RELIGIOUS IDENTITY AND DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER: A NARRATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE SUBORDINATE ROLE OF THE JEW IN THE APOCALYPTIC

TEXTS OF TWO CHRISTIAN GROUPS By Kevin D. Miller Kevin Miller is professor of communication at Huntington University in Indiana.
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This study is a discourse analysis of the apocalyptic narratives of two contemporary Christian groups, both of which see Jews as central to the unfolding of end-of-time events. The research questions focus on how the hermeneutical practice of the reading of the identity of the otherthe Jewthrough sacred apocalyptic scripture serves as a basis for the construction of the identity of the selfin the cases examined here, the white supremacist movement called Christian Identity, and the dispensationalist movement known as Christian Zionism. The one group (Christian Identity) demonizes Jews and sees them as the enemy to be destroyed, while the other group (Christian Zionists) contributes money to Orthodox Jews in the belief that they will rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem, thus making way for Christs Second Coming. The narratives of both groups portray Jews as players in a predetermined script fulfilling scriptural prophecy. The rhetorical analysis examines how the grounding texts of a groups religious faith are used in identity constructions, especially in contexts of ethnic or racial difference, tension, and conflict. From a more theoretical orientation, this study engages

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theories of identity and narrative from the perspective of interpretive communities, proposing that narratives can be analyzed for their plays of power that subordinate other groups in the interest of constructing superior identities of the authoring communities. In particular, the ideas of Paul Ricoeur on time and emplotment are used to connect Heideggers notion of the hermeneutical circle with the kind of knowing of the other and the self that were found in the apocalyptic narratives examined.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION Communication as Social Construction ............................................................................. 1 Research questions ................................................................................................. 3 A point of departure ............................................................................................... 5 A sociological basis for the study ........................................................................ 11 The organization of this study .............................................................................. 13 PART ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter One: History of Christian Identity and Christian Zionism ................................. 15 The origins of the Christian Identity movement ................................................. 15 The origins of the Christian Zionist movement ................................................... 19 Chapter Two: Narrative and Identity ............................................................................... 30 Narrative as theory ............................................................................................... 31 Taylor's theory of narrative identity ..................................................................... 39 Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity ................................................................... 44 Chapter Three: Narrative and Community ......................................................................54 Social movements as moral movements ............................................................. 54 Social movements as interpretive communities .................................................. 61 Chapter Four: Narrative and Knowledge ......................................................................... 67 Hermeneutics as epistemology ........................................................................... 68 Hermeneutics as critique ...................................................................................... 74 Power as rhetorical knowledge ............................................................................ 81 PART TWO: METHODOLOGY Chapter Five: Two Apocalyptic Methodologies .............................................................. 93 O'Leary's apocalyptic method .............................................................................. 93 Brummett's apocalyptic method ........................................................................ 101 Chapter Six: A Narrative Research Design ................................................................... 107 A three-level analysis ......................................................................................... 107 The texts selected for analysis ........................................................................... 109 Cluster criticism .................................................................................................112 Narrative analysis ............................................................................................... 116 PART THREE: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Chapter Seven: Comparable Interpretive Strategies ...................................................... 121 Strategies of authority ....................................................................................... 121 Strategies of typology ....................................................................................... 136 Strategies of transfer ......................................................................................... 146

Strategies of esoteric insight .............................................................................. 155 Discussion of the four credibility strategies ....................................................... 161 Chapter Eight: Contrasting Identity Constructions ........................................................ 168 Cluster analysis findings .................................................................................... 168 Verb transformation findings ............................................................................. 177 Narrative analysis findings ................................................................................ 183 Chapter Nine: Community, Identity, and Sacred Knowing ........................................... 217 The circle of sacred knowing ............................................................................. 219 Narrating superior identities .............................................................................. 230 Narrating collective identities ............................................................................ 233 Appendixes ................................................................................................................... 241 Appendix A: A Christian Identity Doctrinal Statement .................................... 241 Appendix B: Two Sample Analyses ................................................................. 246 References ...................................................................................................................... 267

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LIST OF TABLES Table 8.1: Cluster Analysis of Key Terms of Agreement ............................................. 170 Table 8.2: Cluster Analysis of Key Terms of Disagreement ......................................... 171 Table 9.1: Three Levels of Interpretation ...................................................................... 219 Table 9.2: Three Levels of Interpretation ......................................................................220

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INTRODUCTION Communication as Social Construction Contrary to the predictions of Harvey Cox in The Secular City and other watchers of religion in the 1960s, Western society as a whole has not left behind the sacred city for a secular one. As the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences documents (Marty & Appleby, 1992), we have witnessed in recent decades a resurgence of religious fundamentalisms at home and abroad that expressly oppose the secularizing of the sacred. Some of these groups encourage violence toward other races or religions. Other groups, while nonviolent, nevertheless position themselves as superior to other religious and ethnic groups, which are seen as playing secondary and subservient roles in a comprehensive story of salvation that will culminate in a triumph or glorification of the chosen group at the end of earthly time. To shed light on the role of religion in ethnicized superiority discourse, this book analyszes the texts of two groups within North American Protestant Christianity: Christian Identity and Christian Zionists. The analysis compares and contrasts how these groups respectively understand and speak of the Jewish people and of themselves (largely or exclusively white European Americans). More specifically, it examines how contemporary Jews are read or refracted through a specific type of ancient biblical text (apocalyptic) in the identity creations of the Jewish other and the Christian self. One obvious difference between these two Christian groups is their contrasting attitudes toward the Jew: Christian Identity believers wish to see the Jewish people annihilated (many say they are ready to do it themselves), while Christian Zionist believers teach that the Jewish people, above all other ethnic groups, possess a special

and divinely ordained place in God's plan for the world. Both groups, thus, are preoccupied with the Jewish race. What is intriguing is that the very different estimations of who the Jewish people are and the role they play in history are arrived at by similar operations of biblical exposition of identical Bible passages. A working definition of the Jewish people for this study will follow that given in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society (Swatos, 1998). The encyclopedia notes that secular definitions of Jewish identity are based on culture (including the Yiddish language), on communal ties (such as to Jewish organizations), or on living in a Jewish nation-state (Zionists) (p. 250). This conceptualization includesbut is broader than the traditional one found in halakha (Jewish law), which defines Jews as only those who are born to a Jewish mother or have converted to Judaism (Reformed Jewish definitions add the children of Jewish fathers). Using this more inclusive secular definition, the Encyclopedia estimates the Jewish population at the beginning of the twenty first century to be about 13 million (Swatos, p. 251), with the largest groups living in the United States (5.7 million), Israel, (4.3 million), France (530,000), Russia (41,000), Canada (358,000), United Kingdom (296,000), Ukraine (245,000), Argentina (210,000), Brazil (100,000), South Africa (98,000), and Australia (91,000). Definitions that emphasize only the religious, cultural/ethnic, genetic, or civic aspects of Jewish identity to the exclusion of one or more of the other categories will arrive at numbers different than those given above. Paradoxically, like secular definitions, anti-Semitic views have pushed definitions of the Jewish people in a more inclusive direction, as seen, for example, by the Nazi criteria that included anyone with a single Jewish grandparent. These hostile definitions

led to the inclusion of people in the Jewish community who were not halakhic Jews, which in turn led to the result after World War II the State of Israel accepted those persecuted as Jews by the Nazis and permitted them to enter Israel under the Law of Return (Swatos, p. 250). As a benchmark definition by which to compare the competing and conflicting definitions of the Jew in Zionist and Identity literature, this study will follow the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society in delimiting Jews as those people who were born to Jewish parents or who by participation in Jewish culture, religion, or civic life identify themselves as Jewish. The questions driving the research in this study and its narrative focus draw from a growingbut traditionally overlookedarea in communication studies, a perspective that Alan DeSantis (1997) describes as the recontextualizing of communication theory. DeSantis argues that communication is being reconceptualizedascending from a simple tool that organizes and expresses previously existing ideas, to the force that constructs social reality (p. 74). Adopting this perspective, the research questions in this study take to heart Arthur Bochner's (1994) contention that communication scholars need to bring the study of local narratives that display how people do things together in the process of making meanings into a more central and legitimated position in this field [communication] (p. 22). This meaning-making angle underlies the first research question, which is designed to investigate the fact that both Christian Identity and Christian Zionist groups arrive at their knowledge of the identity of the Jewish people through nearly indistinguishable narrative/hermeneutical techniques of scriptural explication and interpretation. This phenomenon is seen most clearly in the use of apocalyptic portions of

the Bible by the two groups to interpret Jews today as playing a central role in end-oftime scenarios that must unfold before Jesus Christ returns from heaven to reign on earth. The first research question asks: Through what rhetorical devices do Christian Zionists and Christian Identity believers, using the same passages of sacred apocalyptic scripture, construct diametrically opposing identity accounts of the Jew and of themselves? The answer to this question is important on two counts. If we are to make sense of the fervor that drives such groups to actions that appear mysterious or purely fanatical from the outsidewhether they be those of Christian Identity believers training in militia camps for a final War of Armageddon against Jews, or Zionist Christians raising funds to send to Orthodox Jews preparing to rebuild the Third Temple in Jerusalem where a Muslim mosque now standswe need a fuller understanding of the ways that contemporary stories told through ancient texts serve to shape the identities of religious groups. Secondly, while contributing to our knowledge of a specific kind of rhetoric and to an empirical understanding of how these two groups of Christians use apocalyptic scriptures to construct identities of the self and the other, this study also aims to add to the theoretical work that has been done in the area of narrative or hermeneutical epistemology, which for this study will be framed as the role narrative interpretation plays in creating and sustaining the knowledge claims of the members of a community as well as the criteria those members use (explicitly or not) in justifying those claims. The second research question seeks to capture this theoretical concern by asking: What is the relationship between the grounding texts (end-of-time Bible passages), narratives, and knowledge claims of each of the two interpretive communities?

I propose that the concept of the interpretive community, which a number of scholars have explored empirically and theoretically in recent decades, serves an important role in bridging the rhetorical discoveries and the epistemological insights of this study to form a working theory of hermeneutical epistemology. Drawing together the ideas of several theorists of social epistemology, I attempt to present a working definition of such theory in Chapter 4 that will be applicable to the analysis of Christian Identity and Christian Zionism in the last chapters of the study. DeSantis (1997) notes that in the field of communication, Postmodernity has significantly shaped research in the areas of 1) empowerment and 2) epistemology (p. 73). Part of this working theory of hermeneutical epistemology will draw comparisons to Foucault's (1980) thinking on the relationship between power and knowledge, especially as captured in his conjoined appellation power/knowledge, with its implications for understanding any knowing of the other as a kind of exercise in power.

A Point of Departure The view of rhetoric as power/knowledge leads to a departure in this study from the majority of the literature on religious movements since the 1960s. One of the premises many social scientists and sociologists of religion use in explaining the motivation for apocalyptic rhetorical discourse is that apocalyptic and religious cosmologies represent, in a causal sense, the defensive reaction of a threatened group of people to a sudden loss of order in the worlds they have known. This assumption can be found in the rhetorical methods of Barry Brummett (1991), one of the theorists I cite and draw from later in forming a methodology for this study. He defines apocalyptic, which

can be transliterated as revelation or unveiling, as a mode of thought and discourse that empowers its audience to live in a time of disorientation and disorder by revealing to them a fundamental plan with the cosmos (p. 9). Later he asserts that apocalyptic appeals to an audience that is suffering from loss of a sense of order in life (p. 37) and that those who have been hit the hardest and hurt the most from perceptions of chaos and anomie are those most likely to immerse themselves in systematic apocalyptic (p. 41). Similar lost world themes are sounded in Peter Bergers classic book on the sociology of religion, The Sacred Canopy (1967), where he discusses issues of worldconstruction, world-maintenance, alienation, plausibility, and legitimation in the face of secularization. According to Berger, world-construction as a religious enterprise has been the norm in the history of humankind, the exception being the efforts at building secular orders since the Enlightenment. By world-construction, Berger means the ordering of our experiences in a humanly meaningful way. This impulse for order, or nomos, inevitably aims at a total ordering, a cosmization. Such ordering happens through a dialectical process of the internalization, externalization, and objectification of the nomos. Religion implies the farthest reach of mans self-externalization, of his infusion of reality with his own meanings. Religion implies that human order is projected into the totality of being (p. 28). Berger, like Brummett, describes socially established nomos as serving a sheltering function for its inhabitants (p. 22). Against the terror of chaos or meaninglessness, a sacred cosmos with its ordered meanings provides boundaries of protection against emptiness and threats of (what Berger calls) irrealities. Seen in the

perspective of society, every nomos is an area of meaning carved out of a vast mass of meaninglessness, a small clearing of lucidity in a formless, dark, always ominous jungle (p. 24). While in certain cases the motivating force behind apocalyptic rhetoric may be helpfully explained as the fearful reaction to anomie, I argue through the case studies in this treatise that other times the motivation for building an apocalyptic worldview can be better explained as a socially or religiously expressed will to power. That is, the identity constructions of the self and the other can be accounted for best as acts of creative selfassertion arising from group egoism rather than as a merely defensive or reactionary groping-for-order amidst chaos. Stephen O'Leary, another theorist of apocalyptic discourse whom I review in Chapter 5, also argues against the anomie hypothesis. He proposes that while anomie is present behind most any apocalyptic rhetoric, the fact that chaos is always a threat leaves the anomie hypothesis with little explanatory power. The analyses of this study suggest that in Christian Zionist and Christidan Identity discourse, at least, there is an overlooked rhetorical dynamic at workthe positive and creative constructing of ones own identity at the expense of the other party. If this is true, then a comparison to patriotism or nationalism serves as a better analogy to the discourse of religious superiority than does the analogy of circling the wagons most sociologies of religion from the 1960s until recently have applied to such groups. Other scholars lend support to this reconception. Dwight Billings and Shauna Scott (1994), in their discussion of Religion and Political Legitimation, object to the older conceptualizations of social movements as collective, often irrational, responses to sociocultural strain or breakdown (p. 189). They argue instead for the use of resource

mobilization theories which assume constructionist approaches to culture that stress social actors active role in the definition, interpretation, and negotiation of social reality (p. 191). They criticize, for example, the Fundamentalist Project (Marty & Appleby, 1992, which I referred to in the first paragraph of this Introduction) for its flat interpretation of fundamentalist movements as reactions to threatened status identities. In contrast, they argue that resource mobilization theory captures the strategic aspects of such movements and that new social movement theory illuminates how fundamentalist movements, for instance, both defend and modify social identities in the course of mobilization (p. 190). In like manner the historian John Sommerville (2000) says it is time to look at movements as constructive features of the religious life . . . rather than as disturbances within a 'typical' stability (p. 750). He argues that the view of movements as being by definition ephemeral or deviant is part of an older sociological prejudice against social movements that began to break down in the 1970s as social scientists found themselves in sympathy with some of the movements of the 1960s and 1970s and began to publish

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studies that saw movements as purposive rather than merely

reactive, rational rather than psychodynamic, political rather than merely ideological (p. 750). He continues: Sociologists are showing less confidence in the theories of structural dysfunction, atomization and alienation, social strain, and relative deprivation that were once prominent. It is increasingly recognized that some social change, strain, and desperation are always present, and it has

not proven easy to measure the critical amount or speed of change needed to produce social movements. Beyond this, there are so many kinds of relative deprivation that one could always find one that fits the case. (p. 753) This study takes the purposive, constructivist perspectives described above as a beginning point, but also as a position to be examined, tested, and contributed to theoretically. In terms of the identity questions at the heart of this study, the constructivist approach seems especially useful. Sociologist Robert Wuthnow, for one, connects the constructivist presumption to identity concerns. Speaking from the research he has done on evangelical Christianity, he contends that it [was not] necessary for evangelicals to experience severe anxieties, as a status politics interpretation of these events would suggest. . . [once] [t]he reconstruction of symbolic worlds created a domain in which participation simply became a sensible thing to do (Wuthnow 1983: p. 184, quoted in Billings and Scott, 180). To the question Why is religion so often involved in intergroup hostility? Robert Bellah, another sociologist of religion, answers by saying, Just because religion is one of the most important ways of defining our identity and thus making personal and collective boundaries. In modern times religious identity is only rivaled (and sometimes surpassed) by national identity as a source of group belongingness and therefore as a source of intergroup hostility and conflict. (p. 220) James Beckford and Thomas Luckmann's (1989) introduction to The Changing Face of Religion lends support to this view by noting that in the essays in their edited

collection, Evidence is discussed of religious symbolism and ideology which have the effect of re-framing supposedly private matters in terms of their public significance, and vice versa. It is even suggested that some religious movements are conveying new images of the global dimension of human life in the late twentieth century. (p. 2) Martin Bubers concept of self-and-world relationshipsmost notably in his constructs of I-thou and I-it relationshipsprovides another angle for viewing rhetorical activities by groups such as Christian Identity and Christian Zionism as positive, rather than only reactive, and intentional constructions of social reality. Robert Scharlemann (1987) observes that for Buber what is important in the I-thou and the I-it relation is not only that a different category is involved in each case but also that the very words bring about a relation; and where the words are spoken, the relation comes about through the speaking (p. 116). To denote Buber's idea of Grundwort, Scharlemann coins the term instantiation, meaning the power of language to bring about the reality it names or to actualize the relation it means (p. 116). Here Buber and Berger are not far apart. Berger maintains that worldviews are made and kept alive through socialization (by continuing the consensus of the objectified knowledge of reality), social control (holding a reign on deviance), and, most importantly, through the process of legitimation, a communicative process using mechanisms that provide coherent answers to why questions as they are voiced by group members (p. 29). These answers, Berger notes, go beyond the normative ought to the even more persuasive ontological is. In sum, theoretically and methodologically this study stands in consonance with

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the constructivist methodology of the other researcher in this statement by Billings and Scott: In contrast to such semiological approaches in which culture appears to produce its own objects, other researchers develop constructionist approaches to culture that stress social actors active role in the definition, interpretation, and negotiation of social reality (p. 191). The specific point of departure in this study from the mainstream sociology of religion literature on this subject is that there is an intentional power dimension at work in these identity constructions that must be recognized and understood if the generative sources of the religious-ethnic superiority/supremacy claims of these groups are to be meaningfully understood. The use of apocalyptic categories in the Christian construction of the Jew, I argue, can be seen as a narratively strategic act of identity manipulation of the other for the purpose of dominationa spiritual colonization, if you will. These acts can be seen as performed from a position of felt power rather than a sense of powerlessness.

A Sociological Basis for the Study In analyzing Christian Identity and Christian Zionism from a power perspective, I build from basic sociological categories used by others in the study of religious groups. Meredith McGuire (1987) describes several of these in her sociology of religion. Starting where Berger and others have, she defines a meaning system as that which makes sense of ones identity and social being (p. 27). With Berger, she holds that meaning is something brought to a situation, not discovered in it, and, like Clifford Geertz (1973), she argues that religion serves as a primary template for the creation of meaning. This affirms a general study approach that examines a movements discourse for the purpose

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of disclosing how the group makes sense of the world by re-interpreting it through its religious template. In contrast to Berger, however, McGuire sets up several research topics that could be useful in disclosing power relations in the discourse of others and the self. I review them here briefly, showing how they can apply to a Christian Identity and Christian Zionist textual analysis. McGuire lays out the following topic areas: * Four central themes typically can be found and examined in any religious movement: religious experience, power, order, and unity. Given Christian Identitys militancy, for example, both its conception of power and the location of the mechanisms of power within the rhetoric of both groups would be of particular interest. * By exploring how language and other symbol systems articulate a groups reality, sociologists may come to a better understanding of how people subjectively share that reality (p. 158). The symbolism of Christian Identity and Zionist Christian discourse is rich and central to the groups senses of identity. * Some religious groups can be seen as being religiously particular if they actively maintain clear in-group/out-group boundaries, especially if those delineations play a determinative role in the groups identity formation and maintenance. With this lens, a researcher can identify the social location of a religionthe structural relationship between religion and other parts of society (i.e., where does religion fit into the total pattern of how things are done?) (p. 207). Christian Identity, and to a lesser extent Christian Zionists, are strongly separatist. Their connection to the outside world is confrontational and grounded

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in suspicion. By determining the social location of Christian Identity and Christian Zionists, one can go a long way in explaining the movements' identities. This will be addressed in the section on the hermeneutical community and the organizational institutionalist idea of the location of groups within larger social sectors (Chapter 3). One other dynamic is brought into sharper relief when the question of apocalyptic discourse is framed in terms of power rather than weakness or fearthe role of identityformation as an act of subordination (if not subjugation) of the other. If my hypothesis proves tenable and the supremacist rhetoric of these religious groups is, in fact, shown to be religiously motivated, then that religious connection between rhetoric and identity must be identified and theorized. To do this I draw heavily upon the work of Charles Taylor (in Chapter 2) and his narrative theory of the self, which suggests that every narrative of the self is also a moral story. Taylor, I argue, provides a connection between the moral impetus and the sense of self-and-the-other found in the religious apocalyptic narratives of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist believers.

The Organization of this Study The structure of the chapters that follow reflects the research goals outlined above. There are three main parts: Part I is a literature review that briefly recounts the history of the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist movements and develops a theory of hermeneutical epistemology; Part II explains the methodology used in the empirical research behind the findings in this study; and Part III reports on the results of the textual analyses and follows with a concluding discussion of what those findings contribute to

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the theory of religious apocalyptic movements and their rhetoric. The aim of this study is to understand more clearly how apocalyptic narratives are used to construct social identities and the logic that underlies those identities.

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PART ONE: LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter One History of Christian Identity and Christian Zionism Christian Identity believers demonize the Jewish people, while Christian Zionist adherents give them an elevated role in human history. Both justify their position by using the texts of the same Christian Bible and often identical passages of scripture, especially apocalyptic passages that point to how time will come to an end. Both groups then use the respective identity constructions they have performed on the Jew to construct their own group identities. This chapter briefly reviews the origins of each group by focusing on those parts of the histories that relate to the research questions at hand. In particular, I set in historical context the development of each of the groups' understanding of the Jews. I begin with Christian Identity, relying primarily on Michael Barkuns history of Christian Identity, which is the most comprehensive treatment of the group to date. The Movement Known as Christian Identity Christian Identity believers hold to three central beliefs: that white Aryans are the true descendants of the biblical tribes of Israel; that Jews are not descendants of the biblical tribes of Israel but are the literal genetic children of Satan; and that the end of time is near in which apocalyptic war between good and evilthat is, between the Aryans and a Jewish conspiracymust be waged. In his preface to Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, Barkun writes: Christian Identity as a religious orientation is virtually unknown. Its texts

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are not studied in universities. Its books and magazines are not available in bookstores. It goes unmentioned in all but the most encyclopedic accounts of American religion. No one is sure how many believe in it. It is not organized as a denomination, so that no central organization can be consulted for membership statistics. Made up of numerous small churches, Bible study groups, and Identity-oriented political organizations, it is too fragmented to permit anything but rough estimates . ... So small a group would have little claim on our attention but for the fact that Christian Identity has created the most virulently anti-Semitic belief system ever to arise in the United States and that some of its believers are committed to the eradication of American political institutions. (p. x) Barkun traces the emergence of Christian Identity as a distinctly American, twentieth-century phenomenon from its beginnings in eighteenth-century British Israelism and the ideas of a leading thinker of that era, John Wilson, who died in 1871. Wilson had set out to research the origins of the European peoples. That research, he said, led him to the idea that the ten lost tribes of northern Israelas distinct from the two southern tribes of Judah in the Old Testament narrativeshad in fact immigrated to Europe. In an intellectual environment immersed in the newly developed field of historical linguistics, Wilson, a Briton himself, discerned similarities of phonetic sounds between English and Hebrew, which were then used to develop his theory of a one-time migration of the northern Children of Israel into European lands. This, says Barkun, led Wilson and all his successors [to draw] a sharp distinction between the southern kingdom of Judah, from which Jews were deemed to have sprung, and the

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northern kingdom of Israel, the ancestors of the British and other European peoples. Hence, Jews bore only those divine promises God had given to the few tribes that dwelt in Judah, while the bulk of the prophecies were inherited by descendants of the tribes that dwelt in Israelpreeminently the tribe of Ephraim, which populated the British Isles. (p. 7) In contrast to the literal demonization of the Jewish people by present-day Christian Identity leaders, this nascent British Israelism was not intentionally anti-Semitic but instead accorded a place of brotherhood, if not of equal religious status, to the Jewish people of Palestinian descent. At the same time, however, by separating the promises given the Northern Kingdom of Israel from those given to the Southern Kingdom, Wilson had sowed the seeds for the open anti-Semitism of the American Christian Identity movement of the twentieth century. For example, the Promised Land of Palestine came to be seen as Israels rightful possession. When in World War I the British marched into Jerusalem and occupied the territory, it was easy to interpret this as prophetic fulfillment of the promise of British Israelisms possession of Palestine. Thus Wilsons attitude toward the Jews was at once fraternal and patronizing, Barkun observes (p. 7-8). Wilsons incipient racism was present as well in his belief that the Jewish people had become corrupted by intermarriage with outsider Gentiles, while the Lost Tribes (the British and the Europeans) had maintained their racial purity in exile. Preachers of British Israelism soon found an audience in the United States, especially among certain sects of Pentecostals, forming the Anglo-Saxon Federation of America. In the years just prior to World War II, this organization began to sever ties with its British counterpart, thereby creating a distinctly American version of the

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movement that took on the appellation Christian Identity. In contrast to British Israelism, the theology preached by these American intellectual heirs of British Israelism openly justified hatred of Jewish people. The subsequent break of Identity from their British counterparts in the years around World War II was so pronounced that the leaders of the American movement began ostracizing those who continued in a British-Israelist vein. Barkun identifies Wesley Swift, a one-time Methodist evangelist, as a main catalyst in the formation of this American Israelism. Identitys development in the 1970s and 1980s, Barkun writes, was largely a function of those influenced in one way or another by Wesley Swifts writing and preaching. By the time Swift died in 1970, therefore, Christian Identity had separated from its English roots; was developing most vigorously in southern California; and promulgated a theology of battle against demonic Jews and a political program of racial supremacy. (p. 49) In describing Christian Identitys eschatology, Barkun describes what most casual observers of Christian Identity theology would find surprising: Far from constituting an offshoot of Fundamentalism, as is often supposed, Christian Identity rejects the futurist orientation of most Fundamentalists (p. 104). That is, the dispensational premillennial eschatology of John Darby and his fundamentalist heirs was rejected by Christian Identity followers, who from their postmillennial perspective viewed dispensationalism as a dangerous diversion from the impending war of wars in which Gods Israel (that is, Christian Identity) would play a prominent role in defeating the forces of darkness. Against fundamentalist dispensational eschatology, Christian Identity argued (and argues

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today) that the church will not be raptured out of the turmoil of Earth. Instead, the presence of a remnant of true believers on Earth will be crucial in the defeat of Satan at the Second Coming of Christ. From this worldview, based on the sureties of biblical prophecy, springs the militancy of many American Christian white supremacist groups that has caught the attention of the media and the American public in general in recent years.

The Origins of the Christian Zionist Movement If Christian Identity can be seen as a (very small) movement within the larger Protestant Christian tradition, the same is true of Christian Zionism, though the movement is less exclusive, more connected to, and often overlaps with, other more traditional Christian groups and theologies. Christian Zionists as individuals belong to a wide array of Protestant denominations, though almost always of conservative evangelical or fundamentalist types (Bruce, 2000). But similar to the history of Christian Identity, the history of Christian Zionists is one that centers on the Jew and the future of the Jew in the end of time. In an article in the Arab Studies Quarterly, Donald Wagner (1998) contends that the general North American Christian fascination with Israel and the place it has in endof-time prophecy has been presentthough often as a minority positionin Christian thinking since the religion's earliest days. This nascent Christian apocalypticism, in turn, sprang from older Jewish apocalyptic sources. Wagner explains that the first generation of Christians were influenced by Jewish Apocalyptic thought, which itself can be traced to

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Persian religious influences (Zoroastriansim, etc.) during Israel's captivity by the Babylonians and later the Medes and Persians (587-530 BCE). Jewish Apocalypticism was gaining acceptance during the 200 BCE-135 CE period, the same era in which Christianity emerged. One sees this same influence in the New Testament writer Luke's account of Jesus' Ascension, which inserts an Apocalyptic question into the mouths of unnamed Disciples: Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel? (Acts 1:6). . . . Apocalyptic eschatology also shows up occasionally in the other Gospels (Matthew 24), the early Pauline letters (I Thess. 5:1-11), and throughout the Book of Revelation. While this model of eschatology did not dominate early Christianity it did surface at intervals, particularly in advance of a centennial year or following a significant crisis. (1998, para. 6). Jewish apocalypticism also influenced Christian apocalypticism through a medieval Jewish movement known as Cabalism. The Cabalists were Jews who looked for the city of Jerusalem to be returned to the Jews, for the Messiah to come, and for history to reach its end. With the rise of the Protestant Reformation and with the literalistic interpretation of the Bible that was propagated by the second generation of reformers, says Wagner, Jewish Cabalistic eschatology was combined with nonallegorical readings of New Testament prophecy literature by some Christians to produce a millennial apocalypticism ( 9). In this eschatology, the Cabalistic speculations about Jerusalem and a coming Messiah were Christianized and thereby interpreted to mean that there would be a literal future thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ on planet Earth following the return of Jerusalem to Jewish hands. This theology still fit within what can broadly be called

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historical premillennialism, which is the belief that Jesus would return to earth before (pre) establishing a kingdom that would last for a literal thousand (millenium) years. Out of this post-Reformation millennialism, however, grew futurist premillennialism, which, Wagner ( 10) contends, resulted from the convergence of three historic streams of thought: historic premillennialism, the British Puritan literal interpretation of the Bible, and a growing British understanding of Israel in which the people of Britain were thought to be the new Israel in a spiritual sense. The notion that the British people were the New Israel in a spiritual sense eventually gave rise to British Israelisms claim of genetic descent, which in turn spawned the Christian Identity movement in America. Thus Christian Identity as it flourished on American soil would come to exclude Jews from any part in Israel, while the more benign British Israelism of futurist premillennialism kept the Jew as the original genetic children of Israel, even if white Anglo Saxons were seen as the spiritual heirs of Abrahamic faith. This spiritual interpretation of Israel also developed into a political one in some circles. By 1621, Henry Finch, a member of the Parliament in Britain under the influence of British Israelism, began to call for the Parliament to encourage the settlement of Palestine by the Jewish people. Initially, these early advocates of futurist premillennialism were dismissed as lunatics or perhaps worse, as supporters of the antimonarchy movement in England, Wagner says ( 13). It was with the founding of the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews in the early 1800s that what is today recognized as the Christian Zionist movement came into its initial form. Louis Way, who became director of the missionary organization in 1809, promoted three themes, which remain central to Christian Zionist thought to this day:

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First, Jewish restoration was emphasized as a necessary historical and political phenomenon. Second, careful charting and interpretation of present day events would become a primary task of informed Christians, who with sufficient study and inspiration, could decode the signs of the times pointing to the end. Third, the restored Jewish nation in Palestine would be a sign of the end of history and prelude to Jesus' return to earth. Also the restored Jewish nation would be a gift to the Jewish people and a project worthy of every Englishman. (16) In 1839, another member of Parliament, Lord Shaftesbury, wrote an influential essay in which he proposed that Britain must play a central role in the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, and that Parliament should fund the establishment of an Anglican Bishopric in Jerusalem. As Wagner observes, For Shaftesbury, the political and spiritual realms were united by England's eschatological role in the latter days, for if Her Majesty's government would restore the Jews to Palestine, then England would be God's instrument in facilitating the return of Christ and be in line to receive God's blessing. Shaftesbury cited Genesis 12:3 as his primary Biblical text to support the argument: I will bless those who bless you and through you will all the nations of the earth be blessed. ( 27) One more element would be added to Zionist eschatology to make it what it is theologically todayJohn Nelson Darby's idea of dispensations, and especially his notion of a Rapture. Dispensationalism, religious historian Timothy Weber (1998) explains, is one version of the belief that Christ will return and then set up his millennial kingdom. Its distinction is that it sees the Bible and human history as divided into a

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number of distinct eras, or dispensations, in which God deals with humans differently. This distinct view is seen in the belief that the fulfillment of the dispensation of law that brought the Messiah (Jesus) to Earth was, in God's original design, to be followed by the millennial reign of Jesus. But since the Messiah's own people (the Jews) rejected Jesus as Messiah, God postponed the millennium and instead instituted a parenthetical dispensation of grace, which is being fulfilled in the church rather than through the Jewish people as a people. Peter Prosser (1999), in Dispensationalist Eschatology and Its Influence on American and British Religious Movements, observes that dispensationalists believe the Messiah had come to fulfill that worldly kingdom but had been rejected by the people of Israel. When that happened, God had broken the continuity of history and consequently had turned to the Gentiles, leaving the Israelites to their fate for about 2,000 years. When this happened, the prophetic clock had stopped ticking and the church had been instituted. When the church is raptured (according to Darby), the clock will start again, and the events of the Book of Revelation will take place. (p. 190) The present time, therefore, is the dispensation of the church, an interim period of grace in which God's witness to humanity is delivered through the church, which consists of born-again believers who affirm that Jesus of Nazareth was Gods Messiah. Still, dispensationalists argue, the covenant promises made to Israel before Jesus will not be broken, and so the Messiah will come again and Jesus will be established as king on the Throne of David in Jerusalem. This will be the Second Coming of Christ, they believe, and in it the covenant to the people of Israel will be fulfilled in those Jews who accept the

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Messiah in his second coming. But certain things must happen in sequence before the second coming will occur. Darby taught that The true Church will be removed from history in an event called the 'Rapture,' based on I Thessalonians 5:1-11 [sic; see 4:13-18], and Israel the nation will be restored as God's primary instrument (Wagner, 1998, 20). In this secret Rapture, true Christians will vanish as they are translated into their heavenly bodies, thus escaping a time of seven years of great tribulation on earth (according to pretribulationas contrasted to mid and post versions ofdispensationalism). At the end of the seven years, Jesus will resurrect the righteous dead and, together with the nation of Israel, they will battle the Antichrist, who ultimately loses in a last Battle of Armageddon in a valley just outside the city of Jerusalem. Then begins the thousand-year reign of Jesus from Jerusalem. In the next dispensation, the millennium, Yaakov Ariel (1991) says in his summary of dispensationalist belief, Israel will return to its position as God's first nation and will assume a leading role in [the] kingdom, the very same role the Jews would have played had they accepted Jesus in his first coming. Thus, although dispensationalists have recognized the Jews to be God's chosen nation and have anticipated a great future for that nation, they have also expressed a certain amount of bitterness concerning the Jewish refusal to accept Jesus, which caused the delay in the advancement of the ages and the materialization of the kingdom. (p. 17). We see, then that the milieu into which Theodor Herzl (a secular Jew) and others

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at the turn of the twentieth century proposed a purely Jewish Zionism was one already rich with expectation of the restoration of Jerusalem by Christian leaders and by some Jewish thinkers as well. Some fifty years after Shaftesbury, Lord Arthur Balfour and Prime Minster David Lloyd George began the initial political maneuvering that would eventually lead to the creation of the state Israel in 1948. In 1919, Barfour articulated a political position that Wagner says combined a commitment to the British imperial agenda with a loosely articulated form of Christian Zionism [that] played a critical role in the formulation of his policies ( 32). In a speech that year, Barfour asserted that in Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country . . . The four great powers are committed to Zionism. And Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long traditions, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desires and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit that ancient land. (quoted in Wagner, 1998, 33) The Balfour Declaration that Parliament passed soon after, says Wagner, opened the door to Zionist colonization and a form of legitimacy for their cause, and soon the Arab Palestinian hopes were eclipsed ( 34). The establishment of the Jewish state of Israel and the Six Day War of 1967, which put the whole of Jerusalem under Jewish occupation, only served to bolster Christian dispensationalist and Zionist fervor. The Christian Zionist reaction is captured in the words of L. Nelson Bell, the evangelist Billy Graham's father-in-law and editor of the evangelical magazine Christianity Today, who exalted over the results of the Six Day War: That for the first time in more than 2000 years Jerusalem is now completely in the hands of the Jews gives the student of the Bible

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a thrill and a renewed faith in the accuracy and validity of the Bible (quoted in Weber, 1998, para. 55). Wagner (1998) says four trends in the 1970s converged to boost the Christian Zionist movement out of Sunday school prophecy classes and into the mainstream of North American Christianity (paras. 36-40): (a) the accelerated growth of evangelical Christianity relative to mainline denominations; (b) the self-identification of an American President, Jimmy Carter, as an born again Christian; (c) the growth of pro-Israel lobbying and networks in the U.S.; and (d) the rise of the nonsecular (that is, religiously attuned) conservative Likud Party with the election of Menachem Begin in 1977, which actively sought to foster conservative Christian support for the nation of Israel. Through the years Ronald Reagan was U.S. president, the Likud-Christian Zionist alliance grew, and it continues to this day in the form of multiple organizations headed by a list of who's who in conservative or fundamentalist Christian circles. To illustrate these conservative connections and the celebrity names involved in Christian Zionism, recent accounts of the movement (e.g., Gorenberg, 2000; Wagner, 1998; Weber, 1998) recount the story of two trips Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made to the United States in 1998. Before meeting with President Clinton or with any of his advisors during his January visit, the prime minister went to visit the fundamentalist Baptist preacher and one-time director of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell. There he spoke to a filled auditorium of 1,000 conservative Christians of a Zionist persuasion. For his part, Falwell publically promised the prime minister that his organization would contact over 200,000 evangelical pastors to urge them to tell President Clinton to refrain from putting pressure on Israel (quoted in Wagner, 1998,

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para. 3). On his April visit a few months later, the prime minister, who was to meet with Clinton the next day to be urged to forward the Middle East peace plan by exchanging land in the West Bank for peace with the Palestinians, told a crowd of 3,000 Zionist Christians, We have no greater friends and allies than the people sitting in this room (quoted in Weber, 1998, para. 2). Among those in attendance were such prominent conservative Christian activists as Ralph Reed of the then politically influential Christian Coalition, Brandt Gustavson of the National Religious Broadcasters, and Kay Arthur of Precept Ministries. All were there in support of a Christian Zionist group called Voices United for Israel, which opposed the surrendering of any land by Israel to the Palestinians. To summarize the rise of dispensational thinking to this point, then, we can say that Darbys dispensational view was fundamental to the rise of the Christian Zionist movement because of its rejection of replacement theology, the predominant belief among British and American evangelicals that the promises made to Israel would not be fulfilled in a literal restoration of the Jews to Israel but spiritually through the church, the new Israel. Dispensationalists, by contrast, held that God was not finished with the Jews, and would in good prophetic time draw the Jews back to Palestine and reestablish the nation of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital. Part of the vision for the restoration of the Jewish people to the land of Palestine and the reestablishment of Jerusalem as capital of the state came to include the belief that the Solomons Temple would be rebuilt on the Temple Mount and the Levitic sacrifices would be resumed in it. The stony projection in Jerusalem's old city called the Mount is considered a holy site by Jews, Muslims, and Christians. It is believed that there Abraham offered up Isaac as a sacrifice and that

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Solomon built the First Temple, which housed the Ark of the Covenant in the Temple's Holy of Holies. Muslims add that Mohammed was translated into heaven from the Mount, and today the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim mosque, stands on the Mount as one of the religions most holy shrines. Referred to by Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount, it is believed to be (and most agree the archeological evidence supports the contention) the spot in Jerusalem where Solomon built the first Temple, perhaps around 900 BCE. It was destroyed in 586 BCE by the conquering Babylonian emperor Nebuchadnezzar, who took the Jews into captivity in Babylon for 70 years. Upon their (partial) return to Jerusalem following captivity, they built the Second Temple at the same spot. When in 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey conquered Judea and installed Herod the Great as the regional ruler, Herod undertook an extensive remodeling and expansion project of the Second Temple, which was completed in 63 CE. But in 70 CE, the emperor Titus, in a fury directed at the Jewish people, razed much of Jerusalem, including the Temple and the city walls (Gorenberg, 2000, p. 61). This background is important for understanding dispensationalist eschatology and the role the Temple plays in it. As mentioned earlier, dispensationalists believe God relates to humans differently in different eras of time. For example, the church, which exists in the dispensation of grace, receives forgiveness through prayers of repentance that are heard because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. But for Jews, who reject Jesus as Messiah, the older dispensation of law still applies, and forgiveness of sin can occur only through the old (pre Jesus-as-the-ultimate sacrifice) system of sacrificing of animals on the alter. The sacrifices must comply with Mosaic (Old Testament) law, which requires

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priests of the tribe of Levi (one of twelve original tribes of Israel) to offer the sacrifices in the Temple. Various scripture passages are adduced to support the position that most dispensationalists take and to which all Christian Zionists ascribe: that the Messiah (Jesus Christ) will not return until the Jewish people have been regathered in their homeland following the resumption of the Levitic sacrifices in the Temple, which must be rebuilt before the sacrifices can resume. That a Muslim mosque (the Dome of the Rock) now stands on the site of the Mount where most believe the Temple originally stood does not distract Christian Zionists (or some ultra-Orthodox Jewish Zionist sects, as well) from holding to the belief that the Temple will be rebuilt on the Mount soon. This will happen, they believe, as surely as the events of 1948 and 1967 occurred as foreseen by prophetic biblical writers (especially the writer of the Book of Revelation). Thus for Christian Zionists, the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem with the restitution of the Levitic sacrifices is the one event that needs to occur so that Jesus Christ may return in power from heaven, the throne of Christ will be established in Jerusalem, and the thousand years of righteous rule on earth may begin. As this short historical excursus into the thought of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist believers shows, the worlds they inhabit are ones constructed by stories retrieved from the past and retold with events of the present incorporated into those retellings. Put differently, these respective views of the present world and of the world to come are constructed and maintained through narratives. The next chapter will begin to show the specific roles such narratives play in world constructions as well as what role narrative analysis as theory and method can provide in recovering the drama and logic of

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such worlds.

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Chapter Two Narrative and Identity As noted in the Introduction, Arthur Bochner (1994), in a chapter on Theories and Stories, argues that communication scholars need to bring the study of local narratives that display how people do things together in the process of making meanings into a more central and legitimated position in this field [communication] (p. 22). In an attempt to correct what he sees as a bias in the field toward objective scientific research, he asserts that no matter how scientific we think we are being, our descriptions of interpersonal life end up as stories that interpret, construct, or assign meaning and value to the patterns of relating we have observed (p. 26). Bochner says his goal is not to discredit objectivist, theory-directed approaches to research, but he does want to see the interpretive story-centered method elevated to an equal status within the research community. Both research approaches should be seen as legitimate, if different, ways of seeing the world. They merely express preferences to take a different point of view toward the subject matter of interpersonal communication, such that prediction and control do no compete against interpretation and understanding (p. 29). Bochner suggests three ways narrative inquiry might be fruitfully used in communication research (pp. 34-36). One is to use it to understand how narrative is used in communication and what acts it performs in the construction of social reality. Second is to produce autobiographical accounts of epiphanies of experiences that show human actors adapting to and coping with difficult circumstances. And third is to use narrative to reframe conventional social research away from an observer-subject duality

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into one of collaboration between researcher and the researched. This study meets parts of all three of Bochner's research objectives. Narrative methodology and theory are appropriate to answering my research questions for a number of reasons. The first is that narratives permeate the writings and speeches that Christian Identity and Christian Zionists use in defining their beliefs and their worldviews. Secondly, the scriptures they draw on in support of their worldviews and in defense of their doctrines are primarily narrative tropes. And thirdly, the discourses of the other and the self that I examine are morally charged. Narrative theory is particularly equipped to unravel the moral visions that drive the identity work in religious discourses.

