The Anglo Saxon World
I have a personal connection to the above publication. My great-grandfather Stanley P. Stewart of South Colby, Washington, wrote a lengthy article for the publication, entitled “The History, Objects and Aims of the Anglo-Saxon Christian World Movement.” Not many people know much about the Anglo-Saxon Christian World Movement. It’s one of several groups that have taken an interest in the “lost tribes” of Israel taken into captivity by the Assyrians and who then drop out of world history. This group believes that those tribes made their way into Europe and in particular the British Isles. The upshot of this theory is that the glorious promises directed at Israel in the Hebrew Bible can now be interpreted in reference to Britain and the United States. This theory is presented in crystal clear visual form on page 32 of this magazine:
A unique dynamic in Christianity arises through various attempts to incorporate the “Old Testament” into the New Testament. This process is already fully under way in the New Testament itself, but the fun was only beginning. In some of the most durable theological frameworks (Catholic and Protestant) the church is the inheritor of the promises directed at the nation of Israel, which is seen as a proto-church making use of “shadows” and “signs” instead of participating in the real economy of grace. Other sects would get more creative as they emphasized the disjunction between the Old and New Testaments or tied themselves in a direct way to the people of Israel. Ethiopia built its traditional church on their literal inheritance of the lineage of Solomon.. and the Rastafari take this even further. The Anglo-Saxon Christian World Movement is another version, sanctifying their line through a make-believe history the Anglo-Saxon people descended from the British Isles. Traditional spiritual transference of the promises is neglected in favor of the discovery of a literal blood line.
This past week I was in California for a family gathering to mark my grandmother’s 90th birthday. On Sunday morning she gave a short talk about her life. The talk centered more on her father’s conversion than I expected. He was raised as a Unitarian in Worcester, Massachusetts. He moved west with his new wife and had fairly large family (five kids). In the midst of the Great Depression they were living in Silverdale, British Columbia, barely making ends meet. They gardened and her father picked up odd jobs when possible. During this difficult time my grandmother remembers a man who used to come visit her father. This man smoked a pipe and had a dog. She remembers that pipe vividly because her father usually did not allow anyone who smoked to come into the house, but in this case it was all right, though it sounds like they talked outside. So I imagine warm summer evenings, the poor family visited by something of an intellectual. The conversation was about the truth of the Anglo-Saxon identity with Israel. I imagine much of the Bible suddenly coming alive. It sounded so real and alive after the liberalism of Unitarianism. My great-grandfather accepted this form of Christianity.
Some unusual things come with the acceptance of Anglo-Saxons as latter day Israelites. The food laws, for example, are not abrogated, but must be followed. Worship on Sunday instead of the Sabbath is suspect.. Sabbath would be better. This does not look anything like orthodox Jewish versions of kosher, a system of food laws that have their basis in extended discussions about how to keep the laws of the Torah. My grandmother kept the food laws with an eye toward obvious literalism: don’t eat pork! don’t eat shrimp or other unclean foods! But there was no concern to separate dairy and meats, as would reflect a kosher kitchen. In her summary of her faith, my grandmother emphasized the importance of not eating pork. She also pointedly referenced that bad things (like cancer) come to people who eat pork and unclean foods.
It would be a mistake to think that this is all about food. This yen for separation, I think, is again evident in the way my grandmother has here and there emphasized the importance of not intermarrying with other races. That’s a view to which I never subscribed.. but it’s an obvious result of seeing Anglo-Saxons as Israelites. All those Old Testament verses forbidding marriage with Canaanites can now be applied to whites in America marrying Hispanics or blacks. So an avoidance of pepperoni may, in its deepest sense, be an aspect of a deeply racist creed. Separation is the watchword and the little things mirror the big things in life.
I’ve always struggled with this aspect of my grandmother’s view of the world. I’ve always loved her, and found her a personally kind person, but on the more abstract level of the way she sees the world, I have real problems. In my early twenties I wrote a short story about how my grandmother interacted with the world in a generous way (even with non Anglo-Saxons), but her belief system reflected systematic prejudice. I imagine there are a lot of people who have to work through mixed aspects of their past.
