Regarding the C of C all I can relate to you is my personal experience with the church and its members. Now, admittedly the C of C has done better over the years, but many of its older members still hold rather “traditional” views of the so-called “races.”

According to this, the Phineas idea, and Christian Identity in general, evolved from 19th-century “British Israelism” rather than the Germanic racist movements of the same period. Although CI subsequently adopted some of the trappings of Germanic racism, its theology privileges whites in general rather than Germans in particular, and might thus have a greater appeal to other European racists. Also, I’d be wary of reading too much into roots; extremist movements tend to cherry-pick features of like-minded movements that have some success, hence the popularity of Nazi paraphernalia among American racists.

I would have thought that the language barrier – and the cultural gap in the conception of the relationship of Judaism to Christianity – would have posed a more substantial barrier.

Language barriers are overcome fairly easily these days – due, ironically, to the adoption of English as an international standard – and doctrine can often be compromised in favor of pragmatic alliances. If Belgian Jews can vote Vlaams Blok, then there can be French Phineas priests.

As you point out in your latest post, the perpetrator of this particular attack was a loser who found out about Phineas through a movie. At the same time, I wouldn’t rule out other French racists picking up on the idea the same way, especially now that someone has invoked it in the course of an attack.

Still, they have now caught the guy that did it. We’ll see what he comes up with.

I could be wrong on that because I know that some of these ideas have their advocates in Canada and I am simply not aware of trends present in the UK or the more Protestant parts of Europe. However, I am sceptical of claims that this theology has ever been present in Catholicism in any meaningful way, because I have – over the course of life – known people who were close to the less savoury intellectual currents in Catholicism, and I’ve never heard mention of it.

Christian Identity is a small movement denoted primarily by its radically racist theology. The idea here is not condemn Protestants, who as I said overwhelmingly reject this class of theology, even in movements like Christian Reconstructionism, a theocratic movement of which I have almost as bad an opinion as Christian Identity.

Nor am I claiming that white Germanic Protestants are particularly racist. However, a racist movement which privleges white Germanic Protestants is unlikely to have a large presence outside of white Germanic Protestant communities. This is not to say that other people do not have their own racist factions. They do. I said that Catholics have their own racist factions, but that they are different in their justifications. But this one is generally unique to this one ethnic and national group.

In short, I was not claiming any sort of specialism for any group. Just that this strain comes from a particular group of people. If you want to read up on racist movements in the US, use Google. I’ve provided you with ample keywords for doing so. I won’t link to them from here.

Gary, I know that the CI movement is on some things quite orthodox, but I am unaware of any openly racist movement in the C of C mainstream. In every significant church in the US that has traditionally been a “white” church, there are still individual members, and in some cases whole parishes, where old fashioned beliefs about race are still held. Precious few of them, however, openly preach racism as a Biblical value in this day and age. The official C of C has repreatedly made anti-racist statements and has in recent years even been willing to expose its own role in open racism in days past. What distinguishes CI is its unique and openly held beliefs about race, and the preponderance of theological significance that they attach to them.

Scott isn’t making any such implication – all he’s saying is that the roots of the Phineas movement are in Protestant theology as opposed to Catholicism, Judaism and Islam (all of which have generated their own forms of racial extremism). No implication of typicality was intended or made.

Dismaying, maybe, but not strange. We’re living in a very networked world these days in which like-minded people can easily collaborate and share ideas, and this is as true of extremists as of anyone else. The filtering of the Phineas concept to French racists is no more surprising than, say, the filtering of blood libels to the Arab world or the adoption of Western-style racism in east Asia. I suspect that in the future we’ll see more convergence between worldwide racist movements, not less.

I can though say with certainty that this statement is misleading:

“Yeah, it seems a bit far-fetched when you read the text. But that doesn?t
stop people. For those readers less familiar with American Protestantism,
this is a very radical interpretation at present which even most radical
theocratic movements like Christian Reconstructionism reject.”

The problem being the implication that this “Phineas act” business is
somehow characteristic of American Protestantism. I’m no expert
on religions but I know enough to know that’s not true.

Protestant in the american context simply means ‘christian but not
Catholic.’ Other than not being Catholic there is no coherence, other than
historical, to the term. Therefore it’s difficult to make any sensible statement
about what “protestant” means. You certainly can’t, legitimately, make the kind
of characterization that Scott is making.

I know — I caught the copout, “not a mainstream interpretation” — but I think
the copout is there precisely to defend the author from the obvious point that
this likely has little to do with the other religions called Protestant, while
at the same time speak of ‘Protestants,’ without specifying whom is being talked
about, except that it’s american (which is of course a good part of the point
of the exercise).

The only group actually named is something called “Christian Identity.” Even
there I note there are no links to any of this group’s literature so that a reader
can verify that Scott’s characterization is in fact accurate.

Something else that leaps out to my mind. If this “Christian Identity” or
some other like group had done acts of the sort now occuring in France it would
be in the news.

Moving on, these sentences by Scott also leap out to my mind as being objectionable:

“It appeals to a Protestant theology and to a Germanic or quasi-Germanic identity.
Sometimes Celts are granted some sort of “honorary German” status in the ontology
of racist branches of Protestantism, but that?s as far as it stretches.”

This assertion of characteristics of ethnic identities is unencumbered by
evidence. More problematic it’s a racist reasoning. Implicitly what matters
is not the individual but rather the group. It’s easy to make assertions about
groups that are statistically true, in the sense that behavior X is more likely
to be demonstrated by a member of such a group than a member of another group.

But that in a nutshell is racism; that’s all that racism is. And as natural as
such a reasoning may appear it leads to all sorts of trouble.

L’or Manaudou!!!!!!!!