Narrative as Theory In this section, I review the salient characteristics of narrative theory as found in Edward Bruner, Walter Fisher, Laurel Richardson, and James Carey. Edward Bruner's narrative theory. Edward Bruner, in a chapter on Ethnography as Narrative (1986), illustrates the power of narratives to shape our view of reality by giving the history of the shifting scholarly accounts ethnographers told of Native American groups they studied during the twentieth century. In the 1930s and 1940s, ethnographers regularly described Native American culture as having had a glorious past, a disorganized present, and a promising future of assimilation into the broader American culture. By the 1970s, says Bruner, the storyline had changed to one of an exploited past, a present time of resistance, and a future era of ethnic resurgence. Bruner uses the ethnographer Ralph Linton, one of those who argued for the dominant paradigm (glorious

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past to future assimilation) in the 1940s, as a case in point. How, asks Bruner, could an empirical researcher like Linton ignore the evidence of the plain facts around himin particular that none of the seven tribes Linton was studying had in fact realized assimilation? Bruner proposes the answer is to be found in recognizing the political nature of all narratives. Because stories are interpretive devices, they give meaning to the present (1986, p. 267). This present, however, is really composed of an anticipated future and a former present we call the past. By placing events in an ordered sequence, narratives help the present to make sense. Linton was making meaning by playing the present-past off the present-future, resulting in his present-day story of the 1940s that explained the place American Natives inhabited in the anthropological account. Because of the meaning-making dynamic inherent in narratives, narratives can be effectively examined to reveal the interests and visions that underlie social research practices. Bruner notes that in the Native American ethnographies of the 1940s and the 1970s, the accuracy of one story over the other (resistance over assimilation) was deduced not from the experience of the Native Americans but from the imagination of the anthropologists themselves. This illustrates something significant about narratives beyond their ability to make meaning out of temporal chaos: Narratives are not only structures of meaning but structures of power as well (Bruner, 1986, p. 269). The respective stories of assimilation (1940s) and resistance (1970s) had contemporary policy implications and, thus, motivations as well. The fixes to the Indian problem (we could add from history the Jewish problem, the Gypsy problem . . .) of the day found expressionor better, were constructedthrough the narratives told about the problem. Bruner thus sees narratives as both meaning-making structures and power

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structures. A third characteristic in narratives is that they are spawning pools for new narratives. Bruner argues that every narrative of a given era will contain within it certain anomalies and contradictions that, when the political circumstances of a new day highlight those contradictions, give rise to new stories that better account for those anomalies. With the advent of the 1970s resistance narrative, new facts emerged which the assimilationist narrative was unable to explain. The nature of these discoveries depended upon whether the past or the future was pervasive of the present perspective: For the 1930s assimilationist perspective, the past dominated the present, while for the 1970s ethnic resurgence story, the future dominated the present. Different narratives are foregrounded in the discourse of different historical eras (p. 270). But always, like Marxs dialectical view of economic systems and the societies founded on them, each cycle contains its own undoing which the next wave of meaning-making will capitalize on to retell the story for present purposes. A corollary point can be made from this: no fixed meanings of the past exist since the audience and the context is always changing. The narratives, if they are to escape oblivion, are reconfigured to meet the demands of the present (p. 277). Thus also important in Bruner's theory is a fourth characterization of narratives: the central role that time plays in the construction of meaning in narratives. We will explore this idea more below in the section on Paul Ricoeur. Walter Fisher's narrative theory. In his theory of narrative rationality, Fisher (1992) maintains that rationality is present in any concept of communication worthy the name. He argues that people generally have intelligence, the ability for authenticity, the capability for argument, and the desire for understanding. These are what make not only communication but also communities possible. His position stands in contrast to some

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(post)structuralists who contend that only ideology, power, indeterminacy, and desire and not reasoncharacterize human decision and action (p. 311). For Fisher, narrative theory restores the place of reason in human action, not as the elite kind of scientific logic Western empiricism has given us, but as a reason of stories. Moreover, scientific reason for Fisher should be seen as but one form of narrative reasonone that excludes values, which narrative reason includes. This is so because exposition, argument, aesthetic writing, and so forth are all symbolic actions, and as such they are all narrative in the broad sense of the term. All narratives are reasonable in the sense that all narratives are composed of good reasons (p. 314). Fisher defines good reasons as warrants for accepting the rhetoric, whether the rhetoric be scientific or literary. Fisher thus would usurp scientific reason with its special field of warrants by making it just one of many rationalities, each of which contains its own warrants and some of which include values as good reasons. Fisher bases narrative rationality on five premises (pp. 314-315): 1. Humans are essentially storytellers (just as we are essentially symbol users). 2. We act and deliberate using good reason. 3. Good reasons are locally and historically conditioned. 4. Rationality is grounded in the human nature of storytellers, since we are inherently aware of coherence (it hangs together) and fidelity (it rings true to other narratives we believe). Fidelity, he says, is the truth qualities of a story based not only on reasons (which traditional rationality stressed) but also values (which the Enlightenment philosophers attempted to eliminate from their research

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and about which Fisher says narrative rationality asks Would the values of the story constitute good ones for humankind?) 5. Humans experience the world as stories, among which they must choose. This last point turns us to the idea of community, since the stories are constituted through participants co-authoring a story that has coherence and fidelity for the life they live and which may not be the same as the story of other communities. If Fisher's argument for rationality in narrative perhaps becomes overstated in the attempt to dethrone traditional scientific definitions of reason, the take-away for this study is that narrative does have its own internal logic, which can be captured in the concepts of fidelity and coherence. The same basic argument is asserted more modestly by Jerome Bruner, who argues that logical arguments convince of their truth while stories convince of their lifelikeness and believability (cited in Richardson, 1990, p. 118). That is, the logical approach looks for universal truth conditions while narratives look for particular connections between local events. Laurel Richardson's narrative theory. Laurel Richardson (1990), like Fisher and Bochner, uses narrative theory to level the science-humanities playing field. Her discussion of metaphors in particular concurs with the postmodern contention that the study of communication is no longer dependent on, or subservient to, any other discipline, whether that be science, physics, history, logic, or philosophy . . .. For communication . . . is responsible for constructing reality and legitimating the methods, criteria, and presuppositions used by all disciplines (DeSantis, 1997, p. 74). This comes through in her major contention that since the Enlightenment, the scientific and the

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literary have been unfairly opposed to each otherwith the literary being dismissed as figurative and obscured by metaphor, and the scientific being upheld as objective and delivered in plain language. In opposition to the subservient position given the literary, she argues that logicoscientific approaches are themselves always framed by metanarratives, the most common being those of Enlightenment or science, which are pre-operative merely assumed rather than provenstarting points. Even beneath the metanarrative level, the literary conventions can be found at work, if looked for. Richardson argues that science writing, for example, is based on metaphors that prefigure judgments about truth. Three guiding empiricist metaphors, she says (p. 122-123), are 1. The subject-object metaphor. An analogy from grammar of the knowing subject and the known object, this metaphor serves to reify physical objects for the scientist. 2. The tool metaphor. It allows language to be seen as an instrument that only observes or manipulates but (like a telescope) does not contribute content or meaning to what is being spoken of. 3. The management metaphor. This metaphor finds expression in words like control, problems, manage, tables, produced, tested. The world is an object to be classified and controlled. Such operating metaphors are not wrong or bad in themselves, Richardson notes, but by their very nature they do serve to limit the researcher's focus to studies related to controlling our environment (the physical sciences) and people (the social sciences) through prediction and explanation. In so doing, they also serve to turn our attention

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away from other areas of human existence. As the Bruner example of the Native American narratives illustrates, science for Richardson should be seen as the child of metaphor, and metaphor should be seen as the child of politics. Richardson's conclusion, then, is that Narrative structures . . . are pre-operative, regardless of whether one is writing primarily in a 'narrative' or a 'logico-scientific' code (p. 119). I have presented the strong case of narrative as basic to all knowing (Fisher and Richardson), and the weak case of it being one of two different but complementary ways of knowing (Bruner and Bochner). Whatever their differences, both the weak and strong advocates agree that the role of narrative in community, society, and communication in general is pervasive and constitutive at some level or other. The last theorist in this section is reviewed because of his conceptualizing communication in a way that accounts for both the narrative and the scientific approach to communication. James Carey's narrative theory. In A Cultural Approach to Communication (1975) James Carey, accepting John Deweys position that society exists in communication, not just by communication, distinguishes between a transmission view of communication and a ritual view of communication. The root metaphor for the transmission view is that of transportation across geography, so that communication is the transmitting of information to others for the purpose of controlling or influencing others. The church of the Middle Ages, for example, sought to establish the Kingdom of God by sending missionaries with the message of the Gospel to convert others abroad. By contrast, the ritual view of communication is understood as a kind of sharing, participation, or common faith. It is not the transmission of messages in space but the representation of shared beliefs and the building of community. Again, the church serves

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as an example of this view at the physical level with the serving of the Mass (the bread and the wine) where nothing new is transmitted but something valuable is reaffirmed. It is not hard to see that Careys two definitions of communication align well with the divide in the social sciences between those who emphasize the discovery of causal relationships in social settings from those who emphasize the uncovering of meanings in those settings. Carey says communication studies have privileged the transmission view and suppressed or ignored the ritual view, and as a result of this marginalization much of what is interesting about communication is overlooked. To illustrate this, he notes (1975, p. 7) that a newspaper can be studied for the role it plays in the transmission of information, but just as interestingly it can be studied for the role it plays in producing and affirming a worldview, whether that be that bad guys get caught or that its a dangerous world out there and politicians are philandering crooks. Carey argues that the ritual view sees news not as information but as drama, portraying an arena of dramatic forces and action (p. 9). This leads to his definition of communication: Communication is a symbolic process where by reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed (1975, p. 10). This repairing and producing happen in historic time, he says, and humans live in this symbolic reality. This sounds, of course, a lot like narrativethe drama and action, symbolic reality, and time. The ritual view, then, is in effect the narrative view of Fisher or Bruner or Richardson. The comparison grows tighter with the concept of narrative rationality with Careys assertion that all thought is social because it uses publicly available stocks of symbols to map the surrounding environment. Narrative analysis, then, has the advantage of giving the researcher access to understanding the web of symbols and

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meanings we have ourselves have spun and in which we are all suspended (to co-opt Geertz's [1973] well-spun phrase). This makes narrative theory a prime candidate for probing our worlds of communication from a ritualistic perspective, a perspective that proves especially promising for understanding the innerworkings of sectarian religious groups that are busy spinning out new webs of meaning about themselves and some other group as well as the whole apocalyptic cosmos of their symbolic worlds.

Taylor's Theory of Narrative Identity In Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989), Charles Taylor sets about to show why morality, identity, and narrative are integrally connected. In its simplest form, Taylor's argument is that questions of moral orientation are inherent in all narratives, and these orientations or frameworks, by their very nature, also pose questions of identity. Taylor says Western culture has had three existentially insistent ways of viewing human morality: (a) as respect for others, (b) as a sense for what makes life fulfilling, and (c) as a notion of human dignity. The expression of these supreme goods, or hypergoods as Taylor calls them, changes as the horizons of evaluation change. This can be seen, for example, in defining human dignity in terms of honor in most ancient cultures, in terms of rationality among the ancient Greeks, in terms of altruism among early modern Christian civilizations, and in terms of the freedom for self-expression among modern Westerners. There exists an inextricable link between the moral and the self, between the good and one's identity, Taylor continues, because we have a sense of who we are

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through our sense of where we stand [in relation] to the good (p. 105). This is not to say all humans hold the same vision of what the good is, but rather that radically different senses of what the good is go along with quite different conceptions of what a human agent is, and these notions thus produce different notions of the self (p. 105). It is not surprising, then, that notions of the self have shifted as the frameworks or horizons of the good have shifted. But always societies provide some account of what the self is that matches the prevailing evaluative framework. Our modern philosophical story of the self, for example, is of individual human autonomy and equality. By tracing how the story has metamorphosed into what it is todayby mapping the genealogy of the narrative transformationsone can identify the moral roots of our hypergoods and the present moral topography. That these evaluative transformations can be traced at all, says Taylor, depends on a significant characteristic of all frameworks: To be viable and available as moral maps for use in practical reasoning, they must be articulated. That is to say, frameworks are constituted linguistically. Taylor argues that support for this can be seen in the fact that we give our single highest good a special place, which he calls a constitutive good: It is orientation to this [highest good] which comes closest to defining my identity, and therefore my direction to this good is of unique importance to me . . . [T]he assurance that I am turned towards this good gives me a sense of wholeness, of fullness of being as a person or self, that nothing else can (p. 63, italics added). Over and above our desires and competing senses of goods (plural), this good (singular) constitutes us by placing in proper priority the other goods, and thereby gives us a sense of direction. It is this directionality that endows us with a sense of narrative. Put inversely, through narrative

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we chart our directional movement toward or away from the constitutive good. On the basis that the goods which define our spiritual orientation are the ones by which we will measure the worth of our lives (p. 42), Taylor describes the place of narrative in our moral sense of self as including a relative and an absolute aspect. Given our orientation toward the good, we ask the question (as we saw) of whether we are moving toward or away from it. An absolute yes or a no is used to answer to the question of whether or not I am moving toward the constituative good, while a relative answer is used to respond to the question of how near or far I am from the good. As Taylor puts it, behind the more-or-less question of mastery achieved lies an absolute question about basic orientation (p. 45). The relationship between these two aspects can also be stated as that of the relationship between what we are and what we are becoming. Since change is a basic feature of human existence, the issue for us has to be not only where we are, but where were going; and though the first may be a matter of more or less, the latter is a question of towards or away from, an issue of yes or no. That is why an absolute question always frames our relative ones. Since we cannot do without an orientation to the good, and since we cannot be indifferent to our place relative to this good, and since this place is something that must always change and become, the issue of the direction of our lives must arise for us. (p. 47) As Taylor has made clear, all this happens within a moral topography that, through a qualitative distinction of higher and lower, provides individuals with a sense of

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value and worth in terms of their actions and, most importantly, in terms of what they have become. This sense-making of my life and self does not happen in a vacuum, but in the same space of moral questions that gives me my sense of both orientation and direction. If Taylor is right, an assessment of where I have come from and where I am going must be framed by a current assessment of where I am presently in relation to the good which is why acts of assessment invariably take the form of narrative. Narrative serves to structure my present, but only as it structures my past and my future, and thereby brings a sense of unity to it. Richardson (1990) captures this idea when she says, Narrative is the primary way through which humans organize their experiences into temporally meaningful episodes (p. 117). This is precisely because the moral space within which a person moves (closer and farther away from the good) gives that person his or her sense of unity. [W]hat is in question is . . . the shape of my life as a whole. It is not something up for arbitrary determination (Taylor, p. xx) Taylor concludes that we want the future to redeem the past, to make it part of a life story which has sense or purpose, to take it up on a meaningful unity (p. xx). Narrative is the mode by which we come to that sense of meaning and an understanding of ourselves as selves. A point raised earlier is important in understanding the interconnection between narrative and identity and Taylor's nomenclature of moral spacesTaylor's anthropology of the self as constituted in community and language. The question of who I am, as we have seen, shows our identity exists in a moral space: I cannot know who I am without being oriented to the good (whatever that may be) and having an absolute and relative sense of my direction toward that good. But the self-identity that comes from

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answering who I am is not achieved in isolation but within some community or communities of interlocutors and through using the specific language of the good that forms my moral framework. To study persons, Taylor says, is to study beings who only exist in, or are partly constituted by, a certain language. Furthermore, a language exists and is maintained within a language community (p. 35). Any conversation with another person about some thing has the effect of making that thing (or concept) a common or public object for both of us. When done within a community, these public objects and the language that surrounds them create what Taylor calls common spaces. These are, when related to the particular good that a community values, the moral spaces and languages within which individuals narratively make sense of their own lives. Taylor states this in several ways: [O]ne cannot be a self on ones own. I am a self only in relation to certain interlocutors; A self exists only within what I call webs of interlocution; The full definition of someones identity thus usually involves not only his stand on moral and spiritual matters but also some reference to a defining community (p. 36). Taken together, Taylors narrative theory proposes a narrative self constituted in a moral space that is defined by a conversational community using a language of the good. The task at hand in understanding religious identity, then, becomes one of discerning these narrative identities by disclosing through discourse analysis the moral spaces constructed through the articulations of the given religious communities. In the cases I am studying, the biblically based discourses, with their attending ordering of goods (Jews as a God-send for Christian Zionists, or the enemy for Christian Identity) and ultimate

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good (God as interpreted through scripture for both groups), create that moral space and the basis for conversation and, thus, the possibility for an identity of the self and ones community.

Ricoeur's Theory of Narrative Identity What Taylor does in establishing a connection between moral vision and identity, Paul Ricoeur (1984b), in Time and Narrative, accomplishes in linking time with identity. His concept of the way time is made into human time grows from his attention to emplotment. Hayden White (1991) says that the overarching thesis of Time and Narrative is that temporality is the structure of existence that reaches language in narrativity and that narrativity is the language structure that has temporality as its ultimate referent (p. 142, partially quoting Ricoeur). Ricoeur's theory will be covered in three subsections: emplotment and meaning-making, emplotment and identity, and emplotment and history. Emplotment and meaning-making. After reviewing Aristotles discussion of the narrative plot and Augustines reflections on time, Ricoeur says his goal in Time and Narrative is to join together the two preceding independent studies and test my basic hypothesis that between the activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of human experience there exists a correlation that is not merely accidental but that presents a transcultural form of necessity. To put it another way, time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence. (1984b, p. 52, italics original)
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The singular mechanism whereby time is made human is emplotment. The product of emplotmentthe plotRicoeur says, is an invention by which we reconfigure our confused, unformed, and ... temporal experience into meaningful experience (1984b, p. xi). To illustrate the interconnection between time, narrative, and meaning, Ricoeur begins with Aristotles conception of plot as mimesis, or the action of imitation. But going further than Aristotle, he delineates three types of imitation that together create the coherence underlying the act of narrative plotting. These are prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration. Ricoeur defines prefiguration as a reference back to the familiar pre-understanding we have of the order of action, configuration as an entry into the realm of poetic composition, and refiguration as a new configuration by means of this poetic refiguring of the pre-understood order of action (1984b, p. xi). Douglas Ezzy (1998) classifies these three actions as three levels of comprehension: (a) the human experience of life is always prefigured at a preconscious level by a narrative imagination that gives at least a nascent symbolic and temporal structure to the otherwise chaotic actions and events we encounter in the world; (b) humans next consciously configure some of these temporized events into a story by overlaying the events with a theme or plot; and (c), the storyfar from being a static product of the authorencounters lived experience again in the world of the listener or reader who refigures the story as it influences his or her choices about how to act in the world (p. 5). Emplotment thus serves a mediating role between raw experience and reflective experience: To emplot a sequence of events and thereby transform what would otherwise be only a chronicle of events into a story is to effect a mediation

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between events and certain universally human experiences of temporality. And this goes for fictional stories no less than for historical stories. The meaning of stories is given in their emplotment. By emplotment, a sequence of events is configured (grasped together) in such a way as to represent symbolically what would otherwise be unutterable in language, namely, the ineluctably aporetic nature of the human experience of time. (White, 1991, p. 144) What is aporetic about the human understanding of time? One aspect of time that cannot be directly reconciled in human apprehension, says Ricoeur, is the dual nature of the present as physical time and as mental time. Physical time refers to the point-like instant, or the ticking of the second hand of a clock, while mental time is the human experience of the present as a gathering moment between a remembered past and an anticipated future. Ricoeur proposes that narratives are the way humans creatively overcome this aporia of time experience: By the act of telling we provide a certain structure to our experience. And within those structures, we connect the physical and the mental. Most telling is about human actionwhat people did or suffered, either in the real world, this historical world, or in the imagined world, the fictional world of literature. But it has to do with people who do something in a world. Therefore, their actions connect the physical and the mental sides of time. I try to show that time which is construed by the act of narrative is a kind of third time in comparison with the physical or cosmological on the one hand, and the mental or psychical or phenomenological time on

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the other hand. (Ricoeur quoted in Reagan, 1996, p. 111). If narrative emplotment connects physical and mental time for humans, Ricoeur also sees it connecting the world of the text with the lived-world of the reader. Don Ihde (1991) observes: Narrative is both actional and structural. As a plot it provides structure, meaning, but in the movements from configuration through refiguration in both historical and fictional narrative, there is revealed the constitution of textual worlds in correlation with human lifeworlds (p. 128, italics added). David Carr (1991) notes that Narrative mimesis for Ricoeur is not reproduction but production, invention such that narrative may borrow from life but it transforms it (p. 170). Narrative unites actions or events into a configuration; it unites agents, actions, circumstances into plot; it unites chronological with non-chronological elements (p. 171). For Ricoeur the crucial difference is between the experience of time as mere seriality and an experience of temporality in which events take on the aspect of elements of lived stories, with a discernible beginning, middle and end (White, 1994, p. 148). Emplotment turns mere ordering of events into inaugurations, transitions and terminations of processes that are meaningful (White, 1994, p.148). To summarize Ricoeur's position thus far, we can say that narrative becomes humanly meaningful in its connecting of the past, present, and future, in its connecting of physical time with mental time, and in its connecting of the life world with the imagined world of our textual productions. I have left this last point partially unexplained since Ricoeur develops the connection further in his writings on the link between narrative and identity, which I review next. The same starting pointthat time is made humanly meaningful through the mimetic action of emploting events into coherent storylines

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also stands at the base of Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity. Emplotment and identity. In his essay Life in Quest of Narrative, Ricoeur (1991) describes life as an activity and a passion in search of a narrative (p. 29). He argues that the human subject, accordingly, should be seen as neither an incoherent series of events nor an immutable substantiality, impervious to evolution. This is precisely the sort of identity which narrative composition alone can create through its dynamism (p. 32). Narrative analysis is suited to capturing this dynamism of the subject because of its ability to see personal identity as both idem, or sameness, and ipse, or selfhood (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 189). The former implies a static conception of being, such as may be seen in one's body being only one body and the same body over time. The latter implies reflection, which when done in time requires the emergence of the self within the change of timenot through corporeal continuity but through taking responsibility upon oneself, as in making a promise to be faithful to another person and then keeping that promise. Narratives allow these two aspects of identity to be brought together. The self [ipse] intersects with the same [idem] at one precise point: permanence in time (Ricoeur, 1991b, p. 192). When theorists of the subject fail to distinguish these two components of personal identity, they are forced into a false dichotomy of the subject as, on the one hand, a linguistic illusion or, on the other, as an unalterable, substantive soul. My thesis, Ricoeur (1991b) says, is that many of the difficulties which obscure the question of personal identity result from failing to distinguish between these two senses of the term identity (p. 189). This confusion is dispelled by considering the relationship of identity to action. If

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all action, by definition, is done with intention (such as a wave of the hand to say goodbye), and if intention can be read or understood by another only when inscribed in symbolic form (waving signifies goodbye), and if all this is accomplished within time, then all personal identity constructions arise from the dynamic of interpreting the symbols of action from the perspective of the present moment and limited to the attending knowledge I have of the meaning of symbols in the present context. The act of configuring a single symbolic action into a larger coherent context of meaning (a narrative) requires refiguring that action (emploting) from all that is known at the present time. The temporal element of action, then, is found in both the temporal structure of the chronological order in which actions occur one after the other (the prenarrative structure of experience) and in the now-ness of any symbolic reading of an action. An important implication of this fact follows: Because time passes, actions of the past must necessarily continuously be re-read from the newly present moment. This points to the problem of understanding identity exclusively in terms of idemic sameness for example, as one's physical corporealityand not in terms of the symbolic and reflective self-construction of ipse which Ricoeur sees as a necessary component of the subject: The resulting definition of identity will be forced to take up a self-as-permanent position in the dichotomy of self-as-flux/self-as-permanent. The weakness of the criterion of simulated or physical continuity for an understanding of identity is that it cannot fully account for the question of change in time which may erode resemblance (McNay, p. 320). As we have seen, Ricoeur proposes that narrative can account for this change in time. But this solution forces a burden on narrative that Ricoeur thinks bears further

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consideration. The world of lived experience (the world of our corporeal existence) and the world of the text (where the self is constructed through reflection) are never identical. Ricoeur (1991a) maintains that at one level, life-as-lived and, at a second level, stories about that lived life are independent of each other: It is true that life is lived and that stories are told. An unbridgeable difference does remain. How, then, does narrative establish a resting-place between the permanent self and the existential self-in-flux forced on us by the incessant tick of the clock given the gap between these two worlds? This gap, while formidable, is not unbridgeable. The difference, Ricoeur argues, is partially abolished by our power of applying to ourselves the plots that we have received from our culture and of trying on the different roles assumed by the favourite characters of the stories most dear to us. It is therefore by means of the imaginative variations of our own ego that we attempt to obtain a narrative understanding of ourselves, the only kind that escapes the apparent choice between sheer change and absolute identity. Between the two lies narrative identity. (p. 33). Like other theorists looking for a way out of the soul/illusion polarity of the modernist/postmodernist debate on the subject, Douglas Ezzy (1998) argues that Ricoeur's theory of narrative identity captures the middle ground between a sovereign self that is invulnerable and impermeable to the influence of others and, on the other hand, a deconstructed self that emphasizes the linguistic sources of the self and the influence of context (p. 5). For Ricoeur narrative identity is coherent but fluid and changeable, historically grounded but 'fictively' reinterpreted, constructed by an individual but constructed in interaction and dialogue with other people (p. 6).

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Emplotment and history. If narratives do indeed refigure the past to obtain a configured identity in the present that makes a sense of self meaningful, what then is the status of historical narratives compared to fictional narratives? This issue is important in considering (as this study does) the narratives religious groups tell about themselves and others using ancient apocalyptic stories to interpret present-day actions. White (1991) probes the issue by first posing a less obvious distinction. Is there, he asks, a qualitative difference between a newspaper account and an account found in a history book? He argues there is. While journalists tell stories about what happened, such stories typically lack the 'secondary referentiality' of historical narratives, the indirect reference to the 'structure of temporality' that gives the events related in the story the aura of 'historicality' (p. 143). That is, the journalist's story remains closer to the chronicle, while the historical account, because it is a reflection on (not just a reporting of) the temporal condition of human existence, raises its narrative to the level of history. This distinction between a news story and a history helps clarify the difference between literature and history. White continues: Historical discourse is a privileged instantiation of the human capacity to endow the experience of time with meaning, because the immediate referent . . . of this discourse is real, rather than imaginary, events. The novelist can invent the events that histories comprise, in the sense of imaginatively producing them in response to the exigencies of emplotment . . . . But the historian cannot, in this sense, invent the events of his stories; he must . . . find or discover them. This is because historical events have already been invented (in the sense of created) by past human

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agents who, by their actions, produced lives worthy of having stories told about them. This means that the intentionality informing human actions, as against mere motions, conduces to the creation of lives that have the coherency of emploted stories. (White, 1991, p. 144) White (1991) sees this position developed in Ricoeur's concept of emplotment. By discerning the plots 'prefigured' in historical actions by the agents that produced them and 'configuring' them as sequences of events having the coherency of stories with a beginning, middle and end, historians make explicit the meaning implicit in historical events themselves (p. 145). Emplotment allows historians to bear witness to the reality of this level of temporal organization by casting their accounts in the form of narratives, because this mode of discourse alone is adequate to the representation of the experience of the historicality in a way that is both literal in what it asserts about specific events and figurative in what it suggests about the meaning of this experience. (p. 148-149) As a result, for Ricoeur history and fiction arewhile not indistinguishable unavoidably interrelated in that both require the use of figurative language in the act of emplotment to make the events (imaginary for fiction, real for history) meaningful in terms of human time. As Douglas Ezzy (1998) notes, Ricoeur argues that fiction is quasi-historical and that history is quasi-fictive. . . . History borrows from fiction the interpretive forms that allow the past to be reinterpreted in light of new experience that brings potentially contradictory information (p. 4). Again, this is not a conceptual move by Ricoeur to conflate the two genres, as the different first-level referents of real events for history and imagined events for literature

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make clear. It is the secondary referents of history and fiction that are the same: Insofar as both produce emploted stories, their ultimate referent . . . is the human experience of time or the 'structures of temporality (White, 1991, p. 146). The narrative analysis I undertake in this study explores how the emplotments of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist narratives are constructed to leverage apocalyptic time to oppositionally achieve the identities of the two groups (Identity and Christian Zionist) over against the Jews. Of special interest will be the process of refiguration in the narratives I examine, including the use of apparently fictive elements with historical ones. It is an examination that is carried out in the pale of the theoretical conviction Ricoeur expresses when he argues for a hermeneutical, narrative approach to understanding identity: There is no direct knowledge of the self, only that which passes through the intermediary norms, of symbols (Ricoeur, quoted in Reagan, 1996, p. 132). If he is right, narrative is a transcultural human method for symbolizing the self and the other.

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Chapter Three Narrative and Community In the last chapter, I showed how Taylor's theory of the self as morally constructed and Ricoeur's theory of the self as emploted in humanly meaningful time both point to the central role narratives play in identity constructions. Both, furthermore, illustrate the importance of the fact that such narratives are articulated in a community and draw from the community's moral vocabulary. In the first section of this chapter, I draw on a particular perspective of organizational theory to describe Christian Identity and Christian Zionism as movements. I then attempt to show through the thinking of Axel Honneth how such movements take root and are driven by the same moral impetus that Taylor points to as a source of the self. In the second section of this chapter, I review the literature on interpretive communities with an eye toward the next chapter (Chapter 5), which elaborates an epistemological theory of hermeneutics.

Social Movements as Moral Movements As noted in Chapter 2 of this study, Barkun, in his role as a historian, describes Christian Identity as a movement rather than an organization. This raises definitional questions of how Christian Identity and Christian Zionism are best understood as collectivities. A preliminary survey of the de-centered and ad hoc structures of the two groups makes it clear that as collectivities they are loose organizations at best. Because these groups do not fit well into a rational, closed-system definition of organizations, the institutionalist definition of organizations (especially from an open-systems perspective; Scott, 1998) proves helpful in locating and identifying Christian Identity and Christian

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Zionists as organizations. If these two groups can best be understood and described as rhetorical or interpretive communities, as this study argues, then the conceptual tools needed for understanding them as such are provided by the institutional orientation to organizations. Institutional theorists Friedland and Alford (1991) define institutions as both supraorganizational patterns of activity through which humans conduct their material life in time and space, and symbolic systems through which they categorize that activity and infuse it with meaning (p. 232). In their chapter Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions, they identify five central institutions in the contemporary West: the capitalist market, the bureaucratic state, democracy, the nuclear family, and Christian religion (p. 232). Clearly the central institution that Christian Identity and Christian Zionism fit within is the Christian religion. These broad institutions, say Friedland and Alford, serve to shape individual preferences and organizational interests as well as the repertoire of behaviors by which they may attain them (p. 232). A study of Christian Identity or Christian Zionism, therefore, should consider how the interests and categories of the Christian religion provide the essential vocabulary (rhetoric) by which the action of Identity and Zionist discourse and self/otherdefinition takes place. A note of caution is important here: Even when specifying the institutional bases of individual and organizational identities Friedland & Alford (1991, p. 240) note, the institutional analyst does not view organizational behavior or identity as determined by the institutional tradition to which it belongs. This is because multiple logics available to individuals and organizations from other institutions within society, which have their

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own central logics, allow for the possibility of the redefinition of identity and action (p. 232). [T]he content of an institutional order shapes the mechanisms by which organizations are able to conform or deviate from established patterns (p. 244, emphasis added). The point is that organizational change within any given institution is made possible through the wiggle room opened up by the playing of multiple logics against each other. If a social determinism is rejected in institutional thought, so is the ends-driven orientation of rational choice or utilitarianism. Friedland and Alford contend that, because social relations always have both instrumental and ritual content, the materialist-idealist dualism, which has suffused so much of social theory over the last century, hobbles our capacity to understand (1991, p. 249). To overcome this dualism which is usually organized so as to make the material the basis and the symbolic the superstructurewe must see institutions as simultaneously symbolic systems and material practices. Definitionally, this means that institutions are symbolic systems which have nonobservable, absolute, transrational referents and observable social relations which concretize them. Through these concrete social relations, individuals and organizations strive to achieve their ends, but they also make life meaningful and reproduce those symbolic systems (p. 249). The symbolic-interactionist premise underlying institutional analysis is compatible with the social-cognitive emphasis of Axel Honneth in his work on The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (1996). Continuing the Frankfurt schools modification of orthodox Marxism (with its accompanying symbolic reductionism), Honneth argues against the Hobbesian tradition of seeing social

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movements as based in struggles for survival, and for an alternative, counter-tradition kept alive through the early Hegel, some of Marxs thought, Sorel, and in more recent theorists like Sartre and George Herbert Mead. Honneth asserts that the category of recognition is essential for understanding social movements, since within academic sociology, the internal connection that often holds between the emergence of social movements and the moral experience of disrespect, has to a large extent, been theoretically severed at the start. The motives for rebellion, protest, and resistance have generally been transformed into categories of interest, and these interests are supposed to emerge from the objective inequalities in the distribution of material opportunities without ever being linked, in any way, to the everyday web of moral feelings. (p. 161) For Honneth, moral indignation and shame, while not completely displacing selfinterest, move groups to social action and conflict. Social progress, says Honneth (see Honneth, Chapter 5), takes the form of moving through three levels of recognition that parallel the development of the self at a personal level. The first is that of primary relationships, such as mother and child, where love is expressed and self-confidence is built. The second is that of legal rights, which provides the basis for self-respect at the social level. This kind of recognition necessarily remains passive and tolerant in character (as in Western legal systems which see justice as blind). A third level of recognition is that of solidarity, which goes beyond recognition of individual rights to the positive valuing of anothers way of life. Here, the ability for not only self-confidence and self-

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respect are present, but also that of self-esteem. Honneth holds that his proposed concept of social struggle suggests the view that motives for social resistance and rebellion are formed in the contest of moral experiences stemming from the violation of deeply rooted expectations regarding recognition. These expectations are internally linked to conditions for the formation of personal identity in that they indicate the social patterns of recognition that allow subjects to know themselves to be both autonomous and individuated beings within their socio-cultural environment. (p. 163) Applied to Christian Identity and, to a lesser extent, to Christian Zionism, the rise and function of the movements would be seen as the result of an intersubjectively shared sense of violation of expectations regarding recognition. But this shared hurt, in Honneths theory, becomes intersubjectively felt only as it is articulated in a symbolic way all members can identify with, a shared semantics that generates at subcultural horizon of interpretation within which experiences of disrespect that, previously, had been fragmented and had been coped with privately can then become the moral motives for a collective struggle for recognition (p. 164). Honneths understanding of social movements as essentially moral movements pinpoints a dynamic mechanism whereby religious movements like Christian Identity or Christian Zionism can be studied in a post-functionalist or nonutilitarian way that overcomes what Billings and Scott (1994) describe (as I noted in the Introduction) as older conceptualizations of social movements as collective, often irrational, responses to sociocultural strain or breakdown (p. 189). They point instead to the potential

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complementary use of resource mobilization theories that assume constructionist approaches to culture that stress social actors active role in the definition, interpretation, and negotiation of social reality (p. 191). Applied to Christian Identity, resource mobilization theory helps explain, for example, how the near fatalistic dualism of the movements theology that (one would think) would render its followers inactive instead is strategically constructed to motivate members to commit to self-sacrificing activism. If resource mobilization theory works best for explaining how preexistent groups struggle for power and privilege but is less effective for explaining the emergence of new forms of collective identity, consciousness, and solidarity (Billings & Scott, 1994, p. 189), Honneths theory of the grammar of social conflicts and institutionalist views on institutional contradiction and change, can fill in this gap. The goal of my rhetorical analysis is to show the ways this collective identity is performatively constructed through discourse that uses such conflicts and contradictions as the material for novel identity constructions of themselves and others. This brings the discussion full-circle to the institutionalist position as developed by Friedland and Alford (1991). They conclude that institutions constrain not only the ends to which their behavior should be directed, but the means by which those ends are achieved. They provide individuals with vocabularies of motives and with a sense of self. They generate not only that which is valued, but the rules by which it is calibrated and distributed. Institutions set the limits on the very nature of rationality and, by implication, of individuality. Nonetheless, individuals, groups, and organizations try to use institutional orders to their own

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advantage. (p. 251) This balance between complete volunteerism and determinism in institutional theory, I argue, finds empirical support in a movement like Christian Zionism and Christian Identity. The thought categories of these groups are defined by the larger Christian tradition with its theology and scripture and symbols. At the same time, the meaning and relevance of symbols may be contested, even as they are shared. . . . Through the actions of individuals and organizations, the institutional structures of society are not simply reproduced, but transformed (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 254). Wesley Kort, in his book Bound to Differ: The Dynamics of Theological Discourses (1992), provides an internal rationale for this dynamic of conflict and contradiction. He argues that theological discourses can be understood only in relation to other theological discourses. He notes that These relations are primarily negative, relations of competition, opposition, and even repression (p. 1). This proposal, he adds, works against the grain of theological discourses themselves because those discourses conceal, by the attention they draw to other things, the determining and basic role these dynamics play in generating force and significance (p. 1). Korts aim, he says, is to show the specific way by which Christians are bound to differ from one another. It has to do with the more limited area of theological articulation, with theological discourses. What I want to point out is that these discourses are governed by dynamics that make difference and conflict both inevitable and causal. These differences are not incidental, avoidable, or in any way secondary in theological discourses; they are integral to their very life. Indeed,

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theological discourses do not fully actualize their potential power and significance unless or until maximum differences mark their relations to theological discourses with which they stand in opposition. (p. 46) In application of what I have reviewed so far in the literature in this chapter, this study seeks to bring understanding to the construction of the identity of the self (Christian Identity/Christian Zionism) and the other (the demonized/patronized Jew) as it is done from a particular institutional basis (western Christianity) through the appropriation of institutional symbols (Christian apocalyptic scripture and doctrine) that serve to negatively differentiate a position of superiority (white supremacy/theological supremacy) and inferiority (anti-Semitism/subordinate Semitism). This dynamic can be further illuminated in terms of the hermeneutical actions undertaken in interpretive communities, to which we now turn.

Social Movements as Interpretive Communities The concept of the interpretive community provides theoretical support for Honneths rich concept of a collectivitys shared semantics that generate a subcultural horizon of interpretation. Writing from a media studies perspective, Thomas Lindlof (in press) says an interpretive community is a collectivity of people who share strategies for interpreting, using and engaging in communication about a media text or technology. The strategies are devised with respect to norms and standards that evolve among the community members through innovation and the influence of argument. (in press) Made prominent by Stanley Fish in his book subtitled The Authority of Interpretive

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Communities (1980), the concept of the interpretive community has been used as a heuristic for research in areas as far-ranging as studies of the Hindu diaspora (Luthra, 2001) and romance novels (Radway, 1984). The concept is expedient in this study, I propose, as a bridge between the institutionalist and moral construct of social movements reviewed earlier in this chapter and the epistemologies growing out of such movements. Fish highlighted the role of interpretive communities in response to debates in the 1960s and 1970s in literary studies over the stability and determinacy of the meaning of texts. I summarize the history of that long debate only to the extent needed to consider how Fishs answer to criticisms of relativism and solipsism leveled against those who (like Fish) speak of a texts instability inform what Fish describes as the institutional nesting of meaning. From a position much like the institutional perspective of Friedland and Alford (1991) outlined above, Fish (1980) writes: While no institution is so universally in force and so perdurable that the meanings it enables will be normal for ever, some institutions or forms of life are so widely lived in that for a great many people the meanings they enable seem naturally available and it takes a special effort to see that they are the products of circumstances. (p. 309). In one sense what Fish argues for is intuitive. Texts, he says, can have stable meaningsbut any such stability is not a function of the text itself or some literal reading of the text, but of the communities surrounding the text that provide the context and background assumptions that make a texts meaning apparent (and hence obvious) to those who read it from those assumptions. To the extent that a community or tradition is stable, the meaning of texts will be stable.

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What is radical about the position is the insistence that a text is stable in more than one direction, as a succession of interpretive assumptions give it a succession of stable shapes (p. 270). A literal reading of a text is nothing more or less than a reading of it that doesnt problematize the readers assumptions of what counts as truth, evidence, and the relationship of things in the readers world. A literal reading is an interpretive act performed at so deep a level that it is indistinguishable from consciousness itself (p. 272). Likewise, evidence is always a function of what it is to be evidence for, and is never independently available. That is, the interpretation determines what will count as evidence for it, and the evidence is able to be picked out only because the interpretation has already been assumed. (p. 272) Fish contends that what is in the text is not there at some ideal, Platonic level, independent of our interpretation of it, but is a function of interpretive activities, although these activities are performed at so primary a level that the shapes they yield seem to be there before we have done anything (p. 274). Fishs position on meaning can be reduced to this syllogism: (a) A sentence is never not in a context since humans are always situated; (b) No sentence is ever apprehended independently of some or other illocutionary force, which, drawing from speech-act theory, implies that the way a sentence is understood by the heareras a command, a request, a warning, etc.gives it its import rather then the sentence alone providing some unsituated kernel of pure or primary meaning; and (c), if the meaning of a sentence is a function of its illocutionary force (the way it is taken), and if illocutionary force varies with circumstances, then illocutionary force is not a property of

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sentences but of situations (p. 284). Fishs line of thought aims to avoid two theoretical quagmiresthat of the total arbitrariness of a texts meaning and that of the fixed objectivity of a texts meaning. His position deconstructs the idea of a text having inherent constraints, on the one hand, and reconstructs the possibility of shared meanings and agreement of a texts meaning, on the other. The interpretive community provides the linchpin. It is the community (or the institution or the tradition) which creates the constraints that harness purely arbitrary interpretations by determining what is considered factual and fictional. The interpretation constrains the facts rather than the other way around (Fish, p. 293). Institutional nesting, then, refers to the function of communities providing the public norms of interpretation of meanings by creating the structure of goals and purposes which give texts or utterances their referential force. Elsewhere Fish refers to this structure as a system of intelligibility (p. 316). A corollary follows: The system of intelligibility provided by the institution means interpreters act as extensions of an institutional community (p. 321). Agreement or shared meaning of texts between readers or hearers, rather than being a proof of the stability of objects, is a testimony to the power of an interpretive community to constitute the objects upon which its members (also and simultaneously constituted) can then agree (p. 338). Fishs discussion of disagreement in interpretation, like Korts discussion of theological controversy, points to the dynamical aspect of his model. If the institutional or community system of intelligibility constitutes members as well as the objects upon which its members can agree, what possibility for deviance or change exists? The answer, says Fish, lies in the implied objection: precisely because facts are not simply there to

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be interpreted as they really are but are constituted as facts by the community, there is a continual process of negotiation of the meaning of those facts by the members. Disagreements must occur between those who hold (or are held by) different points of view, and what is at stake in a disagreement is the right to specify what the facts can hereafter be said to be. Disagreements are not settled by the facts, but are the means by which the facts are settled. (p. 338) In pointing out the dynamic nature of the interpretive community, Fish also develops a theory of the social nature of knowledge. He writes: What I have been arguing is that meanings come already calculated, not because of norms embedded in the language but because language is always perceived, from the very first, within a structure of norms. That structure, however, is not abstract and independent but social and therefore it is not a single structure with a privileged relationship to the process of communication as it occurs in any situation but a structure that changes when one situation, with its assumed background of practices, purposes, and goals, has given way to another. In other words, the shared basis of agreement sought by [some in the objectivist camp] is never not already found although it is not always the same one. (p. 318) As Kort and institutional theorists have noted, shared traditions, texts, or beliefs restrain the point from which change can proceed, but they do not eliminate that potential for change. That hermeneutical process of reading texts from within a system of intelligibility that themselves are not absolutely determinate provides both for a degree of stability and a level of indeterminacy and innovation. This points to the dynamic of

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hermeneutical epistemology explored in the next chapter and found at work in the two different religious groups examined in this study, whose grounding texts (the Bible) are ostensibly the same but whose facts about the Jewish people are glaringly at odds.

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Chapter Four Narrative and Knowledge If facts are made facts by the community that interprets them as facts, as Fish suggests, the question arises as to the relationship between those facts and what counts as knowledge. In terms of this study, the concern can be considered at both the empirical and theoretical levels. How might the position Fish takes that all knowledge is ultimately that produced by a community or a tradition be applied, for example, to the fact Christian Identity teaches that Jews are demonic? And what room is left for a critique of such positions, which I as researcher may feel are immoral, if it all comes down to my interpretation (from the rationality of my community) of events or texts against those of Christian Identity or Christian Zionists? These questions touch on epistemological, historical, and ethical dilemmas that have produced volumes of discussion in multiple disciplinary fields. This chapter will only attempt a modest rehearsal of several small strands of that philosophical discussion, and that by relying on a number of authors of secondary essays who have put the various facets of the debate in summary form. The aim for this chapter is simply to display the core of the problems at the center of the debate over the social nature of knowledge and to summarize several mediating solutions proposed by the secondary authors I review. The first essay I review is by Merold Westphal (1999), who captures the essence of the debates in the title of his essay Hermeneutics as Epistemology. Westphal forwards the thesis that Heidegger (as well as Gadamer and Derrida after him) is an epistemologist even in his hermeneutical turn away from traditional epistemology. He then seeks to secure a connection between hermeneutics and questions of knowledge in a

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post-foundationalist philosophy. The second essay, Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology by Ricoeur (1991c), moves the discussion on to the issue of whether any common ground exists between a hermeneutical consciousness and a critical consciousness. It develops themes and theorists encountered in the first essay by Westphal. Building on these two essays, I attempt in the last section of this chapter to propose how a connection between power and narrative knowledge can be conceptualized by analogy to Foucault's conception of power/knowledge. Edward Said's rationale for his treatise on Orientalism (1979) is presented as an early example of the critical-narrative model I use for understanding narratives as constructed power paradigmsworlds of knowledge where the identities of others are refigured in the interest of the identity of one's own community.

