes on 'His land.'"

This theological claim to land, Barkun said, goes further than a lot of other Identity adherents do. "What 's unusual here is that this isn't simply a kind of collective granting of a piece of soil by God to his people, but it's a kind of literal granting of ownership and control: Because we are his people and this is his land, no one can tell us what to do with it," Barkun said...

and here's some bits from Embassy of Heaven Website:

Embassy Of heaven: God's Government on Earth

or Kingdom of heaven church

Why We Are Not Citizens of the World

The Kingdom of Heaven is God's nation established by Jesus Christ. Luke 22:29.

Our citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven. Philippians 3:20.

No man can obey two nations. Matthew 6:24.

We expect to be held accountable to the Laws from which we come. Romans 14:12-13.

The law cannot demand the impossible; it cannot require that we obey two nations. Romans 14:4

The Supreme Law of the Kingdom of Heaven is the Golden Rule. Matthew 22:37-40.

The Kingdom of Heaven is available to all who love and trust Jesus Christ. John 14:23.

and its articles on the website give us a hint of how radical the group is:

"A Pervert Nation:Who is Really Running the World?"

& an article to prepare church members for serving time in prison : " Going to Jail "

If you have given your allegiance to Jesus Christ, and you live your beliefs, you will go to jail. It is inevitable because the world will hate you.

But why? What are those beliefs that land us in jail? Most people cannot fathom why taking Jesus as their personal Savior will land them in jail. What is the Gospel that we are preaching that makes the world hate us so?

Part of our Gospel is that we do not obtain permission from the State to do anything. Those who God commissions need not ask men for permission. Our permission and duties come from Above. If we have a duty from Above, then we do not need permission from below. And the world hates us for not seeking their approval. They claim we are evildoers and throw us in jail.