c. 1999 Religion News Service

ATLANTA _ In the decidedly Old Testament eyes of Walter Eliyah Thody, bank robberies, killings, bombings and other acts of crime and violence can be justified if they are committed to avenge a transgression against God’s law or the U.S. Constitution.

A gangly, bespectacled bank robber with the long, ragged beard of a prophet and a prison sentence that will keep him behind bars until the day he dies, Thody sees himself as a soldier of God, fighting a war against those bent on handing America over to a satanic cabal of one-world government conspirators.

“We’re having to fight to keep our country,” said Thody, interviewed in 1996 while serving time at one of America’s toughest prisons, the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. “Killing is normally murder. … Theft is theft. But if you’re in warfare, then those same acts are acts of war. I’m at warfare against the enemies of my country.”

Thody, 60, is a believer of the racist theology known as Christian Identity and is one of the leading proselytizers of the Phineas Priesthood _ a violent credo rooted in an interpretation of biblical vengeance gaining popularity among white supremacists, anti-government zealots and the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion movement.

Experts on hate groups say there may be a connection between the Phineas Priesthood and Buford O’Neal Furrow, the self-confessed suspect in the shooting spree at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles who reportedly told FBI agents he wanted to send a “wake-up call to America to kill Jews.” Furrow is also charged with killing a Filipino-American postal worker in Los Angeles because of his race and government job.

In a van believed to have been driven by Furrow at the time of the community center attack, authorities found a book authored by Richard Kelly Hoskins, a Lynchburg, Va., leader of the Christian Identity movement who also wrote “The Vigilantes of Christendom,” the prime text advocating commission of violent “Phineas actions” to restore the authority of God’s law.

Whether Furrow styled himself a Phineas Priest is still a matter of speculation, hate group experts caution. And it may be an academic question, because a broad variety of hate groups advocate violent acts against Jews, minorities, homosexuals and abortion clinics by “lone wolves” acting on their own initiative.

“You can really craft your own philosophy from this extremist buffet,” said Brian Levin, a criminal justice professor at California State University at San Bernardino and head of the Center on Hate and Extremism. “You don’t have to stay married to one philosophy or another _ you can pick and choose. You see a lot of morphing out there.”

The Phineas Priesthood is seen as the most dangerous credo of violence, a powerful combination of religious zealotry, racist ideology and almost-foolproof tactics.

Less an organization than a call to action and a badge of honor, followers of this blood-stained faith strive to live up to the example of Phineas, who killed an Israelite and his heathen wife with a javelin for violating God’s prohibition against consorting with women not of the Chosen People.

According to the Old Testament Book of Numbers, Phineas’ zealous action saved the people of Israel from a plague God loosed on the land and won this faithful servant and his descendants a perpetual priesthood.

Today, this story is used as a justification for violent action by a diverse group of hard-line zealots. They include:

_ Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist who wrote an essay advocating the commission of “Phineas actions” a year before he was convicted of killing a Pensacola, Fla., abortion clinic doctor and his security escort.

_ Byron de la Beckwith, the convicted assassin of ’60s-era civil rights leader Medger Evers. Prosecutors say de la Beckwith is a Phineas devotee who now sees his act as an “ordained duty.”

_ And, Thody, who claims he and his confederates pulled off at least 20 bank robberies across the country to finance an assassination squad dedicated to killing advocates of one-world government.

Religion is a powerful motivator. Its use as a justification for murder and other criminal acts alarms experts who monitor the white supremacist and anti-government movements.

“It is the American equivalent of the Islamic Jihad,” said Mike Reynolds, a senior researcher with KlanWatch, the investigatory arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights watchdog group based in Montgomery, Ala. “You just can’t overstate the power of the religious component in all of this. These folks are willing to step over that line and stay there. They’re willing to die for what they believe.”

White supremacists see the Phineas story as an example of how to address one of their prime issues _ race-mixing. They also see Phineas as a prime exemplar of what Aryan Nations leader Louis Beam has called “leaderless resistance” _ an individual or small group taking independent, violent action to help foment racial revolution without orders from a larger, easily infiltrated movement.

This strategy insulates the hate group from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits, a favorite weapon of civil rights watchdog groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has successfully sued and bankrupted several Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups. It also makes it virtually impossible for law enforcement to infiltrate and prevent the acts of “lone wolves” such as Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, whose recent deadly Midwest rampage against Jews, blacks and Asians last month killed two and wounded nine before he took his own life, or Eric Rudolph, the prime suspect in the deadly bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic who has eluded authorities for more than a year.

Since many white supremacists follow the racist religious doctrine known as Christian Identity, which holds that whites of Celtic, Anglo-Saxon and Northern European descent are God’s true Chosen People, the Old Testament zealotry of the Phineas doctrine is a natural fit.

“We consider the Phineas Priesthood to be the terrorist, paramilitary arm of the Christian Identity movement,” said Bill Wasmuth, executive director of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment, a civil rights watchdog organization based in Seattle. “They tend to be the ones who act out violently on the beliefs of Christian Identity.”

Evidence of the growing popularity of the Phineas credo is scattered across the country, said Reynolds. During the spring and summer of 1996, a small band of men pipebombed the Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash., plus a local Planned Parenthood clinic and twice robbed a local bank. Manifestos left at the scene quote scripture and were marked with the Phineas Priesthood symbol _ a Christian cross with a P in the upper right quadrant.