Hermeneutics as Epistemology In presenting the thesis that we should view Hermeneutics as Epistemology, as Westphal's (1999) essay is titled, Westphal begins by discussing Richard Rorty's muchpublicized contention that philosophers should abandon any epistemological pretensions in favor of a pure hermeneutics. Epistemology is dead in the metaphysical water, Rorty maintains, and it is time to accept that fact with all its anti-philosophical implications. Rorty's (1979) case is made in a section of his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that is titled From Epistemology to Hermeneutics. For Rorty, the move from epistemology to hermeneutics is the logical next step in the direction philosophers like Heidegger, Habermas, Derrida, and Rawls have all but taken in distancing themselves

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from Enlightenment philosophy with its attendant foundationalist suppositions. As Christopher Norris (1994) has put it, for Rorty, these half-way pragmatists might as well complete the journey by dumping all that pointless 'philosophical' baggage and easing [themselves] back into the communal fold [since] all these thinkers have been heading toward a pragmatist conclusion, despite their various unfortunate hold-ups along the way (p. 163). Following Nietzsche's lead, Heidegger and Wittgenstein gave us the interpretive turn in philosophy, but philosophers have continued philosophizing as if still in the old days of the transcendental signified when one could in good conscious believe that some outside reference point could be called on in justifying certain basic positions and beliefs. Western philosophy, Rorty contends, is really but one conversation (a very long-winded one!) among many, and not a privileged one at that. Rorty's alternative is what he calls hermeneutics, an approach that aims at understanding rather than ferreting out the truth. It seeks to be holistic, historicist, and pragmatic; it constructs truth as conversational agreement, rationality as practical, self-corrective capacity, and intuition as linguistic capacity (Westphal, 1999, p. 416). But Rorty's dismissal of epistemology is too easily accomplished, Westphal contends, even on Rorty's own terms. Westphal can accept much of Rorty's position, but not the claim that hermeneutics would move us beyond or outside epistemology itself. For even Rorty is not content to leave us with a these language games are played relativism. Hermeneutical understanding is needed not merely to illuminate conversations occurring within a given paradigm but especially to highlight the conditions under which conversations between apparently

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incommensurable paradigms can occur. Hermeneutical arguments will not be foundationally constructed, but will be conversational attempts to generate anomalies for other paradigms. To say that this is a matter of rhetoric rather than of logic is simply to say that there is no neutral language game in which the conversation can be played. (p. 417) Westphal's claim is that epistemologyas traditionally understood as the task of reflecting on the nature and limits of human knowledgeremains a concern of Rorty's, as well. What Rorty is really fighting against is a foundationalist view of epistemology in which certainty, neutrality, and a correspondence theory of knowledge combine in Enlightenment thought to view truth as built from self-evident, indubitable, transcendent foundations. Rorty's mistake, says Westphal, is to present hermeneutics as an alternative to epistemology, when it is, in fact, an alternate (if nonfoundationalist) form of epistemology. Hermeneutics is epistemology (Westphal, 1999, p. 417). To support his point, Westphal tests his assertion against Heidegger's conceptualization of hermeneutics and against the right and left development of hermeneutics in the thought of Gadamer and Derrida after Heidegger. Heidegger's treatment of the hermeneutical circle reveals the integrated nature of hermeneutics with epistemology, Westphal argues. As a problem first encountered in textual exegesis, the hermeneutical circle is the phenomenon of meaning attainment whereby an appreciation of the genre of a text is needed to make sense of the component statements and sentences within that text, but apprehension of the sentence-level meanings is likewise necessary for a full interpretation of the genre of the writing. What makes the relation circular is the fact that neither one's sense of the whole nor one's

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reading of the parts is an independent variable (Westphal, 1999, p. 418). Kant had wrestled with this problem, leading to his assertion of the a priori nature of all cognition all seeing is already grounded in a preunderstanding. In Heidegger's words, By showing how all sight is grounded primarily in understanding . . . we have deprived pure intuition of its priority ... 'Intuition and 'thinking' are both derivatives of understanding, and already rather remote ones (Heidegger, quoted in Westphal, p. 418). The implication is that any interpretation which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what is to be interpreted (Heidegger, quoted in Westphal, p. 418). Where this differs from Kant is that Heidegger does not view the a priori as simply given and fixed cognitive categories or forms. The wheel of understanding and interpretation rolls on a priori elements that are themselves contingent, situated, and precognitive or pretheoretical. The result is what Westphal describes as Heideggerian hermeneutics' three-story universe in which assertion, which is cognitive or theoretical in nature, rests upon interpretation, which rests upon (pre)understanding. The (pre)understanding level is one in which our mode of being projected-in-the-world (to use the phenomenological terminology of Heidegger's teacher Husserl) results in our concernfully encountering the world in a practical, non-objectifying, ready-to-hand (practical) manner. It sees the elements of the world as tools to be used or spaces to be occupied. The world initially gives itself to us in this latter mode, on Heidegger's view, and it requires a severe abstraction from experience to see things as objectively present, as what is merely the case, as facts or events waiting to be accurately represented (Westphal, p. 421). Interpretation, then, is the act of turning what is ready-at-hand into the objects of the present-at-hand (facts, objects), about which assertions of truth and

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falsity can be made. It accomplishes this, says Heidegger, by seeing in the sense of seeing asa door, a bridge, or an other object. This seeing-as points to the preunderstanding (the seeing before seeing as) which must necessarily come prior to any interpretation, much less positive assertions of knowledge or facts. Westphal notes that, aside from the substantive difference that the a priori is contingent rather than fixed for Heidegger, thus far Heidegger's description of the formal character of the hermeneutical circle fits that of Kant's. Where Heidegger goes further than Kant in this formal description is in naming what it is that the preunderstanding, before it sees something as a kind of object (a table or a bridge), sees or grasps in a pretheoretical, ready-to-hand manner: the being of ourselves. Westphal states it this way: Every act of interpretation presupposes our understanding of ourselves as thrown projection or thrown possibility in our concernful dealings with things and our solicitude for other persons. But we know ourselves as such, not by reflectively observing these characteristics inhering in us but by being them. To be thrown projection for whom the beings we encounter in the world matter is to understand oneself as such, and all explicit acts of interpretation, including self-interpretation, presuppose this primordial understanding. (p. 422) Put more simply, Interpretation is the 'development' of understanding in which the beings which matter to us are 'explicitly' understood . As already noted, each specific interpretation is a seeing-as, an apprehension of something as something (Westphal, p. 423, partially quoting Heidegger). The result is that (in Heidegger's words) Interpretation is carried out primordially not in a theoretical statement but in an action of

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circumspective concernlaying aside the unsuitable tool, or exchanging it, 'without wasting words' (quoted in Westphal, p. 424). This extension of the hermeneutical circle to the very structure of human knowing by Heidegger was largely responsible for the interpretive turn in the human sciences spoken of earlier. It sought to move epistemology from a base of being concerned solely with theoretical knowledge to a precognitive realm of being. In consonance with Nietzsche before him and Foucault after him, Heidegger's epistemology situates the foundation of knowledge in precognitive actions which ground our being as humans in practices (ready-to-hand manipulation of the world), but also in affects. At the basis of our truth-bearing assertions are practices that are not truth bearing, whether or not they are accompanied by speech acts. Relative to such foundations, the dominant epistemological ideals of the philosophical tradition from Plato to Husserl, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein, are pipe dreams. (Westphal, p. 424). The point that affect, as well as practice, is at the foundation of Heidegger's epistemology requires more discussion before moving on to Gadamer's appropriation of Heidegger's hermeneutics. If preunderstanding is a caring, concernful, or circumspectual action of the ready-to-hand, this is so because of an attitude or state of mind deriving from our moods. Part of our thrownness as beings in the world is that we are delivered over to our moods (Westphal, p. 425). These moods and affects serve to disclose to us the world at a pretheoretical level by leading us to attend to the world. They are conditions of the possibility that anything, including ourselves, should 'matter' to us. The mood has already disclosed, in every case, Being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself towards something. Intentionality presupposes mood

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(Westphal, p. 426, partially quoting Heidegger, italics original). Westphal's discussion is meant to illustrate the central role that epistemology plays in even the hermeneutical philosophy of Heidegger. While Heidegger's is an epistemology that disposes of a metaphysical basis of knowledge, it nevertheless remains through and through a study of the nature and limits of knowledge. For the purposes of this study, it also serves to illustrate the kind of knowledge dynamic at work in narratives in their circular forms of logic. In Ricoeur's discussion of Gadamer and (to a lesser extent) Habermas, the hermeneutical circle of Heidegger serves as a necessary backdrop to the debate between a critical and a hermeneutical consciousness and the possibility for a mediating position between the two.

Hermeneutics as Critique The well-known debate between Habermas and Gadamer over the Enlightenment view of tradition provides Ricoeur with a basis from which to construct an interdependent relationship between a critical (Frankfurt school) and a hermeneutical (Gadamer et al.) philosophy. I will focus the review here on Ricoeur's analysis of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Ricoeur (1991c) describes how Gadamer uses Heidegger's epistemological conception of the hermeneutical circle to show that all human knowing (science included) is based on interpretation. This universality of hermeneutics, Gadamer says, means that prejudice and tradition, far from being impediments to knowing, are necessary conditions for all knowing. He sets about, accordingly, to question the presuppositions of a philosophy that opposes reason to prejudice (Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 274). Gadamer's aim is

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to rehabilitate the concept of prejudice through his theory of consciousness exposed to the effects of history. In doing this, he distinguishes between prejudice as judging too quickly (he calls this precipitation) and prejudice as following custom or authority (predisposition). While the former is only negative and harmful, the latter must be seen as positive. Gadamer also (in Ricoeur's words) requires a fundamental upheaval that subordinates the theory of knowledge to ontology in order to bring about a real sense of the Vorstruktur des Verstehensthe forestructure (or structure of anticipation) of understandingwhich is the condition for any rehabilitation of prejudice (p. 276). This forestructure of understanding is, of course, the (pre)understanding at the base of Heidegger's three-story structure of (pre)understanding, interpretation, and assertion reviewed earlier. As Gadamer notes, The point of Heidegger's hermeneutical thinking is not so much to prove that there is a circle as to show that this circle possesses an ontologically positive significance (quoted in Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 276). The implication is this: If the forestructure of understanding is an ontological reality of all human knowing or judging, then prejudice is not the opposite pole of a reason without presupposition; it is a component of understanding, linked to the finite historical character of the human being (Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 278). The rehabilitation of prejudice is tied by Gadamer to the concepts of tradition and authority in the sense that our pre-judging happens within the customs and traditions in which we reside, and our choice to recognize those traditions constitutes the authority of those traditions. Here Gadamer is careful to discredit the Enlightenment equation of authority with blind obedience. In a passage where Ricoeur sees a critical moment that has potential for linking hermeneutics with criticism, Gadamer writes that blind

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obedience is not the essence of authority. It is true that it is primarily persons that have authority; but the authority of persons is based ultimately, not on the subjection and abdication of reason, but on acceptance and recognition recognition, namely that the other is superior to oneself in judgment and insight and that for this reason his judgment takes precedence, i.e., it has priority over one's own. This is connected with the fact that authority cannot actually be bestowed, but is acquired and must be acquired, if someone is to lay claim to it. It rests on consideration and hence on an act of reason itself which, aware of its own limitations, accepts that others have better understanding. Authority in this sense, properly understood, has nothing to do with blind obedience to a command. Indeed, authority has nothing to do with obedience; it rests on recognition. (quoted in Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 279) The constitutive role of the recognition of authority, in contrast to obedience to authority, says Ricoeur, offer[s] the possibility of articulating the phenomenology of authority onto the critique of ideology (p. 279). This is the case since to accept authority is to pass through the screen of doubt and critique before giving (or refusing to give) one's recognition to it (p. 280). A tradition must be seized, taken up, and maintained; hence it demands an act of reason (p. 281). This taking up of history is thematized by Gadamer in his concept of the fusion of horizons. This plays a central role in his theory of consciousness exposed to the effects of history, and results in his conclusion that prejudice is the horizon of the

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present, the finitude of what is near in its openness toward the remote (Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 283). The fusion of horizons overcomes two positions that Gadamer rejects. The first is that of objectivity, whereby history is thought to be made scientific by taking up the point of view of the past and forgetting one's own point of view. Nothing more destroys the very sense of the historical enterprise than this objective distancing, which suspends both the tension of points of view and the claim of tradition to transmit a true speech about what is (p. 282). The second is that of absolute knowledge with its claim that history can be explained within a single overview or horizon (in postmodernist language, the rejection of metanarratives). If objectivity and absolute knowledge are rejected, the possibility for communication exists only at the fusion of horizonsat the points where the present horizon overlaps with a horizon of the past that is different than the present but not utterly so, at least not at the points where overlapping occurs. We exist neither in closed horizons nor within a horizon that is unique (Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 282). Gadamer thus concludes: Modern historical research itself is not only research, but the transmission of tradition (quoted in Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 283). Our research is done within an historical consciousness and is the action by which we inquire into the past. The word for that action is prejudice. Without it, interpreting the pastwhich, as we saw, is to see as would be nonsensical since there would be no as against which to see the past. Man's link to the past precedes and envelops the purely objective treatment of historical facts (p. 283). From this conclusion, Ricoeur raises this question: It remains to be seen whether the ideal of unlimited and unconstrained communication, which Habermas opposes to the concept of tradition, escapes from Gadamer's argument against the

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possibility of a complete knowledge of history and, along with it, of history as an object in itself (p. 283). Ricoeur (1991c) contrasts Gadamer's hermeneutics of tradition to Habermas's critique of ideology under four headings, summarized as follows by Ricoeur: 1. Whereas Gadamer borrows the concept of prejudice from philosophical Romanticism, reinterpreting it by means of the Heideggerian notion of preunderstanding, Habermas develops a concept of interest, which stems from the tradition of Marxism as reinterpreted by Lukacs and the Frankfurt school (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Apel, etc.). 2. Whereas Gadamer appeals to the human sciences, which are concerned with the contemporary reinterpretation of cultural tradition, Habermas makes recourse to the critical social sciences, directly aimed against institutional reifications. 3. Whereas Gadamer introduces misunderstanding as the inner obstacle to understanding, Habermas develops a theory of ideology, construed as the systematic distortion of communication by the hidden exercise of force. 4. Lastly, whereas Gadamer bases the hermeneutic task on an ontology of the dialogue that we are, Habermas invokes the regulative ideal of an unrestricted and unconstrained communication that does not precede us but guides us from a future point. (pp. 285-286) Ricoeur believes that between these two apparently antithetical positions lies a point of intersection out of which a new phase of hermeneutics can be wrought. To do this we must first ask if it is possible for there to be critique within hermeneutics (p. 271),

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to which Ricoeur's answer is yes. He sees this as possible, and develops four themes that constitute a sort of critical supplementation to the hermeneutics of tradition (p. 298). The first is the concept of distance, which is required for a critique of ideology but is usually looked at askance by hermeneutics in its rejection of any objectification of the past. But Ricoeur sees distanciation as playing a positive role in a hermeneutical approach to literary texts. The kind of interpretation required of literary texts happens within the medium of the text itself, which, unlike the medium of the face-to-face dialogue of conversation or speech, indicates a removalan emancipationfrom the original social context and from the psychological point of view (the author's intention). With writing, the original addressee is transcended. The work itself creates an audience, which potentially includes anyone who can read (p. 298). So a common horizon is found in the concept of distanciation. The emancipation of the text constitutes the most fundamental condition for the recognition of a critical instance at the heart of interpretation; for distanciation now belongs to the mediation itself (p. 298). Ricoeur takes this one step further to say that all discoursenot just the literary textcontains this element of distance. This is only more apparent in writingin contradistinction to speaking since discourse is what remains as said after the ephemeral act of saying has vanished. The second theme is a false dichotomy, as Ricoeur would argue, between explanation and understanding bequeathed to us by Dilthey's assertion that it is illegitimate to force the methods of the natural sciences (explanation) onto those of the human sciences (understanding). But semiological models, especially of narrative texts, show that discourse is a praxis, a labor, a practice that giveseffectsstructure and

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form. The objectification inherent in structure lends itself to structural analysiswhich is a kind of explanation of relationships akin to those in the natural sciences. While Ricoeur objects to a purely structuralist method (explanation of causal relationships) that never moves into the semantics (understanding of meanings) of the text, he agrees that discourse as a work 'takes hold' in structures calling for a description and an explanation that mediate 'understanding' (p. 299). The third theme is the dynamic of the unfolding action of hermeneutics. Unlike the hermeneutics of Romanticism, it is no longer simply the intention within a text that is sought, but the world created in front of the text. The power of the text to open a dimension of reality implies in principle a recourse against any given reality and thereby the possibility of a critique of the real (p. 300). Ricoeur says this critical theme was already present in Heidegger's conception of understanding: Recall how Heidegger conjoins understanding to the notion of the projection of my ownmost possibilities; this signifies that the mode of being of the world opened up by the text is the mode of the possible, or better, of the power-to-be: therein resides the subversive force of the imaginary. The paradox of poetic reference consists precisely in the fact that reality is redescribed only insofar as discourse is raised to fiction. A hermeneutics of the power-to-be thus turns itself toward a critique of ideology, of which it constitutes the most fundamental possibility. Distanciation, at the same time, emerges at the heart of reference: poetic discourse distances itself from everyday reality, aiming toward being as power-to-be. (p. 300) The fourth and last theme is the status of subjectivity in interpretation. Ricoeur

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concludes that the critique of false consciousness which the Frankfurt school emphasizes can also be an act of hermeneutics. As the discussion in Chapter 3 on Ricoeur's concept of narrative and subjectivity already suggested, the narrative world opened up by the text provides the reader with a worldview, thereby a sense of identity. To understand is not to project oneself into the text but to expose oneself to it; it is to receive a self enlarged by the appropriation of the proposed worlds that interpretation unfolds. . . . In sum, it is the matter of the text that gives the reader his or her dimension of subjectivity; understanding is thus no longer a constitution of which the subject possesses the key (p. 301). Texts, then, are able to provide readers with an imaginative variation of the ego. If this appropriation of the text's worldview is combined dialectically with the concept of distanciation, which the hermeneutics of tradition often occludes, we have the makings for a hermeneutical criticism, a critique of the illusions of the subject (p. 301). The critique of ideology can be assumed by a concept of self-understanding that organically implies a critique of the illusions of the subject (p. 301). It is this critique of the subject from a hermeneutical critical perspective that I propose is enhanced by appropriating Foucault's insight into the knowledge/power dynamic inherent in all relationships.

Power as Rhetorical Knowledge Ricoeur's critical correction of the hermeneutic impulse is Janus-faced. Ricoeur sees in a criticism of ideology adjoined to hermeneutics the potential for not only negative critique but also a positive critique. This assumption is present in Ricoeur's concept of mimesis in narratives. Lois McNay (1999) sees this as a needed corrective to the exclusionary, negating bias of most structuralist thought:

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Ricoeur's argument that the function of ideology cannot be explained only as distortion draws attention to the negative terms in which the concept is conventionally conceptualized. In his view, ideology is an example of the foundation of society in the irreducible capacity for creativity: the social imaginary. As a manifestation of the ontological grounding of society in imagination, the concept is shifted away from the negative connotations accorded it in the representationist paradigm and invested with an integrative function. (p. 328) McNay connects this difference to accounts of identity, as well. She contends that in the structuralist mode, Agency is imputed to the individual almost by default; she is able to act autonomously by virtue of her contradictory social location. . . . Accounts of the subject formed in domination provide little explanation of the capabilities of the subject (pp. 328-329). As an example, she cites Foucault's work from Psychiatry and Mental Illness to volume one of the History of Sexuality. She also notes, however, that Foucault's late thought signaled a new appreciation of the creativity of action (p. 329). McNay's reading of Foucault represents a growing consensus on Foucault's position post-volume one of the History of Sexuality. David Ingram (1994) says the last two volumes of the History of Sexuality signal Foucault's hermeneutic turn in which gone is the cold, objective description of functionalist relations. What now occupies center stage in his analysis is ethics or, more precisely, the way in which subjects voluntarily and intentionally subject themselves to technologies of self-control (p. 237). Christopher Norris (1994) says that Foucault came around to a viewpoint strikingly at odds with his earlier (skeptical-genealogical) approach, and that one major consequence

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manifest in all his later workwas a radical re-thinking of the subject's role in relation to issues of truth, critique, self-knowledge, and practical reason (p. 179). These assessments of Foucault's later thought can be seen as providing license for the following discussion of power/knowledge from a hermeneutical position. In it, I propose that Foucault's conception of power/knowledge in a structuralist mode can be adapted to the mediating Ricoeurian one of hermeneutical criticism. Such an interpretively based concept of power-as-knowledge can prove useful, I argue, in assessing the rhetoric of groups like Christian Identity and Christian Zionist for their creative, intentional constructions of identity, but within the constraints of the institutional traditions in which they are situated. In particular, an analogy can be drawn between the formal epistemic relationship Foucault establishes between discourse and statements to the relationship between narrative structures and narrative sentences. What I hope to show is that if, as Foucault has compellingly demonstrated, every episteme has its discourse within which given statements are meaningful (or not), the same dynamic can be found at work at the textual level of narratives within their rhetorical devices. Ironically, this approach turns structuralist theory back to its roots, since structuralism as a philosophy grew out of literary textual approaches and was then later applied to broadly conceived social texts. Where the approach I am suggesting differs from a structuralist one is in restoring to the composing community of the narratives the creative mimetic agency Ricoeur describes in his hermeneutical theory while also giving the critic (the researcher) the basis to deconstruct the narratives to expose the ideology (again, as defined by Ricoeur in its bimodal form) or worldview at work in those constructions. The resulting epistemology of hermeneutics provides a practical text-

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analytic tool that operationalizes Ricoeur's mediating engagement of hermeneutics (Gadamer) and critical consciousness (Habermas), but in a way that foregrounds the power dynamics (Foucault) at work in such identity discourses (Taylor and Ricoeur) as this study examines. As Raymond Morrow (1994) has observed, Although in the French context the hermeneutic and structuralist traditions were viewed as diametrically opposed approaches to the study of meaning, more recently their complementarity has become evident, a thesis introduced by Paul Ricoeur. From this latter poststructuralist perspective, structuralist or semiotic text interpretation is simply a special type of hermeneutics involving high levels of distanciation (p. 264). I begin by describing the general contour of Foucault's conception of power/knowledge. From his writing on power Foucault is perhaps best know for his rejection of a sovereign understanding of power with its claim to a point of view outside of conflicts which had the legitimacy to adjudicate these conflicts through the embodiment of law (Rouse, 1994, p. 100). In the place of sovereign power, he posited a nexus of power/knowledge, whereby power is exercised through a dynamic of social relationships that do not follow a hierarchical organization. Joseph Rouse says Foucault's dynamic conception of power avoids the reification of power found in the sovereign viewpoint. As Foucault wrote, Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away (quoted in Rouse, p. 105). Practices, rituals, buildings, documents, as well as the agents of power combine to create the social networks in which power relations exist. One peculiarity of power thus conceived is that resistance to power cannot be external to power, because power is not a system of domination

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with an inside or an outside. . . Power is exercised through an agent's actions only to the extent that other agents' actions remain appropriately aligned with them. The actions of dominant agents are therefore constrained by the need to sustain that alignment in the future; but, simultaneously, subordinate agents may seek ways of challenging or evading that alignment. (Rouse, 1994, p. 108) Rouse captures Foucault's conception of power by defining it as dispersed across complicated and heterogeneous social networks marked by ongoing struggle. He adds that power is not something present at specific locations within those networks, but is instead always at issue in ongoing attempts to (re)produce effective social alignments, and conversely to avoid or erode their effects, often by producing various counteralignments (p. 109). Rouse suggests that this dynamic conception of power is also at work in Foucault's conception of knowledge. This is seen, for example, in Foucault's distinction between discursive fields of knowledge and the statements held true within those epistemic fields. What made Foucault's inquiry into the structure of such discursive formations interesting was the possibility that there might be significant changes in the organization of such a discursive field. Thus, it might be that what counts as a serious and important claim at one time will not (perhaps cannot) even be entertained as a candidate for truth at another. Statements can be dismissed (or never even be considered) not because they are thought to be false, but because it is not clear what it would

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amount to for them to be either true or false. (p. 94) The modern techniques of surveillance, discipline, and regulation, which not only control people externally but also internally by instilling in them a self-definition that serves to enhance self-regulation, point to the integral connection Foucault makes between power and knowledge. Knowledge thus conceived is the result of a complex production whose aim is control or power over others. The resulting epistemic fields include statements, institutions, practices, and so forth which reinforce each other, or at least align with each other, over a long enough time period to effect their knowledge as power (Rouse, p.110). Rouse notes that the temporality of these epistemic fields is evident in the construction of such epistemic alignments and in the conflicts and resistances they engender. Taken by itself, a statement, a technique or skill, a practice, or a machine cannot count as knowledge. Only in the ways it is used, and thereby increasingly connected to other elements over time, does it become (and remain) epistemically significant. But these uses and alignments encounter snags and generate conflicts with other emerging epistemic practices. These conflicts have a particular configuration that arises historically from the development of competing epistemic alignments and from the specific respects in which they come into conflict. Such conflict, however, spurs further investigations, articulations, and technical refinements. Conflict thus becomes the locus for the continuing development and reorganization of knowledge. (p. 110). Rouse suggests that once we see knowledge production in this dynamic light, we can say

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of knowledge as Foucault says of power, that it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society (p. 111). A parsimonious comparison with narratives can be made at several levels. First, I suggest that the temporal and dynamic elements in Foucault's conception of power/knowledge are also inherent features of narratives, as our discussion of Ricoeur has shown. Narratives can thus be seen as epistemic microfields in which social alignments serve to make epistemic statements (explicit or implicit) within them meaningful or not. Emplotment is the specific means by which alignments are constructed in narratives and through which the contested claims of various epistemes and their statements are given play. Rouse (1994) says that for Foucault how knowledge and power come together is historically specific and may vary significantly in different domains (p. 111). Narratives similarly serve to bring power and knowledge together in historically relevant ways. That is, narratives provide a structure for taking isolated temporal events and unrelated social characters and bringing them into an alignment that is, emploting themthrough the use of time. The resulting discourse is an alignment an epistemewhich renders some statements meaningful, that is, factual, while discrediting or rendering meaningless others. This narrative performance of knowledge and the resulting world of discourse are, accordingly, constructed power relationships built upon and serving the needs and desires of identity. What I have described is the creative or productive side of power/knowledge. At the same time, a narrative that attempts to relate present-day concerns and characters to the epistemic field it has constructed is necessarily under constraints. Rouse (1994) points to this fact when he says (as quoted above), Power is exercised through an agent's

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actions only to the extent that other agents' actions remain appropriately aligned with them. The actions of dominant agents are therefore constrained by the need to sustain that alignment in the future (p. 108). A creative tension must be maintained in the narratives if its emplotment is to remain vital. Doing so will in part involve the renegotiating of alignments as current events in the world (or in the news) alter the events in the larger narrative genre being used. That is, the institutional or community base from which the narratives are being constructed provide the material from which the field of knowledge is constructed, but as Kort and also Foucault have shown, that power/knowledge must not be absolute if the conflict which provides for the ongoing relationship (emplotment, in Ricoeur's terms) is to be dynamic. To an extent, the narrative serves as the instrument of surveillance which forces the characters in it to speak the truth and to engage in selfdefinition within the epistemic field created by the narrative structure. It is a means by which to exact confessions that are meaningful, given the social alignments configured in the stories. It is in these ways that narratives, I am suggesting, are rich sources for understanding identity constructions in terms of power relations. To conclude this discussion, I turn to what I see as an early model (and a model for my study of Christian narratives) that applied this view of critical hermeneutics to narrativesEdward Said's (1978) critique of European colonialism in his book Orientalism. Said describes his project this way: Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orientdealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having

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authority over the Orient. (p. 3) In a similar vein, The Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West (p. 5). This for the West aspect of Orientalism has a power dimension and an identity dimension to it, according to Said. The power dimension is considered in terms of Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemonyin particular, the hegemony of European ideas about the Orient, themselves reiterating European superiority over Oriental backwardness (p. 7). Elsewhere Said writes, The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, or varying degrees of a complex hegemony (p. 5). Said refers to Foucault's ideas several times in this respect, finding Foucault's notion of a discourse useful to understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manageand even producethe Orient (p. 3). But Said's appropriation of Foucault's notion of discourse is not a wholesale endorsement of it: Yet unlike Michel Foucault, to whose work I am greatly indebted, I do believe in the determining imprint of individual writers upon the otherwise anonymous collective body of texts constituting a discursive formation like Orientalism. . . . Foucault believes that in general the individual text or author counts for very little; empirically, in the case of Orientalism . . . I find this not to be so. (p. 23) Said instead proposes a method that balances the constraints and the creativity within the production of given texts in a way that mirrors institutionalist notions of

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change within sectors and Ricoeur's notion of poetic reference (or prejudice or consciousness exposed to the effects of history) in which the innovations both draw from and change the textual traditions within which they flow: I think it can be shown that what is thought, said, or even done about the Orient follows (perhaps occurs within) certain distinct and intellectually knowable lines. Here too a considerable degree of nuance and elaboration can be seen working as between the broad superstructural pressures the details of composition, the facts of textuality. (p. 13) Again, Said states: We can better understand the persistence and the durability of saturating hegemonic systems like culture when we realize that their internal constraints upon writers and thinkers were productive, not unilaterally inhibiting. . . . Therefore I study Orientalism as a dynamic exchange between individual authors and the large political concerns shaped by the three great empiresBritish, French, Americanin whose intellectual and imaginative territory the writing was produced. (p. 15) A difference in Said's approach from a critical methodology concerned primarily with hidden interests and ideology is found in Said's contention that it is not some hidden dimension that needs to be exposed in the texts of the Orient. Rather it is the worlds produced at the surface of the texts that needs to be exposited: My analysis of the Orientalist text therefore places emphasis on the evidence, which is by no means invisible, for such representations as representations, not as 'natural' depictions of the Orient. This evidence is

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found just as prominently in the so-called truthful text (histories, philological analysis, political treatises) as in the avowedly artistic (i.e., openly imaginative) text. The things to look at are style, figures of speech, setting, narrative devices, historical and social circumstances, not the correctness of the representation nor its fidelity to some great original. (p. 21) Another aspect of Said's work that serves as a model for the kind of approach I am proposing is his view of the political action involved in texts, especially in terms of the production of identities of superiority. If it is true that Orientalism has less to do with the Orient than it does with our world (p. 13), it follows that Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the Westerner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand (p. 7). This function of superiority in Orientalism worked by giving Europeans what Said calls the surrogate or underground self a dynamic I find operating in Christian Identity and Christian Zionist discourse as well. A last aspect that makes Orientalism a useful model is its narrative sensibilities in analyzing identity formations. Said notes that Everyone who writes about the Orient must locate himself vis-a-vis the Orient; translated into his text, this location includes the kind of narrative voice he adopts, the type of structure he builds, the kinds of images, themes, motifs that circulate in his textall of which add up to deliberate ways of addressing the reader, containing the Orient, and finally, represent it or speaking on its behalf. None of this takes place in the abstract,

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however. Every writer on the Orient . . . assumes some Oriental precedent, some previous knowledge of the Orient, to which he refers and on which he relies. Additionally, each work on the Orient affiliates itself with other works, with audiences, with institutions, with the Orient itself. The ensemble of relationships between works, audiences, and some particular aspects of the Orient therefore constitutes an analyzable formation. (p. 20) In this chapter I have attempted to make the case for viewing narratives as power/knowledge tools that can serve the authoring community in its desire to forge identities of superiority. When connected to the ideas of time and moral maps that Ricoeur and Taylor (reviewed in Chapter 3) theorized, and set in the larger institutional or tradition context that Honneth and others in Chapter 4 have proposed, a narrative analysis of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist discourse can achieve a similar understanding of the identity dynamics in their respective texts. The next chapter focuses this analysis in terms of the apocalyptic emphasis so prominent in their discourses.

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PART TWO: METHODOLOGY Chapter Five Two Apocalyptic Methodologies As I have attempted to show, the discourse that each of the religious groups I am studying lends itself to apocalyptic discourse analysis. Two recent books by communication scholars provide the general methodological framework within which my study will proceed. One is Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (1994) by Stephen D. OLeary of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. The second, is Contemporary Apocalyptic Rhetoric (1991) by Barry Brummett at the University of Wisconsin, whose ideas on the apocalyptic rhetor and grounding texts will be especially noted.

O'Leary's Apocalyptic Method In this section, I first summarize O'Leary's definition of apocalyptic literature; second, review OLearys defense of his symbolic-rhetorical emphasis; third, describe OLearys general methodology; and last, show how the narrative theory I have reviewed in the previous chapters can be combined with OLearys ideas in such a way as to build a general methodological framework for my study research on Christian Identity and Christian Zionists. In his chapter Toward a Rhetorical Theory of Apocalypse, OLeary (1994) writes that he intends to develop an understanding of how the form and symbolism of apocalyptic discourse are shaped by, and in turn help to shape the collective behavior

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of, its historical audiences. The story of the apocalyptic tradition is one of community building, in which human individuals and collectivities constitute their identities through shared mythic narratives that confront the problem of evil in time and history. (p. 6). My analysis of Christian Identity and Christian Zionism will also focus on the groups' apocalyptic texts to shed light on how the identity of the self (understood as the interpretive communities of Christian Identity and Christian Zionism) and the other (the Jewish people) is constructed through the refracting lens of apocalyptic discourse. OLeary says apocalyptic discourse is one kind of eschatology, and eschatology is one kind of cosmology. Eschatology, which comes from the Greek word eschatos, points to the ultimate or the end of all things. By contrast, the Greek word apocalypse means revelation or unveiling. This meaning can be found in contemporary English titles of the last book of the New Testament, which is often titled The Book of Revelation, but sometimes The Apocalypse of St. John. OLeary explains that The unique feature of apocalyptic myth is that it offers a temporal or teleological framework for understanding evil by claiming that evil must grow in power until the appointed time of the (imminent) end (p. 6). O'Leary proposes that eschatology, in contrast to specifically apocalyptic thought with its linear structure, can accommodate an episodic view of history. In the history of Christian thought, such a general (episodic) eschatological viewwhich sees the book of Revelation as depicting an ever-present, cyclical struggle of good and evil rather than an apocalyptic end-of-time climax, such as the War of Armageddonhas prevailed. In his book, OLeary focuses his study on the (linear) apocalyptic discourses in Christian

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thought and narrative. O'Leary's apocalyptic theory encompasses both primary source apocalyptic literature, such as the first-century AD book of Revelation, as well as (most importantly to his study) the discourse about Revelation and the apocalypse as it has been handed down as a dominant theme in Christian culture for over two thousand years (p. 7). He notes that Though the apocalypse has been predicted time and time again through the centuries, the disappointment created by the failure of these predictions has not lessened the appeal of this discourse to its believers (p. 7). Christian Identity is one such contemporary group of these believers, Christian Zionist is another. A difference in O'Leary's theory from most scholarly studies of apocalyptic communities is his insistence that the symbolic meaning of the apocalyptic rhetoric is not of secondary importance to understanding such communities. A rhetorical analysis is needed if the phenomena are to be understood at their root. For the purposes of a generalized theory of apocalyptic appeal, OLeary finds inadequate three audiencecentered explanations. The first is the materialist explanation, which typically posits economic deprivation as the source for a paranoid search for a means of survival. OLeary admits that in some cases those who were taken by apocalyptic visions were economically deprived. But in the 2,000 years of Christian apocalypticism, those who have ascribed to the vision have not fit into one economic or social class. The audience of those receptive to prophecy and its interpreters has included emperors, peasants, merchants, farmers and factory workers, the educated and the uneducated alike from Isaac Newton to Ronald Reagan (p. 9). Citing the best-seller The Late, Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, which was on bestseller lists and sold in the millions in the 1970s,

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he concludes that mechanistic theories of apocalypses appeal based in economic circumstance that prevail in much current scholarship fail to account for this wide variety of class and education in apocalyptic audiences (p. 9). The second explanation also posits a hardship that jolts people into apocalyptic belief. Here, however, the hardship is not economic but environmental or man-made calamity. O'Leary contends, by contrast, that even if we allow that events such as earthquakes, wars, and depressions are experienced as disasters by virtually everyone, not every event of this kind is accompanied by an increase in apocalyptic conversion. Some occurrences, on the other hand, are viewed as disasters because a rhetor succeeds in persuading an audience with this definition; and only rhetoric can turn any disaster, real or perceived, into a sign of the imminent end. Only a discourse-centered theory can account for the role of disasters in apocalypse. The issue is not whether audiences are predisposed by such experiences to accept apocalyptic arguments, but how apocalypse contextualizes disasters as a rhetorical use of calamity. (p. 9) A third rejected explanation which does take the symbolic dimension of apocalypse into account is one that says that apocalyptic believers suffer from psychological conditions of anomie and absence of meaning (p. 10). O'Leary finds such disorientation theories inadequate in that they usually try to connect the rise of apocalyptic visions with particular historic social upheavals, suggesting that the resulting anomie, as expressed in anxiety or fear or acute dissatisfaction, provides a receptive audience to apocalyptic stories. But when, OLeary asks, hasnt anxiety been a part of human existence? Apocalypticism should not be seen primarily as a discrete effect of

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discrete historical causes, but rather as a tradition, a textually embodied community of discourse founded in the accepted canon of Western sacred Scripture and occasionally augmented by the production of new revelations and interpretive strategies (p. 10). Here, then, lies O'Leary's rationale (couched, as it is, in overgeneralization and disciplinary ad hominem) for a rhetorical approach to apocalyptic criticism: It comes as no surprise that sociologists and historians, lacking the perspective of rhetorical studies, should expend so much energy in trying to explain the appeal of apocalyptic discourse by discovering audience predispositions based in conditions of social and economic class, in the experience of calamity, or in psychological anomie. It is curious, however, that even those rhetorical scholars who attempt to account for the appeal of apocalyptic never seriously entertain the hypothesis that people are actually persuaded by apocalyptic arguments; that is, that the nature of apocalyptics appeal should be sought in transactions of texts and audiences. (p. 11; OLeary uses the word apocalyptic as a noun that indicates apocalyptic discourse as a genre) O'Leary's alternative theory builds from a two-fold hypothesis: that apocalyptic rhetoric serves as a symbolic theodicy, and that it is accomplished through the discursive construction of temporality (p. 14). He rejects the common rhetorical method of genre studies with its emphasis on form as too one-dimensional to explain the dynamic of apocalyptic, which he sees as a discourse of action. Genre theory may aid understanding of texts, but tells us little about how and why audiences for these texts behave as they do (p. 14). OLeary instead employs what he calls a dramatistic and argumentative analysis,

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which is (he argues) able to be more sensitive to the context of apocalyptic literature. With this approach, apocalyptic discourse is seen as an event alive in its present, with the theorists responsibility being to discover how a particular apocalyptic influences and is influenced by the discursive practices that surround it (p. 15). The connection between drama (or what is in this study called more broadly narrative) and argument, argues O'Leary, is inherent in apocalyptic discoursecontrary to those who dismiss the discourse as irrational mass hysteriawith its concern for careful scriptural exegesis and tightly reasoned arguments. What makes apocalyptic argument distinctive from more typical arguments is that it is conducted in the context of a cosmic narrative. Those who construct the apocalyptic discourse see themselves as both actors in the drama of the cosmos and as rational thinkers. Concludes OLeary: Insofar as rhetors and audiences perceive history and human action in terms of the dramatic narrative of myth, their discourse will exhibit dramatic, as well as argumentative, form (p. 16). Similarly, most analyses have located the power and rhetorical effectiveness of this discourse primarily in its imagery of the grotesque and fantastic; few have focused on the logical structure of apocalypse and its contributions to social knowledge (p. 21). These statements begin to define OLearys methodological use of what he calls topoi and social argument theory as well as Kenneth Burkes dramatic (narrative) theory of tragic and comic drama. For OLeary, topoi indicates both recurring themes in discourse and patterns of reasoning (p. 22). Drawing from Aristotles work on the topoi of rhetoric, topoi theory posits both common and specific topoithe former meaning roughly the topics or themes or modes of thinking common to all human thought about the nature of reality, the latter referring to socially dependent knowledge, about which

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different groups and cultures and even individuals are likely to hold different views. Apocalyptic theory, says O'Leary, deals with three common topoi: those of time, evil, and authority. Special topoi, which Aristotle identified as doxa, or opinion, and which modern theorists of rhetoric call social knowledge, derive their substance from communally accepted opinion and function as warrants or connective principles in rhetorical argument (p. 23). OLearys study undertakes to answer how the disjunctures between usual themes in the Christian cosmology (such as, How can a good God allow people to experience evil?) are resolved through the argument and narrative of apocalyptic that use common topoi (evil as temporary, for example) to form specific topoi (a premillennial eschatology, for example). OLearys study leads him to conclude that the apocalyptic tradition, founded in mythic narratives and canonical scriptures and augmented by debates about the meaning of these texts, provides the social knowledge base of apocalyptic movements (p. 197). The other method, Burkes dramatism, provides a way for OLeary to look at the topoi of evil and time as symbolic modes for achieving theodicy. OLeary appropriates Burkes categories of the tragic and the comic dramas in the following way: The tragic plot conceives of evil in terms of sin or guilt; its mechanism of redemption is victimage, and its plot moves toward the isolation of the evildoer in the cult of the kill. The comic plot conceives of evil in terms of error, misunderstanding, or ignorance; its mechanism of redemption, and its plot moves toward exposure of the evildoers fallibility and his incorporation into society. The tragic rhythm is progressive and cadential,

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while the rhythm of comedy is episodic; the tragic plot promotes a view of time and human action as predetermined, leading to an inevitable resolution . . . [A]n audiences views of historical time and human agency are shaped in part by the frames of acceptance and the temporal rhythms found within the dramatic representation of history as myth. (p. 201-202) These methodological tools, of dramatism and topoi, are then applied in OLearys comparative analysis to two rhetorical phenomena: the Millerites Great Disappointment at the passing of a date set in the mid-eighteenth century for Christs return (the Adventist movement came from the Millerites); and the reception of Hal Lindsey's book The Late, Great Planet Earth in the mid 1970s. This comparative study led O'Leary to the conclusion that The Millerite and Lindseyite systems of argument were found to be governed by the narrative logic of the tragic drama, which structures time in terms of historical necessity and posits an absolute dualism between divine and demonic forces (p. 212). This supported his research hypothesis that apocalyptic discourse does indeed constitute a symbolic theodicy that operates through its discursive construction of temporality (p. 213). This cursory overview of OLeary's approach is, I hope, enough to show where the narrative theory of Taylor and Ricoeur can be applied methodologically to OLeary specific apocalyptic theory. The theory of apocalyptic discourse, says O'Leary, provides a framework within which rhetorical critics can move beyond generic classification into a diagnostic and prescriptive critique of the rhetoric of social movements (p. 215). Therein lies a blueprint for a methodology: a diagnostic critique of one particular use of the apocalyptic discoursethe construction of the identity of the self and the other through

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the dynamic of millennial rhetorical discourse.

Brummett's Apocalyptic Method As noted in the Introduction, Brummett claims that apocalyptic rhetoric can be understood as a system designed to create order. What is revealed [in apocalyptic rhetoric] is the secret order or structure actually underlying what has lately seemed to be a chaotic world (p. 31). This structure is temporal in nature, but of a particular kind of temporality: it is linear (not cyclical) and telic (headed toward a completion or perfection); it is also determined. The determinative apocalyptic view of history does not mean, however, that individuals are helpless against a fatalistic run within an inevitable history. As one analyst has observed, [Apocalyptic] history is a unity or totality determined by God but at the same time so configured as to allow humanity, or more precisely, a member of the elect, to choose between Christ and Antichrist (Beathe, 1989, p. 9, quoted in Brummett, p. 35). Brummett distinguishes two types of apocalyptic discourse according to whether the discourse specifically addresses the local social context (rhetorical apocalyptic) or a more general vision not aimed at the politics of the present day (original apocalyptic). What makes rhetorical apocalyptic distinct from original apocalyptic is that, at least in the last few centuries, the former gains its rhetorical impact by using the latter, by invoking its authority and applying it to the present. . . . (p. 92). In both Zionist and Identity apocalyptic rhetoric, this equates to using the ancient apocalyptic texts of the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, for the purpose of present-day apocalyptic pronouncements and stories.

