Wesley A. Swift

Wesley A. Swift (September 6, 1913 – October 8, 1970) was a minister from Southern California who was known for his white supremacist views and was a central figure in the Christian Identity movement from the 1940s until his death in 1970.

Wesley Albert Swift was born in New Jersey on September 6, 1913, the son of R.C. Swift, a methodist minister who pastored a church on Long Island, New York.

Raised as a Methodist, Swift converted to Pentecostalism in the early 1930s.

Swift was a student at L.I.F.E. Bible College (now Life Pacific University) at the Angelus Temple, Aimee Semple McPherson's Pentecostal Foursquare Church, during the 1930s.

Swift later served as a minister at the Angelus Temple during the 1930s and 1940s.

Swift's wife, Genevieve, told interviewers that he was introduced to British Israelism by Gerald Burton Winrod, an evangelist from Kansas, who was a speaker at Angelus Temple.

Swift was a student of Rev. Philip Monson's Kingdom Bible School during the 1930s; Monson taught British Israelism and some of the racial teachings which Swift would later reformulate into Christian Identity theology.

Swift was also exposed to Charles Parham's British Israel teachings at the Angelus Temple.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Swift became a leader of the local British Israel community, serving as president of the Anglo-Saxon Christian society, leader of the Great Pyramid Club, and leader of the Anglo-Saxon Bible Study Group at Angelus Temple.

In a December 1932 Los Angeles Times news story, it was reported that Swift foiled an attempt to kidnap his wife.

Swift fired shots at the kidnappers and the family escaped into the Angelus Temple to evade their persuers.

In the mid-1940s, Swift emerged as a well known advocate of Christian Identity.

In the 1940s, Swift founded his own church, Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation, which he renamed the Church of Jesus Christ–Christian in 1957.

The church's website now states that "Wesley Swift is considered the single most significant figure in the early years of the Christian Identity movement in the United States."

Michael Barkun described Swift as the "central figure" in Christian Identity between the 1940s and his 1970 death.

Swift was involved in the revival of a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in California during the mid-1940s, helping to establish the short lived California Klan.

Roy Elonzo Davis and William Upshaw were in California at the time and they assisted in fundraising efforts for the Klan.

Swift was responsible for the formation of the Antelope Valley chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Swift worked closely with Gerald L.K. Smith, an American Nazi sympathizer and politician during the 1940s.

Wesley Swift was billed as a speaker at the Little Rock Nine protests, but did not speak and instead served as one of the hooded klansmen escorting and protecting Gerald Smith during one of his speeches.

"Swift pioneered a particularly insidious form" of racism which became "the most distinctive element" of Christian Identity theology: that non-whites and Jews are the "biological offspring" of Satan (the serpent).

Swift combined the two-seed-line teaching of British Israelism with Russel Kelso Carter's theory about the sexual nature of Eve's sin in the garden of Eden.

He concluded that "the violation of Divine law by Lucifer" was caused by "interbreeding" of "the peoples of earth".

He insisted the black, brown, yellow and red races were all the products of interbreeding with Cain's descendants.

Swift believed "that the only descendants of Adam are the white men" and "the rest of the beings represent the agents of evil because of their direct link with the fallen angels."

The teaching also associated the offspring of Satan (the serpent) "with the activities of the Catholic Church and the pope".

The ideology taught that descendants of the serpent could be identified genetically, claiming that "the nature of the seed of the serpent are as fixed as the skin of a modern Ethiopian or the spots of a leopard", and that "what is genetically marked cannot and will not change."

Swift believed "an extreme doctrine of the Calvinist double predestination, in which those predestined to salvation and those predestined to perdition can be recognized only by their racial status."

Interracial marriage was an important topic to Swift.

He believed races could coexist so long as segregation was maintained.

He said "there isn't anything wrong with being black, but there is something wrong when you try to mix that black species with the white man, that is a violation of God's law, that is wrong".

Swift's believed salvation was possible for all races, but that their status as lower orders of beings would always be maintained.

He explained by saying, "Do not worry about these other races. You teach them to worship the right God and you set them free… He says He will go to the end of the earth and that eventually, all of these people, all of them, shall be saved and justified according to His purpose and His plan."

Swift insisted that " God's plan for the world is segregation and a preservation of Kind," and he viewed whites as the master race who would rule over all other races.

Swift relied heavily on the Book of Enoch to justify his theology.

The Christian Identity ideas held by Swift were viewed as extreme by some others on the far right.

Swift's views were denounced by Robert W. Welch Jr., the founder of the John Birch Society, but supported and financed by Birch supporter James Oviatt, for whom the James Oviatt Building is named.

In 1946, while living in Lancaster, California, Swift was taken in for questioning by police in connection to a cross burning near San Bernardino.

Swift denied being involved in the Klan at the time.

Most sources give 1948 as the year in which Swift incorporated his church, but one source reported 1946.