The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9906/03/text/pageone5.html 'Christian' groups share racist links Date: 03/06/99 By GREG ROBERTS Christian groups have been established in several Australian States under the umbrella of an American movement with close links to the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. Anti-racist campaigners say members of the Christian Identity movement in the United States have been responsible for violent acts against racial minorities. They claim it is potentially dangerous because its members believe the millennium will bring a cataclysmic showdown with the "anti-Christ". The Imperial Klans of America's Australian organiser, Mr Peter Coleman, said the KKK had close ties with Christian Identity. "We talk to them all the time and people are always travelling between the groups," Mr Coleman said. Australian Identity groups, while having close ties with the US movement, say they do not share the extremist views of some of their US brethren. The Southern Poverty Law Centre in the US describes Identity, with 50,000 American followers in 94 churches, as "increasingly the glue that binds together the terrorist Right", with a major meeting in Colorado in 1992 bringing together a new coalition of KKK members, neo-Nazis and extremist fundamentalists. Seven Christian Identity groups have been formed in Australia: four in NSW and one each in Victoria, Queensland and South Australia. According to the B'nai B'rith Anti-Defamation Commission, the Identity movement differs from Protestant fundamentalism by welcoming rather than fearing the "Second Coming", which it believes will occur at the millennium and result in a "final apocalyptic battle with the forces of darkness and evil, that is, Jews and other non-believers". The commission's director, Mr Danny Ben-Moshe, says the prediction of a violent confrontation makes the movement potentially dangerous. "You don't know what some of these people could resort to," he said. Pastor Frank Dowsett heads a Sydney Identity church, the Covenant Vision Ministry. He says the millennium will "set up the Kingdom of God on Earth" but this does not mean there will necessarily be violence. Pastor Dowsett denies that Identity is white supremacist and says it is not racist to believe in the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race - "You have got to put people in charge who are trained and proficient." The Identity movement has its roots in a creed called Anglo-Israelism, which claims white Anglo-Saxons, the rightful rulers of the world, are descended from the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The Anti-Defamation League in the US says the movement describes Jews as "descendants of a sexual union between Eve and Satan" and blacks and other non-white races as "mud people" who have no souls. Christian Identity features prominently on the KKK's Internet Web site. Pastor Dowsett says he does not share the views of some American Identity churches or support the KKK. Nonetheless, he describes two prominent US Identity leaders, Dave Barley and Pete Peters, as "very fine Christians" with whom he has shared speaking platforms. Mr Barley heads one of the main Identity churches, America's Prime Ministries in Idaho, which has promoted Holocaust denial publications such as Did Six Million Really Die? Mr Peters, who heads Scriptures for America, has called for homosexuals to be executed. Mr Vic Proposch, a former magistrate, heads the Victorian branch of an Identity group, the British-Israel World Federation. Mr Proposch says Anglo-Saxons are the "literal descendents of God's people" and that the Holocaust has been "completely blown out of proportion". But he says his group believes the Identity movement in the US "has gone overboard, which gives us a bad name". A Sydney-based Identity group, the Bible Believers, predicts in a recent newsletter the "imminent collapse of the world economy" will be precipitated by, among other things, massive tidal waves that will destroy the Australian east coast. This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
