Wesley A. Swift

Swift collapsed and died of a heart attack in a Mexican clinic on October 8, 1970 while waiting to receive treatment for kidney disease and diabetes.

By 1966, Swift had established a chain of churches in California, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Florida, Washington, and other places in the United States. In the 1990s, there were 245 reported ministers and groups in the United States, across 41 states who were promoting Christian Identity teachings he espoused. David Duke and Tom Metzger were heavily influenced by Swift's teachings and were major promoters of his teachings in the 1970s and 1980s. After Swift's death, the headquarters of Swift's church was moved to Idaho and renamed Aryan Nations by his successor, Richard Girnt Butler. Butler built on Swift's teachings to build what he called a "white bastion" in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

The Attorney General of California named Swift as the leader in the California Rangers and the Christian Defense League, paramilitary organizations for White Supremacists, in a 1965 report. Swift spread his teachings through recorded tapes of his sermons and tracts.

William Branham was influenced by Swift's teachings, and re-branded elements of Christian Identity as "Serpent Seed" and spread it among his followers from 1958. Several figures associated with Swift were also key members of Branham's campaigning team. Arnold Murray, a Missouri based televangelist was ordained in the Church of Jesus Christ. Swift's ideology has influenced generations of white supremacists.

In 1946, while living in Lancaster, California, Swift was taken in for questioning by police in connection to a cross burning near San Bernardino. Swift denied being involved in the klan at the time.

In the 1940s, Swift founded his own church, Anglo-Saxon Christian Congregation, which he renamed the Church of Jesus Christ Christian in 1957. The church's website now states that "Wesley Swift is considered the single most significant figure in the early years of the Christian Identity movement in the United States." Most sources give 1948 as the year in which Swift incorporated his church, but one source reported 1946. Michael Barkun described Swift as the "central figure" in Christian Identity between the 1940s and his 1970 death.

Swift was involved in the revival of a branch of the Ku Klux Klan in California during the mid-1940s, helping to establish the short lived California Klan. Roy Elonzo Davis and William Upshaw were in California at the time and they assisted in fundraising efforts for the Klan. Swift was responsible for the formation of the Antelope Valley chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

Swift worked closely with Gerald L.K. Smith, an American Nazi sympathizer and politician from the 1940s. Wesley Swift was billed as a speaker at the Little Rock Nine protests, but did not speak and instead served as one of the hooded klansmen escorting and protecting Gerald Smith during one of his speeches.

Swift did not create a systematic theology. Beyond his racial views, he did not offer any other significant religious views. Swift claimed his teachings to be the true successor of British Israel thought. He traced himself in a line of succession back to the earliest teachers of the ideology through his teacher, Phillip Monson, to Howard Rand, to C.A.L. Totten, to Edward Hine. Gerald Smith publicized Swift's ministry through his publications where he advertised Swift's tracts and recordings on Christian Identity topics beginning in the 1940s. Smith also assisted Swift in organizing speaking tours and conventions among the British Israel and white supremacist's communities in the 1940s and 1950s.

In a December 1932 Los Angeles Times news story, it was reported that Swift foiled an attempt to kidnap his wife. Swift fired shots at the kidnappers and the family escaped into the Angelus Temple to evade their persuers.

Raised as a Methodist, Swift converted to Pentecostalism in the early 1930s. Swift was a student at L.I.F.E. Bible College at the Angelus Temple, Aimee Semple McPherson's Pentecostal Foursquare Church, during the 1930s. Swift later served as a minister at the Angelus Temple during the 1930s and 1940s.

Swift's wife, Genevieve, told interviewers that he was introduced to British Israelism by Gerald Burton Winrod, a Nazi and evangelist from Kansas. Swift was a student of Rev. Philip Monson's Kingdom Bible School during the 1930s; Monson taught British Israelism and some of the racial teachings which Swift would later reformulate into Christian Identity theology. Swift was also exposed to Charles Parham's British Israel teachings at the Angelus Temple. During the 1930s and 1940s, Swift became a leader of the local British Israel community, serving as president of the Anglo-Saxon Christian society, leader of the Great Pyramid Club, and leader of the Anglo-Saxon Bible Study Group at Angelus Temple. In the mid-1940s, Swift emerged as the best known advocate of Christian Identity.

Wesley A. Swift (September 6, 1913 – October 8, 1970) was a minister from Southern California who was known for his white supremacist views and was the central figure in Christian Identity from the 1940s until his death in 1970.

Wesley Albert Swift was born in New Jersey on September 6, 1913, the son of R.C. Swift, a methodist minister who pastored a church on Long Island, New York.