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If the original apocalyptic that rhetorical apocalyptic draws on is apolitical, the same is not true of the latter. It is in telling people what to expect history to do, and then in telling people how to prepare for historys predetermined path, that contemporary apocalyptic wields a great deal of social and political influence (p. 93). This political/social action that the apocalyptic rhetoric urges on its audience results from the rhetor claiming a special insight into the original apocalyptic text for interpreting the present and future events. Brummett points to several specific techniques that are used in this hermeneutical feat: The several strategies of bolstering personal credibility and attacking the claims of rival rhetors[]typology, transfer, and the use of language that is esoteric, dramatic, yet apparently logical and learned[]are all ways of showing an apocalyptic audience that the rhetors social and political pronouncements are justified by the grounding text and the secret knowledge that is contains (p. 116). I will define these categories further below, using a Christian Identity doctrinal statement posted on the Internet (see Appendix A) to illustrate how this is done: Authority. Many rhetors, says Brummett, must perform the paradoxical role of both showing that Scriptures secret is plain, but that it also stands in need of being explained by those in their privileged position (p. 102). This is present even in the less narrative format of a doctrinal statement. Here credibility is established through the repeated use of the authoritative credo form of WE BELIEVE for each statement of belief. It is further heightened through extensive use of scripture references. These whole chains of references (e.g., Psalm 82:6; Hos. 1:10; Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6; I John 3:1-2 in support of who Adam was) are paired with biblical terminology and allusions to such an extent that some phrasings are direct usages of biblical ones (e.g., the land between two

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seas, King of king over the house of Jacob forever, his elect,). Even the use of the tetragrammaton YHVH, which the writers of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Christian Old Testament) used for the name of Jehovah/Yahweh, whose name was so holy that to utter it or write it fully always endangered one of using it in vain, sends a signal that this modern text is sacred in nature. Together these stylistic devices serve to create an aura of authority and credibility that helps to legitimate the discourse and the larger cosmology of which it is a part. Topology. This is a way of seeing a grounding text as being about the present and future, Brummett explains, since one knows how to identify the linkages between the grounding text and the present, and if the grounding has prophetic power, then one cannot only predict the future, but also understand the grand plan underlying history (p. xx in the Introduction). Typology, Brummett notes, is a particularly important way in which rhetors use the grounding of sacred texts to make political and social pronouncements (p. 106). The Identity doctrinal statement in Appendix A, in fact, does read the signs of the time through typologies. For example, the entry WE BELIEVE that the United States of America fulfills the prophesied (II Sam. 7:10; Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 36:24) place where Christians from all the tribes of Israel would be regathered, aside from its direct scriptural references to regathering goes on to note that It is here in this blessed land (Deut. 15:6, 28:11, 33:13-17) that God made a small one a strong nation (Isa. 60:22). In the King James Version of the Bible that Identity believers use, Isaiah 60:22 reads, A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time. The special prophetic insight Identity theologians believe they possess

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gives them the ability to link the grounded original apocalyptic idea of a small nation becoming a strong nation and apply it to the history of the United States with its growth to global dominance from humble immigrant origins. Similarly, the identification of the Jew as the literal seed or posterity of Satan is done through typology in which interpretive insight reveals that the word seed in the Bible refers to todays Jews. Part of the method by which these linkages are accomplished relates to Brummetts next rhetorical category, that of transfer. Transfer. Similar to the typology strategy of seeing contemporary events or figures as being first named in the original apocalyptic, rhetorical transfer, says Brummett, allows rhetors to link the grounding text to statements that are not explicitly within those texts. To make such a linkage, especially for political purposes, requires a slide out of the sacred grounding texts and into explicitly secular pronouncements. Thus transfer is a strategy that fits exactly into what apocalyptic rhetoric tries to do: fetch the political out of the sacred. (p. 110) Such a slide is seen in the dictionary exercise performed about the meaning of the word Adam. The statement reads: Adam (a Hebrew word meaning: ruddy, to show Blood, flush, turn rosy) is father of the White Race only. The biblical name Adam is first defined in the Hebrew lexicon, then paraphrased into the English equivalent of being rosy, which in turn is framed in the modern, nonbiblical category of race (the Bible speaks of ethnic and people groups rather than distinct races as originating from the five continents, which the biblical writers were ignorant of). The result of this transfer is that

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The White Race only is descended from Adam. In the same entry, a similar slide is used on the modern psychological category of body, soul, and spirit to assert that only whites possess spirits in addition to bodies and souls. Style. Here Brummett refers in particular to the use of two strategiesknowing language (which uses esoteric vocabulary) and mysterious drama (or allegory)that give the texts a sense of dogmatic surety or inside knowledge. In the first strategy, the use of esoteric vocabulary, apocalyptic adopts mysterious language because it must prove to its audience that a secret is now being revealed. Moreover, this is no ordinary secret; it is the plan underlying history (p. 112). Brummett cites Manis list of symbols and images found in much biblically grounded apocalyptic discourse: the garden, the wilderness, the altar, the ark of covenant, the ark that saved Noah, . . . the tree of life, the fruit of forbidden knowledge, Sodom and Gomorrah, the seven seals and trumpets, the seven vials of wrath, the seven candlesticks, the Son of Man, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, the beast, the serpent, the dragon, the Woman clothed with the sun and the moon at her feet (Mani, 1981, p. 3, cited in Brummett, p. 112-3). A reading of the Identity doctrinal statement for such allusions exposes the following mystery-filled words and phrases: body of Christ, law of kinsmanship, kinsman of the flesh, Passover Lamb, Throne of David, Yeshua the Messiah, God predestined the elect, redeem, called-out seedline, twelve sons of Jacob, YHVH God, Anti-Christ, the Serpent and the list goes on. The second style strategy of drama or allegory is also found in so nondramatic and nonnarrative a format as a doctrinal statement. Roland Barthes (1977), in his

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Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Literature, goes so far as to propose that sentences can be viewed as mini-narratives because of the relationship of the subject to the predicate in the sentence. For example, the statement WE BELIEVE the White, AngloSaxon, Germanic and kindred people to be Gods true, literal Children of Israel is followed by this past-tense account: Only these descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel scattered abroad (James 1:1; Deut. 4:27; Jer. 31:10; John 11:52) have carried Gods Word, the Bible, throughout the world (Gen. 28:14; Isa. 43:10-12, 59:21), have used His Laws in the establishment of their civil governments and are the Christians opposed by the Satanic Anti-Christ forces of this world who do not recognize the true and living God (John 5:23, 8:19, 16:2-3). Both esoteric vocabulary and mystery narratives signal the existence and integrity of a system of knowledge that serves to establish the authority of the text and its author (Brummett, p. 113). The next chapter will pull together O'Leary and Brummett's methodologies and place them into the larger theoretical framework established in the literature review to provide a formal research design and methodology for this study.

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Chapter Six A Narrative Research Design In this chapter I (a) outline a three-level approach that adapts the models of O'Leary and Brummett for analyzing apocalyptically oriented texts, (b) describe the texts to be analyzed, (c) explain how two specific rhetorical-critical methods (cluster criticism and narrative criticism as defined by Sonja Foss) provide a concrete way to decode the texts, and (d) provide the results (in Appendix B) of a sample textual criticism of a Christian Zionist article and a Christian Identity article to illustrate how the method I used actually worked.

A Three-Level Analysis O'Leary models the use of a thematic approach (topoi) and a tragic/cosmic narrative approach to studying apocalyptic writing. Brummett, in an effort to show the relationship between original apocalyptic and rhetorical apocalypticwhat I will refer to as biblical apocalyptic and modern apocalypticprovides a list of strategies that can be looked for in contemporary apocalyptic texts (strategies of authority, typology, transfer, and esoteric style). The research design I used is a three-level approach that does the following to operationalize O'Leary and Brummett's models: Level 1. Using Brummett, I analyzed the texts to disclose and list the strategies of authority, typology, transfer, and style in it that serve to fetch the political out of the sacred and the present out of the past. Level 2. In line with O'Leary's concern with topoi, I conducted a cluster analysis

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of the text (described below) to uncover the central themes in the texts as well as the association of words surrounding and defining those key theme words. These associations serve to expose arguments implicit in a text as well as basic identity viewpoints. I added to the cluster analysis a step called verb transformational analysis adapted from Michael Toolan's (1988) Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. While cluster analysis focuses on nouns, this approach adds a focus on action and being verbs and the worldview inherent in them. Level 3. Following O'Leary's approach of looking for the dramatistic elements in apocalyptic texts, I analyzed eight narrative elements in the texts, such as characters, setting, and the plot. These three approaches were intended to reveal the in-text rhetorical strategies that turn ancient scriptures into current political commentaries, thereby providing the material data needed for addressing (in chapters 8 and 9) the first research question, Through what rhetorical devices do Christian Zionists and Christian Identity believers, using the same passages of sacred apocalyptic scripture, construct diametrically opposing identity accounts of the Jew and of themselves? By comparing the results of these analyses, I sought to provide a prototypical characterization of the narrative structures and rhetorical strategies of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist texts. Through comparing and contrasting the similarities and differences that emerge between Identity and Zionists texts about the Jew and themselves in an apocalyptic framework, I was able to apply the theoretical ideas of hermeneutical epistemology that was developed in Chapter 5 to the empirical results. This made it possible (in chapters 8 and 9, but mainly in Chapter 10) to begin to address the second and more theoretically

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oriented research question, What is the relationship between grounding texts (in this case, end-of-time Bible passages), narratives, and knowledge claims of the two interpretive communities? Here the identity constructions of the self and the other through apocalyptic texts were considered within the larger theoretical positions outlined in the chapters on Taylor (the moral aspect of identity), Ricoeur (the self as emplotted in narrative time), Fish and Honneth et al. (the interpretive community), and Foucault and Said (power-knowledge).

The Texts Selected for Analysis The texts I used in my analysis came from narrative-based articles, including one doctrinal statement produced by each group, which were posted on the Internet from both Christian Zionist and Christian Identity sites. This combination of a series of articles and a doctrinal statement was designed to reveal the interpretive dynamics at work in these two groups in which (a) the reading of current news events is accomplished through the lens of ancient scriptural prophecy passages, and (b) the narrative logic inherent in the explication of scriptural apocalyptic and the development of prophetic warrants are performed. From the Christian Zionist camp, I selected articles posted on a Web site called Prophecy in the News (www.prophecyinthenews.com) and articles from two other Christian Zionist sites linked to this Web site. The Prophecy articles are also published in a monthly magazine produced by Prophecy in the News ministry. Founded by J. R. Church in 1979, the organization publishes a full array of books, audio and videotapes, sermons and software on prophecy from a Christian Zionist perspective. Having

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graduated from Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, a leading institution in futurist premillennial belief, J. R. Church is a recognized representative of the dispensationalist Christian Zionist movement. He has served as an ordained Baptist minister for more than 15 years, and during that time developed a love for eschatology, as his online bio states. The authors appearing in his magazine are the same ones seen and referred to in other Christian Zionist and prophecy venues of a dispensationalist conviction, indicating that within Christian Zionist circles the group is respected and known. Likewise, the articles from the other two Web sites are published within the same Christian Zionist perspective as the Prophecy in the News articles. They are taken from Friends of Israel (www.foigm.org) and the International Christian Zionist Congress (www.netvision.net.il/php/tehilah) Web sites. Drawing from three Web sites allowed me to examine the writing of a wider variety of authors who still hold to the same Christian Zionist convictions. Similarly, from the Christian Identity camp selected articles posted on the Mission to Israel Web site (www.missiontoisrael.org) as well as the Web sites of Christian Separatist (www.christianseparatist.org), Christian Research (http://sharpwebpage.com/ CR/TTP.html), the Jubilee Newspaper (www.jubilee-newspaper.com), and Independent History & Research (www.hoffman-info.com). These ministries hold to the same basic Christian Identity beliefs as the Mission to Israel ministry run by Ted R. Weiland of Scottsbluff, Nebraska. He is an preacher, evangelist, author, and leading thinker for the Christian Identity movement. Like the Christian Zionist J. R. Church, Weiland offers a plethora of books, tapes, sermons, and online resources on the topics closest to the

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ministry's mission. While the articles do not come from a magazine per se, the Web page, in effect, serves as an online magazine since each of the articles are usually displayed with a posted date (day/month/year) and read like a typical magazine article for a Christian audience. The articles I analyzed from each of the groups were posted during a three-year span, equaling 30 articles (about half from Christian Identity and half for Christian Zionists). They were drawn from those articles posted in 2000, 2001, and the first quarter of 2002years full of news stories and developments in the Middle East, the Jewish state of Israel, and the Temple Mount. In choosing to conduct this analysis on three years of articles and a doctrinal statement from each group, I sought to avoid two extremes: One extreme is undershooting the number of texts examined, thereby not analyzing a wide enough variety to capture the rhetorical dynamic at work in the communities authoring them; the second extreme is overshooting the number of texts examined and thus risking not going deep enough to capture the inside texture of the rhetoric. As the analysis progressed, this number of articles and the span of time covered seemed adequate to avoid the two extremes. In selecting the particular articles to be analyzed from the two groups, I employed two criteria: the article needs to (a) be at least implicitly apocalyptic in its orientation, (b) refer to the Jewish people, and (c) be representative of the thought of the respective sponsoring traditions (Christian Identity and Christian Zionist). This approach followed the distinction Norman Denzin (1989, p. 66) makes between research that is intended for documentation and verification (which would be redundant in this study since few people inside or outside of Identity and Zionist camps would dispute what the groups materially

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believe and teach) and research that is an attempt to make sense of a given social phenomenon (the research questions in this study ask how the identity constructions are performed through the rhetoric).

Cluster Criticism At this level, I employed cluster criticism as described by Foss, and I added to it a complementary approach called verb transformational analysis. This gave attention to the verbs around the noun clusters of the cluster analysis. Cluster criticism is especially suited to the research goals of this study since, as Sonja Foss (1996) writes, the critic using cluster analysis is able to locate the conflict or opposition in principles and images of the discourse (p. 104). Peter Marston and Bambi Rockwell say analysis of associational clusters in discourse may ... reveal 'the power of the text in constructing [the author's] identity, and possibly that of his [or her] audience (Marston & Rockwell, 1996, p. 72, with a partial quote from Oravec, 1989). In a chapter on Cluster Criticism, Foss (1996, pp. 63-67) describes the method of rhetorical criticism developed by Kenneth Burke. Cluster criticism, he wrote, builds on the insight that the work of every writer contains a set of implicit equations. He uses 'associated clusters.' And you may, by examining his work, find 'what goes with what' in these clusterswhat kinds of acts and images and personalities and situations go with his notions of heroism villainy, consolation, despair, etc. (quoted in Foss, 1996, p. 64). The method is designed to help the critic discover a rhetor's worldview. In this method,

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the meanings that key symbols have for the rhetor are discovered by charting the symbols that cluster around those key symbols in the rhetorical artifact (Foss, 1996, p. 64). Thus, the key terms or words, and the terms or words that cluster about them, are the unit of analysis used to answer the research questions of a study. Foss describes the three steps employed in analyzing a text using cluster criticism (to which I add the fourth step of verb analysis): 1. Identification of key terms. Up tobut no more thanfive or six terms that the critic considers central to the text. These key terms are key in terms of both the text being considered and the research interests of the critic. While there is therefore an element of subjective judgment in the selection of the key terms, this is partially controlled for by two criteria: the frequency of the term, and the intensity of the term. (p. 65). The second criterion, intensity, may not appear very often in a rhetor's work, but it may be extreme in degree, size, strength, or depth of feeling conveyed (p. 65). Elsewhere Foss says simply that Terms of high frequency are simply terms that frequently are repeated in the discourse, while terms of high intensity are those that are naturally charged or that are particularly significant in the works being studied (p. 104). Foss notes that often the terms selected as key terms are god and devil terms. God terms are ultimate terms that represent the ideal for the rhetorthe rhetor's view of what is best or perfect. Devil terms are the counterparts of god terms and represent the ultimate negative or evil for the rhetor. In the speeches of many politicians, for example, crime constitutes a devil term and prison constitutes a god term, with both probably functioning as key terms. (p. 65). 2. Charting of clusters. To chart the clusters around a key term, Foss says, each

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occurrence of a key term must be identified. Then terms connected to the key terms are identified: They simply may appear in close proximity to the term, or a conjunction such as and may connect a term to the key term. The rhetor also may suggest a cause-andeffect relationship between the key term and another term . . . (p. 66). Once identified, the context in which the clusters appear is also noted. A straightforward cluster term might be the word epidemic used in connection to the key word crime. 3. Discovery of patterns in the clusters. At this step of the process, Foss says, the critic attempts to find the patterns in the associations or linkages discovered in the previous charting of the clusters as a way of charting the worldview the rhetor has constructed (p. 66). The association of a cluster word like epidemic with the key word crime, for example, may mean that the meaning of the key word is modified by the cluster wordcrime is seen negatively as analogous to a disease that must be fought. 4. Analysis of verb transformation. This additional step of the cluster analysis, which is not prescribed by Foss, was used to examine key verb clauses surrounding the key character nouns in the cluster analysis. To do this, I adapted Toolan's (1988) method of narrative discourse transformations, which is part of a larger concept of transitivity analysis. Transitivity (or process) analysis is a simple semantic parsing. That is to say, the analyst is identifying the process or action that a clause expresses (p. 112). Toolan submits that the clause is the basic vehicle for representing patterns of experience (113). This approach assumes that the semantic processes and participants expressed by particular noun phrases and verb phrases in a clause are a representation of what we take to be going on in the world. By means of choices from among limited sets of processes

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and participant roles, expressed in the grammar of the clause and, in particular, its verb, we characterize our view of reality. (p. 112) Toolan (1988, pp. 233-235) describes verbal processes of doing and of being. A process of being verb, such as Emma is clever or Ted has a piano, involves a carrier (Emma) and an attribute (is beautiful). Process of doing verbs, by comparison, fall into four transformational categories. The first process of doing is a transitive clause. Toolan describes this as clause containing a verbal process done by one participant to another (p. 233). This clause follows an agent-active verb-object form, as in Police shoot Africans. This clause thus involves an agent (police) and an affected (Africans). A variation of this is the complex transitive clause where an attribute or condition of the affected is given, as in Police shoot Africans dead. The second is a passive clause. In this clause, the affected participant is brought to the focal subject position in the sequence, and the semantic agent can optionally be deleted (p. 234). An example would be the sentence Africans are shot dead by the police. The third is an intransitive clause and the fourth is a nominalized clause. Because few of the cluster nouns I analyzed contained nominalizations, this category was not reported; similarly, the instrument category of nouns was rarely found. The findings within given articles are categorized as agents or affecteds, carriers or attributes. In terms of the cluster analysis, I applied the transformational analysis of verbs only to those verbs connected to the key words determined in the cluster analysis, and of those, only those key words which are actors (or acted upon sentient beings). This is in keeping with the narrative-and-identity focus of this study, whereby attention is particularly given to that characters in the stories (Jews, Palestinians, Christians, etc.) and

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the actions contained in the verbs. Toolan (1988) gives the following rationale for giving this kind of attention to verbs in a textual analysis: The reward for carefully analyzing character portrayals in relation to this semantic grammar should be clear. We rapidly obtain a preliminary picture of who is agentive, who is affected, ... whether characters are doers or thinkers, whether instruments and forces dominated in the world represented, and so on. (p. 115). The analysis gives us a description of characters, their dispositions, ability to control things and infer causal connections, or their powerlessness (p. 115). Adding transformational analysis to cluster analysis is particularly useful in uncovering the action in the narratives that Ricoeur points to in his theory of emplotment, and it serves to complement the noun-centered cluster analysis with the dynamic setting those nouns and subjects have in the narratives. When finished with the three steps of cluster analysis (and with the additional fourth step of transitivity analysis, in this case), the critic, says Foss, lists the key structures built around the key words. These findings are then ready to be interpreted. For this study, the results of the cluster analysis are given and interpreted in Chapter 9.

Narrative Analysis Because cluster analysis is one way to begin to divulge the worldview of a text, it serves well as a first step toward a fuller narrative analysis, since narrative also is recognized to be a way of ordering and presenting a view of the world through a description of a situation involving characters, actions, and settings (Foss, 1996, p. 400). If cluster analysis is conducted with an eye toward the bricks that are used to construct

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the character of the story, a narrative analysis gives us a blueprint of the structure or frame of the story around which the bricks are laid. Narrative criticism gives us a way of discovering how the construction of a particular narrative directs the interpretation of a situation, and as a frame upon experience, [it] functions as an argument to view and understand the world in a particular way (p. 400). Foss says that narratives can be specifically examined for how they function as tools for empowerment or to build community as well as for what they reveal about an individual's or a culture's identityboth central concerns of this study (p. 401). Foss breaks narrative analysis into two steps: (a) a comprehensive examination of the narrative's elements or basic features, and (b) the selection of elements that are particularly significant in terms of the research question. For this study, the latter will focus on selecting the elements dealing with identity and power constructions inherent in the narratives. The formerthe comprehensive examination of the elements of the narrativewill mean using a typical checklist of narrative elements (characters, setting, etc.) most narrative scholars (especially after Kenneth Burke) use when assessing a narrative's structure. Foss (1996, pp. 402-405) provides a list of questions the critic can ask for each of these elements. Below is a sampling of those questions: Setting. What is the setting or scene of the narrative? How does the setting relate to the plot and characters?

Characters. Who are the main characters of the narrative? Are some of the characters non-human or inanimate phenomena?

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What are the physical and mental traits of the characters? Are they flat or round?

Narrator. What kind of authority does the narrator claim? What is the point of view adopted by the narrator? Is the narrator omniscient, knowing the outcome of every event and the nature of every character and setting, thus telling the story from a god-like vantage point? Is the narrator allowed to range into the past or future or restricted to the contemporary story moment? Does the narrator engage in tie and space summarizing, a process in which vast panoramas and large groups of people are characterized in certain ways as seen from the narrator's exalted position? Does the narrator go beyond describing to engage in commentary such as interpretation and evaluation? Does the narrator engage in metanarrative discourse, or discourse in which the narrative itself is discussed and elements in the narrative are commented on explicitlysuch as definitions of terms or translations of foreign words? How reliable is the narrator? in unreliable narration, the narrator's account is at odds with the audience's inferences and judgments about the story. Events. What are the major and minor eventsplot lines, happenings, or changes of statein the narrative?

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Are [the events] characterized by particular qualities? How fully are the [major events] developed by [the minor events]? Are the events active (expressing action) or stative (expressing a state or condition)?

Temporal relations. What are the temporal relationships among the events recounted in the narrative? Do events occur in a brief period of time or over many years? Is the telling of the story subsequent to what it tellsa predictive or prophetic form? 6. Causal relations. What cause-and-effect relationships are established in the narrative? Are events caused largely by human action, accident, or forces of nature? 7. Audience. Who is the audience or the person or people to whom the narrative is addressed? Is the audience a participant in the events recounted? What are the signs of the audience in the narrative? What can be inferred about the audience's attitudes, knowledge, or situation from the narrative? 8. Theme.

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 What is the major theme of the narrative? A theme is a general idea illustrated by the narrative; it is what a narrative means or is about and points to the significance and meaning of the action. How is the theme articulated in the narrativethrough the depiction of setting, characters, or events or through the narrator's commentary? Applied to my analysis of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist articles, in any given text some of these eight elements may not be present or particularly important. But as the analysis of the 30 articles and the doctrinal statements was completed, a fuller accounting for each of these eight elements emerged, making the larger story being told more comprehensible. These results are reported and interpreted in Chapter 8. The task in the remaining chapters of this study (chapters 7-9) is to integrate the text-level analyses of the credibility strategies, the clustering strategies, and the narrative strategies into an account that makes sense of them in terms of the identities the two groups create for themselves and the Jewish people through those narratives.

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PART III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Chapter Seven Comparable Interpretive Strategies In this chapter I report the findings of the Level 1 credibility analysis of the articles. As noted in Chapter 5, the political/social action that apocalyptic rhetoric urges on its audience results from the rhetor claiming special insight into the original apocalyptic text for interpreting present and future events (and, I argue, identities). This is accomplished through the use of four strategies that build the author's credibility with the reader (Brummett, 1991; see Chapter 5): authority, typology, transfer, and esoteric insight. I present the findings and then compare and contrast Christian Identity and Christian Zionist use of rhetoric in those four categories below.

Strategies of Authority Apocalyptic rhetors must perform the paradoxical role of both showing that Scriptures secret is plain, but that it also stands in need of being explained by those in their privileged position (Brummett, 1991, p. 102). My analysis of authority strategies looked both for simple phrasing that served to establish the authors authority as well as more sophisticated rhetorical actions that furthered the authority of the article by meeting particular objections or challenges facing both the author and the assumed audience in their apocalyptic worldviews. CHRISTIAN IDENTITY AUTHORITY STRATEGIES Satire and humor. This unanticipated authority strategy in Christian Identity articles was not present in the Christian Zionist articles, and neither Brummett nor

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OLeary discuss it in their survey of apocalyptic rhetoric. An example of it is the article facetiously titled America Should Fight Minorities and Aliens the Way Israel Does. The first sentence reads: As a long-time admirer of the Jewish people and supporter of the state of Israel, I have always taken the Jews to be a pattern for my own life and my relationship with the Almighty. Given the patent distaste of the author and readership for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, this is nothing less than a biting parody of the dispensationist eschatology of other Christians, especially Christian Zionists. Buttressing the humor is the byline for the articleRev. Bob Singleton, Pastor and Patriot. It is accompanied by a line-art portrait of Singleton with a smirk on his lips and a pipe hanging loosely from one corner of his lips. In terms of authority, the humor of the article builds camaraderie between author and reader. It also serves to establish the absurdity of dispensationalist/Christian Zionist eschatology, thereby reinforcing the soundness of the Identity postmillennial and whitesupremacist theology. The article, for example, jabs fun at Christian Zionist teaching in a statement that urges readers to learn from the sacred policies of Gods Chosen People. The irony in the statement would not be lost on the reader given the central claim of Christian Identity doctrine that the true identity of the Chosen People are the white European descendants, not Jews, who are seen as imposters to the claim. Even so otherwise unremarkable a phrase as As I watch prophetic events unfold in Israel serves to parody the language of Christian Zionist and other dispensationalist prophecy watchers. This light approach was also found in other Christian Identity articles, even ones not of a satirical genre. A number of articles contained wordplays (some of which are

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also examples of the strategy of transfer), such as: lowercasing the word jews; reconfiguring Judeo-Christianity into jewdo-churchianity; and transmuting King James Version into the Queen James Version of the Bible. The use of satire and humor in these articles, I propose, helps bolster authority by disarming the reader and by belittling potentially threatening counter-positions. The humor also serves to inoculate the reader against the positions of counter eschatologies by naming and explaining those eschatologies, thereby preemptively discrediting them. The lubricant of humor helps the job of establishing authority go over more smoothly. Personal tone. In an article which addresses an internal dispute between Christian Identity believersbetween the seedline versus the covenant view of the Jews (asserted) demonic origins in Cain versus Hamthe author gives his own position as a covenanter but says he can understand the seedline position even as he argues against it. Similarly, another author shows a measure of self-deprecation by ending his essay with I could be wrong, and this is, after all, my point-of-view and opinion, but I seriously doubt it. A third author, quoting the Proverbs 22:28Remove not the ancient landmark which your fathers have setpairs the verse with a proverb the author has himself penned: If I believe in diversity, I must then preserve it! The only people actually practicing diversity are those who practice racial apartheid!!! A fourth author tells readers who have been accused of being part of hate groups to reply by saying they are lovers of humanity who only speak Gods judgments, not their own, on the other ethnic groups. The same author exhorts his reader using direct address: Wake up, white Christian! The personal tone of these self-divulging, even self-doubting, comments alongside the consistent use of we language in the articles allows the reader to feel a

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level of intimacy and oneness with the author that (the author hopes) increases the trust of the readers for the author. A particularly clear use of this is found in the article Smash White Supremacy by Tom Blair. Written in the first-person, he creates an us-versusthem identification with the reader by directly addressing the reader and asking how many of them make over $100,000, the implication being that Jubilee readers are like the authorjust common peopleand not like the white elite who run the nations top newspapers and corporations. He writes that his readers are soldiers, park rangers, clerks, farmers, mechanics, insurance salesmen, prisoners, shopkeepers, hardworking common folk. He then cites Obadiah in the Old Testament for support of the position he is taking that those elite, ruling whites of the American establishment are really Edomite Jews. His conclusion is also framed in personal terms: America is not ruled by white, European Christians. . . . If it were, we would not be openly discriminated against in the courts. The implied and stated first-person plural as well as the self-revelation of the author together intimate the reader to the writers point of view and thus helps establish the authority of the speakers arguments and stories. Appeal to history. Not only were historical accounts given to directly support the points the authors were making but also competing interpretations of those accounts were confronted. In one such appeal, the author, V. Herrel, quotes a passage from the ancient Roman historian Tacitus to support the idea that Christians burned Rome down because it was evil, then discounts Christian apologetic interpretations which have tried to render this passage in such a way as to not make the Christians look like they admitted to burning the city down. Herrel's argument is against the more common Christian position that Christians were nonviolenta reading that the Christian Identity author sees no need

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to make since a militant Christianity is the true form of following after Christ. In the same article, Herrel blends biblical and extrabiblical accounts to further his support of the militant church. He answers, for example, the objection that Jesus told his disciples not to fight when Jesus said his government is not now of this world otherwise my disciples would fightby noting that Jesus qualifies his statement with the word now: Now my Government is not of this world. The author concludes: His usage of the word now clearly shows the temporal nature of all that He has said.we see that the reason that His government was not in this world was because all the prophecies regarding Him had not been fulfilled. His Government was not in this world in that age, but in the new age His Government would be in this world. After the day of Pentecost, and certainly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, His government is in this world. Hence, we see the importance of a true understanding of what the Bible teaches regarding end time things. Many people are shocked to learn that they are now and have been in the everlasting Christian age for 2000 years. A common historical approach was to quote the enemy (Jews themselves) to support a reading of the origins of the Jewish people. In the article Could You Be an Israelite and Not Know It, Ted Weiland writes: Indeed, Alfred Lilienthal (a Jew) understood what most Celto-Saxons do not: Many Christians have much more HebrewIsraelite blood in their veins than do their modern Jewish neighbors. A different Identity enemythe Christian Zionist and dispensationalist Christians in generalare discounted in a brief history the author gives of John Darby, the founder in the 1830s

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of the pernicious doctrine of dispensationalism, and of the infiltration of the Protestant churches in earnest in 1909 with the publication of C.I. Scofields Dispensationist Bible. From this the author concludes that dispensationalism is a modern aberration For at least 1,830 years the followers of Jesus rejected and opposed this thinking. A variation of this was to quote the anti-Semitic comments of respected church figures in the history of the church, such as Martin Luther of the Reformation era or the early church father John Chrysostom, as in this quote of Chrysostom found in the article The Talmudic Jew Identified: The synagogue is worse than a brothel it is the den of scoundrels and the repair of wild beasts . . . the cavern of devils a criminal assembly of Jews .. . a place of meetings for the assassins of Christ. Historical support is also found in the words of Jesus in John 8:39-47: If you were the children of Abraham [but] you are of your father, the Diabolical One. The Christian Identity author comments about this verse: This is one of the most important passages in all the Bible. Jesus speaks here to the Edomite Jews who claimed to be Israelites, who claimed to be descendants of Abraham, as do mongrel Jews today. The right biblical hermeneutics. What follows is a typical statement from one article but echoed in many of the other articles: Now, what we have stated in this article are clear, explicit facts. For anyone who calls himself a Bible believer or a Christian to deny these Biblical facts is to blaspheme the Holy Spirit of God. For the Holy Spirit of God is also the Sprit of Truth, and no lie is of the truth. This appeal to the perspicuity of the Bible is usually accompanied by the implicit claim that the author is only drawing out the inherent meaning of the text and making it relevant to the discussion at hand, whatever that may be. As the quote above shows, this appeal to the Bible sanctions the

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authority of the author as emanating from nothing less than God. This position, however, is more nuanced in other articles where the author sees the need to explain how the exegesis or interpretation of Scripture passages needs to be carried out correctly to obtain a right understanding of the holy text. Sometimes hermeneutical principles were carefully listed. One author writes: While some people attempt to spiritualize this passage of Scripture to fit their preconceived ideas, the Israelites cannot be spiritualized in this verse for three reasons. The reasons given are the context of the verse in the New Testament, the way the verse itself refers to an Old Testament passage, and the witness of a second New Testament passage to the same question of Israels identity. One article touting a new translation of the New Testament by Christian Identity translators delves into the question of hermeneutics. Called the Anointed Standard Translation, or AST, it lists both the vices of previous translationsespecially those that employ conceptual translation techniquesand the virtues of the new AST translation: The danger of a conceptual translation is that it reflects the understanding and therefore the theology of the translator, which more often than not, is wrong. Thus, the AST is a literal translation. Theology and personal understanding have no influence whatsoever on the translation. One last example of the hermeneutical principles appealed to by Identity authors: We teach that the Word of God must be obeyed and believed objectively, without imposing ones personal feelings or operating in feelings. In other words, our views of Christ-hating, Talmudic Jews or humanists or homosexuals are not our personal pointsof-view, or at least, they were not our personal points-of-view before we became

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indwelled by the Living Holy Spirit of Truth. We . . . simply repeat the just judgments of a just and true Living God. * Stylistic phrasing and typography. The Bible was appealed to in various ways as the source of the writers authority. In the phrase The WORD plainly declaresthe capitalization of WORD and the adverb plainly shows the appeal of the author to the presupposition that the Bible is clear and plain in its authority over believers and that it should be obeyed. The use of the tetragrammaton YHVH for Gods name (Jehovah/Yahweh) in some of the articles gave the articlesand thereby the authorsan air of authority and reverence. One article repeatedly used the phrases It is the truth that, The truth is that, and The fact is that. The Christian Identity doctrinal statement in particular made use of stylistic phrasing to imbue the statements with an air of divine authority. Each of the creeds began with an uppercase WE BELIEVE. The doctrinal statement also contains whole chains of references (e.g., Psalm 82:6; Hos. 1:10; Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6; I John 3:1-2 in support of who Adam was), which are paired with biblical terminology and allusions to such an extent that some phrasings are direct usages of biblical ones (e.g., the land between two seas, King of king over the house of Jacob forever, his elect,). The authority found in the Scriptural saying of Jesus and the Old Testament prophetsThus saith the Lord was paralleled in the authors' sentence constructions in such a way as to lend the aura of sacred authority to them. A statement in an article on the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centers in New York CityWe have been told by the government . . . butresembles Jesus formulation in the New Testament Gospels of It has been said . . . but I say unto you...

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Fulfilled predictions. In an article titled Irvin Rubin Arrested, the author triumphantly points out three times that immediately after September 11, 2001, he had correctly predicted that the U.S. government would follow a plan of slowly leaking information about what really happened in the attacks on the World Trade Center, particularly that the government had some knowledge about it before 9/11 and that ultimately that Jews had orchestrated it. Another writer, who first notes that Yahweh's Word is always faithfully fulfilled to support his citation of scripture passages, then points out that his earlier prophecy-based prediction had come true: I forewarned of the potential possibility of such a conflict or war with Arab nations . . . in December 2000. These instances of prediction were relatively rare in the Christian Identity articles, however, especially when compared to Christian Zionist discourse. And even when prediction was used, the emphasis was more on the correctness of the insightful and discerning prediction than on having simply interpreted a divinely inspired prophecy from Scripture. At least one of the writers, Identity pastor Mike Rose, described himself eschatologically as a theist preterist, that is, one who sees the main of Scriptural prophecy fulfilled first in the current day of the writer of Scripture and only secondarily in the centuries that followand never as only a prediction of a single future cataclysmic event, with the exception of Christs return. CHRISTIAN ZIONIST AUTHORITY STRATEGIES Personal tone. A common pattern emerged in the Christian Zionist articles that almost seemed a stylistic convention. The article would start in the objective third-person voice and stay in that mode until the very last paragraph or sentences, at which point it would address the reader as you. Often, these formulaic endings had an evangelistic

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thrust to them. For example, in Aftermath of the Rapture, a detailed description is given of the time of tribulation that will follow the rapture of the saints from earth. Only in the last four sentences of the article is direct address used: If you are a believer, you will not be around for the 'aftermath of the Rapture.' If you are not a believer in Jesus as Messiah and Savior, you need to become one. You can come to Him now. He is waiting. Other times the direct address is used to comfort or exhort the Christian believer, as in this ending to the otherwise third-person voice of History by the Wishing Well: As Christians, we must be discerning and not allow the media or politicians to sway our commitment to Israel and the Jewish people despite the constant, dishonest, and manipulative depiction of Israel as the persecutors of helpless Arabs. So in comparison to Identity use of the personal tone to establish authority, the Christian Zionist rhetoric kept an objective tone; only at the end of the reporting and exegeting of those news stories was any form of intimation undertaken by the authors. The sense of camaraderie in Identity articles was missing. The use of personal tone was used to issue direct calls for action (though this action was more spiritualized than material). In this sense, the use of personal tone in Christian Zionist writing was less a strategy of authority and more an assumption of authority in the vein of a preacher or evangelist who speaks for God in calling his listeners to action. Appeal to history. This was used, but with less emphasis and vigor than is found in Christian Identity discourse, likely because Christian Zionist use of history for establishing credibility was preempted by a stronger emphasis on the authority of Scripture for reading current-day events (thus jumping over the history between the Scriptures and the modern era). Thus, the authority of the author rested less on proving

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historical precedence than in showing that biblical prophecies were being fulfilled in the present and that the author was able to discern that fulfillment. Nevertheless, there were exceptions. For example, William Varner, in discussing the possibility of a Palestinian state being formed, gives an account of the history of the region of Palestine to show that, even for Arabs, it was a backwater of the larger Ottoman Empire and that there were comparatively few Arabs living in the area. He then quotes Mark Twain's description of his visit there in 1867We never saw a human being on the whole route from Joppa to Jerusalemto support his point that the Jews inhabited a largely uninhabited land in 1948. Another article similarly focuses on the history of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Like some of the Christian Identity articles, it too quotes outside sources, including Jewish ones, to prove its point that the mount belongs to the Jews. These included Gershom Gorenberg in The New Republic and the ancient historian Josephus. Archaeological evidence is also adduced. But the historical summaries even in these cases quickly jump from the base of Bible texts to current events. One similarity to the Christian Identity citation of the enemy (for them, the Jews) to support their own arguments is the quoting of Yasser Arafat (an enemy of Christian Zionists) to use his own words against him (as being against the sharing of the Temple Mount, for example). The right biblical hermeneutics. The underlying principle in Christian Zionist discourse is that the Bible is the source of future knowledge and as such should be approached for its prophetic message. The first paragraph of an article on Israel begins: March 2001: As the world watches, Israel is being steadily and methodically torn apart. If the peace process that began in Oslo had

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continued in the direction taken by Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton, it would have been only a very short time until modern Israel would have ceased to exist. To the contemporary Bible-believing Christian who has watched Israel since 1948, such an outcome is simply unthinkable. Should it actually happen, our current conceptions about Bible prophecy would, of course, have to be radically reconsidered. This begins a detailed discussion of what certain biblical references to the regathering of the children of Israel mean. In terms of authority, this approach serves to problematize a common reading of prophecy to which the author then provides the answer by examining Scripture more closely for overlooked facts bearing on the subject. The prophecy-centered approach to biblical hermeneutics upon which the authors rest their authority to interpret current events is also found in phrases such as the Bible reveals and in grounding prophetic assertions, such as Jerusalem being the physical center of the world, in the authority of the Revealed Word of God. Stylistic phrasing and typography. As in Christian Identity discourse, Christian Zionist phraseology exhibits a creative tension between humbleness and certainty. The wording of the doctrinal statement I examined is formal and declarative of truth. It describes itself as the Proclamation of the Third International Christian Zionist Congress. Held in Jerusalem, it was attended by approximately 1,500 delegates and other participants representing over 40 countries. In addition to its use of formal language (We, the delegates to the Third), it invokes as its basis God and the Bible (Confident in the favour of God upon our endeavors...; After careful consideration and

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prayer, we .. declare and decree; We are persuaded by the clear unction of our God to express ...; the Bible is the inspired Word of God and is the source of our motivation as Zionists.). In the less formal articles I examined, however, the rhetorical operation of both showing personal humility and biblical certainty was found in passages such as this one from Is This the end of the World?, written following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The author first paints an apocalyptic pictureIt is only right that the United States find the perpetrators and bring them to justicethen uses a measure of modesty to admit, Now we cannot say with certainty that those events will occur as a result of our nations resolve to justice. The next sentence, however, starts with a but: But here has never been another time in the history of the world when such a catastrophic scenario was more possible than today. More often, however, it is the voice of confidence that prevails, as in these last sentences of an article: The first regathering is complete. Soon, Israel will be tested. Then, and only then, can the second and final regathering take place. Fulfilled prophecy. If Christian Identity uses the idiom of prediction, Christian Zionist uses the idiom of prophecy. Even when the word prediction is used its connotation is that of foretelling from a privileged knowledge basis. The Word of God is declared the basis of this prophecy, and thus it serves as the authority of the writer of the article as a prophecy expert. Because prophecy claims saturate the Christian Zionist articles, I will give a few examples that are typical of such claims to authority. J. R. Churchs article on Trouble Over the Temple Mount uses the phrase We have been predicting . . . for several months to report the fulfillment of a prediction he

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had earlier made about a coming Palestinian uprising. A few sentences later we read this self-questioning interlude: We wondered how the Jews would ever be able to establish Temple liturgy if . This wording conveys the appearance of objectivity in that the author was faced with a Scriptural fact (in this case, that the Temple would be rebuilt) but at the same time the authors could not see how it would happen until a development in world politics had occurred (the invitation for the United Nations to take over the Temple Mount). This political development suddenly brought the reasonableness of the Bible's claim to light. This illustrates the difference between forecasting based on perceptive sociopsychological insight into the course of human events alone and foreseeing based on revealed, infallible truth. This distinction comes through in another article titled Rabbis Declare the Time of Jacobs Trouble. Several times in this article the author presents the opinion of Jewish religious leaders but then quickly adds that we think they don't quite have it right. An example is seen in this reasoning: All 27 of the leading Orthodox and Hassidic sages agreed to the declaration that begins, 'It is a troubled time for Ya'acov, but he will be saved.' It is our belief that 'Jacob's trouble' lies yet in the future. We have not entered the time of the biblical 'Tribulation Period' yet, though it may not be far off. This difference between the Jewish and the Christian understanding of the Jacobs trouble illustrates a still further hermeneutical distinction made by the Christian Zionist expositor: The Old Testament passages need to be read through the New Testament ones (such as those that speak to a period of Tribulation) which bear on the topic at hand; only then can current events and their timeline be understood correctly. From this vantage of complete revelation as given in the New Testament, the Christian

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Identity author writes that the Jews equate the battle with what John referred to as Armageddon. However, we see the two wars as separated by the seven-year Tribulation Period. One last example from the same article is seen in the reasoning of the author based on a belief in the revelation of truth in the Bible. Since Jeremiah says both Israel and Judea will return to the land, and since only Judah has, the Scripture passage is clearly prophecy of a future event in which Israel will return also. If this passage referred to the Babylonian captivity, God would not have included Israel along with Judah. Later the author notes as evidence the repatriation of the black Jews of Ethiopia (1948-1991). A group from Manassah has been found in India. Another Tribe was recently located in Africa. DNA tests are helping to establish the link between this generation and the past. Specific knowledge of current events. This characteristic, which I did not list for Christian Identity, was not totally absent in the Christian Identity articles. But even when present in Christian Identity rhetoric, it doesn't serve the prominent role that it does in Christian Zionist rhetoric. The display of specific knowledge was often about recent negotiations over Palestine, such as Baraks plan to share sovereignty of the Temple Mount with the Palestinians in an article by Elwood McQuaid, or quoting Hillary Clinton as First Lady: She told a gathering of Arab and Jewish youth, I think it will be in the long-term interests of the Middle East for Palestine to be a state In another article, the author gives very detailed information about where exactly excavations are occurring in the Solomons Stables area of the Temple Mount and of the size of the hole (9 yards deep and 15 yards wide). The author names and quotes both Palestinian and Jewish civic

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leaders, including mayors, architects, and ministry officials. This specific and detailed insight into the characters and places of current news events lends credibility to the authors as they discuss how those events fit into the apocalyptic worldview they are building for their readers.

