Customer Reviews

Race Over Grace: The Racialist Religion of the Christian Identity Movement

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Largely a part of the author's Master's thesis, RACE OVER GRACE has thesis type organization that helps avoid confusing or overgeneralizing the many variations of Christian Identity doctrine and groups. First, the author stresses that we are not dealing with a minor doctrine on race taken from a few verses, but an entire theological system or paradigm for explaining Christianity. Then, Roberts traces how Christian Identity emerged from British-Israelism (which teaches that the Anglo-Saxon people of Britain are the true Israelites), changing with such events as entrance into right-wing politics, piggy-backing on early Pentecostalism, interjection of the serpent seedline doctrine, etc.

After this history, with "founding fathers" of the movement named (though certain notables were left out), the author gets into the actual doctrines, both those generally held and others specific to subgroups. Examples: Adam was the first white man, other races were created before Adam (some call them "beasts of the field," Jews came from Eve having sex with Satan); tri-theism or modalism rather than Trinity; salvation and redemption not coterminus (only whites can be redeemed); probability that Jesus was not a Jew by race or religion; extrabiblical sources of authority (Apocrypha, Pseudoepigrapha); no hell; universalism and more.

Overall, the book is helpful given the dearth of critical works on the topic, but the author (who is Presyterian, a covenentalist) oversteps the topic to mischaracterize and disparage dispensationalism, repeatedly citing older forms of dispensationalist theology that he then tenuously tries to tie to the Identity heresy. This is ironic since Identity is primarily about Anglos usurping the identity of Israel and applying it to themselves, something dispensationalists oppose but that coventalists like Roberts support, he himself saying, "The Church is the New Israel of God." In contrast, dispensationalists' most significant distinctive is insistance that the Church is not Israel and that God's promises to Israel belong to the literal, not allegorical, nation of Israel (the one in the Middle East, not some spiritualized one). In sum, the book is informative, but its surprising turn at the end to attack dispensationalism with its unfair comparisons is odd to the point of being suspect. While it'd be unfair to impute a sneaky, ulterior motive to the author, one can only wonder as it is rather strange that the entire book leads to suggesting a dispensationalism-Christian Identity affinity.

"Race over Grace" is a theological treatment of the Christian Identity movement from a conservative evangelical perspective. As such, it looks carefully and thoughtfully at some of the most glaring doctrinal errors inherit in Christian Identity's racist theology. I thought it could have been stronger and more definitive in terms of the most obvious problems with Identity theology, it's emphasis on hate etc., but perhaps it is simply my repugnance for that theology showing. If you are not a conservative evangelical in terms of your own theology, this book might not make much sense to you. If you are, or at least, are familiar with that perspective as I am, it is a good read and lays down a well argued exploration of the doctrinal problems of this fringe, racist theological movement.