the group. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. References Sources See also Christian Identity Serpent Seed 1913 births 1970 deaths Christian Identity Christian conspiracy theorists American Ku Klux Klan members Methodist ministers Former Methodists Ku Klux Klan in California American white supremacists