Strategies of Typology Typology is a particularly important way in which rhetors use the grounding of sacred texts to make political and social pronouncements (Brummett, 1991, p. 106). It is a way of seeing a grounding text as being about the present and future, since one knows how to identify the linkages between the grounding text and the present, and if the grounding has prophetic power, then one cannot only predict the future, but also understand the grand plan underlying history (Brummett, p. xx). My analyses showed that both Christian Zionist and Christian Zionist authors used this approach to gain credibility and to forward their views of the current situation. One difference became clear as the analyses progressed. While not exclusively the case for either group, in general the Christian Zionist typology served to defend the time-frame of their dispensationalist eschatology, while the Christian Identity typology was used to support its definition of others, especially Jews. CHRISTIAN IDENTITY TYPOLOGY STRATEGIES Disclosing true identities. Typologies from both the Old and New Testaments are used to disclose the identities of Jews, Muslims, Judeo Christians, Christian Identity, and the antichrists. Jews are identified in many of the articles. In one, Genesis 10:3 is used to show

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how the Ashkenazi jews derive from Ashkenaz, the great grandson of Noah. In Smash White Supremacy, author Tom Blair affirms that there are white supremacists, but through an inversion of identities he shows those white supremacists to be elite white Jews who are running America (hence, not really white at all). About these white supremacists, the Jews, he says The Bible documents their evil in the book of Obadiah, calling them Edomites. He then quotes from Obadiah to say that they will eventually be destroyed and their their worst sin was their betrayal of the people among whom they lived. This he applies to present-day Edomites (Jews) who are said to be corrupting pure white America but will one day be defeated when we throw off the yoke of the white supremacists and secure the existence of our people and a future for our children. The words of Jesus in John 8 were quoted by several authors (here in the Anointed Standard Version translation of Christian Identity authorization): If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me . . . If God were your father, you would love Me Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to hear My Word. You are of your father the Diabolical One, and the lusts of your father you wish to do. That one was a murderer from the beginning, and he has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own, because he is a liar, and the father of it. . . . He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear Me, because you are not of God. The article in which this quote is given in full explains it this way: This is one of the most important passages in all the Bible. Jesus speaks here to the Edomite Jews who

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claimed to be Israelites, who claimed to be descendants of Abraham, as do mongrel Jews today. Other typologies concerning the identity of the Jew were less extended and captured in phrases such as, the struggle between Jacob and Esau which began in Rebekah's womb endures today in their modern-day descendents. Muslims are identified through typology in the article Exposing the Big Lie About Muslims and Christians. Citing John 14:16, which mentions the Holy Spirit, the author says that Moslems historically have identified Mohammed with the promised Paracletes (Holy Spirit), and that today they thus venerate Jesus. This positive and approving identity of the Muslim through typology contrasts sharply with the negative identity of Muslims in Christian Zionist literature. Judeo Christiansthat is, Christians who are not Identity believers and especially those who see Jews as Children of Israelare also type cast using Scripture. An article addressing the doxological differences within Christian Identity circles explains that more important than these internal differences is the threat of outside enemies of the Faith such as the Beast evil empire and the False Prophet(s) of the Babylonian Mystery Religion of jewdo-churchianity. It is adversity and outsiders which keep both doxologies together, just as the leading mutually hostile tribes of Judah and Ephraim stuck together until the LORD split the Israelites apart in the days of Rehoboam. Another author cites Matthew 18:6 (which says that anyone who causes a Christian to sin should have a millstone tied about their necks) to condemn Christian Zionists in their support of Jews. The identity of Christian Identity believers themselves (and other white Christians who are ignorant of their true identity) is secured through typology, as well. In the Christian Identity doctrinal statement, one states: WE BELIEVE that the United States

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of America fulfills the prophesied (II Sam. 7:10; Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 36:24) place where Christians from all the tribes of Israel would be regathered. Aside from its direct scriptural references to regathering, it goes on to note that It is here in this blessed land (Deut. 15:6, 28:11, 33:13-17) that God made a small one a strong nation (Isa. 60:22). Isaiah 60:22 reads, A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the Lord will hasten it in his time. The special prophetic insight Identity theologians believe they possess gives them the ability to link the grounded original apocalyptic idea of a small nation becoming a strong nation and apply it to the history of the United States with its growth to global dominance from humble immigrant origins. The last group identified through typology in the Christian Identity articles are the antichrists. Jewish antichrists attempt to destroy not only the Christ child (but they couldnt keep HIM down!), but His disciples in the earth. If you are a Christian and a white person, YOU are the target of the enemies propaganda. Just as the Resurrection meant Christ was not conquered by the antichrists, so too today Christian Identity believers will be victorious over modern-day antichrists. Another author, seeing the Old Testament priests as types of white Christians today, states, We are intended to be a kingdom of priests. Ted Weiland, in the article Could You Be an Israelite and Not Know It?, employs an extensive typology to support the white identity of Israel today through a listing of 25 Scripture citations that are adduced to find five national aspects, five geographical aspects, and five spiritual aspects of the identity of true Israel in the Bible. These all point to the fact that white European Christians are the true Israelites today. I will describe this more fully in Chapter 8. One difference between Christian Zionist and Identity discourse is the Zionist

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concept of Antichrist (singular) in contrast to that of antichrists (plural) in Identity discourse. Given their postmillennial eschatology, Identity believers do not see one antichrist at one point in history, but many antichrists from the early church age to the end of time. The antichrists, one article states, are all enemies of Godhomosexuals, gypsies, white people who hate God, Identity groups that hate God and are judaized, and white Judeo churches that hate God and a re-judaized or heathenized. Another article with the title England Swings names the antichrists as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Queen of England. In still another article, Jews are identified as antichrist because of 1 John 2:22. The author writes: The WORD plainly declares, 'Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus (Yahsua) is the Christ (Messiah) He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.' Ignoring these clear instructions, most nominal Christians presumptuously embrace, support and comfort those who say they are Jews, and thus commit treason against the Kingdom of our Father in heaven. Justifying action. The article The Army of Christ quotes Deuteronomy 7:1-6 (LXX), which includes these words to justify violence (i.e., the annihilation of Jews): The Master your God shall bring you to the land into which you go in order to possess it and shall remove great nations from before you neither shall you have mercy for them. . . . For you are a separated people to the Master your God and the Master your God chose you to be to Him a peculiar people beyond all the nations that are upon the face of the earth. The author, continuing with a double typology from the Old Testament to the New Testament and on to today, writes:

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Just as the Army of Israel was given specific commands to kill certain people, so too in the New Testament, a specific injunction is given, for in Luke 19:27, we read (AST): But these enemies of mine, those not desiring me to reign over them, bring here, and execute them before me. The word translated execute is the Greek word katasphazo, which Lampes A Patristic Greek Lexicon defines as, slaughter and Liddell, Scott, Jones Greek-English Lexicon concurs with this definition. Martin Luther, in his German translation of the New Testament, chose to translate this word with the German word meaning to strangle. The root of the word, spazo, is defined by Liddell and Scott as: to slay, slaughter, properly by cutting the throat, to slaughter, to slay , kill. The King James Version uses the word slay. In any translation, however, the connotation and meaning is the same. Katasphazo is the same Greek word used in Herodotus 6:23, where the translation of A.D. Godley reads: three hundred, that were their chief men, he delivered to the Samians to be put to death. Another action supported through Scripture is segregating the races. For example, the injunction to not join together that which God has put asunder (a biblical saying usually used by ministers at weddings against divorce) is used to support racial segregation. One author quotes Deuteronomy 32:7-9: Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you, when the Most High divided the nations, when He separated mankind, He set the boundaries of the people according to the number of the

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children of Israel. For YHVHs portion is His people; Jacob is the lot of His inheritance. The idea that the Children of Israel (whites) should be separate and not intermarry with nonwhites, says the author, is a foreign concept to the masses in the year 2001. A third actionthat of not forgiving the Jewsis justified through the discrediting of a common Christian typology: that of forgiving. Using this unusual approach, the author implies that whatever its merits, forgiveness does not apply to Jews since on the cross Jesus didn't forgive those who crucified him (the Jews, according to Christian Identity theology). The author asserts that the common misuse of this typology (Jesus forgave those who crucified him, and we should forgive those who persecute us) results from an incorrect translation in the King James Version of the Bible. He explains: If you were reading the KJV, or any other translation for that matter, and you came to Luke 23:34 and read the words, 'And Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. you would not be aware that the translators of your particular version decided to put that sentence in there even though it is not contained in any Greek manuscript older than the fifth century. That's right: even though it was not in the New Testament for the first four hundred years of its existence, it has been kept in our translations. Why is this? Because most Bible translators, from the time of the KJV to the present day, believe that if some interpolation has crept into the texts of the Greek New Testament through 2000 years of copying, then it must be kept because it is a 'divinely inspired interpolation.'

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CHRISTIAN ZIONIST TYPOLOGY STRATEGIES Establishing rightful possession. Typology is used to prove the rightful possession of the land of Palestine and the Temple Mount as the Jews'. The biblical passage where King David buys Mount Moriah for 600 shekels of gold in 1 Chronicles 21:24-26 is used typologically to establish that the Temple Mount (believed to be on ancient Mount Moriah) rightfully belongs to the Jews. The same author adds that the conflict between the Palestinian Arabs and the Jews of Israel is not merely a confrontation between two groups of people but spiritual warfare. In an article by William Varner on the question of a Palestinian state, history and typology are combined to do the job: In 135 A.D. the Romans . . . changed the name of Judea to Palestine and made it part of the larger province they called Syria. This act was an effort to eliminate all connection between the Jewish people and their ancient homeland. The name Palestine was actually the Latin word Palestina for Philistine. This name recalled that ancient coastal sea people who had harassed the Israelites so much in the Books of Judges and 1 and 2 Samuel. The parallel identities are obvious to the reader: Just as the ancient coastal sea people called the Philistines harassed the Israelites of old, so too today the Palestinianstheir namesakeharass modern Israel. Naming prophetic identities. This category is similar to the disclosing identities category of typology in Christian Identity discourse. The emphasis in Identity discourse, however, is on disclosing or revealing hidden identities, while the Zionist typology goes beyond simple historical identities and moves into prophesied identitiesthat is, from the often obtuse and mystical Scriptural identities (the Antichrist, for example) to the

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correctly discerned contemporary organizations, states, and even persons prefigured in the typology (Clinton is the Antichrist). Typologies in the article Israel: A House Divided include a house divided (religious versus nonreligious Jews in Israel), a second regathering (those Jews still in diaspora will return in the near future), the glory of Jacob shall be made thin (Israel will be attacked and almost lose its statehood and existence, but not quite), a period of unbelief (when the secular Jews win out in the Kenesset), Ezekiels Northern Confederacy (Russia with Iraq and Syria), and the government of the Antichrist (the European Union). All are supported typologically from Scripture passages, many of them from Isaiah and Ezekiel. The author of the article also sees a type in the biblical phrase passing under the rod as a metaphor for the judgment God will issue upon unbelieving Jews that will finally bring a remnant of faithful Jews to repentance. Another article addresses the coming economic problems about which the Bible is not silent, seen, for one example, in Revelation 6, where a measure of wheat for a denarius will be commonplace. Alan Greenspan is mentioned, as are the stock markets and the mark of the beast (Revelation 13). In Trouble Over the Temple Mount, J. R. Church draws these typological conclusions: The current conflict may be the predicted prelude to the battle of Gog and Magog; Gentile may refer to a plurality of nations, meaning the United Nations. Gog leads an invasion force against Israel, which may involve Syria and bring about the Russian invasion; and the profane place described by Ezekiel is the Mosque of Omar today. Establishing the prophetic timeline. This statement from the Christian Zionist doctrinal statement is typical of this use of typology: The modern Ingathering of the

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Jewish People to Ertz Israel and the rebirth of the nation of Israel are in fulfillment of biblical prophecies, as written in both the Old and New Testaments. Another author, citing Isaiah 57:1, in which the righteous are said to be taken away but no man layeth it to heart, writes, I have long felt that the Rapture could occur under the cover of a nuclear war. The author then undertakes an exposition of the Hebrew word for taketh away and concludes it means to cause to disappear and gathered into a place of safety. In an article Aftermath of the Rapture, references to Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zecharia in the Old Testament, and Matthew, Acts, 1 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Ephesians, and Revelation in the New Testament are used to explain the dispensation of the Church (today) and the Rapture to come. For example, the Rapture is adduced in the following sentence from two separate Scripture references: In 'the twinkling of an eye' (1 Cor. 15:52), true believers will disappear to meet the Lord in the air (1 The. 4:16-17), ending forever the Church Age. Another author sees a time of warfare among the nations and a one-world government: Scripture teaches that the countries of Europe will consolidate around a world leader (Dan. 7:7-8, 23-24; 9:27; 11:36-39). In an article titled Israel at the Epicenter, Ezekiel 5:5 is adduced to show that Jerusalem is the center of world history: This is Jerusalem: I have set her in the midst of the nations and countries that are round about her. The author then notes that Widespread belief that Jerusalem is truly situated at the geographical heart of the planet is even reflected in the common term for the region, Middle East. His conclusion is that Both the Old and New Testaments foretold that the Promised Land would be the focal point for the climactic battle of history that would usher in the Messiahs earthly reign.

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An unusual use of typology is to take the Jewish Holy Daysrather than the Bibleand read the signs of the times through them: Prophets of both the Old and New Testaments speak of judgment day. Recent development at Camp David and Jerusalem have reminded us once again that those prophesied events are very close. In the parade of Jewish festivals, we find that judgment day is represented with remarkable clarity. . . .This year, the Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz fell on July 20, the day president Clinton left the Camp David talks for his annual meeting with the historic Group Seven (lately termed G8)the leaders of the worlds largest industrial nations. One can only marvel at the coincidence that this fast fell upon the eight day of the Camp David talks between Yassir Arafat and Ehud Barak.

Strategies of Transfer Brummett (1991) says that rhetorical transfer of meaning is similar to the typology strategy of seeing contemporary events or figures as being first named in the original apocalyptic. But rather than a construct of this-stands-for-this, transfer requires a slide out of the sacred grounding texts and into explicitly secular pronouncements (p. 110). This is done through a number of side stepping maneuvers, as the examples below illustrate. CHRISTIAN IDENTITY TRANSFER STRATEGIES Broadening biblical categories. One way this was done was to point out that the original Greek or Hebrew word under consideration has multiple meanings. V. Herrel, in his argument for the true church as a militant one uses this when he notes that for the English word apostle the Greek word has two primary meanings: first, it means a

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governmental envoy or ambassador, and secondly, the word referred to a naval squadron or expedition. In other words, its [apostolos] root meaning is someone or something dispatched from a government, whether that be a person or a fleet, and whether that be for peace or for war. Another example comes from the article Wake Up, Christians! It broadens the category of who will be damned to hell from those specifically mentioned in the Bible to modern groups not mentioned there. The Bible, that is, the Christians' rule of faith, the New Testament, declares very clearly that a Christ-hating Jew or homosexual or gypsy or Hindu or Buddhist cannot know anything about real Christianity. If you are a white Christian, and you have sense enough to know that Judaism is a mongrelizing philosophy that has made its way into Protestantism and Catholicism... This passage slides from Bible to New Testament to the truth that Jews, homosexuals (who are both mentioned in the Bible), to Hindus, gypsies, and Buddhists (who are not mentioned in the Bible), and lastly to white Christians (in contrast to the Jews and Buddhist, etc.) as alone the bearers of truth. Narrowing modern categories. Such a slide is seen in the dictionary exercise performed about the meaning of the word Adam in the Christian Identity doctrinal statement. One entry reads: Adam (a Hebrew word meaning: ruddy, to show Blood, flush, turn rosy) is father of the White Race only. The biblical name Adam is first defined in the Hebrew lexicon, then paraphrased into the English equivalent of being rosy, which in turn is framed in the modern, nonbiblical category of race (the Bible speaks of ethnic and people groups rather than distinct races as originating from the five continents, which the biblical writers were ignorant of). The result of this transfer is that

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The White Race only is descended from Adam. In the same entry, a similar slide is used on the modern psychological category of body, soul, and spirit to assert that only whites possess spirits in addition to bodies and souls. Another author limits those who can be saved by God today to whites. Predestination doesnt apply here either, because Peter has said: [Jesus] not having purposed any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But this verse is limited to created, Adamic beings, not the non-created sons of Satan or animals. I Peter 2:9 (AST) tells us: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a Separated nation, a people for possession' Support for a segregated society is provided for in another slide. The English word adultery is a descendant of the Latin word used in early Greek-Latin lexicons. But the English speaking world has failed to remember the meaning of the Latin word. The Latin word was from ad-altere or to change, corrupt, adulterate, etc., and anyone familiar with the writings of Horace knows that the word meant to mongrelize or to corrupt seedline. Establishing historic identities. In the article Ishmael, Edom and Israel and the Attack Upon America, the author writes: The Arab people, although darkened over the centuries from mixing with darker races, are originally descended from Abraham. This slide implies a white Abraham from which today's Arabs have mixed into a darker race. Similarly, the author establishes the Jews as a mixed, non-Israelite people by saying that Esau (Israel's twin brother) was the father of the Edomitesbut most people do not know who the Edomites became. He then quotes an encyclopedia entry to say the Edomites became a section of the Jewish people. Less obvious but just as effectively,

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the author again performs an Esau-to-Jews slide using two words separated only by commasEdom, Idumea. The implication is that the Edomites are today's Jews, since Jews comes from Idumea, which comes from EdomJews are thus not Israelites. The white identity of Jesus and his ancestor King David is established through this kind of narrowing transfer of meaning. Jesus was of the same racial make-up and genealogy as the great king David of Israel, whom the Bible describes as a white man. And he sent and fetched him: and he was ruddy, with beauty of eyes, and good in the sight of the master. And the Master said to Samuel, Arise, and anoint David, for he is good. (I Sam 16:12 LXX; cf 1 Sam. 17:42). The historian Josephus further describes David as having golden-blonde skin (Antiquities VI:164). In fact, Jesus Christ could not have been the Christ if He had been a mongrel or a mamzier (bastard) in blood. For no mamzier or bastard could ever enter into the congregation of the everlasting Church of Almighty God (Deut. 23:2). * Reversing apparent meanings and facts. The author's instruction conveyed to readers through the title Smash White Supremacy hangs on a reversal of the identity of who white supremacist are (since the eponym is usually applied to Christian Identity disciples). The elites in American society and its establishments are the white supremacists. They are white supremacists and they run this country . . . America is not ruled by white, European Christians . . .Jewish nationalism (Zionism) is openly accepted at the highest levels of government and the media. This transfer plays on an ambiguitythat Jews, on the one hand, are seen as white by much of society, while on the other, even European whites in elite circles are corrupted by Zionists and are therefore part of the Jewish attempt at supremacy. This is the white supremacy that the

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author wants to see smashed. For example, the author says the NAACP is held by 'white' Jews using that African-American organization to promote their agenda. Sometimes this is done through word plays or other rhetorical maneuvers. The marriage vow injunction What God has joined together, let no man put asunder is reversed. The author explains: The converse of this marital injunction is also true, regarding racial and cultural differences: What God has put asunder, LET NOT MAN JOIN TOGETHER! The same author performs a play on the word diversity: If I believe in diversity, I must then preserve it practice racial apartheid. The attention to diversity reveals that the author is conscious of the discussion in society on that issue, but he owns the term through the reversal for his own worldview. At another point in his article, the author writes against trends that undermine our national (racial) sovereignty. The juxtaposition of the word racial in parenthesis to the word national slides the meaning of nation as a political entity (such as the USA) into the other meaning of nation as a people, making the two synonymous (meaning all Americans should be whites). In one case, the reversal slide was used to discredit and denounce Christian Zionists and other dispensationalists who revere Jews. The author calls such Christians Judeo-Churchians, and says that while they say they oppose racism, in reality they worship a race known in popular parlance as 'the Jews.' These Jews [in parenthesis], he argues, have become the the Master Race for Christian Zionists and other dispensationalists. This reverencing of the Jews as the Master Race, the author says, is racist. When done, the slide has served to establish the Jews as the Master Race, rather than Aryans like Christian Identity. This serves to turn the criticism often leveled at

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Christian Identity for being white supremacists back on those who accuse them of being supremacist. Another case transfers blame from the apparent party to the apparent victim. In the article Irvin Rubin Arrested, for example, the writer reports that Irv Rubin, a Jew who has investigated Christian Identity, was arrested by the government for conspiring to bomb a mosque and an Arab-American Congressman. The author describes him as a Zionist terrorist. Why would the Zionist U.S. government arrest one of their own? The US Cryptocracy periodically tosses their Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian poodles the barest of bone to keep them paying their dues to the Evil Empire. The arrest of Rubin, a low-level stooge, is such a bonetouted as an example of American even-handedness. More such kennel fodder consists in the FBIs so-called hunt for Israeli spies in connection with 9/11. CHRISTIAN ZIONIST TRANSFER STRATEGIES Discerning prophesied identities. In an article on why the Temple Mount belongs to the Jewish people, the author identifies the biblical name with the Temple Mount in the phrase: Mount Moriah, commonly known as the Temple Mount. This transfer is then followed by another one based on 1 Chronicles 21:24-26 and the words on Mount Moriah in brackets: And David built there [on Mount Moriah] an altar unto the Lord. Thus, Temple Mount = Mount Moriah = place of David's altar. In the Christian Zionist doctrinal statement, a transfer of meaning that establishes the identity of Jerusalem begins with this premise that the authors base on Bible references: Concerning Jerusalem: It is the Holy City of the Jewish People and those of biblical faith. At the time appointed by God, Messiah will return to sit on the everlasting

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Throne of David in Jerusalem and will reign over all the world in righteousness and peace. This then leads to the conclusion that because of the sovereign purposes of God for the City, Jerusalem must remain undivided, under Israeli sovereignty, open to all peoples, the capital of Israel only. Other transfers related to identity include: A reference in the Book of Revelation to 144,000 is slid to mean God will provide 144,000 Jewish men who will speak the truth in contrast to the false prophets and will recognize that Jesus is the Messiah; a two-step slide is performed from the remnant of Edon in Amos, to Peter's version of Amos in Acts of the residue of men, to J. R. Church's interpretation that the phrase refers to the Jews returning from a long exile as they have in the twentieth century to the nation of Israel; and Gog in Ezekiel 38 is transferred to Russia invading Israel; the voice speaking in Ezekiel 43:4-8, saying, They have even defiled my holy name by their abominations is said to be that of Christ speaking about the Temple Mount and the Muslim Mosque standing there. Revealing hidden timelines. Drawing on the Jewish Holy calendar, author Gary Stearman says the holy day Tammuz 17 is said to represent the inglorious day when Jerusalems walls were breached. He notes these connections to present-day events and transfers the meaning of an ancient Crusader foe onto that of Yasser Arafat and the Crusader friend Richard the Lion-Hearted onto that of Ehud Barak: Clintons talks with Arafat and Barak ended on the Tammuz 17; Arafat was welcomed back home as the new Saladin; Saladin laid siege to Jerusalem and conquered the Holy Lands completely. During the Crusades, after a series of battles with Richard the Lion-Hearted, he negotiated a truce, which left him in control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine. The

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implication is that the timing of the talks points to a parallel with the events of the Crusades where Muslims took the Holy Lands through a truce. An interesting transfer (which is also a typology) is one that sees democracy prophesied in Ezekiel 40: 21-22: And their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them The author writes: Today, there is no monarchy and no descendant from the house of David. Israel's government is selected by vote from among the general population. Such a thing was unheard of in Jeremiah's day. Yet, the prophecy is clear and strongly points to this generation as the one designated to experience 'Jacob's trouble.' * Revealing prophesied events. The author of Is this the End of the World slides from the present situationthe war against terrorism following the September 11, 2001, attacks against the World Trade Centerto the possibility of a world war, to that war involving nuclear weapons, to Revelation 6:8s description of a catastrophe in which a fourth of mankind dies by sword and hunger and Revelation 8:7-9 in which a third of land will be scorched. The author of Israel's Final Judgment says that Scripture foretells that at the end the nation of Israel will be bornborn spiritually (born again) as each individual Jewish person accepts Jesus death on the cross and receives Him as Messiah. This is based on the prophet Jeremiah's description of Israel being born in great travail but not being stillborn. It is then slid into the New Testament, evangelical terminology of being born again and applied to modern-day Jews. Similarly, the author shows how the birth of Jesus was foretold by quoting Isaiah 66:7-9, which says of Israel that she was delivered of a man-child. The author concludes, with parenthetical inserts that secure the

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transfer of meaning: Israel will bring forth a man-child (the Messiah) before the time of travail (the Tribulation). This took place almost two thousand years ago when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Reversing apparent meanings and facts. Two reversals are found in the article A Palestinian State? The author describes the land of Palestine before 1880 as desolate and a wasteland, then concludes: This was what the Arab occupation of the biblical land of milk and honey had done for it. It was the growing number of Zionist settlers from 1880 onward who injected new life into what had become a woefully neglected and unproductive wasteland. A rarely mentioned fact is that the vast majority of Arabs came to Israel only after these Zionist pioneers began to rebuild the land and create the economic opportunities that attracted Arabs from both near and far. This serves the author's narrative purpose of showing that the Arabs came lately, even though the history given by the author of the Turkish empire earlier in the article shows the Arabs were there hundreds of years before 1880. Rhetorically, however, the effect is that 1880, when Zionist settlers started arriving, becomes the starting point of history of the land, after which Arabs started to arrive because the land was now productive. A second reversal makes the apparent present conflict opposite of what it seems in the news media and popular history: Another of the ironies of Middle Eastern history is that in 1948 the Palestinian Arabs, in rejecting the UN resolution and choosing to go to war, refused an opportunity to immediately have their own Palestinian state! Evidently, they had no national aspirations at the time. Furthermore, the surrounding Arab countries would not allow the creation of another independent Arab country in the area! At the end of the war, Jordan actually occupied the Arab-controlled area west of the Jordan River,

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now called the West bank. This makes Jordan, not Israel, the occupier of the West Bank, and Arabs, not Israelis, the ones who refuse to let Palestine have independence.

Strategies of Esoteric Insight This refers to the use of knowing and mysterious language which uses esoteric vocabulary that conveys a dogmatic surety of inside knowledge. Such language proves to its audience that a secret is now being revealed. Moreover, this is no ordinary secret; it is the plan underlying history (Brummett, 1991, p. 112). CHRISTIAN IDENTITY ESOTERIC STRATEGIES Inside knowledge of how the enemy thinks. In the article Exposing the Big Lie About Muslims and Christians, the author claims inside knowledge that Jews on Christmas Eve do not read holy books as it could save Jesus from eternal punishment; that Jews today refer to Jesus as Yeshu instead of Yeshua, since the former means Perish his name; and that the New Testament Gospel is called Avon Gilaion, or the booklet of Sin, by Jews. The title of another article, AntichristStrong delusion, points to the hidden character of the antichrist (the Jews) and the need for careful biblical exposition on the antichrist. Another author claims knowledge that Jewish manipulation occurs in government, society, and even in hate crimes against Jews, which are initially instigated by jews themselves to gain sympathy for the Jews. The truth about ostensible identities. Many of the Christian Identity authors made claims similar to this one from an article on the antichrist as being the Jews: The fact is that those who say they are Jews today are in reality not the seed of Abraham, but are a mixture of Edomite, Canaanite and Asiatic (Khazar) bloodlines; judge by their roots and

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by their fruits. Another author tells us that the NAACP is in actuality run by Jews. A central thrust in all Identity articles is the fact (as they see it) that Jews are not Israel and that Israel is white Christianity. This apparent reversal needs Scriptural support to gain the credibility of the reader, which is done through phrases such as this one: The Prophet Isaiah spoke of a time in the future when the eyes of those who see will not be blinded . . . and the mind of the hasty will discern truth (Isaiah 32:3-4). It is the purpose of this short tract to assist in the fulfillment of Isaiahs prophecy in regard to the true identity of Israel. Why have white Christians historically not known their true identity as the Children of Israel? Because Israel was to be blind for the most part to her identity (Isaiah 42:16-19). But thankfully, God provided Scriptural clues for identifying Israel of old. . . . Even more exciting is the fact that these very same features help us to identify Israel today! Attuned to Scriptural language. The Identity doctrinal statement contains the following mystery-filled biblical allusions in words and phrases: body of Christ, law of kinsmanship, kinsman of the flesh, Passover Lamb, Throne of David, Yeshua the Messiah, God predestined the elect, redeem, called-out seedline, twelve sons of Jacob, YHVH God, Anti-Christ, the Serpent. One author closes his article with the biblical language of When we throw off the yoke of the Jewish supremacists, and the prayer May the day come soon when God destroys the temples of their money, their media, and their police forces. Some of the authors cited the original languages of the Bible, especially those who advocated the Anointed Standard Version of the Bible as the only accurate translation. For example, one author writes that the English word church does not reveal

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its true Greek meaning at all. In Greek, the legislative assembly was called the ekklesia, and since this legislative assembly was composed of regular citizens, it was therefore the Body Politic. Another author quotes Hebrews 8:8, followed by an asterisk: Behold days are coming, says the Yahweh* The asterisk reads: Where the tetragrammaton has been incorrectly substituted with words the LORD or GOD in either the Old Testament or in the New Testament where the Old Testament is quoted, these passages have been corrected by inserting the letters YHWH (pronounced Yahweh) as should have been done by the English translators. A different author notes: All modern translations have Jews on their translation teams, and even the King James Version relied upon Jews for linguistic, textual and etymological assistance. Since the AST is 'Jew-free'... it will be accurate and unbiased in its translation. Knowledge of the news behind the news. In one article the author delivers the inside scoop on the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks, promising at the start of the article that it will answer Who are these players and what role do they play upon the world stage? With such figures as $4 billion dollars per year of U.S. money goes to support to the State of Israel, he develops the view that the September 11 attack upon America is connected to the Zionist conquest of Arab lands and the murder of Arab lives, which are unfortunately financed by American tax dollars under the guise that today's Jews are Israelites. Adding to the esoteric nature of his insights, he adds: I forewarned of the potential possibility of such a conflict or war with Arab nations in ... December 2000. Another author asserts that J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI documented that Martin Luther King, a race-mixing Marxist communist, liked to screw white women in almost

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every motel stop, claims that the World Council of Churches includes Jews, and says Christian Identity believers are in a better position than British Israelists to know the reality of British Israelism and the fact that Jews teach British Israelism. CHRISTIAN ZIONIST ESOTERIC STRATEGIES Spiritual warfare underlies the geopolitical struggles. In reference to the Columbine High School shootings in which a Christian girl died after telling the shooters she believed in God, Steve Herzig writes: The events in Colorado last spring serve as a reminder of past and future realities spoken of in Scripture: For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual wickedness in high places (Eph. 6:12). Cassie Bernall was a martyr. Her crown awaited her in heaven. Arafats designs on Jerusalem are seen as those of Satans in one article: One had to wonder if it wasnt the evil ruler of that fiery domain who actually inspired Arafats political demand. After all, it was Satans eternal opponentthe God of Israel who foretold, through His ancient Hebrew prophets, that He would restore control over Jerusalem to His dispersed Jewish people in the last days of human history. This follows a quote of Arafat who is said to have said that those who oppose his intentions to set up his throne in Jerusalem can go to hell. This shows Arafat to be Satans spokesman. In the article A Palestinian State? the author writes: Most world leaders who think that this conflict is over land seriously ignore this Islamic factor. They do not recognize that the Arab-Israeli conflict is over basic world views and philosophies, and these views are largely dictated by religion, not by politics. but those who understand know that the growing power of Islamic extremism is what makes a lasting peace in the volatile region as elusive as a Middle Eastern desert wind.

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While both Christian Identity and Christian Zionists see the Jews as rejecting Jesus as Savior, this quote from a Christian Identity writer spins this unbelief in more positive light: Those who have spiritual eyes know that we are in a spiritual battle. Satan hates whom God loves, and God loves the Jewish people. The hatred of Gentiles toward Jews has led Jews to be suspicious of Christ. This is the work of Satan. Inside knowledge of how the enemy thinks. One article discloses Palestinian leader Arafat's ploy in calling Arabs in Palestine Palestinians to imply they are the ancient inhabitants of the land. And now they are perpetuating a new ploycalling the Temple Mount by the Arabic Haram al-Sharif. In another article, this inside knowledge of the enemy's mind is seen in the conjecture that the Moslems are determined to erase any physical connection between Israel and the Temple Mount by irresponsible excavations just as they reject any historical connection. Another article asserts that Syria is rebuilding burned out cities in the Golan Heights, but is not reviving the communities. It is thought that Syria is using the construction to hide troops and supplies for a possible war. The truth about identities. One author's analysis of Iraqs call to arms upon Sharons election and of policy matters contested between the Labor Party and Likud all point to inside understanding of the politics and figures of the day. Indeed, the old war horse, Ariel Sharon, may well have arrived at a moment of historical destiny. During his election, he pledged never to allow a divided Jerusalem. Attuned to Scriptural language. Many of the articles contained word examinations that delved into the Greek or Hebrew originals. The Hebrew word ovad was cited as the root of the English perish, which was used to support from the Old Testament the

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concept of a Rapture of the saints. Another discussion of the time of Jacob's trouble (Jeremiah 30:7), illustrates this approach: In this verse, Jeremiah spells the name of Jacob with an added vava reference to the Mosaic prophecy in Leviticus 26:42. There are only five occasions in Scripture where Jacob is spelled in this unusual way. Normally, Jacob is spelledyod, ayin, koph, beit. However, in five passages, a vav is added, making it stand out for a special consideration in the Bible... Taking note of this mysterious vav, Jewish scholars have concluded that the vav represents the Messiah and the prophecy refers to the establishment of Israel's long-awaited kingdom in the seventh millennium. Knowledge of the news behind the news. This sometimes took on the simple form of esoteric knowledge: There is reason to believe that the menorah from that Temple may be stored somewhere in the Vatican. Many times, however, it was set in prophetic framework, hinting at what was about to occur. The author Mark Robinson lets readers into a secret (the coming Rapture) which will ultimately leave behind a world of Stunned and unregenerate people and chaos, especially for Christian populated countries and governments: If the Rapture were to occur today, the United States would be particularly affected, as would south Korea, Canada, and other countries with large numbers of born-again Christians. He continues: The nations of the world will be looking for explanations regarding the sudden disappearance of millions of earth's inhabitants. He also says that the attainment of a false peace in the Middle East will ultimately fall apart, leading to the time of Tribulation. Numerology as prophecy. In an article on the Temple Mount, the author connects the Palestinian uprising as prophetically significant since it began on Rosh HaShanah,

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September 29. The same author notes the opening [of] a large prayer hall for 3,500 Moslems in the underground Solomon's Stables area and careful calculations of numbers from the Old Testament book of Daniel to argue that the new tabernacle that is to be built is not to be the old Mosaic one. These esoteric strategies convey a sense of scientific accuracy as well as inside knowledge.

Discussion of the Four Credibility Strategies The goal of this Level 1 credibility analysis was to begin to show how contemporary Jews are read or refracted through a specific type of ancient biblical text (apocalyptic) in the identity creations of the Jewish other and the Christian self. This relates to the first part of the first research question: RQ1: Through what rhetorical devices do Christian Zionists and Christian Identity believers, using the same passages of sacred apocalyptic scripture, construct diametrically opposing identity accounts of the Jew and of themselves? It is apparent from the findings that all four of the credibility strategies of authority, typology, transfer, and esoteric insight are used by both groups as devices for connecting ancient apocalyptic (the Bible) with present-day apocalyptic texts (the articles analyzed). What becomes clearer in detailing the two groups' respective use of those four strategies is that while there is a broad overlap in the way they use these strategies, at significant points their differing approaches are telling of the worldviews the authors are attempting to construct and maintain. When the above subcategories are laid out side by side, as below, the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist use of the four strategies can be compared and contrasted more clearly for their similarities and differences.

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Subcategories found in one group but not the other group are set in italics. Regular Roman typeface indicates that a given authority strategy was used by both groups.

Christian Identity AUTHORITY Personal tone Appeal to history Right biblical hermeneutics Stylistic phrasing and typology Fulfilled predictions Satire and humor Christian Identity TYPOLOGY Disclosing true identities Justifying action

Christian Zionist Personal tone Appeal to history Right biblical hermeneutics Stylistic phrasing and typography Fulfilled prophecy Specific knowledge of current events Christian Zionist Naming prophetic identities Establishing rightful possession Establishing the prophetic timeline Christian Zionist Discerning prophetic identities Reversing apparent meanings/facts Revealing hidden timelines Revealing prophesied events

Christian Identity TRANSFER Establishing historical identities Reversing apparent meanings/facts Broadening biblical categories Narrowing modern categories

Christian Identity ESOTERIC Inside knowledge of enemy Truth about ostensible identities Attuned to scriptural language Knowledge of news-behind-news geopolitical

Christian Zionist Inside knowledge of enemy Truth about identities Attuned to scriptural language Knowledge of news-behind-news Spiritual warfare behind Numerology as prophecy

The list shows that the two groups share 12 subcategories, while Christian Identity exhibited 4 unique subcategories and Christian Zionists had 7 unique subcategories. The differences in the authority strategy were in the Christian Identity use of satire and humor, and the Christian Zionist use of specific knowledge of current

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events. This divergence characterizes a consistent difference in the tone of the two sets of articles I examined. The Christian identity tone was edgy, transgressive, unrestrained. The unique use of satire and humor contrasts with the unique use by Christian Zionists' specific knowledge of current events, which conveyed a concerted effort to be respectable, rational, and constrained in their discourse. The two different approaches to building authority with their readers reflect the different communities they write within and for. As the review of institutional theorists in Chapter 4 showed, both groups are solidly within the larger religious community of Protestant Christianity. But while using the language and the sacred texts of that tradition, the Identity believers, who idealize a de-centered and cell-based approach to organizing themselves, see themselves as a called-out group who alone understand their true identity as believers while others within the Protestant tradition have been tricked into a Judeo-Christian theology. The point is that the humor and satire in Identity discourse serves to reflect as well as maintain this oppositional stance of the authors and the readership. Satire transgresses propriety and respect; the name-calling and name altering in Identity writing were intended to break the boundaries. For the community of like-minded believers for which these articles were written, this opposition serves to establish the authority of the author and his message, which in the Christian Zionist camp would serve only to undermine it. Each of the remaining unique Identity subcategory differences in typology, transfer, and esoteric insight, I contend, serve similarly to achieve these transgressive, politically incorrect credibility goals. The unique subcategory of justifying action under typology, for example, encompassed the justification of Christian believers acting militantly, segregating the races, and refusing to forgive Jews. These were justified

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through a typology that was not formally different from that found in the Christian Zionist use of typology (both cited Scripture verses, for example), but the substantive difference in content and theology performed by and reflected in these uses of given Bible passages point to the difference in temperament and character of the two respective communities. We again see this transgressive attitude displayed in the transfer subcategories of broadening biblical categories and narrowing modern categories, which were unique to Christian Identity. For the Identity authors, the sliding of meanings in these two ways served to support their central thesis of white versus Jewish identityand that in a way not publicly acceptable in mainstream society or even in the institution of present-day Christianity as broadly understood. (This is not to say the Christian religion is free of anti-Semitism; only that it is the rare group like Christian Identity that will openly defy the principle of equality which Western society upholds as a criteria for considering race). Meanings are broadened, on the one hand, to make apostles not only messengers but also military personnel, and on the other, to make damnable not only those groups mentioned in the Bible such as Jews and homosexuals but also modern-day groups such as gypsies, Hindus, and Buddhists. If an oppositional strategy drives the unique credibility strategies of Christian Identity discourse, the unique Christian Zionist discourse is characterized by the prophetic strategy. This is seen first in the unique Christian Zionist authority subcategory of specific knowledge of current events, but also in the other six unique Christian Zionist subcategories of establishing rightful possession and establishing the prophetic timeline under typology, revealing hidden timelines and revealing prophesied events under

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transfer, and spiritual warfare behind the geopolitical and numerology as prophecy under esoteric insight. As this list of subcategories shows on its face, the subcategories often served to perform the same prophetic task of revealing the hidden behind the apparent. Always underlying Christian Zionist credibility strategies is a depth hermeneuticsa reading of what lies below the surface. The credibility of the articles hinged on establishing for the sympathetic reader that the true meaning of current events and characters in the news was already given in Scripture but needed to be brought into relief by careful exegesis and exposition. Differences between Christian Identity and Christian Zionist strategies also existed in a nuanced way between some of the subcategories they shared. One I have already noted is between Identity's fulfilled predictions and Zionist's fulfilled prophecies. Other nuanced differences can be described: The stylistic phrasing in Identity discourse was playful and manipulated the other side's names (Jewdo Churchian), while the Zionist discourse was more formal and authoritative (We declare and decree); Identity authors sought to disclose true identities through typology (Jews are really Edomites), while Zionist authors would name identities as prophesied (Russia is Gog and Magog); similarly, Identity used transfer to establish historical identities (ancient historians say Jews were Edomites), while Zionists used transfer to discern prophetic identities (in the Greek, Gog represented a power from the North, which fits Russia). The credibility analysis and these differences point to one key divergence of worldviews of these two groupsbetween a premillennial dispensational eschatology for Christian Zionists and a postmillennial one for Christian Identity. A premillennial

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eschatology leads to an apocalyptic that follows a precise and complex timeline of sequenced events and characters who appear at those appointed times. This leads to the Christian Zionist emphasis and use of credibility strategies for recognizing what has already been foretold in Scripture. As the analysis showed, whether at the authority, typology, transfer, or esoteric levels, the Christian Zionist authors seemed to leverage the given rhetorical tool in a prophetic manner. Postmillennial eschatology, by contrast, while seeing the return of Christ and a final battle of good against evil foretold in Scripture, there is less a timelinemuch less a complicated onethan a now (the millenium is the time from Christ's ascension to heaven following the resurrection until Christ returns) and a then (Christ's return to earth to overthrow the Evil One and his dominions through the efforts of his faithful and militant few). In parallel to what the analysis showed of the Christian Identity credibility strategies, the Identity authors managed to leverage the given tool of authority, typology, transfer, and esoteric insight in an identity direction. Who is of the superior race and who are imposters of that race seem to be at the heart of every biblical exposition undertaken. These differences are significant, but they should not blind us to the even greater similarities that exits between Christian Identity and Christian Zionist credibility strategies. The simple fact that both groups made ample use of all four strategy types should be noted first, as well as the fact that the analysis found considerable overlap at even the subcategory level between the two groups (Christian Identity shared 12 of 16 categories with Christian Zionists, while Christian Zionists shared 12 of 20 with Christian Identity). This is explained, I propose, by the fact that whatever their substantive differences, both groups are a people of the book (as is the Christian religion of which

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they are a tributary) and both groups center their reading of present-day politics in a biblical apocalyptic framework. In oversimplified terms, the clash of eschatologies can be seen as competing versions of the same drama with the same basic character rolesbut an intractable difference between how many scenes there are and who gets to play those roles. The analysis found that for both groups not only were the credibility strategies identical, but so too were the substrategies virtually the same. This level of analysis illustrates the role the grounding text of the Bible serves in providing the vocabulary and the raw materials from which two opposing moral conceptions of the self and two opposing conceptions of meaningfully human time are constructed in present-day apocalyptic texts. In the next chapter I present the findings of the cluster analysis and the narrative analysis. Incorporating Taylor's theory of the self as morally constructed and Ricoeur's theory of the self as emploted in humanly meaningful time, the analyses findings explain how the respective identity operations of these two groups are used to construct diametrically opposing accounts of who the Jew is. This present chapter has already begun to illustrate the fact that such narratives are articulated in a community and draw from the available stock of vocabulary in that community.

