July 19, 1999
Contact: Christian Basi
Interim Assistant Director for News
(573) 882-6211
[email protected]
MU RESEARCHER INVESTIGATES RELIGIOUS GROUP; ATTEMPTS TO DISCOVER ORIGINS, GOALS, THREATS
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Descriptions of groups or individuals including the words racist, militant, threatening, terroristic and secluded might bring about visions of the Ku Klux Klan, the Montana Freeman or even Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, but never a neighbor, friend or church group. However, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher recently conducted studies on a group that might be just around the neighborhood corner and just as dangerous.
Larry Brown, a researcher in the MU Department of Geography, has completed two pilot studies on a group that is unfamiliar to most people but has several thousand members, the Christian Identity movement. In the first study, Brown focused on the origination of the group and how it is linked to the state of Missouri. In the second study, Brown examined colleges affiliated with this group and what they were teaching their students.
"The bottom line in the first study was that we linked them all the way to a movement in the 1640s in England called British Israelism," said Brown, who is doing this research as his doctoral dissertation. "Members of the Christian Identity movement believe that they are descendants of the lost tribes of Israel and they base many of their rules on their interpretation of the Old Testament in the Bible. They claim that they have found their true identity and that their people, not the Jewish population, are the true descendants of Israel. "
Brown discovered that the Christian Identity movement's mission is to inform and instruct people about who they are and to claim the United States as their kingdom. Brown also discovered that the Midwest is one of the top three regions for the growth and development of these organizations. They are continually trying to make inroads in economics, politics and other areas that will put them in charge of the government.
Brown's second study examined the educational materials published by the Christian Identity movement. Brown studied Saxon University, a mail-order college affiliated with Identity, and other colleges, and found very similar curriculum in each college. Students are taught that they are the chosen ones and are responsible for reconstructing God's kingdom on Earth.
"You will find similar groups, and particularly Identity, in two geographic areas," Brown said. "Identity is in those parts of the country that are dominated by the Scots-Irish culture, but with few other culture groups, and primarily in rural areas. This is very true for the Ozark region in Missouri."
Brown's next step is to identify the process of recruitment into Identity and how these groups develop and grow. Brown already has attended several annual conferences and public meetings. Identity has a number of scholars and musicians, who utilize most forms of music, except hard rock, to forward their movement. In his current studies, Brown has found that as the world has become more globalized, governments are seeing more resistance from groups like these that are feeling their way of life and culture threatened.
"We need to identify and know how these groups work to prevent further tragedies like the ones in Waco, Oklahoma City and Montana," Brown said. "We need to know how to prevent these groups from going to the extreme where other people are injured and hurt. They also are causing a great deal of cost to the judicial system by clogging it up with cases and problems."
This summer, Brown will be researching the effectiveness of Identity's World Wide Web site. He will look at how many people access it and how well it is used as a recruitment tool. He also will continue to learn about their messages and way of life in order to understand why they feel threatened and encourage violent actions. Brown admits that some of their underlying messages might be agreeable to many, but that their actions ultimately are self-destructive.
"For them 'multiculturalism' means the end of white-European culture," Brown said. "For example, no one wants to see someone else's culture destroyed, but Identity believes the only solution to stop that is to establish supremacy and hurt other people. By contrast, we value the exchange of ideas and culture as a way to grow together globally where no one culture is destroyed and all are enriched."
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