In the Midwest in early 1995, two Aryan Nations followers dubbed by law enforcement officials as the Midwestern Bank Bandits were arrested in Ohio after pulling off at least 22 bank robberies. Both were members of an underground terrorist group called the Aryan Republican Army. One of the men, Peter Langan, made a two-hour recruitment video for the group, holding up a copy of Hoskins’ book, calling it a handbook for the revolution.

At Identity meetings and Aryan Nations rallies, belt buckles with the Phineas Priesthood cross or the inscription “25:6,” for the chapter and verse in the Book of Numbers telling the Phineas story, can be seen. At Skinhead gatherings, tattoos and jacket emblems feature the Phineas cross and the same inscription.

But as Hill so graphically illustrates, the Phineas credo isn’t limited to the white supremacy movement. It is also popular among some anti-abortion activists.

“They are choosing to engage in criminal activities and want some kind of justification for it,” said Ann Glazier, Planned Parenthood vice president for research. “They can’t get it from society, so they try to get it from religion.”

Although Glazier is careful not to suggest any hard links between the anti-abortion and white supremacy movements, she says both feature strong religious motivations, giving the story of Phineas a natural appeal to zealots in both camps.

Thody, who now has been transferred from Atlanta to the federal prison at Beaumont, Texas, agrees.

“It is simply a shared philosophy,” he said. “Paul Hill didn’t get any authorization from me. I didn’t send him out to do the job.”

While Thody sees his actions as those of a holy warrior battling against an evil government, he views Hill’s act as that of an Old Testament judge who would mete out ofttimes bloody punishment to those of the people of Israel who transgressed against God’s law.

“I would call his killing of that murderer a judicial action. … Paul Hill was a judge who stepped in and passed judgment _ he was a Phineas Priest,” said Thody. “I don’t know if he refers to himself as such, but that’s what he is, in essence.”

No one knows how many Phineas Priests are out there, planning violent acts against government officials, financial institutions, abortion clinics or, another favorite target, homosexuals.

“It’s like an ion in a chamber,” said Mark Thomas, a Pennsylvania Christian Identity minister who is an advocate of the Phineas example. “You can’t see it, but you can see the trail. And you see a lot of trails criss-crossing about. … It’s more than evident that there is a rise in Phineas actions because of a total breakdown in respect for the state.”

A Phineas symbol is painted on a cross that hangs outside Thomas’ Identity chapel just south of Allentown, Pa. Thomas says a Phineas Priest is an instrument of God’s will, not a criminal seeking a juicy rationalization for his or her actions.

“A proper Phineas action is a recourse to a higher law, not a rejection of law itself,” he said.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM _ STORY MAY END HERE)

The credo is a perfect fit with Beam’s strategy of leaderless resistance, Thomas said.

“There’s no infrastructure to this,” he said. “It’s informal, good or bad. Tactically, because of the omnipotence of the government and its technology, it has to be that. … Individual action taken for the glory of God would be best.”

But even Thomas admits the rising faddishness of Phineas among skinheads and ex-cons who get turned on to Christian Identity and the Aryan Nations credo while in prison makes it difficult to determine whether an unsolved act of violence is that of a true believer or a common criminal.

“How many of these acts are answering a higher calling and how many are the actions of skinheads who’ve had too much to drink, I don’t know,” he said.

Even Furrow may have been more of a Phineas wannabe than a true believer, said Levin, who notes that Furrow surrendered to the FBI instead of committing suicide, as Smith did, or dying in a bloody shootout with police, as did slain Christian Identity martyr Robert Mathews. Mathews was leader of The Order, a violent Aryan Nations spinoff group responsible for a chain of armored car robberies in the mid-1980s and the murder of a Denver talk radio host who was Jewish.

“Furrow may be more of a Phineas Lite than anything else,” said Levin. “This is a religious calling that makes it much more likely that they will want to shoot it out and less likely that they will surrender. I think Furrow found martyrdom much better on paper than he did in reality.”

Thody, who has also served time for counterfeiting and started down the road to racial revolution as a John Birch Society leader and tax protester, has a simple counter to this concern.

“Look at the individual and see what he is doing with what he is getting,” he said. “Is he using it for personal gain and self-aggrandizement or is he using it for the purpose he said he was setting out to do?”

When Thody was arrested in 1991 after a running gunfight with police in Muskogee, Okla., he was driving a ’78 Oldsmobile and living in a $300-a-month rental house.

“My liabilities exceeded my assets,” he said.

For Thody, these are the proofs of a true believer _ a soldier of God, a Phineas Priest.

“Get up and get past the point of talking and writing,” he said. “There’s a place for talking and writing, but there’s also places for those who will take action on their own and that’s where I believe the Phineas Priesthood has its major role.”

When you look at Walter Eliyah Thody and consider how softly and rationally he advocates harsh, bloody action, it’s natural to wonder how far he has taken his role as a Phineas Priest.

There is little doubt he was prepared to kill while outside the walls of this prison: “It’s part of what you have to do when you’re in warfare.”

Has he killed? A long pause and a direct, meaningful look at the questioner before this careful answer: “I have not been charged with any killing.”

IR END NESBITT