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Chapter Eight Contrasting Identity Constructions In this chapter I report the findings of the Level 2 (Cluster and Transformation) and Level 3 (Narrative) analyses of the articles. Added to those in Chapter 7, these findings allow for a more complete answer to the first research question, RQ1: Through what rhetorical devices do Christian Zionists and Christian identity believers, using the same passages of sacred apocalyptic scripture, construct diametrically opposing identity accounts of the Jew and of themselves? The chapter focuses especially on addressing the opposing identity accounts part of the research question. As described by Foss (1996), cluster analysis is able to locate the conflict or opposition in principles and images of the discourse (p. 104). Peter Marston and Bambi Rockwell say analysis of associational clusters in discourse may ... reveal 'the power of the text in constructing ... identity' (Marston & Rockwell, 1996, p. 72). To this cluster approach I added the step of verb transformation analysis. It examines the process of verbs around the key nouns chosen for the cluster analysis with the aim of more fully disclosing the constructed identities of those nouns. To report the findings of the Level 2 analysis, I list the identity clusters found in both Christian Identity and Christian Zionist stories (Tables 9.1 and 9.2) and then consider patterns of verbal transformations around those noun clusters. For the narrative analysis, I characterize the similarities and differences between the two groups in eight narrative categories.

Cluster Analysis Findings To synthesize the clusters found across the 30 articles I analyzed, I have

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categorized them in a way that applies the moral typography theory of Charles Taylor (see Chapter 2) in terms of the relations of the goods found in any narrative (see the pyramid in Table 8.1). This stands in consonance with an early observation by Kenneth Burke in his development of the cluster approach that often identities are cast in God and Devil terms. A third category of Morally Ambiguous Terms classifies those terms that are neither essentially good nor bad from the authors' point of view, or are good for some and bad for others. Judgment, for example, is classified as ambiguous since it is Christian Zionist good for those who accept Christ and bad for nonbelievers. While the verb and narrative analyses attend more to how characters within particular articles are related to each other by the narrator, the cluster exercise foregrounds the central identity constructions present in those articles. This cluster overview reveals what identities are constructed (and with what attributes they are endowed), while the narrative analysis goes further in showing how those characters are cast in relation to each other in the dramatic action of apocalyptic emplotment. I have broken down the comparisons into two sectionsan Agreement section (Table 8.1), where both Christian Zionists and Christian Identity agree on what characters are good or evil, and an Opposite section (Table 8.2), where what the one group sees as a good is seen as the evil by the other group. Where terms are used prominently in one group but not in the other group, they are placed below a dotted line. In Chapter 8 the differences in credibility strategies were less than the similarities of those strategies in their use by Christian Identity and Christian Zionists. In this chapter the opposite is true. A measure of agreement can be found between the narrative identities of some of the charactersnamely, both groups seem to agree that the moral

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Table 8.1: Cluster Analysis of Key Terms of Agreement

Christian Identity GOD TERMS (GOODS) GOD rules now; God of War; divine plans for Israelites JESUS CHRIST Messiah; is God; condemned Jews; Jesus rules now CHRISTIANS not false Judeo-Christians; an army persecuted; church militant AMERICANS are threatened; white, Anglo-Saxon; Protestant; need to use violence *ISRAELITES TODAY a people of promise; true Christians; white European; genetically defined; become a great nation; new homeland outside Canaan new religion Christian Zionist GOD TERMS (GOODS) GOD divine prerogative; divine plan; divine judgment; wrathful; providential JESUS CHRIST personal savior; the Jewish demarcation CHRISTIANS solidarity with Jews; biblically vigilant; pro-Israel concern for Muslim error AMERICANS righteous; we; legitimate rule; a target of others ISRAELITES TODAY (JEWS FOR CZ)* persecuted/hated; Palestinian natives; a historical people; a people of God's word; a people of promise a holy people; special/ a providential remnant; will be punished; will accept Christ/will be saved by Jesus; biological heritage; personal identity

* That Israelites are the Chosen People of God is agreed upon by both groups; where both groups disagree is who racially those Chosen People are (whites or Jews). For this reason, the term Israel is placed here and below in the Opposites category to capture both of these differences. Christian Identity DEVIL TERMS (EVILS) ANTICHRIST enemy; whoever denies the son; Jews; individual persons; organizations; various types Christian Zionist DEVIL TERMS (EVILS) ANTICHRIST a single political potentate; deceiving; enemy of Israel

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Table 8.2: Cluster Analysis of Key Terms of Disagreement

Christian Identity DEVIL TERMS (EVILS) ISRAEL white Europeans; only whites saved; Jesus only for whites; superior leaders; Jews a curse to Israel JEWS false claims; false friends; mixed race; evil; controlling; white supremacists; establishment Elite; manipulative; children of Satan; serve the devil; imposters; Christ killers; propagandizers; race mixers; the enemy; false identity; Edomites; impure; corrupters; flawed character; aggressive CHRISTIAN ZIONISTS support Jews; love Zion more than Christ; misleading CHURCHIANITY Jew worshipers; false teachers KING JAMES VERSION bad translation ANOINTED STANDARD VERSION reliable translation CHURCH OF ENGLAND godless; racemixers; full of Jewish conspirators MINORITIES outsiders; a threat to true Americans; need to be controlled Christian Identity GOD TERMS (GOODS) ARABS mixed heritage; conflicted; wronged MUSLIMS peaceful with Christians; persecuted; venerate Christ CHRISTIAN IDENTITY MOVEMENT commoners; discriminated against; indigenous Europeans; will prevail; targeted; a godly heritage; choose God; seedline and covenant WHITES false and true whites; won't tolerate Jews; Christian values Christian Zionist GOD TERMS (GOODS) ISRAEL a target of others/threatened; friend of USA; vulnerable; victorious; amenable; chosen by God; prophesied; peace-loving JEWS persecuted/hated; Palestinian natives; a historical people; a people of God's word; a people of promise a holy people; special/ a providential remnant will be punished; will accept Christ/will be saved by Jesus; biological heritage; personal identity JERUSALEM epicenter of the world; desired; sacred; place for thrones TEMPLE MOUNT its own geography; contested possession; focus of experts; endangered; a future glory; center of the universe; timeless; holy RELIGIOUS JEWS nationalistic; faithful; know land is theirs; growing population JUDAISM a practice; a religion RABBIS scholars; study Scripture Christian Zionist DEVIL TERMS (EVILS) ARABS already have states; occupiers; came lately to Palestine; threat to Israel MUSLIMS overpopulated religion; destructive; definable; demanding; militant; religious militants; plotting/conniving; Arab (non-Jewish); a threat CHRISTIAN IDENTITY MOVEMENT un-Christian; violent; suspicious NATION OF ISLAM preaches positive message; blames Jews; anti-Jesus RUSSIA foe PALESTINIANS disagreeable; selfish; a threat ARAFAT stubborn; new Saladin; designs on Jerusalem; satanic; unyielding

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Table 8.2 (continued)

Christian Identity MORALLY AMBIGUOUS TERMS RACE the enemy's tool; biblical separation of races; white race DIFFERENCE God-given; often attacked as bad Christian Zionist MORALLY AMBIGUOUS TERMS BARAK good-faith negotiation; politically defeated SECULAR JEWS Marxist; antireligious CLINTON peace broker ISRAELI GOVERNMENT weak leadership PALESTINIAN LAND wasted by Arabs; restored by Jews JUDGMENT act of God; caused by Israel's sin; orderly JACOB'S TROUBLE means tribulation; Rabbis' view of it partly right; refers to Israel today RAPTURE a global event a temporal event; the beginning of disaster; for believers only TRIBULATION a temporal event; a political event; a religious event;

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goods include God, Jesus Christ, Christians, Israelites, and Americans. Similarly, both groups identify the Antichrist as evil. But even these surface unities prove shaky when the attributes listed beneath those terms are compared. For example, the term Christians for Christian Zionists implies those who express solidarity with Jews, while for Christian Identity it can include only those who are not false Judeo-Christians (only those who don't support Jews). Similarly, Christian Zionist articles call Christians to a pious response of individual biblical vigilance, while Identity articles call for a militant response through the collectivity of a guerilla army. Even more revealing of identity differences beneath the apparent agreement is the assertion by both groups that the people called Israelites are God's Chosen People who were called out for a special purpose in the history of salvation. The list of attributes below the term Israelites for each group reveals completely differing definitions of who the Israelites are today. If both groups happen to agree that the Israelites are the descendents of Jacob and were destined to again become a great people and nation (1948, for most Christian Zionists; when white forces finally defeat the Jews in the future for Christian Identity), the similarities end there. Christian Zionist associations around the Israelites clearly point to today's Jews while the Identity associations show them to be whites of European descent. Charles Taylor's (1994) theory of moral identity helps here to make sense of an emerging pattern in the above listing of respective goods and evils by the two groups. I propose that a pyramid shape exists in the cluster terms such that the higher up the moral pyramid of goods one moves (toward what Taylor calls the hypergoods; see Chapter 3 in this study), the closer in definitional agreement the two groups come to each other.

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Structurally, then, the peak holds the terms God and Jesus Christ, upon which there is considerable definitional congruity. Moving down from the peak of the pyramid, beneath God and Jesus Christ toward the base of less definitional agreement we find, in order, Christians, Americans, and Israelites. The term Israelites, as we have seen, represents formal agreement but substantive disagreementa relationship that one finds to be more pronounced the further down the terms are from the hypergoods at the peak of the pyramid. Israelites formally for both groups are the called-out people of the Old Testament from whom the Messiah was born and for whom the promises in the Old Testament still hold true and will be fulfilled in them alone. But attributionally, the two groups show little agreement. Are the Israelites white or Jewish? Do they practice Judaism or Christianity? Is their Promised Land the land of Israel or a new land outside of Canaan (the United States)? Both groups argue that biology and genetics are important in solving these questions, but then disagree on whose genes are those of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The one hyperevil the two groups mutually list is Antichrist. But again, this formal agreement belies a substantive differenceis the Antichrist singular, an uppercased A, and an individual who will appear at one point of history near the very end of all time (Christian Zionist)? Or is he antichrists plural, lowercase, and manifest in many evil people, especially the Jews, throughout history (Christian Identity)? The associational clusters reveal that the antichrists/Antichrist are very different characters in the two competing narratives, despite the surface similarities. Below the pyramid's base of agreement lies the moral terrain of opposite views of the other and the self and of who is evil and who is good. On the Christian Identity moral

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map, Jews are evil, controlling supremacists who manipulate others and serve the devil. Genetically, they areat bestmixed-race Edomites. For Christian Zionists, in contrast, they are a persecuted but holy and chosen people who look for the Messiah to come. An interesting category in each list is that of Christian Identity (in the Christian Zionist list) and Christian Zionist (in the Christians Identity list). Both Christian Identity and Christian Zionists describe the other group in Burkean evil terms. Christian Zionists see Christian Identity believers as un-Christian, violent, and suspicious. By contrast, Christian Identity describes its own believers as white Israelites with a godly heritage who are persecuted but will prevail in the end. They in turn blame Christian Zionists for misleading other white Christians about their true Israelite identity and for supporting Jews more than they support or love Christ. Such Jew-worshiping Christians are part of Churchianity, not true Christianity. A cluster analysis finding I had not anticipated, which I will explore more in the narrative analysis section below, is the opposite role Arabs, Palestinians, and Muslims are given in the narratives of the two groupsa strongly negative one in Christian Zionist narrative, but a sympathetic, if measured, one in Christian Identity narrative. The Christian Identity cluster analysis shows the association with Arabs to be one of a mixed heritage (a negative for Christian Identity), but Arabs are also seen as a violated and conflicted people in the sense of being unfairly embattled by the forces around them. Muslims are seen as a persecuted people who act peacefully with Christians and who even venerate Christ (while not accepting him as God Incarnate). By contrast, Christian Zionist discourse paints Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians as occupiers of land that belongs to Israel (and further, they clamor for a new Palestinian state when they already

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have Arab states like Jordan, while Jews only have one state). They are destructive, demanding, militant, and a general threat to the survival of Israel. Why is there this strong concern for the identity of the Arabs by both groups? Perhaps Arabs serve a unique role in identity constructions of the other and the self that points to a third-party complexity in such constructions not described by the theorists of identity reviewed in this study. This will be considered in more depth in the narrative section below. In each of the cluster categories in the listing in Table 9.1 and Table 9.2, there are also characters and events (which are typeset on the outsides of the columns) that were not emphasized by the other group. This was particularly the case with the Christian Zionist articles. These included characters such as Russia, Arafat, Barak, Clinton, the Israeli Government, and Rabbis, and events and places such as Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. These unmatched identity focuses, I suggest, reflect differing moral visions of the good between the two groups. The incongruity between cluster categories as well as the difference of the attributes when cluster categories are, in fact, shared by both groups (for example, both groups seeing Christians as a good but disagreeing on what constitutes a good Christian), point to a dynamic that several of the theorists reviewed in this study have developedthat the moral languages of respective communities develop distinctive vocabulary to serve their unique moral concerns. This dynamic is theorized in institutional theory (Chapter 3), which would suggest that the large institutional sector out of which the stock of vocabulary these groups draw from in developing their own vocabulary is that of Protestant Christianity and its sacred texts. The same dynamic is found in Honneth's (Chapter 3) concept of a collectivitys shared semantics that generate a subcultural horizon of interpretation. Here the

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subcultural horizon is reflected in the subcategory difference in attributes. It is found in Foucault's description of discursively meaningful statements (Chapter 4). For example, in Christian Zionist discourse the Christian Identity sentence the Children of Israel have regathered in the new Canaan land (the United States) would be nonsensical. It is also found in Taylors idea of moral visions and the articulation of the good (Chapter 2), and Fish's category of facts as interpreted facts (Chapter 3). Together these theorists point to both the stability and the innovative character of vocabulary in the context of a community that produces, maintains, and interprets that vocabulary. Christians is the same word in both Christian Identity and Christian Zionist discourse, but the variant meanings held by that single locution are seen in the attributes the subcultural horizon of interpretationthat cluster around the word. Semantically Christian Identity's Christians and Christian Zionist's Christians are little more than homonyms: words that sound identical but essentially share no common meaning.

Verb Transformation Findings The transformational analysis of verbs I conducted adds a focus on action and being verbs surrounding the main cluster characters. In particular, the analysis of verbs is used to classify nouns connected to action (transitive) verbs as either agents who perform an action or affecteds who are on the receiving end of an action. The analysis also classifies nouns connected to being verbs as either carriers of attributes or the attributes of carriers (in the phrase He is a Jew, the pronoun he is the carrier and Jew is the attribute). The goal behind the verb analysis was not to produce percentages that could be

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generalized to all articles by Christian Identity or Christian Zionists. It was, rather, to further expose particular cases of kinds of rhetorical operationsin this case verbal operationsused to construct identities. Put another way, the cluster analysis highlighted the main characters and their attributes in the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist apocalyptic narratives; the verb analysis exposed an actional dimension by showing how the verb usages turn the characters into either agents (doers of action) or affecteds (receivers of actions), and either carriers (subjects that hold attributes) or attributes (descriptors of subjects). As described in the methodology section (Chapter 6), the verb transformational analysis looked for two main verbal processes: those of being and of doing. In terms of verb activity around the clustered nouns, the results showed three basic categories of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist articles: (a) action articles where verb action predominated and exhibited discernable patterns in relation to the characters in the narratives, (b) being articles where the verbs formed equational structures that served to directly define characters rather than express the action of characters, and (c) mixed articles where no single predominant pattern of verb transformations occurred. Action articles were defined as those in which at least one of the characters identified in the cluster analysis served as an agent at least 50% of the time. Almost always when this was the case, the percentage was 66% or higher, and often more than one character was agentive. Being articles were defined as those in which the agent categories were less than 50% and at least one of the being categories of verbs was 50% or higher. The mixed articles were defined as those which fit neither of the above two categories well. It also included several articles that were not analyzed for verbs,

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such as a satirical article in which character roles were sometimes reversed and the verb transformations were thus sometimes backward of the author's true beliefs, and articles where the key cluster words were not personified characters who could be or do anything. Any given article usually contained at least some of the being or action verb operations, even if characterized as one or the other type of article. Thus defined, the breakdown of article types belonging to Christian Identity or Christian Zionist was action articles (CI had 6; CZ had 12), being articles (CI had 5; CZ had 1), and mixed articles (CI had 5; CZ had 1). The results highlight four differences between Christian Identity and Christian Zionist use of narratives. First, the findings suggest a difference in emphasis between Christian Identity and Christian Zionist writing. The five being articles in the Christian Identity category, compared to only one being article in the Christian Zionist articles, points to a stronger emphasis on definitional discourse. Conversely, Christian Zionist articles, while including almost no predominantly definitional articles, were heavy on dramatic articles, as seen in the twelve action articles of the Christian Zionists. Second, the findings point to a free spirit in Christian Identity articles that allows the authors to experiment with unconventional writing styles. This is reflected in the higher number of mixed articles from the Christian Identity selections than from the Christian Zionist selections. The use of satire that I highlighted in the credibility analysis chapter (Chapter 7) is an example. By contrast, the lack of mixed-approach articles in the Christian Zionist repertoire (there was only one), coupled with the consistent use of an action approach (to the exclusion of the being approach) and the repeated use of unique

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literary conventions (such as writing in a reporting voice but suddenly dropping the objective voice in the last paragraph to issue a direct-address exhortation to the reader) all point to a more studied, principled approach to the production of these apocalyptic articles. Third, the findings show how action verbs are sometimes employed to create relational power imbalances or to construct power confrontations. The cluster analysis of nouns already has shown the fact that a strong righteous/evil dichotomy occurs in these apocalyptic characterizations. The transformational analysis helps explain how the authenticity of those characterizations is rhetorically achieved, namely, through the employment of transitive verbs to create good and evil actions. These actions help the author to both justify existing characterizations as well as to construct those characterizations: on the upside of the hermeneutical circle, because a character does bad things, he is evil; on the downside of the circle, because he is evil he does bad things. The action verbs created four character types, depending one whether the character was the giver or the receiver of action, and on whether the character was morally good or evil. I classify them as agentive heroes (righteous givers of action) and affected martyrs (righteous receivers of actions), and agentive antichrists (evil givers of action) and affected cowards (evil receivers of action). An example of a clear agentive antichrist is found in a Christian Zionist article on the tribulation period. The article describes how a remnant of Jews who survive the tribulation will at last recognize that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah and accept him as such. In this article, the character Antichrist is agent in 9 out of 9 sentences in which it appears. A sampling of those Antichrist sentences include: The Antichrist will crush all who come against him, he

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will consolidate his power, this man will rule over Europe, the Antichrist will actually claim to be God, the Antichrist will use his charm, and the Antichrist will attempt to destroy Israel. The Antichrist as a character is thus the archetypal agentive antichrist (in terms of the type analysis I am proposing, as opposed to affected martyr, for example, or the agentive hero). An example of the archetypal agentive hero is in a Christian Zionist article (God's Final Judgment) where God as a character is given the role of agent in 16 out of 16 sentences. These include: God has chosen them, God warned the Jewish people, God used the Babylonians, God created the world, God will make 'a full end of all nations,' and He will correct Israel in measure. In the same article, Jews are given the role of agent just 22% of the time, but the role of affected 55% of the time. A sample of those sentences shows how Jews receive the brunt of other's action: God warned the Jewish people, Israel will be spared complete destruction, all the armies of the earth will be marshaled against them [the Jews], and the deliverance He [God] will bring to Israel. Even in the two sentences that give the Jews agentive roles, the Jews are placed in positions such that their actions fulfill the larger plan of God's will. For example, we read that each individual Jewish person accept Jesus' death on the cross. Usually the percentage difference between agent and affected characterization was not as pronounced as the above examples, but often the narrative effect was still the same. In one Christian Identity article on Why Society Is Hell-Bent, Jews were given the evil agent role 75% of the time and the affected role 0%, while you (the Christian Identity reader addressed by the author as you) was give the agent role 20% of the time and the affected role 40% of the time. The agentive characterization of the Jew in these

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action sentences was negative, such as Jews destroy his disciples on the earth. Another Christian Identity article on Exposing the Big Lie about Muslims and Christians poses both Christian Zionists (85%) and Jews (66%) as evil agents. The article also gives agentive roles to Muslims (71%). But when the verbs are examined for their connotations, it becomes clear that the Muslim's actions are positive ones from a Christian Identity point of view: Muslims venerate Christ, order(s) you to believe in Christ, identify their prophet with Paracletes, and proclaim him [Jesus] as the Messiah. By contrast, the action of Christian Zionists is negative from a Christian Identity point of view. Christian Zionists seek to wake up religious intolerance, incite Christians against Muslims, care [not] for Christ, only for Zion, promote the Christhating spirit among Jews, and lead their innocent flock on the path of the Anti-Christ. And Jews, for their part, concealed from Christians their hate toward Jesus, spat at the Holy Cross, and caused Jesus' execution. Fourth, the findings highlight the definitional power inherent in the use of being verbs to construct positive and negative identities. Edward Said's (1979) observation bears consideration here that often the simple copula is contains the evidence for the statement being asserted. For example, Christian Identity statements such as Jews are rarely genetic Israelites or contemporary Israelites are oblivious to their own identity assert the stated conditions as facts that stand alone. At the same time, many of these statements are contained in conjunction with elaborate expositions of Scripture and extrabiblical citations and other forms of reasoned discourse. Even more importantly, even when these kinds of statements were thrown into the texts I examined as brute facts that needed little support, their credibility drew on the

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credibility of the author. That is, to the extent that credibility has been established through the strategies of authority, typology, transfer, and esoteric insight that Brummett describes, the simple symmetrical structure of being constructionsX is Yproves to be an efficient and definitive way of establishing identities, at least for the sympathetic reader. If this is the case, then we find a distilled and more efficient means in being constructions than was discovered in the use of action verbs to create good and evil agents and affecteds. The construction of dramatic action requires more complex elaboration and staging than does the definitional function of simple X = Y assertions. Both approaches allow for the narrator to create power relations between characters in the narratives that serve the narrator's real-world political interests. With the definitional article more typical of Christian Identity discourse, those relations were more often accomplished through sheer assertions of subject-is-attribute constructions. More examples could be given from both Christian Identity and Christian Zionist writing, but essentially they would replicate the characterizations found in the noun cluster analysis since it is those nouns (Jews, Muslims, Whites, etc.) that are given being status.

Narrative Analysis Findings In the Level 3 analysis, I examined each of the articles for eight narrative elements: setting, characters, narrator, events, temporal relations, causal relations, audience, and theme. Below I summarize the findings from these categories, combing several of the categories and giving more attention to those categories not already covered by the credibility and cluster analyses. The category of theme is addressed

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throughout the other category discussions and is not presented separately. The question considered is how a category relates to the identity focus in the research questions of this study. 1. SETTING. This refers to the place and time used in situating the narratives. I begin with the Christian Zionist use of setting, and then compare and contrast it to Christian Identity use of setting. Christian Zionist setting. At first blush, the setting in the Christian Zionist articles seems solely centered on the world of Israel and the Jews and not on the American world of the audience of Christian Zionist readers. The title of one of the articlesIsrael at the Epicentercaptures this abiding interest in the land of Israel, both for the way the Bible is read as well as for the way contemporary news is interpreted. The sense of Israel being epicenter includes both geographical and temporal dimensions that underscore the conviction that the strip of land bordering the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea is the setting of everything important in ancient history and in future world events. Geographically, Christian Zionist accounts often include minute details of the various quarters of the city of Jerusalemeven detailing the inches and feet on the Temple Mount, since this is where the Jewish Third Temple is prophesied to be rebuilt. The accounts are also carefully worded on contested political issues. Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank are called pioneers who have more recently settled in the contested territories of Israelimplying that these territories are not occupied by Jews but by Palestinians. Similarly, Christian Zionist nomenclature for the region is the Land of Israel rather than Palestine, even when describing Gaza and the West Bank. The temporal setting often ranges widely within any given article, from Abraham

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on Mt. Moriah, to the days of Jesus, to 1948, to today, to an immanent future when Christ will return to Jerusalem as King to reign for a thousand years. An example of how the setting moves effortlessly across time is found in the article Israel: A House Divided. In it, the author gives the history of the rise of the European Union, saying it will become the eventual government of the Antichrist. He also recounts how the recent Palestinian incitations will lead to reprisal by Israeli Prime Minister Sharon and then explode into a full-blown international war (World War III), during which world leaders will decide to place international peacekeeping forces in Israel and secure a false peace. Citing Daniel 11:45And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help himhe proclaims that this world leader, the Antichrist, will even declare Jerusalem as his headquarters. But as focused as the articles are on the Middle East and Jews, they also contain a consistent secondary setting that moves the stories closer to home for the white American Christian reader. One author, for example, writes the United States into ancient biblical prophecies of what he interprets to be a coming rapture or sudden disappearance of Christians from earth and a subsequent time of tribulation for those unbelievers who remain: The period from the Rapture to the start of the Tribulation will undoubtedly play an important role in establishing the Antichrist's reign. All born-again believers will have disappeared. Considering the millions of Christians who will be raptured worldwide, the devastation to the economies, militaries, and social structures of nations could be potentially significant. If the Rapture were to occur today, the United States would be

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particularly affected, as would South Korea, Canada, and other countries with large numbers of born-again Christians. A little later, the article gives the reason the United States in particular should have such an impact: Since many Christians hold positions of importance in every segment of American society, the Rapture could leave the U.S. critically wounded and possibly reduce it to a second-rate power. With the United Statesthe world's policemancrippled, many political changes could occur across the globe. Thus the ripple effect from the collapse of the United States would lead to global economic chaos, the rise of a strong leader (the Antichrist) in Europe, and his eventually setting up a power base in Jerusalem. This re-centering of the United States into the biblical apocalyptic story alongside Israel is accomplished in other articles, as wellthrough pairing Camp David and Jerusalem as co-centers for prophetically important policy decisions, the United States and Israel as equally vulnerable to attacks by Islamic countries, and even the Columbine High School shootings conducted by neo-Nazi indoctrinated youth with Nazi and other forms of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment. Christian Identity setting. One might say that in Christian Zionist discourse the physical is spiritualized, while in Christian Identity discourse the spiritual is made physical. The time and place of the millenium is the mundane here and nowhaving already begun forty days after Jesus resurrection (at his ascension to heaven) and ending only when he returns to set up a throne on earth and establish a theocratic reign of pure justice. Like Christian Zionists, planet Earth is the setting where spiritual forces do battle. But for Christian Identity, this battle is not fought indirectly by hidden spiritual forces

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working behind the scenes to influence the outcome of events by winning the souls of humans in preparation for a future physical battle. Instead, Satan is present biologically now on earth, beginning (for Seedline Identity believers) with Satan's genetic mongrelization of Adam's race to produce the Jews, who are at enmity with the pure remnant of Adam's white descendents, the white Children of Israel, King Jesus' elected foot soldiers. God will not only bring justice in some future time and place called the Tribulation, but is doing so now during the present millennium and through Christian Identity believers who both expose the many antichrists operating in the world today and train in militia groups for any combat needed now or in a culminating battle of good against evil at the end of time. No rapture of the saints will spare them from tribulation; rather, the coming of Jesus will bring to fruition the war already being waged between good and evil forces on earth. The Christian Identity doctrinal statement describes the setting of the present millennium this way: WE BELIEVE in an existing being known as the Devil or Satan and called the Serpent (Gen. 3:1; Rev. 12:9), who has a literal seed or posterity in the earth (Gen. 3:15) commonly called Jews today (Rev. 2:9; 3:9; Isa. 65:15). These children of Satan (John 8:44-47; Matt. 13:38; John 8:23) through Cain (I John 2:22, 4:3) who have throughout history always been a curse to true Israel, the Children of God, because of a natural enmity between the two races (Gen 3:15), because they do the works of their father the Devil (John 8:38-44), and because they please not God, and are contrary to all men (1 Thes. 2:14-15), though they often pose as ministers

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of righteousness (II Cor. 11:13-15). The ultimate end of this evil race whose hands bear the blood of our Savior (Matt. 27:25) and all the righteous slain upon the earth (Matt. 23:35), is Divine judgment (Matt. 13:38-42, 15:13; Zech. 14:21). Geography becomes crucially important in the this-worldly focus of Christian Identity, for it is in part by geography--when read through biblical clues--that true identities are traced and determined. In ways both different from and similar to the Christian Zionist's sense of place, Christian Identity sees a close connection between land and the identity of the Children of Israel. Christian Identity narrative also moves the United States into an even more central role in biblical prophecy. One author gives five geographical aspects of the true Israelite and the true land of Israel today (which does not include the Jews and is not located in the Middle East). Citing both Old and New Testament references, he concludes that the biblical clues can only describe the United States, since the Bible shows that the new Israel will be in a new home other than Canaan Land, will be inhabited by people gathered from many nations, will be a land of unwalled villages, will be a land of great agricultural wealth, and will be a land that is the camp of the saints. That the United States and Christian Identity believers are this new Israel as described in biblical prophecies is also found in the doctrinal statement with biblical proofs: WE BELIEVE that the United States of America fulfills the prophesied (II Sam. 7:10; Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 36:24) place where Christians from all the tribes of Israel would be regathered. It is here in this blessed land (Deut. 15:6, 28:11, 33:13-17) that God made a small one a strong nation (Isa.

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60:22), feeding His people with knowledge and understanding through Christian pastors (Jer. 3:14-15) who have carried the light of truth and blessings unto the nations of the earth (Isa. 49:6, 2:2-3; Gen. 12:3). North America is the wilderness (Hosea 2:14) to which God brought the dispersed seed of Israel, the land between tow [sic] seas (Zech. 9:10), surveyed and divided by rivers (Isa. 18:1-2, 7), where springs of water and streams break out and the desert blossoms as the rose (Isa. 35:1,6-7). In contrast, then, to the Christian Zionist fixation on Israel as a state and a holy land, Christian Identity articles only occasionally make Israel the focus of discussionand never in a sympathetic way. What to Christian Zionists is the land of Israel is to Christian Identity the land of Canaan or Palestine. The Christian Identity article Exposing the Big Lie about Muslims and Christians depicts the plight of a Palestinian town under duress from Israeli occupation and describes the hardship of Palestinians displaced by immigrant Jewish settlers. As noted in the cluster analysis, other Christian Identity articles employ satire to deride the dispensationalist obsession with the Temple Mount and the rebuilding of a Jewish temple there. Given the Christian Identity understanding of the United States as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, it is not surprising that many Christian Identity narratives are set in the United States. These include articles about a Missouri city that the 2000 census figures showed to be one of the whitest cities in America, about the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York, and about the inundation of America by minorities. The temporal setting is less developed and simpler than the complicated prophecy

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calendars framing Christian Zionist narratives. As noted earlier, the millennium for Christian Identity believers is right nowspanning the time between the resurrection of Jesus from the dead 2000 years ago and his sometime future return to judge the unsaved. The biblical term millennium, thus, is taken figuratively in terms of time (but very literally in terms of the current iron-fisted reign of Christ in the present age). This now orientation contrasts with the futurist orientation of Christian Zionist narratives. The phrases In time of war... and in the war of our Faith against the Babylonian world system used by one Identity author express this view that the struggle of good and evil is not just future but present and should be seen in terms of combat. The phrases connote a feeling also found in Christian Zionist writing that the struggle is one of faithbut for Identity believers it is not a faith secluded to the pious interiority of the dispensationalist heart but faith expressed in physical readiness, vigilance, and action. The response called for is not to search your heart and pray, but to become armed. 2. CHARACTERS, NARRATOR, AND AUDIENCE. The cluster analysis has already divulged many of the kinds of characters and their attributes found in the articles. A number of further observations can be made, however, in comparing and contrasting those identities, and especially as they relate to the role of the narrators' communities. Christian Zionist characters, narrators, and audience. Both Christian Zionists and Christian Identity narratives thematize a throne from which Christ will rule on earth at his Second Coming. The Christian Zionist story places this throne on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Historically and religiously, the throne in Christian Zionist narrative follows a succession from a past Jewish rule (King David), to a present Islamic rule (Muslims control the Temple Mount today), to finally a future Christian rule (the Second

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David, who the New Testament identifies as Jesus, at his Second Coming). One author, who denounces the Muslim Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount as a profane place, exposits a passage in Ezekiel to this conclusion: The Messiah speaks to Ezekiel and complains that the profane place still stands on the Temple Mount. Christ notes that their threshold stands next to His threshold with a wall built between them. Note also, that Christ says that they have been consumed in His anger. This means, says the author, that religious Jews in Israel are prophesied to retake the Temple Mount with its profane place (the Dome of the Rock) from the Muslims and prepare it (rebuild the Third Temple) for the long-awaited Messiah. In doing so, the Jews anticipate a Messiah who will come for the first time, not being willing to recognize until sometime during the last half of the Tribulation that that Messiah was and is Jesus, the one Jews rejected in his first coming. Many Jews will even accept the false Messiah (the Antichrist), who will rule for a period during the Tribulation. Thus in the Christian Zionist narrative, the Christian Messiahnot the Jewish or Muslim messiahswill ultimately reign, trumping all other pretenders to the throne. This metanarrative underlies all Christian Zionist stories. The minor contemporary players within this epic contest are often named in the articles as Arafat and Sadat, Barak and Rabin, and Bill Clinton and George Bush, representing the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian parties in the prophetic drama. Israel, compared to Muslim states, is cast in a positive light, as was seen in the cluster analysis and is seen in this sentence which elides Israel's military invasion of Palestine as an incredible reappearance: Local Muslims have long called Israels incredible reappearance on the modern world stagein the face of an all-out military attempt by several Arab states to prevent ital-

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Nakba, the catastrophe. The word reappearance is also used by Christian Zionists to describe Christs second coming, and in the context the parallel between Israels reappearance and Jesus reappearance would resonate with the readers. It is the reappearance of Israel as a state on the world scene that makes possible the final reappearing of Christ and the thousand-year reign of justice and peace he institutes. This framing of the throne and its contenders as culminating with the Christians messiah as King is done, as we have seen, through the use of Jews and Muslims in the narratives. Here, too, the rhetorical structure of the narratives serves to subtly re-center Christians into the Jewish stories. The subordinate role of both Jews and Muslims can also be seen in Christian Zionist narratives that do not directly address the larger messianic theme itself. A Christian girl killed in the Columbine High School shooting is used to show that hatred toward God's chosen people, the Jews, will in due time also bring ill upon Christians. Jewish Rabbis are portrayed as almost correctly interpreting the times, but not quite getting it right because they lack the further insight given in the New Testament about prophetic events. Russia and its Muslim allies, Ethiopia, Libya, and Iran, are said to serve the Antichrist, but Israel, with the support of the United States, will resist the Antichrist. These relationship structures serve to position Christians back into narratives that on their face seem to be about Muslims and Jews and have little or nothing to do with Christians. In Christian Zionist discourse, the Jewish and Muslim characters play spiritual roles of which they themselves nor world leaders are almost never not cognizant. One writer observes, Most world leaders who think that this conflict is over land seriously ignore this Islamic factor. They do not recognize that the Arab-Israeli conflict is over

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basic worldviews and philosophies, and these views are largely dictated by religion, not by politics. ... But those who understand know that the growing power of Islamic extremism is what makes a lasting peace in this volatile region as elusive as a Middle Eastern desert wind. Christian Zionist characterization of the other and the self can thus be summed up as Muslims are evil, Jews are chosen but stubborn, and Christians are righteous because of their belief in Jesus. God's final judgment of Israel's rebellion is yet future, one author writes. Only the time of Tribulation will finally force Jews to open their eyes to the Christian truth that Jesus is the Christ. Then at last, every kneeMuslim and Jewish includedwill bow and every tongue will confess the Lordship of the Christian Messiah. Christian Identity characters, narrator, and audience. The harshest Christian Identity vilification, of course, is reserved for Jews, who are seen as antichrists, since, in the words of 1 John 2, He is the antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. The cluster analysis made explicit this anti-Semitism. Jews are characterized as Christ killers, destroyers of white Christians, and controllers of the media (the Jew-run New York Times), the education system, and the government. One article drew out the comparison of the Jewish King Herod's attempt to have Jesus killed when he was born to today's Jews and their supposed conspiracy to eliminate white Israelites. The same article sets out to prove from Scripture that whites are Adamic and created in Gods image but Jews are not and are thus like the animals. After recounting a story of King David and his encounter with Edomites, the author, with the implications for today clear from the context, concludes: Therefore, the children of Israel later in their history were to kill the Edomites whenever they were encountered, just as David had done.

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As I noted earlier, one of the surprising findings from the cluster analysis was the relatively positive role Christian Identity narratives accord Arab Muslims. This is surprising given the white supremacist views of the writers, who see minorities (anyone not of pure Aryan ethnicity) as containing body and soul but not spirit. Catholic peons from Mexico invade our country, undermine the Protestant character of our nation and perpetrate more crime and terrorism laments one author, adding that the negro/Afro minority amongst our beloved nation, as well as the aliens from Mexico . . . threaten to inundate us at our border. This subhuman status assigned nonwhite humans, as we saw in the credibility analysis, is supported scripturally. Why then is the Arab Muslim, who is considered nonwhite, given such a positive narrative characterization? I propose there is a simple psychological answer and a more intricate narrative answer to that question. The simple answer is that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. While seen as a mongrel race and a misled religion, Arabs and Muslims are not the imposters that Jews are seen to be. They do not claim, in particular, to be the Children of Israel as do Jews. Furthermore, while not Christians, their holy book, the Koran, portrays Jesus in a favorable, almost Christian, light. One author explains: The Moslems venerate Christ. He is called 'The word of God, Logos, Messiah, the Prophet and is considered 'a Messenger of God,' along with Abraham, Moses and Muhammad. Many chapters of the Kor'an tell the story of Christ, his virgin birth and his persecution by Jews. This is in contrast to the Jewish deprecation of Jesus: Even today, Jews in Israel refer to Jesus by the demeaning word Yeshu (instead of Yeshua), meaning 'Perish his name.' . . . In a similar pun, the New Testament Gospel is called 'Avon Gilaion,' the booklet of Sin. These are the endearing feelings of

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Zionists towards Christ. The author also attempts to cast Mohammed as sympathetic to Christians, saying that Moslems identify their prophet with Paraclete, the Helper referred to in John 14:16, and understood by Christians to be the Holy Spirit sent by Jesus. The enemy-of-my-enemy dynamic is further evident in the stories told of Jewish oppression of the Arab people, especially of the Palestinians. Christian Identity portrayals of Muslims as friend and Jews as foe is found in the inverse in Christian Zionist characterization of Muslims as the archenemy and Jews as Gods chosen people. The narrative dynamic at work here might be called the function of surrogate/mercenary identities. A surrogate or mercenary identity exists when another group (such as Jews) does for the authoring community (Christian Zionists) what it wants to see done in the world. In the rhetorical construction of narratives concerned with identities, such as the ones studied in this study, the desires and actions of the narrator's community are fulfilled in the God-and-Devil identities of the others in the narrative. Adapting Edward Said's (1978) insight that the function of the Muslim in medieval Christian discourse was not so much to represent Islam in itself as to represent it for the medieval Christian (p. 60), I propose that the Christian Zionist and Christian Identity incorporation of Jews and Muslims in their discourse serves primarily a representation for (the respective Christian communities) function rather than a representation of function. A representation for construction in identity-focused narratives allows the authoring community to not only designate God and Devil characters, but also make those characters act out the desires and judgments of the authoring community. When three parties are involved, the surrogate/mercenary function is comprised of a primary relationship of contrast and a secondary relationship of contrast. In the primary

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relationship, the first-party identity and the second-party identity are contrasted against each other. In the secondary relationship, the second-party identity and the third-party identity are reflected against each other. For Christian Zionists, the primary relationship is Christian/Jew, the secondary is Jew/Muslim. In the secondary relationship, third-party Muslims personify the threat to Israels existence and the right to the land and the Temple Mount. The Muslim, who does not accept the Hebrew scriptures but instead defends an adulterated version of them in the Koran, also represents false religion. The second-party Jews, in contrast to these Muslims, are inheritors of the Promised Land, have been regathered to that land after 2000 years of diaspora, accept the Hebrew Old Testament, and look for a coming Messiah. In the primary contrast relationship, the second-party Jews serve to reflect well on the first-party Christian. In a manner less virulent but nonetheless subordinating in function, the defects of the Jews serve to elevate the virtues of the Christian. In Christian Zionist narrative, as is seen more clearly below in the section on causes and events, the frustration of Christians with the Jewish refusal to accept Jesus as Messiah finds a punishing hand in Gods outpouring of wrath on unraptured unbelievers on earth. Thus through two foils, a hierarchy of Christians/Jews/Muslims is constructed with the Christians on top, Jews next, and Muslims on the bottom. The surrogate/mercenary function in Christian Identity narratives works similarly. Here the primary contrast is also Christians/Jews, and the secondary contrast is between Jews/Muslimsbut unlike the friendly relationship represented in the primary contrast of Christian/Jews in Christian Zionist narratives, the Christian Identity primary relationship of Christian/Jew is negative. The first-party identity is that of Christian Identity believers,

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who are portrayed as the white Children of Israel who know Christ and are his ready warriors. This positive identity depends on the negative status of the second-party identity, the Jews. They are portrayed as imposters in their claim to be the Children of Israel, as thieves in their occupation of the land of the Palestinians, and as antichrists in their practice of an anti-Christian religion (Judaism) and in their refusal to worship Jesus as Messiah. This negative identity of the Jew is supported by the third-party identity, the Muslims, who, while not white and not Christian, at least pay homage to Christianity by recognizing Jesus as a special prophet. Additionally, the suffering of the Arab Muslims serves a surrogacy role in the narrativeswhat happens to the Muslims is what Jews would like to do to Christians, and already are beginning to do in indirect ways through controlling the influential institutions in America. The coming of the Messiah Jesus will usher in a final battle in which Christian Identity believers will destroy the Jews. And while Muslims are not denounced, there is no indication in Christian Identity writings that they will not suffer the same annihilation of all nonwhites that is the destiny of all people who have bodies and souls but not spirits. Minor versions of this surrogacy model can be found at work in the vilification of Christian Zionists, the U.S. government, the Catholic Church, mainline Protestant denominations, and all Jewdeo-Churchians by Christian Identity. To the extent that these institutions supported Israel, they were seen as on the enemy's side. One article describes the racist Jew-worship of Judeo-Christians and the history of the growth of this false worship (dispensationalism) in the last 150 years. The claim that for 1,830 years this false doctrine did not exist is used to show how the advent of dispensationalism is a new doctrine and not Scriptural.

