Word: christian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Things didn't quite work out for Josh Anderson in the Mormon church. Nor did a nondenominational Christian upbringing light the way for Randy Haselton. But neither teen gave up entirely on structure and clean living in Utah. The boys hooked up with Straight Edge, an anti-drug gang of middle-class kids, and discovered new passions. Josh became a vegan and firebombed a McDonald's; Randy enjoys beating the tar out of people...
...club that was perfect for someone who had never really fit anywhere else. He joined the Aryan Nations, an organization of neo-Nazi white supremacists founded in the mid-1970s by former aeronautical engineer Richard Butler near Hayden Lake, Idaho. Butler based the group on the religious doctrine of Christian Identity, established in Los Angeles in the late 1940s by an anti-Semitic rabble rouser named Wesley Swift. Christian Identity holds that white Aryans are the authentic lost tribes of Israel, the true descendants of Adam and Eve. Jews of the modern world, on the other hand, are impostors...
Furrow steeped himself in the teachings of Hoskins and Christian Identity and may have believed he had a calling to be a "priest." By 1994 he had distinguished himself as a member of Butler's security detail at Hayden Lake, and he was courting Debra Mathews, the widow of white supremacist Robert Mathews, who died in 1984 during a 36-hour gun battle with federal agents on Whidbey Island, Wash. Mathews was the founder of the Order, a radical offshoot of Aryan Nations believed to be responsible for a series of bombings and murders, including that of Denver radio talk...
...more likely--and in a way more disturbing--that he acted alone. The real question is, How many other single white supremacists are out there, blessed by the doctrine of Christian Identity and fueled by hatred and the pursuit of the Phineas priesthood? The Rev. Richard Butler of Aryan Nations told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last week that Furrow had probably been motivated by "the war against the white race." Furrow himself said as much to the authorities. "You can say he was sick, but [the supremacists] gave him a focus for his sickness," says veteran cult watcher Rick Ross...
...fear that the ranks of the disenchanted are growing--and that they will be harder than ever to track if, like Furrow, men begin operating alone. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups nationwide, there are between 35,000 and 50,000 adherents in 100 Christian Identity ministries. Even though supremacist rallies are often sparsely attended, Joe Roy, intelligence director at the Alabama-based center, notes that there have been 10 times as many episodes of domestic terrorism, including hate-based murders and bombings in abortion clinics and newspapers, as the 100 such cases that were...