British Israelism: how an ancient historical puzzle fuels conspiracists and terrorists today

David Barrett explores how an obscure religious history idea with no substantiation but with tens of thousands of believers ties up with spiritual, national and racial identity and with racism, terrorism and conspiracy theories.
For centuries people have tried to identify what happened to the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Taken into captivity by the Assyrians around 720 BCE, they vanished from history. Of many theories, one of the most persistent is that the ancient Israelites ended up in Britain, and that today’s British people – and by extension Americans – are not just their spiritual but their physical descendants. When half the globe was coloured pink and Britain was the natural and rightful leader of the world, this idea, despite having not a scrap of historical evidence, became popular. At one time a granddaughter of Queen Victoria was patron of the British Israel World Federation.
British-Israelism was at the heart of the prophetic teaching of the American sect the Worldwide Church of God, whose 100,000 members believed that Britain and America are central to God’s plan for the Millennium, when Christ returns to Earth. Other British Israelites believe that Jesus came to Britain as a child, that St Paul visited Britain, and that Joseph of Arimathea is buried in Cardiff.
But there is a darker side to British-Israelism. Originally pro-Jewish and Zionist, in the last half century many elements of the movement have become anti-semitic. While by no means all British Israelites are racist, Christian Identity groups in the United States use the theory to teach that those of white European stock are God’s Chosen People; these are the white supremacists who carry a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, and who have been responsible for terrorist attacks such as the 1995 Oklahoma bombing which killed 168 people.
And if one tracks back many of the widespread conspiracy theories of the last few years, from 9/11 to Obama’s birth certificate to the death of the Princess of Wales, via Bilderberg, the Jewish-masonic Illuminati New World Order and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, it is these same white supremacists who are behind them.

A former teacher, intelligence officer and journalist, Dr David V Barrett has been a freelance writer specialising in new religious movements and secret societies for over 20 years. He gained his PhD in Sociology of Religion from the London School of Economics in 2009. His many books include A Brief Guide to Secret Religions (Constable & Robinson, 2011) and The Fragmentation of a Sect (OUP 2013).