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Thus we see that for both Christian Zionists and for Christian Identity narratives, the third-party serves an essential function in establishing the moral status of the secondparty identity (the Jew is good/the Jew is bad). But for both friendly relationships and negative ones, ultimately the wrath of God is what awaits them at the end of the story. That there is a surrogate/mercenary function at work in these articles becomes clearer when the thinness of Christian Zionist and Christian Identity characters qua characters in their respective narratives is taken into account. In almost all the narratives from both traditions, Jews and Muslims are well-developed characters, but Christians are on the fringes or simply absent. In Christian Zionist articles, for example, the formulaic endings of last-paragraph exhortations to the Christian reader is often the first time Christians are mentioned in the articles. This contrast suggests that for both Christian Identity and Christian Zionist storytelling, the Arab Muslim is needed to perform an oppositional identity construction to that of the Jew. The roundedness of the Jewish characters is, in fact, accomplished through this Muslim oppositional characterization. This surrogate/mercenary function also helps to explain the extreme contrast in the Jewish identity between the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist narratives: In making the third-party Arab Muslims either very good or very bad, the Jew in relation to the Muslim is made to look very good or very bad. In this way, good and evil forces (as understood by the authoring community) are personified in Muslims and Jews, thereby justifying the authoring communitys view of the groups and of themselves. There is nothing new, of course, in observing that these religious narratives, like most dramatic narratives, contain protagonists and antagonists. What is explained through examining the narratives through a surrogate/mercenary lens, I suggest, is the way these protagonists

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and antagonists are appropriated achieve desired identity constructions that have the ring of fidelity to the real world for the sympathetic reader. 3. EVENTS AND CAUSAL RELATIONS. To compare and contrast these relations of events and causes, I report the results of my analyses of both a Christian Zionist article (Is this the End of the World?) and a Christian Identity article (Ishmael, Edom and Israel and the Attack Upon America) on the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. Christian Zionist events and causal relations. The article Is This the End of the World? frames the events and causal relationships as occurring between three main characters, all nation states: Israel, Russia, and the United States. Israel represents Jews, the United States represents Christians, and Russia represents the Arab peoples. This identification of Russia with Arabs is accomplished by the author through a typology and a slide in the following sentences: In the days following [September 11], we learned that Osama bin Laden appeared to be the mastermind behind the killings. The Israeli Mossad announced that Iraq had funded the terrorists. . . . Ezekiel predicts a scenario wherein Gog of Magog will come to the defense of certain rogue Arab nations. We are told that Russia will consider itself as a guard to its allies and will garner the support of Iran, Libya and Ethiopia, plus a host of other armies for an all-out invasion of Israel. Just where we fit into all of this is not clear. But we could be in the thick of it as Israel undertakes the fight of its life. If Russia contemplates war against Israel, the Kremlin may decide to take the US out in a pre-emptive strike at the same time. It

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seems to me that Russia could not afford to let us survive, lest we come to the aid of Israel. The scenario painted is one in which these events would then lead to a nuclear holocaust. Based on a verse in Isaiah 57The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to comethe author conjectures that the rapture could occur under the cover of a nuclear war, so that when the smoke clears away, the world will think that we are simply among the millions of casualties. The conclusion of the article is addressed to the Christian Zionist reader: It may be that when we step through gates of pearl onto streets of gold we will say, Whew! That was close! Oh, my friend, our departure may be very near. Prepare your soul by trusting in Christ today. Then win as many others as you can while there is time. The cluster analysis revealed that in this article the United States was seen as a righteous, legitimate regime, but one targeted by the enemy. It also presented the nation in us and we terms. Russia, by contrast, was portrayed as a foe that was not to be trusted because of its cozy relationship with Arab nations and its tense relationship with Israel. The cluster analysis of Israel showed the country to be understood as a friend of the United States, and like the U.S., one targeted by hostile Arab enemies. The verb transformation analysis showed that Russia was an active agent 100% of the time and never the affected; that can be compared to Israel being agentive in 40% of the sentences compared to being affected 60% of the time. When the connotation of the agentive verbs are taken into consideration, the general picture is one of Russia the aggressor, Israel the preyed upon, and the United States (an agent 28% of the time, affected 28% of the time)

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Israels vulnerable ally. The we language of the article shows the authoring Christian Zionist community identifies itself with the United States in a close way. The author begins the article by describing the attacks as an unspeakable act of war against the citizens of the United States and that It is only right that the United States find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. He also portrays the nation as a righteous Christian one: All across the nation, churches were opened for prayer. Memorial services turned our attention toward God. The nations senators and representatives held a prayer vigil at the Capitol Building and sang God Bless America. But this patriotism and loyalty to Israel is tempered by a distinction between those who are believers and those who are not as well as the degree of loyalty or lack of loyalty the United States shows to Israel. As the authors description of the Rapture shows, at the point of the worlds most dire need, believers will be gone from earth and walking blissfully on streets of gold. The Tribulation will then play out as prophesied, reeking havoc on those left behindJews included: In Revelation 6:8 we are told that a fourth part of mankind could be subject to dying by sword and hunger. And again, in Revelation 8:7-9, we learn that a third of the earths trees and grass will be burned; and a third of all ships in the oceans destroyed. The causation inherent in this narrative can be viewed at the level of current events and the level of prophetic events. The cause of current events in this story is an Arab attack on the friend of Israel, the United States. This leads to a good-will effort by the United States to bring those rogue nations to justice. The causes from a prophetic standpointrhetorically enacted with the words could lead to and references to a

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handful of Bible passagesare the forces of Gog and Magog (Russia and the rogue Arab states) issuing a preemptive nuclear attack on the United States in a strategy aimed at destroying the state of Israel but leading instead to the time of Jacobs trouble (the Tribulation). As the analysis of the narrative function of Arab Muslims in the character section above showed, the third-party mercenary role Arabs play is crucial in enacting the causes that lead to the prophesied events. But as this article shows, this is true not only for the enemy Arab but also for the second-party Jew-as-friend. It is Russia's plan to attack Israel thus necessitating the prior destruction of the United Statesthat leads to the world war. This narrative dynamic of using both third-party and second-party characters to achieve the dramatic action is discernable in the Christian Identity article on the 9/11 attacks, which I describe next, though with different parties filling the roles of friend and foe. Christian Identity events and causal relations. The article Ishmael, Edom and Israel and the Attack Upon America frames the events and causal relationships as occurring between three main characters: Jews, Arabs, and Christians. It is noteworthy that these characters correspond to those ethnic/religious groups represented in the 9/11 Christian Identity article on Israel, Russia, and America. The article begins by framing the 9/11 attacks in terms of the biblical identities of the parties involved in the attack: The world is still reeling from the effects of the September 11, 2001, attack upon America by way of the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and the World Trade Center Towers in New York City. Much has already been written and much more will yet be heard about these heinous acts of

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terrorism. However, next to nothing has been said about the identity and millennia-long history of those involved in these events. The reason for this is found in the fact that few people today know the identity, that is, the biblical identity of todays Arabs, Jews and Anglo-Americans. Furthermore, most people are unaware that the identity of all three groups are intertwined and have been since the times of biblical antiquity. Moreover, few people know that the basis for what occurred on September 11 is found in the religious rivalries of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. This approach to understanding cause and effect by understanding identities underlies all Christian Identity discourse (and the groups name). The article proceeds from that opening paragraph by explaining from biblical references the identities of Arabs (from Ishmael, Abrahams son), the Jews (from Esau, Jacobs son and Israels twin brother), and Anglo-Americans and their white kin (from Israel). The descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Esau are said to have interbred with other nonwhite groups against Gods express commands and thus produced the Arabs and the Edomites. Todays Jews are Edomites, and todays whites are Israelites, according to the author of the article. The cluster analysis revealed that in this article the white Israelite Americans (i.e., Christian Identity believers) are seen as a people of divine promise, of white, European pedigree, and the practitioners of the one true religion, Christianity. The cluster analysis of Jews showed them to be understood as parading a false identity as Israelites but really being the mixed-race descendants of the biblically despised Edomites. Arabs were painted as having a mixed genetic heritage, as being a people in conflict with each

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other and others, but also as being a wronged people by the state of Israel and the United States. The verb transformation analysis showed that all three groups were given carrier or attribute positions (for example, Jews are rarely genetic Israelites), in contrast to agentive positions, almost in every sentence in which they appearedwhich simply shows that the article treated them in definitional ways rather than giving them dramatic agentive roles. Counterintuitively, it is this definitional construct (rather than an agentive construct) that is used rhetorically to create the causes and events in the narrative. Once the true identity of the three groups has been carefully and biblically determined, the author arrives at this logically derived conclusion: The United States supports the spurious State of Israel in Palestine to the tune of about $4 billion dollars per year. It has not been lost on the Arab nations that the State of Israel could not exist and could not be stealing their land if it were not for the United States assistance. Therefore, the September 11 attack upon America is connected to the Zionist conquest of Arab lands and the murder of Arab lives, which are unfortunately financed by American tax dollars under the guise that todays Jews are Israelites. In other words, this terrorist incident is, at its core, unequivocally linked with the question: Who are todays true Israelites? Because America has misidentified Israel and consequently backed the Zionist movement, many in the Arab world have become the avowed enemies of both Israelis and Americans alike. The raw patriotism exuding from the Christian Zionist 9/11 article is

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conspicuously missing in this article. There is no we language, and no implication that the United States was right and the terrorists were wrong. In fact, the cause of the attacks at the current news level is the complicity of the United States in Israels oppression of the Palestinian Arabs. At the biblical prophetic level, the cause is to be found in the double sin of the Jews interbreeding with nonwhite races against Gods command and of then claiming to be the pure race of Israel when it was a mixed race with a false religion (Judaism rather than Christianity). For this author, the third-party role of the Arab Muslim is not one to be castigated, as Christian Zionists would have it, but one to be sympathetically understood. The author leads the reader to ask: Why do they [Arabs] hate America so much that they have labeled it the head of the serpent and the Great Satan? These unflattering sentiments about America are, in fact, voiced by Christian Identity authors in other articles. Here the Arab does the mercenary work of the Christian Identity believer, not only in humbling the American establishment by destroying the towers but in naming the United States government for what it is, the Great Satan. As other of the Christian Identity articles showed, the power positions in the United States government and in influential civic bureaucracies are held by, or are unduly influenced by, Jews. One of the other articles went so far as to suggest that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by Jews with the consensual knowledge of the U.S. government to create on pretense the right to attack Arabs in Afghanistan. 4. TEMPORAL RELATIONS. How do Christian Identity and Christian Zionist narratives leverage apocalyptic time to achieve the oppositional identities of the two groups (Identity and Christian Zionist) against Jews? An answer already emerging from

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the analysis of the narrative categories above is seen vividly in the category of temporal relations: The oppositional identities are constructed through the subordination of the sacred texts and stories of Jews and Muslims about themselves to the Christian story. To present the findings of this category, I again focus on one article from each group. Drawing especially from the theory of time and identity developed by Paul Ricoeur (see Chapter 3), I report the findings of this part of the analysis with an eye toward the construction of time in the narratives as containing a structural and an actional component. The distinction can be illustrated through the word final in the title of the Christian Zionist article I present here, Israel's Final Judgment. It contains within itself reference to both the plot (structure) and the (emplotment) action of time. The structure of time is a dispensational pretribulation calendar in which physical time runs its course. The action of time is a teleology in which all that remains outside of God's will is at last set in order. The double meaning of final here then implies last in an order of events, and fulfillment in the purpose of those events. For the Christian Zionist, the truth of the finality of time (in both senses) is revealed in Holy Scripture. It is this groundingtext dynamic that this study explores, and which, in terms of temporal relations, sends the question of time-and-identity beyond that of how narrative makes time humanly meaningful, as Ricoeur shows, to how narratives that reference contemporary events from a base of ancient prophetic narratives make time humanly meaningful. Christian Zionist temporal relations. The article Israel's Final Judgment begins by noting the tragic drama of the history of the Jewish people under the attacks of Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, the Czars of Russia, and the Nazis of Germany. It then proposes a thesis. Some of these attacks have been the result of unreasonable hatred.

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Others have been the judgment of their God. It is precisely because God has chosen them that He has meted out judgment on them for their rebellion. . . . [But] God's final judgment of Israel's rebellion is yet future. A narrative follows that explains the purpose of the coming time of Tribulation, which is compared to the birthing process as found in Genesis (in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children), Isaiah (they shall be in pain like a woman that travaileth), Jeremiah (Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins, like a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?), and 1 Thessalonians (For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them , as a travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape). The author sees this painful process of birth as one of judgment, just as it was a judgment on Eve following her sin with the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. This judgment will be against all nations of the earth, including Israel, but as God's chosen people, it will bring them to salvation, not utter destruction. God's purpose for Israel in the Tribulation period is to save them from destruction during a time of intense antiSemitism and to prepare them for their coming Messiah. He also will 'correct thee [Israel] in measure' for the sins they have committed in their rebellion against Him. The partial quote comes from Jeremiah 30:11, which reads: For I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee; though I make a full end of all nations to which I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee, but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished. The Tribulation, which will last seven years, is next delineated into four periods that are found in the Book of Revelation: the Beginning Sorrows, the Seven Trumpets, the Bowl Judgments, and finally the Birth. Each period of the tribulation, like the birthing

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of a child, is progressively more intense and more painful until the very end. With the period of the Beginning of Sorrows, taken from Revelation 6, we see the appearance of the Antichrist with the onset of the birthing contractions. In these initial judgments, the rider of the white horse, the Antichrist, will begin to conquer (v.2); a series of wars will start (vv. 3-4); famine will follow (v.6); and 25 percent of the earth's inhabitants will die (vv. 7-8). At that time believers will be martyred for their faith (vv. 9-11). Finally natural disasters will occur (vv. 12-17) with a severity that people have never seen before. The Trumpet Judgments unleash an army of 200,000,000 in strength, and 33 percent of the earth's inhabitants will die, and Satan will attack the Jewish people (12:13), attempting to annihilate them. The Bowl Judgments will be the last period before the actual delivery and will release demonic spirits that will gather the political power of the world and their armies to the Valley of Jezreel (Megiddo) for the ultimate destruction of these forces at the climatic Battle of Armageddon. And last comes the Birth. In the Birth, Israel will be spared complete destruction, although all the armies of the earth will be marshaled against them. Their only hope will be to call on the Messiah, and that is what they will do. Zechariah 12:10 says: 'they will look upon me [the Messiah] whom they have pierced.' At that point Israel will receive Jesus as Messiah. The author then quotes Isaiah 66:7-9: Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man-child. . . . Shall I bring to the birth and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord. Shall I cause to bring forth and shut the womb? saith the Lord. The author then exposits the verse to explain God's final judgment: Three thing should be noted in this passage. First, Israel will bring forth a man-child (the Messiah) before the time of travail (the Tribulation). This

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took place almost two thousand years ago when Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Second, as a result of the travail, the people of Israel will be ready to receive their Messiah. Third, God will not allow this to be a still birth. The nation will not be destroyed during the period of labor pains. The process will be painful, but at the end the nation of Israel will be born born spiritually (born again) as each individual Jewish person accepts Jesus' death on the cross as payment for his or her sin and receives Him as Messiah. For the first time in history, an entire nation will accept Jesus. God's final judgment of Israel will be finished. He will deal with them for their sins, but with everlasting love He will use the circumstances to bring them to Himself. This dramatic conclusion to the narrative of judgment is followed by one more paragraph, addressed to the Christian Zionist reader: God often works in the same manner with individuals. He allows, even brings troubles into our lives to show us our need for Him. When things seem the most desperate, He is ready to deliver us. Several points can be made about this narrative in view of temporal relations. The first is that the structural framework of Christian time is imposed on the Jewish people and even the sacred Jewish calendar. The temporal structure of time is chronological, representing the progression of time from Adam and the Prophets and Jesus in history, through today and extending into the future. The future period of Tribulation is then broken down into successive subperiods of time, which are followed by the return of Jesus and, presumably, the literal thousand years of his reign on earth. This structure of time, of course, follows a reading of the Christian Bible. And that reading is a

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dispensational one in which successive periods or dispensations follow, the last of which is Jesus' thousand-year reign on earth. This double structure of the temporality (biblical time and contemporary time) requires a hermeneutical translation to get from the biblical time descriptions to the present and future prophetic time. The dispensational template serves as the code for deciphering this double temporality. A second point is that the actional construction of time in the narrative (emplotment) moves the succession of events from mere chronicle to drama. As noted, the final judgment of Israel refers not only to the last thing that happens in a succession of events but also to the completion of God's dealing and covenant with Israel. If the structural work of the article fits the Jewish story in a Christian time frame (and a particular type of Christian frame), the actional work the article performs through the temporal relations it constructs places the Jewish story into a Christian teleology, namely Christ as the Omega or end of all human struggle and meaning. This becomes very clear in the climax to the article in which, at last, the Jews accept the Christ they rejected at his first coming. As traditional dispensational theology would have it, it was as a result of the initial Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Christ that the millennial reign was postponed (the parenthetical age of the church we now live in) in the first place. The relations of time to events and people in this apocalyptic tale are integral and constitutive of identities and destinies by framing them in a larger biblical drama with its gathering and culminating time scheme. The last point is that this constitution of identities through the Christian Zionist time frame assumes and constructs for the reading community its superior position to the Jews. The last paragraphthe only one in the entire article to address the Christian

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readeris clearly of a different tone than the whole of the writing up to those sentences. The action called upon is purely individual, interior, and spiritual in contrast to the earthy and corporate (the entire nation of Israel receives Jesus) nature of the drama that proceeds it. From the other articles, we know that Christians are raptured before the Tribulation begins (though some nonbelievers will accept Christ during the tribulation and be martyred for doing so). The punishment that befalls Israel in the Tribulation will finally open the eyes of the remnant that survives to the truth that Christians have known all along. Jews will at last be born again, as the author of the article puts it in allusion to Jesus' words in the Gospel of John where he says to a Jewish Pharisee, You must be born again to enter the kingdom of God. This Tribulation punishment, the author says, will fall on those who have pierced his hands, implying by citation of the phrase from Isaiah that it was the Jews who not only rejected Jesus but crucified him. Christians, by contrast, will be spared the Tribulation because of their belief. Thus we see that the finality found in the world constructed through dispensationalist temporal relations affirms Christians as they are while positioning Jews as rebellious and obstinate and in need of judgment. The Christian story swallows up the Jewish one, not as wrong, but as not going far enoughof staying in the Old Testament when the Old Testament itself (in their views) is pointing them to a higher truth found in the New Testament. Christian Identity temporal relations. For the sake of making the contrast and similarities between the two groups' use of temporal relations, I consider the same three points drawn from the Christian Zionist use of temporal relations in this subsection. The first point is that the structural framework of Christian time is imposed on the Jewish people. This is true for Christian Identity narrative as well, but it is far less visible than it

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is in Christian Zionist narrative. Missing in Christian Identity apocalyptic are detailed descriptions of time periods and the succession of events in themno careful explication of what happens during the judgment of the Seven Trumpets or of the Bowl Judgments. These symbols from the Book of Revelation are not totally absent from Identity discourse, but they are interpreted as symbolic images of the judgment of God against unbelievers, not successive stages moving toward a climax. Still, the general framework of Old and New Testament is present, and the eventual final triumph of Christ over the powers of evilwhich are manifest most potently in the Jewframes Christian Identity narrative. An example of this can be seen in an article that describes the true church as a militant church. In answer to Christian pacifists who point out that Jesus at one point told his disciples not to fight, the author quotes the reason Jesus gave for that pacifism, with the word now italicized.: Now my Government is not of this world. His usage of the word now clearly shows the temporal nature of all that He has said. We see that the reason that His government was not in this world was because all the prophecies regarding Him had not been fulfilled. His Government was not in this world in that age, but in the new age His Government would be in this world. After the day of Pentecost, and certainly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, His government is in this world. Hence, we see the importance of a true understanding of what the Bible teaches regarding end time things. Many people are shocked to learn that they are now and have been in the everlasting Christian age for 2000 years.

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The time frame here reflects a postmillennial eschatology in which the present age beginning forty days after Jesus' resurrection and ascension to heaven and continuing now and until Christ returns with trumpet sound from the clouds just as he ascendedis the age of Christ's rule, that is, the millennium described in the Book of Revelation. While premillennial dispensationalists see this age as following the return of Christ. postmillennialists see the millennium of Christ's reign as now and the return of Christ bringing to a close the 1000-year reign of Christ through the true church. So while the time frame between Christian Identity and Christian Zionists differs on when the millennial reign of Christ occurs, it shares the belief in a millennial reign of Christ in which justice will be served, especially upon the Jew. The second point is that the actional construction of time in the narrative moves the succession of events from mere chronicle to drama. Christian Identity's chronicle of events is simpler than the Christian Zionist one, but it nevertheless serves the militant theology of the group well. We can see the actional side of the temporal relations in the article AntichristStrong Delusion. In this article, the second-party identity is the Jew, but the third-party mercenary is, interestingly, Christian Zionists and other dispensationalist believers. The author begins by attacking the Christian Zionist sympathy for the Jewish people: In times of war, fraternizing with the enemy is tantamount to treason . . . Yet, in the war of our Faith against the Babylonian world system, most who name the name of Christ are unconscionably guilty of [this]crime! To support this claim, the author quotes 1 John 2:22-23, adding explanatory parenthesis. The WORD plainly declares, 'Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus (Yahshua) is the Christ (Messiah). He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever

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denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. From this basis, the emplotment of time is used to develop the same action that was found in the Christian Zionist article examinedthe judgment of God at Christ's second coming against the rebellion of the Jews. Our Savior's command upon His return will be those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them bring hither and slay them before me (Luke 19:27). This is the fate that every rebel against the Truth will meet, including those rebels who say they are Jews. For a Christian to pretend and proclaim that any rebellious unbeliever will be blessed when Messiah returnsjust because the rebel claims descent from Abrahamis gross error and an outright lie. . . . Messiah Yahshua said that if the Jews were Abraham's children, they would do the works of Abraham, not seek to kill and deny Him (John 5:46). The temporal relations in Identity narrative bring closure to the ungodly state of human affairs, just as was seen in Christian Zionist narrative. Through the narrative, the Christian Identity author is able to make time and identity come together through a kind of teleology with the same effects as the Christian Zionists', but with a different emphasis. Christian Zionist teleology is a Platonic final-cause teleology, while Christian Identity teleology is an Aristotelian one of first causes. History and identity are pulled from the end in Christian Zionist timeit is what you decide to do (accept Christ or reject him) at the end of time that determines your identity. But history and identity for Christian Identity pushes from the origins up, as is reflected in the seedline faction of the movementit is your seed or genetic identity that determines your destiny, which the

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coming of Christ at the end of time exposes more than it determines. It is this fundamental difference in the view of temporal relations that is then reflected in the two different discourses. The article ends with this quotation from Revelation 19:1-2 in which the shore is seen to be the Jews: Halleluyah! salvation and glory and honor and power unto Yahweh our Elohiym, for true and righteous are His judgments: for He will judge the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication and He will avenge the blood of His servants at her hand. This verse represents the last point, that this constitution of identities through the Christian Identity time frame assumes and constructs for the reading community its superior position to the Jews. The white supremacy in Christian Identity is apparent. The temporal relations in their narratives suggests how it can be held to so virulently. It is only the end of time that will reveal to all what Christian Identity believers already know: that Identity believers are the Chosen People of Israel and the Jews are demonic imposters to that identity. The last paragraph of another Christian Identity article coveys this worldview vividly, referencing the Old Testament prophet Obadiah: I like Obadiah. The good guys win. Though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord. Obadiah then describes what God will do to the Edomites. I find it especially satisfying. I long for the day when God destroys the temples of their money, their media, and their police forces. Then our communities will kick out white supremacists [my note: this refers to the Jews through an inversion of the term 'white supremacist' earlier in the article to mean the Jewish elite who are said to run the government and institutions of the

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United States] and take back control of our children, schools, streets, and town halls. We will build museums celebrating our history, not theirs. We will work to build a future for our children. When we throw off the yolk of the white supremacists we will secure the existence of our people and a future for our children. May that day soon come. In summary of this chapter's findings, we can see how the rhetorical device of apocalyptic narrative serves to construct differing identity accounts: (a) through differing moral maps drawn from the same biblical terminology, (b) through differing semantics for the same biblical vocabularies, (c) through differing surrogate/mercenary identities of the same biblical characters, (d) through differing assignments of evil or good action verbs to characters, (e) through differing assessments of who the Antichrist(s) is and the role of the United States and Israel in the struggle of good against evil, (f) through differing accounts of whether Jews will have a positive or negative role in ushering in the returning Messiah, (f) through differing teleologies that form identities from origins or ends.

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Chapter Nine Community, Identity, and Sacred Knowing The last two chapters addressed the rhetorical dynamic of two Christian groups using the same biblical texts but arriving at opposite identity constructions of the Jew. These chapters also began to illustrate the way these rhetorical operations serve to give the authoring communities a sense of identity. A thesis of this study is that these identity-of-the-other narratives are essentially also narratives of the self. In this chapter I propose that the findings reveal that beneath the opposite identities of the Jew in the two discourse traditions lies a common effort by both communities to use the Jewish other to build a superior identity of the self. By use the Jewish other is meant a kind of knowing of the other as inferior, depraved, or subordinate that, in turn, allows one to know oneself as superior. The superiority discourse I am proposing is the power dynamic that I theorized in Chapter 4a Ricoeurian-modified power/knowledge drawn from Foucault and applied, following the model of Said, in critical-hermeneutical form to narratives. The knowing of the other in the two Christian groups I studied is a particular kind of knowing based on the sureties of divinely inspired scripture. The findings have exposed this sacred knowing to involve a complex interpretive action that moves back and forth between the Bible's apocalyptic texts and today's events. Combined with sophisticated authority and clustering strategies (see chapters 8 and 9), the resulting narratives are powerful creators and reinforcers of the worldview of the community for which the narratives are authored.

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From these findings and the theoretical perspective outlined in the Literature Review, especially that found in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, this chapter attempts to answer the second research question of the study: What is the relationship between the grounding texts (end-of-time Bible passages), narratives, and knowledge claims of each of the two interpretive communities? The answer is expanded in three sections below; first, however, I will first give a short version of the answer. I propose that the relationship between the Bible, the Christian narratives, and the knowledge claims inherent in those narratives is a circular onethe Heideggerian hermeneutical circle described in Chapter 4. Metaphorically it can be pictured as an interpretive wheel rolling across the fertile hermeneutical ground of divine scripture. Or better, it is the wheel of modern apocalyptic linked with the wheel of ancient apocalyptic, since the Bible is itself the product of hermeneutical circles. Modern apocalyptic is thus a wheel-in-a-wheel, an interpretive worldview built upon an ancient worldview, a modern prophetic vocabulary whose locution is as old as the Old Testament prophets. The interesting dynamic here is that, even more than a single wheel, a wheel-in-awheel is semantically unpredictable and can spin off in any number of directions. But those wheels can also be purposefully guided to some degree. In whatever direction the double wheel is rolled, however, it leaves tracks that the spinner of the wheel can point back to as a source of proud tradition and origin. This phenomenon of the double apocalyptic hermeneutic, I contend, is what makes the narratives spun from itin two opposite directions in the cases I studiedso innovative and yet at the same time so convincing for those who follow in their tracks.

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The Circle of Sacred Knowing In Chapter 4, I reviewed Heidegger's notion that all seeing is already grounded in a preunderstanding, a seeing as of what is already seen. In Heidegger's words, Any interpretation which is to contribute understanding, must already have understood what is to be interpreted (Heidegger, quoted in Westphal, p. 418). Westphal described Heideggerian hermeneutics as a three-story universe in which (a) cognitive assertion rests upon (b) interpretation, which rests upon (c) (pre)understanding. I argued in Chapter 5 that this three-story hermeneutic parallels Ricoeur's narrative tripartite of prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration. Applied to the findings of this study, the parallel might look like Table 9.1. Table 9.1 Three Levels of Interpretation Heidegger Level 1: preunderstanding Level 2: interpretation Level 3: assertion Ricoeur prefigured configured refigured Apocalyptic lived experience of ancients Bible apocalyptic accounts modern apocalyptic accounts

The third column (Apocalyptic) can be read by starting with the Level 2 Bible apocalyptic accounts. These accounts are configurations by the biblical authors of the prefigured life experiences (Level 1) of their people in their day. The Level 3 modern apocalyptic accounts (which were contained in the articles I analyzed) are then refigurations of the ancient biblical apocalyptic accounts. This comes close to capturing the dynamic at work in Christian Zionist and Christian Identity narrativesbut it leaves something out. The refiguration step (Level 3) that produces modern apocalyptic accounts in fact involves two interpretive actions. The

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first action takes the Bible texts in a prefigured manner and then configures those texts into a system such as premillennialism or postmillennialism. It is this configured millennialism that then serves as a configuration from which to refigure modern events with apocalyptic meanings. This is the particular double hermeneutic that I refer to when speaking of a wheel-in-a-wheel. The grounding Bible texts provide for an initial interpretation (dispensational premillennialism, for example) followed by a secondary interpretation (such as the September 11 attacks are the beginning of the time of Jacob's troubles). This hermeneutical process is diagrammed in Table 9.2: Table 9.2 Three Levels of Interpretation Heidegger Level 1: preunderstanding Level 2: interpretation Level 3: assertion Ricoeur prefigured configured refigured Apocalyptic Bible apocalyptic accounts pre or postmillennial doctrine modern apocalyptic accounts

In this table, Level 2 premillennialism or postmillennialism represents a configuration of the givenness of the sacred world of Scripture (Level 1) in which the modern-day narrators already live symbolically and unself-consciously. From the seeing level of this biblical preunderstanding is deliberated a seeing-as interpretation of that inherited sacred text-world. The seeing-as configuration is then the basis from which the assertions of modern apocalyptic accounts are spoken into being. An example of this double hermeneutic is found in the way the Christian Zionist today reads the Book of Revelation. To make sense of the book, the individual sections of the book (such as the trumpet judgment of the Tribulation) are given functional positions in relation to the whole of the book. Concurrently, what the whole of the book amounts to a dispensationalist premillennialismis ascertained by reading out the smaller verses

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and portions of the book, such as the Trumpet judgment of God. This is the circular reasoning of knowing the whole from the parts and the parts from the whole. Another Christian Zionist example is the thousand-year reign of Christ found in Revelation 20. It is taken literally since the Book of Revelation as a whole describes a literal timeframe; and the timeframe found in the book of Revelation is taken to be literal since the time of 1,000 years in Revelation 20 is a literal number. This level of the hermeneutical circle is a Level 2 configuration. Level 3 refiguration, then, is a reading of the whole of history from the parts and the parts from the whole of history. In Christian Zionist terms, the whole of history is the way real-world eventsthe events CNN reportsplay out teleologically in the time remaining until Christ's triumphant return. The parts of history are the individual events that have occurred in the past and which will occur until Christ returns. Given their belief in the Bible as the revelation of God, Christian Zionists believe the currentevents parts (Level 3) can be recognized and understood through the careful analysis (that is, through careful refiguration) of biblical prophecy passages (Level 2) in which the whole of the history of salvation is given. When Muslims make trouble for Israel, this modern part is located in Scripture and then fitted into the whole scheme of dispensational history. At the same time, it is the whole scheme of prophetic history (dispensationalism) that allows these parts to be recognized. If we raise the question of which of the two tables9.1 or 9.2is right, the answer points to a textual dynamic that is important in understanding sacred knowing and all hermeneutically based epistemology. Any given completed hermeneutical circle is more a heuristic device contrived by the analyst than it is a felt reality for the person

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living in that circle. That is to say that Tables 1 and 2 are each synchronic snapshots of a continuously rolling, diachronic phenomenon we call understanding. There is no first snapshot, no pristine prior understanding, no primordial prefiguration or preunderstanding from which to map or retrace all subsequent knowing. Table 2 is the level at which I chose in this study to capture the ongoing dynamic of knowing in these two Christian groupswhich means my analysis has captured dispensationalism at a single (recent) historical moment in time. To illustrate this further, dispensationalism is itself a modification of an earlier kind of premillennialism and is today undergoing substantial modification at certain theological centers (such as Dallas Theological Seminary). A time-series photograph would show the premillennialist wheel bumping along the uneven terrain of biblical apocalyptic texts and at one juncture in the late 1800s metamorphizing into dispensationalism. If this contingency is true of Level 2 hermeneutics, it is even more the case for modern (Level 3) apocalyptic accounts, such as, for example, the 1980s conjecture by some dispensationalists that Russian President Gorbechev was the Antichrist because of the birthmark on his forehead (which quickly lost currency in prophecy circles following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s). Level 2 modification is slower and relatively more stable than Level 3 modification. Or put oppositely, innovation is faster and less directionally predictable the higher the level of interpretation. Level 3 refiguration is the cutting edge of interpretation and is thus where the greatest innovation naturally occurs. This picture emphasizes the presence of change and innovation, and thus the instability and indeterminacy of both primary texts and the secondary texts based on

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them. Once this inherent instability is acknowledged, however, the opposite phenomenon of continuity and shared meaningsthat is, traditionbecomes even more remarkable. Here is where Fish's notion of the interpretive community is enlightening. As noted in Chapter 3, Fish argues that texts can have stable meaningsbut such stability is not a function of the text itself or some literal reading of the text but of the communities surrounding the text that provide the context and background assumptions that make the texts meaning natural or apparent to those in the tradition who read it. Even more pertinent to the two case studies in this study is Fish's (1984) proposal that a text is stable in more than one direction, as a succession of interpretive assumptions give it a succession of stable shapes (p. 270). When we connect this to the levels of understanding displayed in Table 2, we see that at Level 1 (biblical apocalyptic) both Christian Zionists and Christian Identity narrators are in agreementthat the Bible is the divinely revealed word of God and that Bible means Old Testament and New Testament. It is at the second and, even more so, the third levels that the divergence becomes pronounced between the two groups. From the perspective of believers within any one of the particular movements, their position is the natural logical outcome of reasoned biblical deduction. From their point of view, their community's Level 3 positions rest directly and securely on Level 2 positions, which rest directly and securely on Level 1 positions. From a comparative point of view of Christian Zionists and Christian Identity, we (academics studying the groups) can see the two groups as examples of the stable in more than one direction phenomenon Fish describes. But those along for the ride on a given community wagon (narratives make good wagons) can look back at the interpretive tracks left by their

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wagon and reassuringly recognize where they have come from and the general direction in which they are headed. From the believers' perspective, it is the other wagonsother interpretive communitiesthat are off track in the direction they are headed. Fish (1984) notes that evidence is always a function of what it is to be evidence for, and is never independently available. That is, the interpretation determines what will count as evidence for it, and the evidence is able to be picked out only because the interpretation has already been assumed (p. 272). If this is true, we can see that given knowledge claims will be accepted by anyone at the same level of understanding (we agree), will be understood but denied by anyone one level of divergence apart (you are moving off track), and will be dismissed as absurd by anyone two or more levels of divergence apart (they are completely off track!). This we/you/they progression (we agree/you are moving off track/they are off track) is seen in the Christian Zionist acceptance of the Christian Identity claim that the Bible as the word of God reveals the secrets of the end of time (Level 1), the Christian Zionist recognition of but disagreement with the postmillennial eschatology of Christian Identity believers (Level 2), and Christian Zionist dismissal of the Christian Identity claim that Jews are antichrists as absurd (Level 3). The higher up the branches of the hermeneutical tree one moves, the less common connections there are for dialogue, and the we of former times becomes a distant, foreign they (all the more so for having once shared common roots). What is absurd or unreasonable, then, depends on the number of levels of understanding that separate any common worldview. For an atheist, for instance, the absurdity of Christian Zionist and Christian Identity belief en total (and the reasoning that supports that belief) will come much earlier since the atheist does not accept the common ground of biblical

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revelationmuch less the theismthat these two groups assume and share. To summarize the discussion in this chapter thus far, what is known depends upon the grounding texts one starts from and the interpretive wheel one runs across those grounding texts. For Christian Zionists, that wheel is premillennial dispensationalism; for Christian Identity, that wheel is postmillennialism. Exactly how the two interpretive wheels pick up such different soil from the same grounding texts was explored in the strategies of authority (credibility, typology, transfer, and esoteric insight) each group uses in its discourse. The metaphor of wheels and tracks I use is essentially Gadamer's rehabilitated definition of prejudice and tradition and the inevitable role they play in all knowing (see Chapter 5). For Gadamer, prejudice is the horizon of the present, the finitude of what is near in its openness toward the remote (Ricoeur, 1991c, p. 283). In terms of our metaphor, we might say it is the present location of the hermeneutical wheel on the ground of interpretation with the tracks of tradition behind it and the open plain before it. This balance between the constraints of tradition and the productiveness of tradition to all understandingand therefore to all knowingaccounts for the combination of similarity and difference found in the Christian Zionist and Christian Identity traditions (what Edward Said describes as intellectually knowable lines). The similarities grow from Christian Zionists and Christian Identity sharing a common beginning point in the Protestant Christian tradition; the differences, developed through the smallest interpretive strategies into the most encompassing but divergent eschatological frameworks, grow from the dynamic activity of these living communities as they enter into the openness of the remote. The shared horizons of the centrality of the Jew in their stories grows from

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the prominent role Jews have in the biblical accounts they both breathe. The same could be said for their mutual emphasis on God's sovereignty, the uniqueness of Jesus, the belief in Antichrist, and the anticipation of the end of time and final judgment. By contrast, those horizons that are outside of the other's purviews, where no immediate possibility for a fusion of horizons exists, are the result of the ongoing interpretive activity of each group moving them in differing but stable directions. To end this section, one last issue raised in Chapter 4 on the difference between narrative histories and narrative fictions can now be applied to the nature of prophetically based knowledge claims like those found in Christian Identity and Christian Zionist discourse. In describing Ricoeur's thesis that narratives make time humanly meaningful, White argues: To emplot a sequence of events and thereby transform what would otherwise be only a chronicle of events into a story is to effect a mediation between events and certain universally human experiences of temporality. And this goes for fictional stories no less than for historical stories. The meaning of stories is given in their emplotment. By emplotment, a sequence of events is configured (grasped together) in such a way as to represent symbolically what would otherwise be unutterable in language, namely, the ineluctably aporetic nature of the human experience of time. (White, 1991, p. 144) The first point to be made about prophetic knowing is that the stories on which the knowing is based are emplotments. As such, their status as fiction or fact remains undetermined since both the novel and the history book both employ narratives to grasp

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together events and people into symbolically meaningful form. Don Ihde (1991) observes: In the movements from configuration through refiguration in both historical and fictional narrative, there is revealed the constitution of textual worlds in correlation with human lifeworlds (p. 128). Emplotment allows historians to bear witness to the reality of this level of temporal organization by casting their accounts in the form of narratives, because this mode of discourse alone is adequate to the representation of the experience of the historicality in a way that is both literal in what it asserts about specific events and figurative in what it suggests about the meaning of this experience. (White, 1991, p. 148-149) What does distinguish history and literature is made clear by Ricoeur in terms of the first- and second-level referents of narratives. Fiction at the first level references the imagined world while history at the first level references the real world. But when emploted, the events of the real world or the imagined world are equally grasped together by reference to temporality. At this second level of temporal reference, there is no difference for Ricoeur between history and literature: Insofar as both produce emploted stories, their ultimate referent . . . is the human experience of time or the 'structures of temporality' (White, 1991, p. 146). A second point can then be made about prophetic claims that is less obvious than it at first appears: To the extent they reference real-world events, they are historical. As the narrative analysis showed, both groups framed their prophetic statements in Christian teleological terms, but the nature of these teleologies differed between Christian Zionists and Christian Identity authors. The first-cause teleology underlying most Christian Identity claims meant that their prophetic claims were based on history (as told by them).

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The Jews today are worthy of judgment because of the lie they have lived of being the Children of Israel when genealogical and geographical evidence shows them to be Asian Khazars rather than Hebrews. Because the seed determines the outcome, much of the focus is backward looking. By understanding the heritage of the different races, one can recognize the prophecies of the Bible and the modern identitiesand hence the fateof those named in them. Christian Zionist teleology, by contrast, sees history as pulled from the end rather than pushed from the beginning. This gives their narratives a more futuristic cast. But even with this futurist focus, most Christian Zionist prophecies reference current real-world events, such as the Palestinian uprising or the attacks on the World Trade Centers. While the accuracy of the evidence adduced by each group to support their prophetic readings (such as Jews are Khazars from Asia) can be challenged (and usually on their own terms since both groups are careful to couch their claims in traditionally accepted criteria of historical evidence), the facts in their prophetic claims are usually oriented to the real world, not the purely imaginary world of fiction. What a nonbeliever to each group will usually contest is the meaning of these events, which is to say the apocalyptic temporal framework into which the events are placed. And the level of agreement or disagreement on temporal framework will be determined by the levels of understanding described in Tables 9.1 and 9.2. But there is another category of prophecy that is usually meant when the problem of knowledge claims is raisedprophesied events of the future. These contain both the events and the timeframe requisite to any narrative. The believer will claim historical or factual status for those yet-to-happen events, while the nonbeliever will claim fictive or agnostic status for those claims. In the sense that the events haven't happened (yet)

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moves them out of the traditional category of history-as-past-occurrence. But because of the claim by the ancient prophets that the events will happen in history, the question remains as to their factual or fictive status. This is where sacred and secular knowing part ways. The purpose in this study is to understand the status of these sacred claims in terms of the narratives that contain them. I suggest that this disagreement over the nature and limits of knowledge can best be analyzed at the level of temporal reference. That is, it is at this second-level reference (rather than at the first-level reference of real-world/imagined world) that the fundamental disagreement between sacred and secular knowing is made clearest. An example will illustrate. The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was hailed by most dispensationalists, and in particular by Christian Zionists, to be the fulfillment of biblical prophecies foretelling the regathering of the Jewish people to the Promised Land and the covenant God made with Israel that it would be a great nation on the earth. At the same time, however, a small minority of premillennialists, following the lead of ultra Orthodox rabbis (see Gorenberg, 2000, and Prosser, 1999), believed that the founding of the state of Israel could not be the fulfillment of these prophecies since they understood that that great re-enthronement would only happen upon the Messiah's coming and establishing a regime of truth and justice on earth. Thus we have one eventthe founding of the state of Israelbut two differing interpretations of that event based on two slightly differing eschatological readings. Even more pronounced would be the difference between postmillennialists and premillennialists on the meaning of the founding of the state of Israel. The point is that differing narrative traditions can incorporate the same event into

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their plots, but by virtue of the way the narratives differently reference the temporality of human existence, the importance of that event can take on markedly different meanings. The sacred/secular divide reflects, among other differing assumptions, a teleological/nonteleological difference. From that basic temporal difference the criteria of what counts as knowledge will vary sharply.

Narrating Superior Identities In the last section, the divergence away from shared understanding was conceptualized as a we-agree/you-are-not-quite-right/they-are-crazy progression. The we/you/they development of the other is reflective of the I-thou relationship and the I-it relationship Buber (1987) theorizes (see Introduction). His conceptualization also points to a power dynamic in I-it relationships. What is important in the I-thou and the I-it relation, he writes, is not only that a different category is involved in each case but also that the very words bring about a relation; and where the words are spoken, the relation comes about through the speaking (p. 116). The question this study raises in regard to narratives is this: When the levels of understanding transform a shared understanding from a respectful I-thou encounter into an impersonal I-it relationship, how will that be reflected in the stories told by the I community? The narratives I analyzed point to this objectification of the other as a rhetorical form of domination of the other and elevation of the self. I propose here how this is done. Drawing from Foucaults ideas as reviewed in Chapter 4, I suggested the possibility of viewing narratives as epistemic microfields in which the social alignments in them serve to make the knowledge statements in them meaningful or not. Following

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Ricoeur's analysis of emplotment, I proposed that the action of plotting is the specific means by which alignments are constructed in narratives and through which the contested claims of various epistemes and their statements arefar from being silencedgiven voice. Furthermore, if Foucault is right and how knowledge and power come together is historically specific and may vary significantly in different domains (quoting Rouse [1994], p. 111), the same is the case on the smaller scale of the narrative. Narrative structures align otherwise isolated temporal events and unrelated social characters, thereby becoming epistemes that render some statements meaningful and others absurd. As I contended in Chapter 4, this narrative performance of knowledge-of-the-other and the resulting worlds of discourse it produces are, in effect, constructed power relationships built upon and serving the identity needs and desires of the authoring community. This model found support in the narratives I examined in two concrete ways: The doctrinal statements of both of the groups made explicit the implicit epistemic statements in the narratives, and the social alignments that create the microepistemic fields (the narratives) were constructed largely through God and Devil terms in each discourse through I-thou and I-it relationships. Connecting these two, the God and Devil terms, as representatives of the forces of good and evil that define the biblical worldview and permeate the apocalyptic discourse of both groups, were aligned in such ways as to make the epistemic (doctrinal) statements of each group meaningful. For example, the sovereignty of God, which is found in the doctrinal statements of both groups, is also actionally reflected in the narratives where God is placed at the top of the moral pyramid and is agentive through the verbs attending to God. Similarly, the Christian Identity

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doctrinal statement that says Jews are of the devil is accomplished in the narratives by clustering Devil terms around Jews that serve to objectify Jews in an I-it relationship. As the results of the cluster analysis showed, the two groups hold more views in common the higher up the moral pyramid one moved. Conversely, the further down from the shared moral peak one looks, the more definitively different are the social alignments in the narratives of the two groups and the fewer epistemic statements (doctrinal statements) one will find in common at those lower levels, until at last the horizons diverge, eliminating any overlapping moral ground. As was noted in Chapter 4, the creative or productive side of power/knowledge also has a constraining aspect to it. Rouse (1994) summarizes Foucault's position that power is exercised through an agent's actions only to the extent that other agents' actions remain appropriately aligned with them. The actions of dominant agents are therefore constrained by the need to sustain that alignment in the future (p. 108). From this I theorized that a creative tension must be maintained in the narratives if its emplotment is to remain vitalthat power/knowledge in the narrative action must not be absolute if the conflict which provides for the ongoing relationship is to be dynamic. A certain realism must be maintained in emploting Arabs as bad guys for Christian Zionists or even Jews as demonic for Christian Identity. The narrative analysis showed that this was done by both groups through the rhetorical device of personifying the desires and moral judgments of the authoring community in second- and third-party characters, namely, Jews and Muslim Arabs. To make them well-rounded characters, the narrators gave detailed histories of Jews and Arabs and endowed their actions and positions on issues with motives. For example, while the Jew in each narrative tradition was seen as holding

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wrong beliefs, the narratives made clear why those wrong beliefs were held and how the Jews had arrived at them. Jews were thus portrayed as wrong-headed or stubborn in their beliefs, but not as totally illogical. The others, to play a convincing role as a foil to the authoring community and its identity, were given a level of recognition and even dignity even as they were disparaged or subordinated to the driving themes of the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist stories. Another point where the narrative analysis supported an epistemic model was in the finding that to varying degrees the narratives serve as instruments of surveillance which force the characters in it to speak the truth and to engage in self-definition within the epistemic field created by the narrative structure. This was done both by depicting the actions of the other and by quoting the words of the other. The Jew in Christian Identity spits at the name of Jesus and mispronounces the name of Jesus to call him a dog. The religious Jew in Christian Zionism looks to rebuild the temple and eventually confesses that the very Jesus Jews crucified on his first appearance is the Messiah who has come again to reign over them. These exacted confessions are meaningful ones to the readers because of the power/knowledge paradigm they share with the authors. Just as the European Orientalism that Said analyzed served to make the Oriental speak the truth of itself for the purpose of representing for Europeans the exotic other, here too dispensationalism and postmillennialism narrate the voice and actions of the other for the purpose of representing that other for the needs of the authoring community.

Narrating Collective Identities Theorists of the interpretive community contend that communities form

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interpretations, and interpretations form communities. The empirical results of the rhetorical analysis lend support to this theoretical perspective and add to it a sacred dimension. For the two cases I studied, narratives were at the center of an unfolding dialectic of interpretations forming the community and the community forming interpretations. As we have seen, the narratives of the Bible are at the heart of both the storytelling and the doctrines of the two Christian groups I studied. From an institutionalist organizational perspective, the supraorganizational structure of Protestant Christianity is the institution from which these two groups derive their symbols and language. If we widen the focus of the lens back from just North America in the twentieth and early twenty-first century, we see that Protestant Christianity split with Catholic Christianity, which itself parted ways with its eastern counterpart, Orthodox Christianity. Each of these splits involved deeply rooted interpretational disagreements about doctrine and the Bible. Widening the lens yet further, we can see Christianity as one religion in contrast to Islam and Judaism. All three theistic religions, known as Religions of the Book, share at least some version of the Hebrew Scriptures in common. All this is to say that it is largely stories at the heart of all three religions, since the Torah and even much of the prophetic materials of the Hebrew Scriptures are narratives. This wide-angle view puts into perspective the Christian religion and its need for not only the Hebrew Scriptures but also a New Testament (similarly, the Koran draws from but expands upon both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament). And it shows the two groups I studiedChristian Zionists and Christian Identityto be small rivulets down a long and complex system of tributaries and main arteries. The purpose here is not to recount the history of Western religion but to illustrate

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that the same interpretive operations studied in this study at the level of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist are but cases in point of a long process of such interpretations of interpretations based on sacred narratives. The permutations observed in Christian Identity and Christian Zionism are not aberrations but are typical of the nature of interpretive traditions. The cluster analysis illustrated that a family resemblance in narrative characters (such as The Children of Israel) does not necessarily lead to similar identity constructions when the moral vision poured into those characters differs between two groups. Also, secondary characterssuch as Arab Muslims (the third-party characters in my schemata)can be put to use in narratives as catalysts to forward the action of the plots in directions opposite of those of the same characters in a competing religious narrative (Muslims make good things happen in Christian Identity narratives/Muslims make bad things happen in Christian Zionist narratives). This points to a phenomenon described by Wesley Kort (1992; see Chapter 3): A dynamic of conflict and contradiction between theistic discourses is inevitable since doctrinal relationships among these groups are primarily negative, relations of competition, opposition, and even repression (p. 1). The shared Bible texts and the common Christian institutional sector that both groups I studied share with each other, rather than setting the two groups on the same course, instead provide the wrestling space or the fighting fields for distinguishing respective positions from the other. This overagainst dynamic found in Christian Identity and Christian Zionism works not only between Christian groups but between Christians and other religions, especially the other two large monotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam. Still, these are family squabbles at the distant cousin levellittle or nothing was said in the narratives I examined, for

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example, about or against Buddhism or Hinduismand are made possible by shared inherited sacred texts. As seen in Chapter 3, institutionalist theory conceives of institutions as symbolic systems through which organizations categorize activity and infuse activity with meaning. From this perspective, we can see the interpretive activity of each group as drawing from a common stock of symbols but infusing them with differing meanings as they reproduce those symbolic systems (see the discussion of Friedland and Alford [1991] in Chapter 3). In the cases of the two groups I studied, the apocalyptic texts of the Bible proved to be the main symbolic resource upon which both groups drew in articulating their respective worldviews. Institutional theory helps describe the dynamic of how the employment of differing hermeneutical practices carry Christian Identity and Christian Zionists down different paths, resulting in different identity constructions of the Jew and of themselves. Friedland and Alford point to the multiple logics available to individuals and organizations from other institutions within society that have their own central logics and allow for the possibility of the redefinition of identity and action (Friedland & Alford, p. 232). So while the thought categories of Christian Zionists and Christian Identity are defined by the larger Christian tradition with its theology and scripture and symbols, at the same time, the meaning and relevance of symbols may be contested, even as they are shared. . . . Through the actions of individuals and organizations, the institutional structures of society are not simply reproduced, but transformed (Friedland & Alford, 1991, p. 254). The Heideggerian hermeneutical circle provides a philosophical basis for this

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pattern of permutations observed by institutional theorists. (At the intersection of these two theoretical perspectives, I argue, one will find narrative identity.) As noted earlier, at the base of all knowing is what Heidegger called preunderstanding, the seeing that precedes seeing as. And what is seen or preunderstood, said Heidegger, is the being of ourselves. This grasping of the being-of-ourselves can be seen as the energy that drives the hermeneutical circle. Westphal's summary of this concept, which I quoted in Chapter 5, is worth revisiting here: Every act of interpretation presupposes our understanding of ourselves as thrown projection or thrown possibility in our concernful dealings with things and our solicitude for other persons. But we know ourselves as such, not by reflectively observing these characteristics inhering in us but by being them. To be thrown projection for whom the beings we encounter in the world matter is to understand oneself as such, and all explicit acts of interpretation, including self-interpretation, presuppose this primordial understanding. (p. 422) Westphal makes the same point this way: Interpretation is the 'development' of understanding in which the beings which matter to us are 'explicitly' understood. As already noted, each specific interpretation is a seeing-as, an apprehension of something as something (Westphal, p. 423, partially quoting Heidegger). Tables 10.1 and 10.2 display the levels of understanding that Heidegger said are realized through the hermeneutical circle. I proposed that these are matched by Ricoeur's levels of figuration, and that they can be seen in process by the textual levels of apocalyptic discourse. An extension to that table could be made in which institutional

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levels are added. Conceptually, they might be institution/sector/organization, concretely paralleling the Christian institution, the Protestant sector, and the Christian Identity or Christian Zionist organization. The point in doing this would be to demonstrate graphically that the hermeneutical circle that has been depictedas apocalyptic levels (my study), as narrative figuration levels (Ricoeur), as philosophical epistemological levels (Heidegger), and now as institutional levels (Friedland & Alford)can all be seen as having been nurtured out of the fertile ground of the hermeneutical circle. If the parallels hold, and if Heidegger is correct that the action of the circle is centered on a grasping of the self as ourselves, the case is made that the identity constructions at the heart of narratives reflect the deeper ontological structure that underlies each of the levels in each of the categories. The interpretive wheel is propelled by a search for being, and narratives symbolize that search in some cases with God and Devil characters and in all cases with a temporal framework. This points, finally, to the connection between interpretation and community. If the theorists I reviewed in this study are right, the interpretation of the self happens in language, and since language by its nature is communally shared, all interpretation of the self happens in community. Several of the theorists in the Literature Review emphasized the distinct vocabularies that develop among sharers of language who hold a common moral vision. Again, a reciprocal relationship exists between the common vocabulary which makes possible a common vision, and a common vision which leads to a common vocabulary. Charles Taylor (see Chapter 2) offered the further insight that it is through the establishment of common objects between two or more people that that sense of commonality that forms community occurs. Or as Carey (see Chapter 2) conceptualized

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it, communication is ritual in that values are symbolized in a way that all parties can partake. Bringing these theoretical insights together, I suggest that the narratives examined in this study represent the ritual or symbolic performance of the being-of-the-self of the communities. The language and symbols of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist narratives are used to objectify the Jewish otherto see the Jew as a particular kind of other. Ricoeur notes that There is no direct knowledge of the self, only that which passes through the intermediary norms, of symbols (Ricoeur, quoted in Reagan, 1996, p. 132). As a common symbol or object for a community, the Jew provides a common moral vision that is expressed symbolically in the community narratives. Another common object or symbol for both interpretive communities is the Christ, and it is in the narrative emplotment of the Jew in relation to this Christian Messiah that the superiority identity of each respective group toward the Jew is accomplished. The Jewish other is needed for the self-interpretation at the heart of the narratives these Christian groups tell of their Christ, and hence of themselves. The sacredness of these narratives adds a totality or absoluteness to them that may be hard to find in other narratives that don't have as their constitutive or highest good God Almighty. The exclusivity inherited by any sector of any of the three large monotheistic religionswhere there is only one God and Moses/Jesus/Mohammed is his special prophetis intensified in Christianity where that special prophet is also the very Incarnation of God, as Christian doctrinal statements attest. Christian apocalyptic reflects this absoluteness by making the temporal referent in its narratives a teleological one in which an edenic vision of what should have been (Christian Identity) or a utopic vision of

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what shall be (Christian Zionist) is brought to climatic resolution with Christ's reappearance. The Jewish and Arab other is needed in these narratives to reflect the more brightly, by their soiled character, on this Christ. Thus, the Christian story in both the Christian Identity and Christian Zionist versions swallow up the Jewish and Muslim stories, just as the Christian Messiah in the end shows both Jewish and Muslim pretenders to the throne to be but pretenders. Narrative theorists say stories are worlds within which to live. When such narratives serve the identity needs of their authoring communities, they also become traditions that in turn shape the communities that authored them in the first place. The analysis of the apocalyptic rhetoric of Christian Identity and Christian Zionist narratives illustrates the durability, the vitality, and the logic of these traditions.

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Appendix A A Christian Identity Doctrinal Statement The following doctrinal statement is posted by Kingdom Identity Ministries on its web page (www.kingidentity.com) and provides a succinct summary of the movements theology. Below are 11 of the original 23 statements. --------------------------------------------------The following is a brief statement of our major doctrinal beliefs as taught by the Holy Scriptures. This list is not exhaustive, but a basic digest defining the true faith once delivered to the saints. For a further explanation of our beliefs and the implications of these truths, please contact us. WE BELIEVE the entire Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as originally inspired, to be the inerrent, supreme, revealed Word of God. The history, covenants, and prophecy of this Holy Book were written for and about a specific elect family of people who are children of YHVH God (Luke 3:38; Psalm 82:6) through the seedline of Adam (Gen. 5:1). WE BELIEVE that God the Son, Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), became man in order to redeem His people Israel (Luk 1:68) as a kinsman of the flesh (Heb. 2:14-16; Rom. 9:3-5)/ died as the Passover Lamb of God on the Cross of Calvary . . . WE BELIEVE in the literal return to this Earth of Yehsua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) in like manner as He departed (Acts 1:11), to take the Throne of David (Isa. 9:7; Luke 1:32) and establish His everlasting Kingdom (Dan 2:44; Luke 1:33; Rev. 11:15) WE BELIEVE membership in the church of Yahshua or Messiah (Jesus Christ) is by Divine election (John 6:44, 65; 15:16; Acts 2:39, 13:48; Rom. 9:11, 11:7; II Thes.

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2:13). God foreknew, chose and predestined the Elect from before the foundation of the world (Psalm 139:16; Jer. 1:5; Matt. 25:34; Rom. 8:28-30; Eph. 1:4-5; II Tim 1:9; Rev. 138) according to His perfect purpose and sovereign will (Rom. 9:19-23). Only the called children of God can come to the Savior to hear His words and believe; those who are not of God, cannot hear his voice (John 8:47, 10:26-27). WE BELIEVE God chose unto Himself a special race of people that are above all people upon the face of the earth (Deut. 7:6, Amos 3:2). These children of Abraham through the called-out seedline of Isaac and Jacob (Psalm 105:6; Rom 9:7) were to be a blessing to all the families of the earth who bless them and a cursing to those that curse them (Gen. 12:3) The descendants of the twelve sons of a Jacob, called Israel, were married to God (Isa 54:5), have not been cast away (Rom. 11:1-2, have been given the adoption, glory, covenants, law, service of God, and promises; are the ones to whom the messiah cam (Rom. 9:4-5) electing out of all twelve tribes whose who inherit the Kingdom of God (Rev. 7:4, 21:12). WE BELIEVE the White, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and kindred people to be Gods true, literal Children of Israel, Only this race fulfills every detail of Biblical Prophecy and World History concerning Israel and continues in these latter days to be heirs and possessors of the Covenants, Prophecies, Promise and Blessings YHVH God made to Israel. This chosen seedline making up the Christian Nations (Gen. 35:11; Isa. 62:2; Acts 11:26) of the earth stands far superior to all other peoples in their call as Gods servant race (Isa. 41:8, 44:21; Luke 1:54). Only these descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel scattered abroad (James 1:1; Deut. 4:27; Jer. 31:10; John 11:52) have carried Gods Word, the Bible, throughout the world (Gen. 28:14; Isa. 43:10-12, 59:21), have

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used His Laws in the establishment of their civil governments and are the Christians opposed by the Satanic Anti-Christ forces of this world who do not recognize the true and living God(John 5:23, 8:19, 16:2-3). WE BELIEVE in an existing being known as the Devil or Satan and called the Serpent (Gen. 3:1; Rev. 12:9), who has a literal seed or posterity in the earth (Gen. 3:15) commonly called Jews today (Rev. 2:9; 3:9; Isa. 65:15). These children of Satan (John 8:44-47; Matt. 13:38; John 8:23) through Cain (I John 2:22, 4:3) who have throughout history always been a curse to true Israel, the Children of God, because of a natural enmity between the two races (Gen 3:15), because they do the works of their father the Devil (John 8:38-44), and because they please not God, and are contrary to all men (1 Thes. 2:14-15), though they often pose as ministers of righteousness (II Cor. 11:13-15). The ultimate end of this evil race whose hands bear the blood of our Savior (Matt. 27:25) and all the righteous slain upon the earth (Matt. 23:35), is Divine judgment (Matt. 13:38-42, 15:13; Zech. 14:21). WE BELIEVE that the Man Adam (a Hebrew word meaning: ruddy, to show Blood, flush, turn rosy) is father of the White Race only. As a son of God (Luke 3:38), made in His likeness (Gen. 5:1), Adam and his descendants, who are also the children of God (Psalm 82:6; Hos. 1:10; Rom. 8:16; Gal. 4:6; I John 3:1-2), can know YHVH God as their creator. Adamic man is made trichotomous, that is, not only of body and soul, but having an implanted spirit (Gen 2:7; I Thes. 5:23; Heb. 4:12) giving him a higher form of consciousness and distinguishing him from all the other races of the earth (Deut. 7:6, 10:15; Amos 3:2). WE BELIEVE that as a chosen race, elected by God (Deut. 7:6, 10:15; I Peter

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2:9), we are not to be partakers of the wickedness of this world system (I John 2:15; James 4:4; John 17/9, 15, 16), but are called to come out and be a separated people (II Cor. 6:17; Rev. 18:4; Jer. 51:6; Exodus 33:16; Lev. 20:24). This includes segregation from all non-white races, who are prohibited in Gods natural divine order from ruling over Israel (Deut. 17:15, 28:13, 32:8; Joel 2:17; Isa 13:14; Gen. 1:25-26; Rom. 9:21). Race-mixing is an abomination in the sight of Almighty God, a satanic attempt meant to destroy the chosen seedline, and is strictly forbidden by His commandments (Exo. 34:1416; Num. 25:1-13; I Cor. 10:8/ Rev. 2:14; Deut. 7:3-4; Joshua 23:12-13; I Kings 11:1-3; Ezra 9:2, 10-12; 10:10-14; Neh. 10:28-30, 13:3, 27; Hosea 5:7; Mal. 2:11-12). WE BELIEVE that the United States of America fulfills the prophesied (II Sam. 7:10; Isa. 11:12; Ezek. 36:24) place where Christians from all the tribes of Israel would be regathered. It is here in this blessed land (Deut. 15:6, 28:11, 33:13-17) that God made a small one a strong nation (Isa. 60:22), feeding His people with knowledge and understanding through Christian pastors (Jer. 3:14-15) who have carried the light of truth and blessings unto the nations of the earth (Isa. 49:6, 2:2-3; Gen. 12:3). North America is the wilderness (Hosea 2:14) to which God brought the dispersed seed of Israel, the land between tow [sic] seas (Zech. 9:10), surveyed an divided by rivers (Isa. 18:1-2, 7), where springs of water and streams break out and the desert blossoms as the rose (Isa. 35:1,6-7). WE BELIEVE the ultimate destiny of all history will be the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon this earth (Psalm 37:9, 11, 22; Isa. 11:9; Matt. 5:5, 6:10; Rev. 21:2-3) with Yahshua our Messiah (Jesus Christ) reigning as King of kings over the house of Jacob forever, of his kingdom and dominion there shall be no end (Luke 1:32-

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33; Dan. 2:44, 7:14; Zech. 14:9). When our Savior returns to restore righteous government on the earth, there will be a day of reckoning when the kingdoms of this world become His (Rev. 11:15; Isa. 9:6-7) and all evil shall be destroyed (Isa. 13:9; Mal. 4:3; Matt. 13:30, 41-42; II Thes. 2:8). His elect Saints will be raised immortal at His return (I Cor. 15:52-53; I Thes. 4:16; Rev. 20:6) to rule and reign with Him as kings and priests (Rom. 8:17; II Tim. 2:12; Rev. 5:10; Exodus 19:6; Dan 7:18, 27).

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Appendix B: Two Sample Analyses To illustrate how the methodology described in Chapter 6 worked, I present below the completed findings of the three levels of analysis for both a Christian Zionist article and a Christian Identity article. The Christian Zionist article, from the Prophecy in the News Web page (www.prophecyinthenews.com), is titled Trouble Over the Temple Mount. It was published in November 2000, and its length is about six printed pages. The byline is J. R. Church, the founder and director of Prophecy in the News. The second article, from the Christian Identity Web site (www.missiontoisrael.com), is titled Ishmael, Edom and Israel and the Attack Upon America. It was published soon after September 11, 2001probably in October (unlike most of the articles on the Web site, this article did not have a posting date). It was authored by Ted. R. Weiland, the director of Mission to Israel, and runs about the same length as the Temple Mount article.

The Results of a Christian Zionist Article Analysis Here are the preliminary results of the three levels of analysis of the Christian Zionist article Trouble Over the Temple Mount. Level 1: Credibility strategies. Credibility strategies found in the article using Brummett's four categories of authority, typology, transfer, and a knowing style include the following. The first, authority, was accomplished in several ways. One was the use of the authorial we, indicating that J. R. Church as author represents the deliberated consensus of other knowledgeable Christian Zionist commentators. The phrase We have been predicting . . . for several months is an example. Furthermore, this sentence reports a prediction about the Middle East made earlier in the magazine with had come true

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another way to build credibility with the reader. Another interesting we statement is one that points to the author's sense of being objective. We wondered how the Jews would ever be able to establish Temple liturgy if ..., shows a sense of objectivity in that the author was faced with a Scriptural truth (that the Temple would be rebuilt) but could not see how it would happenuntil a development in world politics had occurred (the invitation for the United Nations to take over the Temple Mount). In other words, the author knew the prophesied event in Scripture must happen and, as a good student of the Bible, was faithfully waiting to see its fulfillment even though the mechanics of it seemed incomprehensible until it actually began to occur. One other unusual way to establish credibility is used twice: showing how New Testament writers themselves would slide Old Testament meanings into the present. The book of Acts is shown to interpret the meaning of remnant of Edom in the Old Testament to mean Gentiles upon whom my name is called. J. R. Church than performs a similar slide or transfer from the version in Luke to those today who are part of Gentile Christianity. Thus, remnant of Edom really refers to today's Gentile Christian. The slide is important as an example of a strategy of authority since it draws its credibility by pointing to how New Testament writers themselves transferred meaning before J. R. Church performed the same action himself. The above is an example of a typology as well as an authority strategy. Typologies, as Brummett explains, are ways of fetching the political from the sacred and the present from the past. Examples in the article are found in phrases such as: The current conflict may be the predicted prelude to the battle of Gog and Magog. Gog leads an invasion force against Israel which may involve Syria and bring about the

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Russian invasion. Gentile may refer to a plurality of nations, meaning the United Nations. And the profane place described by Ezekiel refers to the Mosque of Omar, which today stands on the site where the Jewish Temple once stood and will stand again one day. A unique typological exercise is performed by the inclusion of a photo of the Eastern Gate in Jerusalem today and then a detailed discussion of a passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel, where the Eastern Gate is thought to be described. J. R. Church asserts that the description fits the modern Eastern Gate, built centuries after Ezekiel's time, and not the Eastern Gate to Old Jerusalem which would have been standing during Ezekiel's time. The implication is that if God had indubitably given Ezekiel such prophetic powers that he could even describe to the fine details of a gate that would be built much laterthe other prophecies in Ezekiel about the end of time must also be trusted and granted unquestioned authority. The transfer, or slide, strategy was plentiful in the article. For example, before quoting Revelation 11:1-2, the author wrote In the book of Revelation, John is told that Gentiles will control the Temple Mount during the Tribulation period. This transferred the meaning of the scriptural words the temple of God to the Temple Mount, and it also read the premillennialist belief in a Tribulation Period into the timeframe of the verses cited in Revelation. A slide of the name Gog, which Ezekiel says comes from the North in Ezekiel 38, is transferred to the present day to mean Russia invading Israel. Another slide is the assertion that the Antichrist will take control of the Temple Mount. This is done by transferring the meaning of the pronoun he in Daniel 11:45 to mean Antichrist (the word Antichrist itself is never found in Daniel): And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountainand glorious

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holy mountain is interpreted to mean today's Temple Mount. One last example: The voice speaking in Ezekiel 43:4-8, saying, They have even defiled my holy name by their abominations is said to be that of Christ speaking about the Temple Mount and the Muslim Mosque standing there where the Jewish Temple should be standing. And the last strategy for building the authority of the text, style, is found in the use of knowing and esoteric language, such as allusions to ancient Jewish holy days that are connected to the modern Western calendar, such as the day of the Palestinian uprising beginning on Rosh HaShanah, September 29. Similarly, the author uses detailed phrasessuch as the opening of a large prayer hall for 3,500 Moslems in the underground Solomon's Stables area and careful calculations of numbers from Daniel to argue that the new tabernacle that is to be built is not the old Mosaic one but a new Davidic oneto convey a sense of scientific accuracy as well as inside knowledge. Level 2: Cluster criticism. In an attempt to understand the identity worldview of the Christian Zionist, I looked for terms that were associated or clustered around three key nouns in the article: Temple, Palestinians, and Jews. I also conducted a transformational analysis of the verb clauses related to the characters in the narratives (Palestinians and Jews, not Temple). I will briefly describe the patterns of clusters that I detected around each of those terms, and the action present in the verb clauses. TEMPLE. One group of terms that clustered around this word depicted the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as the center of the universe. It is the place where the Messiah arrives in power and great glory at the end of time, and just prior to that the Antichrist will establish a palace there. The Temple Mount is where eventually the erection of a sanctuary for the Jews must occur for biblical

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prophecy to come true, and where currently building projects on the Temple Mount pose a threat to the eventual erection of the Jewish Temple. The term Temple is secondly seen as a contested possession. Phrases like Temple Mount sovereignty, under the control of, the current war over Temple Mount sovereignty, and if the UN were given custody all show that the author sees possession of the Temple Mount to be of paramount importance. One set of possession clusters are negative in tone, referring to the current (supposed) Palestinian possession of the site: they laid claim to it and would see Jews forever banned from the site; because of them, Jews are not allowed on the Holy Site, and it doesn't take much for the Palestinian to be enraged over Jews coming up to the Temple Mount. The issue of possession needs fixing, and one possible solution the author sees as coming will be for the United Nations to divide the 'baby' right down the middlea compromise that is better than the current situation but ultimately must make way for full Jewish possession. The Temple is thirdly viewed as a timeless in its existence. The Old Testament prophet Ezekiel was transported into the future to view the scene of today's Temple Mount J. R. Church writes. He speculates that the possibility that the United Nations be given sovereignty seems to be in keeping with the prophecy. And the Temple Mount is to play a prominent role during the Tribulation Period. And lastly, the Temple is portrayed by the rhetoric as holy. Phrases like the Jewish house of worship, a Jewish sanctuary, Holy Site, Temple Worship, stand in contrast to the belief that if the Moslem Palestinians have there

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way, no Jews would be allowed to pray anywhere on the mount. Furthermore, the Jewish house of worship stands in direct contrast with a profane place (a phrase from Isaiahabout which J. R. Church writes, I am convinced that the Mosque of Omar is that 'profane place.' And last, in the future the Antichrist will take control of the Temple Mount. One other association of holiness is found in the cluster around the Templethat the Temple that prophecy says will eventually be placed on the Temple Mount will be a Tabernacle of David and not a Mosaic Tabernacle. The reason is that the Temple Christ returns to must be a temple of the New Covenant and not the Old Mosaic Law. PALESTINIANS. The terms surrounding the word Palestinian fit into three categories. The first is disagreeable. Palestinians have rejected the idea of UN control. This is in contrast to the fact that Israel has been unsuccessful in getting the Palestinians to compromise on sharing the Temple Mount. The negative images of Palestinians are also found in the phrases just a single group of Islamic Palestinians and in describing their fierce Palestinian opposition. The second category is selfish, since instead of sharing the Temple Mount, the Moslems want full Palestinian sovereignty and they see the occupation of the Temple Mount as being permanent. When Jews go to the Temple Mount, it doesn't take much for the Palestinians to become enraged over Jews. And the last cluster around Palestinians is characterized by the idea of threat. This threat to the Jew is present because the Palestinian leadership would like to stipulate that no Jews would be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, and that Israel would be forever banned from the Temple Mount. Similarly, if a

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new Palestinian nation would keep Jews from ever establishing Temple liturgy. JEWS. The cluster of terms around the word Jews fell into three categories, as well. The first, a holy people, is conveyed in terms like religious Jews, Jewish worship, and an etymological assertion that Jews are probably the meaning of the word Edom, which in the Hebrew can just as well be translated Adam. As noted before, the rebuilding of the Temple on the Temple Mount would give the Jews a house of worship in contrast to the profane place now on the mount in the form of the Mosque of Omar. The Jews are also seen as persecuted. They are a remnant returning home from their long exile among the nations. And the threat of Palestinian rule of the Temple Mount leaves the author (before the idea of the UN taking control) wondering how the Jews would ever be able to establish Temple liturgy. Persecution is also implied by the idea that under the Palestinians no Jews would be allowed to pray anywhere on the mount. The last cluster of terms around Jews can be categorized as a people of promise. The Temple Mount is the future place of Jewish worship. This sure prophecy may play out today if the United Nations can make the Temple Mount available for a Jewish presence. In conclusion, this cluster analysis of the rhetoric of a Christian Zionist article shows that in the view of the author and the sympathetic audience for which he is writing the drama surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is timeless, one of contest, about a holy place, and the center of cosmic interests. The drama is being played out between two

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characters, one being the antagonist Palestinians, who are disagreeable, selfish, and a continual threat to the Jew; the other being the protagonist Jew, a holy people who are persecuted but who will prevail in winning control of the Temple Mount one day and in rebuilding the Temple so that Jewish worship and liturgy may be rightfully restored. The results of the analysis can be charted in the following way. View of the Temple Mount Center of the universe A contested possession Timeless Holy View of the Palestinians Disagreeable Selfish A threat View of the Jews Holy Persecuted People of promise The results of the verbal transformation analysis provided the following results: CHARACTER ROLES PALESTINIANS JEWS 4/6 (66%) 0/4 (0%) 0/6 (0%) 2/4 (50%) 1/6 (16%) 0/4 (0%) 0/6 (0%) 2/4 (50%) 0/6 (0%) 0/4 (0%) PROCESS OF BEING/DOING PALESTINIANS JEWS 4/6 (66%) 1/4 (25%) 1/6 (16%) 1/4 (25%) 0/6 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 1/6 (16%) 0/4 (0%) 0/6 (0%) 2/4 (50%)

agent affected instrument carrier attribute

transitive passive intransitive nominalized being

It showed that in terms of character roles associated with the verbs, Palestinians

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were depicted most of the time (66%) as the agents of actions while Jews were not depicted as active agents at all. Relatedly, in terms of the verbal processes, Palestinians were connected to transitive (active voice) verbs in 66% of the clauses compared to only 25% of the clauses involving Jews. For their part, Jews were depicted as affected and carriers (50% each), and in terms of verbal processes, were given the active voice only 25% of the time compared with verbs of being and passive verbs 75% of the time. The worldview situated in these verb usages puts the Palestinian in a much more active, agentive role and the Jew in a much more affected, passive or state-of-being role. One weakness in the cluster approach is the inability to see what is not there. What, for example, does the narrative of the Jews and Palestinians imply about Christians? The word Christian is only used once, making it an unlikely candidate for a key word. The one indirect clue the cluster analysis did turn up is that the author was clear that the Jews would need to practice their worship within a new temple of David, and not of Moses. This stands as an important clue to the authors perspective that even the Jews, who are the protagonists in the narrative the Christian author spins, play a subordinate role to another more important part of the dramathat of a returning Christ, the victor in the story, who will rule from the Temple Mount. Moses represents the Old Testament law, while Christ, the son of David, represents the New Testament dispensation of grace (not law). The desire to see the Jews rebuild the temple on the Temple Mount and resume Jewish liturgy derives from a larger hope of seeing a prophetic checklist marked off so that Christ (the God of Christians whom most Jews refuse to recognize as Savior) may return and usher in the millennium. This becomes clearer in the third level of analysis I do, using analysis that considers the big picture of

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the story instead of the small words and clusters in that story. Level 3: Narrative analysis. This level builds on the cluster analysis with its disclosure of some of the narrative elements of setting, plot, and so forth. The purpose of the level 3 analysis is to put into a more comprehensive form the storyline, and to look for ways that storyline structures the interpretation of identity and leverages social relationships in an exercise of rhetorical power. The setting, in simplest terms, is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. As the cluster analysis showed, however, the setting is the epicenter of the universe of not only humans but also demonic and other apocalyptic forces. The geography is at once both cosmic and as detailed as the possibility of dividing the Temple Mount into two parts as a compromise between Jews and Moslems. The setting is one of cosmic struggle, the stage on which the nations of the earth (the United Nations) are bound to enter and battle. The characters are the Jews, the Palestinians, and the United Nations. The cluster analysis disclosed how the Jews are seen as holy protagonists and the Palestinians as unholy antagonists. The United Nations, an important nonhuman character in the story, plays the role of well-meaning peacemaker: The current suggestion that the United Nations be given Temple Mount sovereignty seems to be in keeping with the prophecy. This suggestion is said to have come from the government of Israel, another character in story. Both the government of Israel and the UN are seen as fulfilling the political machinations needed to secure a compromise and a peace which will pacify the parties involved and pave the way for the Antichrist to rule from the Temple Mount. The call for United Nations control may well set the stage for the Tribulation events predicted in the Bible. But ultimately, that fragile peace will break down and the Tribulation will

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begin. Christ will return from heaven and conquer the forces of darkness. The Messiah speaks to Ezekiel and complains that the profane place still stands on the Temple Mount. Christ notes that their threshold stands next to His threshold with a wall built between them. Note also, that Christ says that they have been consumed in His anger. The narrator and his voice has already been discussed in the authority analysis of the textit is one of a distant observer who knows the Bible prophecies to be true but also of limited omniscience as he, like other believers, waits to see what puzzling passages in the Bible mean on the current political scene. Much of the narrator's credibility derives from a constant back-and-forth between his own words interpreting modern-day news events in the Middle East and passages of Scripture which are said to have predicted the events. His role is to show the connection. In this sense the narrator goes beyond description to engage in commentary and interpretation. The events follow an assumed plotlinethat of a pretribulational dispensational return of Christ to earth with all the events leading up to that return. One of the qualities that characterize the events is that they are pictured in ancient prophecies of the end of time, and that the actors in the events are often unaware of the script they are playing. All efforts will fail except those Christ inaugurates. The events are active, but point to a condition of hopelessness that will prevail until Christ returns. I have already alluded to the fact that the temporal relations are on two timeframesthat of the Bible prophecies and those of today. The story is not only about what has happened, but about what will happen and what is about to happen in the next several months. In this sense, the timeframe extends into the futureor is even told from a futurist point of view.

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The idea of causal relations in the narrative are nearly deterministic, in that first one event must occur (the compromise over the Temple Mount brokered by the UN) before the next can occur (a false peace, the calm before the Tribulation). The return of Christ is the only purely voluntary act in the script, and even that is preordained to occur when the events of the Middle East have played themselves out. The audience is the readership of the magazineother Christian Zionists. Foss asks, Is the audience a participant in the events recounted? The answer is yes, but from a distance. The word Christian is only in the article once; otherwise Christians themselves are never mentioned. But the writing implies that all of the drama is occurring so that the Christian end can be realized. As noted earlier, the Jews are the protagonists in the story, but even they must accept the Davidic (New Testament) temple when the Third Temple is rebuilt on the Temple Mount, not the Old Testament Mosaic one. This would be read by Zionist Christians as an affirmation that the Christian story will ultimately engulf the Jewish and the Palestinian ones. One stylistic device used by the author to connect with the audience is the use of the word you and we several times: If you have kept up with the nightly news, then you are familiar with the details. These two sentences then follows: We have been expecting the Middle East powder keg to explode for several months. It seems to have started right on schedule. The second person and the first person plural create a sense of intimacy between the reader and the writer. The feeling is that you have read the news, now I will explain it to you from Bible prophecies. Themes in the narrative of the article are clearly those of dispensational eschatology. As the cluster analysis revealed, the central themes fit the mythic structure of good versus evil and the ultimate triumph of the Victor. The Temple Mount becomes

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the staging center for this struggle.

The Results of a Christian Identity Article Analysis The Christian Identity article analyzed hereIshmael, Edom and Israel and the Attack Upon Americawas taken from the Mission to Israel Web page (www.missiontoisrael.org). It was written following the September 11, 2001, bombing of the World Trade Centers in New York. Level 1: Credibility strategies. Strategies of authority could be seen in the set up of the article with the statement that few people today know the identity of Arabs and Jews, with the implication that the author will reveal it. Later the author writes again, most people do not know who the Edomites became. Weiland's phrase early in the article We have been told by the government....but follows an authority strategy found in the New Testament accounts of Jesus' teaching in which Jesus is reported to have said, It has been said ...but I say unto you. Other credibility strategies included: extensive citations from various encyclopedias with complete reference numbers; references to Jewish authors by name and their titles to support the author's point; statements such as Yahweh's Word is always faithfully fulfilled to support the author's citation of scripture passages; and notice that the author's earlier prophecy had come trueI forewarned of the potential possibility of such a conflict or war with Arab nations . . . in December 2000. Surprisingly, there was little direct use of typology in the article. Two times, however, Weiland did use an Old Testament event to explain typologically a current situation: he wrote that the struggle between Jacob and Esau which began in Rebekah's

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womb endures today in their modern-day descendents, and that the Celto-Saxon peoples fulfill the marks of Israel as described in Jeremiah 31. There was more abundance of transferor sliding of meaningsin the article. In writing that the Arab people, although darkened over the centuries from mixing with darker races, are originally descended from Abraham executes a slide from an implied white Abraham to Abraham's descendents today being Arabs of a darker race. An Esau- to-Jews slide is accomplished by citing the etymology of the word Jew through two words, Edom, Idumea, with the conclusion that the Edomites are today's Jewsand Jews are thus not Israelites. In another case, the author quotes the promise of God in Jeremiah 31 to establish a new Covenant with his people Israel. The reader is then instructed to consider on what continents Christianity (the slide being that Christianity, following the New Covenant of Christ, is the fulfillment of the New Covenant) grew and flourished. The answer is those nations primarily comprised of Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and kindred people. They above all peoples have been most responsive to Yahshua's call of salvation over the last two-thousand years. These marks of Israel fit Celto-Saxons, not today's Khazar Jews. The credibility effect of style (knowing and esoteric language) was found in the author's intimation of having an inside scoop on the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center attacks. The article promises to answer the question Who are these players and what role do they play upon the world stage? The answer in part is that the September 11 attack upon America is connected to the Zionist conquest of Arab lands and the murder of Arab lives, which are unfortunately financed by American tax dollars under the guise that today's Jews are Israelites. And as noted above, the author had foreknowledge

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of these attacks: I forewarned of the potential possibility of such a conflict or war with Arab nations in ... December 2000. Level 2: Cluster criticism. To understand the identity worldview of the Christian Identity believer, I looked for terms that were associated or clustered around three key nouns in the article: Arabs, Jews, and Israelites. I also conducted a transformational analysis of the verb clauses related to these nouns I will briefly describe the patterns of clusters that I detected around each of those terms, and the action present in the verb clauses. ARABS. One group of terms that clustered around this word emphasized the mixed heritage of the Arabs. From a purported biblical identity of Arabs, the author established them as the descendents of Abraham, although darkened over through the mixing with darker races. While Arabs are related to ... the Edomites and the Israelites through Abraham, but they are Ishmael's descendants and not Isaac's. A strong identification of Arabs today is made in the use of the phrase Palestinian Arabs and in the connection of Arabs today following Mohammed's example. So while Arabs are related to Israelites, they lack the marks of Israel (Isaac's son Jacob). What separates them from Jews is that they do not pretend to be Jews. A second characteristic of Arabs is that they are a conflicted people. Phrases like Arab factions, conflict or war with Arab nations, Arabs being the avowed enemies of both Israelis and Americans illustrate this. Arabs are said to hate America. A third identification of the Arab people is one of being a wronged people.

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We read that the land of Israel was previously owned and controlled by Arabs but is now controlled by the State of Israel after stealing their lands. Similarly, the State of Israel is guilty of a conquest of Arab lands and Arab lives. JEWS. The terms around this word clustered into three categories. The first, false identity, was denoted in placing the word Jews in quotation marks and in explicit phrases such as today's Jews operating under the guise of being Israelites. From this false identity, the Jews spuriously claim right to the land of Israel. The second cluster of terms dealt with the true identity of the Jewish people. Like the identity of the Arabs, this was said to be based on the Bible. Jews, in essence, are Edomites, non-Israelite Edomites, Edom, Idumae. They are also identified as Khazar Jews and Zionist Jews. Stated directly, today's Jews are non-Israelites, and as Edomites, they have a 'perpetual hatred' and 'wrath forever' toward Israelites. The last category of terms clustered around the word Jews points to the view that Jews are an impure race. This was found in terms such as interbreeding and phrases such as rarely genetic Israelites. From the context, it was also clear that the religion of Judaism is not a true religionbut the religion adopted by the Jews (over Christianity). ISRAELITES. Three cluster grouped around this word. The first were terms relating Israelites to a people of promise. The people of Israel have been given a new covenant, and as Jacob's descendants are a promised people. That is, because they are the servant of God, God's Word promises Israelites

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would never cease as a nation. The second cluster shows them to be the true Israel. Unlike many who say the ten northern tribes of Israel were forever lost after being taken into captivity, genetic Israelites have not gone out of existence. The true Israelites are to be found in true Christianity, thus true Israelites are not today's Khazar Jews. The last cluster of terms fall into the category white Europeans. Israelites are Celtic, Germanic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon since they bear the biblical mark of Israelites. Several paragraphs are given to show the link between biblical Israelites and Celto-Saxon people. What the author sees as sad is the fact that most contemporary Israelites [white Europeans] are oblivious to their own identity. In conclusion, this cluster analysis of the rhetoric of a Christian Identity article shows that in the view of the author and the sympathetic audience for which he is writing, the drama playing out on the world stage with the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City must be understood in terms of the biblical identities of the Arabs, Jews, and Christians. Christians are seen to be true Israelites, and thus a people of promise. And they are white Europeans. By contrast, Jews are found to be living with a false identity, when in reality their true identity shows them to be an impure race and only non-Israelite Edomites. And lastly, Arabs, while also of mixed heritage like the Jews, do not claim to be God's chosen people (the Israelites) and wronged by the Jews even if conflicted among themselves. The clusters contain within them explicit and implied opposite values. The results of the analysis can be charted in the following way.

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View of Arabs Mixed heritage Conflicted Wronged View of Jews False identity True Edomite identity Impure race View of Israelites A people of promise The true Israel White Europeans The results of the verbal transformation analysis provided the following results: ARABS agent affected instrument carrier attribute 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 4/4 (100%) 0/4 (0%) CHARACTER ROLES JEWS 1/4 (25%) 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 3/4 (75%) 0/4 (0%) ISRAELITES 0/7 (0%) 0/7 (0%) 0/7 (0%) 2/7 (29%) 5/7 (71%)

transitive passive intransitive nominalized being

PROCESS OF BEING/DOING ARABS JEWS ISRAELITES 0/4 (0%) 1/4 (25%) 0/7 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/7 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/7 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/4 (0%) 0/7 (0%) 4/4 (100%) 3/4 (75%) 7/7 (100%)

With one exception, all of the verb clauses related to Arabs, Jews, and Israelites fell into the category of being (rather than doing). Likewise, the character roles were presented in terms of being carrier of an attribute of the attribute of a carrier. Essentially, the author was writing in an equation-like mode in which x = y (Jews = Edomites, Israel = white Christians, etc). This fits a definitional approach to writing. Still, this approach is

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fundamentally narrative in approach; the rendering of ethnic definitions are set in a biblical account complete with not only characters but plot as well. Level 3: Narrative analysis. This level builds on the cluster analysis with its disclosure of some of the narrative elements of setting, plot, and so forth. The purpose of the level 3 analysis is to put into a more comprehensive form the storyline, and to look for ways that storyline structures the interpretation of identity and leverages social relationships in an exercise of rhetorical power. The setting is a cosmic one which reveals itself in the attack on the World Trade Centers. The author explicitly relates the setting to the characters in the story, saying that until the true identities of these characters are understood we will miss what is really happening. This requires understanding the biblical story behind the characters. The characters, accordingly, are the focus of the story, which is reflected in the predominant use of being verbs and carrier/attribute nouns in the story. The mystery of who is what drives the plot. As the cluster analysis showed, Arabs, Jews, and Israelites (Christians) are the main characters. They are players in a cosmic drama only certain Christians (the author's audience) can see and understand. As the cluster analysis revealed, the Israelite/Christian is the protagonist, the Jews are imposters to be expose and opposed, and Arabs, although darkened over by interbreeding, are to be seen in a relatively positive light as they are wronged by Jews. The narrator is present in the narrative, but not in the first person. Instead, the authority of his writing is built up through his reasoned use of biblical passages and the citation of Jewish sources against their own identity. Foss describes well the author of this piece when she asks, Does the narrator engage in time and space summarizing, a

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process in which vast panoramas and large groups of people are characterized in certain ways from the narrator's exalted position? Does the narrator go beyond describing to engage in commentary such as interpretation and evaluation? The events are both present-day events and past events. The credibility analysis of typology, meaning slides, and style showed this. For example, the conflicted nature of Arab existence created in the article was based both on today's news events in which Palestinian Arabs are wronged by the State of Israel and by reference to the Old Testament account of the birth of the progenitors of the Arabs and the Jews (Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob/Israel and Esau) and of their struggle against each other from infancy. The events have a double naturean apparent reading of which gives you current news (such as Arabs attacked the WTC) and the causes behind those news events for those who understand the identity issues at the root of them, which only a biblical interpretation can reveal. This is also at the base of the article's narrative use of temporal relations as both current events but events that play into a larger apocalyptic whole. Causal relations are complex in the sense that the apocalyptic story will continue to unfold with Jew against Christian and Muslims somewhere in between. At the same time, the narrator urges the reader to understand the true identity of himself (a white European Christian Israelite) for the purpose of joining the right side of the struggle and for naming the enemy (the Jew) as the enemy. This points to a broad cosmic determinism with some latitude for individual choice and self-determination, at least for white Europeans. The audience is clearly meant to be a sympathetic one of white Europeansboth those who are already Christian Identity believers and those who may be considering the

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position of Christian Identity. The signs of the audience in the narrative are references to the Celtic/white identity of true Israel and the exhortation to recognize and live in the promises which come with such an identity. All the action in the drama points to the theme of the article that Arabs, Jews, and Christians have a biblical basis for identity that can only be understood from a correct reading of the Bible. In particular, the theme of the false identity of the Jews as the Children of Israel is developed to set the stage for answering who the Children of Israel are today if not the Jews. This creates the relevance of the setting and the narrator's commentary about them.

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