Church at Kaweah Spreads Hateful, Militant Christian Views
A California church with longstanding ties to far-right extremists and a militia of its own is preparing for war.
In a 22-acre compound at the southern edge of Sequoia National Park in California, a secretive cohort of militant Christian fundamentalists is preparing for war. One of the men helping train the flock in the art of combat, a former Marine named Steve Klein, believes that California is riddled with Muslim Brotherhood sleeper cells âwho are awaiting the trigger date and will begin randomly killing as many of us as they can.â
âI know Iâm getting prepared to shoot back,â Klein says.
At the head of the Church at Kaweah is Pastor Warren Mark Campbell, who sees yet another enemy on the horizon: the âNew World Order,â that chimera of the conspiracists who populate the resurgent, antigovernment âPatriotâ movement.
The tiny church has been well outside the mainstream since the early 1990s, when founding pastor Warren Lee Campbell (father of the current pastor) bought into the notion that churches should shun all government regulation and answer solely to God. Since then, the church has become increasingly radical, ramping up its paramilitary activities and forging alliances with an array of figures revered on the radical right â among them, militia and Patriot leaders, white supremacists, neo-Confederates, border vigilantes and Christian Reconstructionists, whose goal is to turn America into a theocracy based on the Old Testament. In the meantime, the churchâs militia has gone from patrolling the banks of the Kaweah River to conducting joint exercises with Minuteman groups along the Mexican border.
The churchâs ideology, which it defines as a âmilitant Christian separatist worldview,â seems to blend several far-right ideas and prejudices â borrowing heavily from the âunregistered churchesâ and Patriot movements, both of which reject government authority.
Itâs a combustible mix of guns, extreme antigovernment politics and religious extremism that brings to mind another Christian militia that made news recently â the Hutaree. In 2010, nine members of that Michigan-based group were charged with conspiring to murder numerous police officers in hopes of sparking a revolution against the government.
âWhat is remarkable here is the openness with which they speak of religious war to advance Godâs laws and Godâs government,â said Frederick Clarkson, an independent journalist and expert on the religious right. âLess surprising is that the war is to be waged against the government and the usual stew of far-right enemies â although, clearly, Muslims seem to have replaced Communists as the most fearsome, frontline Satanic soldiers said to be creeping over the border and into society.â
Severing Secular Ties
Nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills near the convergence of the North, Middle and South Forks of the Kaweah River, the village of Three Rivers (pop. 2,182), some 70 miles southeast of Fresno, has seen more than its share of unusual social experiments. From 1886 to 1892, it was the site of the socialist Kaweah Colony. Later, it was home to a Hare Krishna ashram and boarding school.
Equally distinctive is the Church at Kaweah â founded in 1965 by its first pastor, Warren Lee Campbell, and his wife, Margaret.
In the mid-1990s, coinciding with the height of the Patriot movement of that decade, Campbell decided to sever ties with secular authorities â namely any form of government. He believed the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit status that the U.S. tax code automatically grants churches is âforeign to the law of Godâ and exists solely âto compromise the church.â
Most churches prize nonprofit status, because it exempts them from corporate income taxes and allows donors to deduct gifts from their own income taxes. But, like all other tax-exempt organizations, they are not allowed to engage in electoral politics and their right to lobby the government is limited. They also must withhold federal taxes, as well as Social Security and Medicare payments, from their employeesâ paychecks â and they still must abide by the laws that govern the rest of society.
On Aug. 15, 1997, apparently following the guidance of the Ecclesiastical Law Center (ELC), which says that â[t]heocracy, not democracy, was Godâs plan,â Campbellâs lawyer went to the Tulare County Recorderâs office and transferred the deed to the churchâs earthly property to âthe Lord Jesus Christ, True and Beneficial Owner and beneficiary.â What had been the Kaweah Community Church became the Church at Kaweah.
The church apparently went all in. In 1998, it began interring deceased members on its own grounds. Ultimately, several bodies were exhumed from the Three Rivers Public Cemetery and moved to the new âEcclesiastical Mortuary.â Today, home births are encouraged, children are homeschooled, and members are urged to support themselves though cottage industries. Couples do not get marriage licenses, preferring âcovenant marriagesâ sanctioned by the pastor alone.
The idea that churches can declare themselves free of any government oversight is an analog to the individual separatism asserted by adherents of the radical âsovereign citizensâ movement â a movement to which the founding pastor of the Church at Kaweah was closely tied. Warren Lee Campbell outlined his own theory of âdisestablishmentâ in the foreword to a 1998 manifesto produced by members of Right Way L.A.W., a defunct ring of extreme-right con artists who pitched a financial fraud known as âredemption.â Taught and practiced by disciples of the sovereign citizens movement, the redemption scam is based on the false claim that enlightened individuals can collect hundred of thousands of dollars from secret trust funds being held in their names by the federal government.
Campbellâs connection to Right Way L.A.W. is just one of myriad ties the deceased pastor established with extremists. Under his leadership in 1995, the church began hosting an annual Old Paths Christian History Conference, which quickly became a destination for radical-right luminaries. Guest speakers have included John Trochmann, a godfather of the Patriot movement whose Militia of Montana was the first major militia to come to public attention; Eric Hovind, a âcreation science evangelistâ whose father, Kent, was a famous tax protester who ran a Florida creationist theme park called Dinosaur Adventure Land until he was jailed on 58 counts of tax fraud in 2007; Joe Banister, a former IRS agent who claims that most citizens are not required to pay income taxes or have taxes withheld; Gary DeMar, a prominent Christian Reconstructionist who heads the anti-gay group American Vision; and Chuck Baldwin, a gun-loving pastor and politician who condemns Islam as a âbloody, murderous religion,â refers to Martin Luther King Jr. as an apostate, and believes âthe South was rightâ in the Civil War.
Though he is not known to have attended the Old Paths conference, Patriot icon James Wesley, Rawles (like other sovereign citizens, he uses the comma as part of his name) credits the deceased pastor as an inspiration. Wesley, Rawles is a survivalist author who proposed the establishment of a fortified home for âChristian Patriotsâ in the Northwest. In recent years, a significant number of antigovernment extremists have begun to move to Montanaâs Flathead Valley. In January 2011, at the invitation of Covenant Community Church in Whitehall, Mont. (whose leadership is affiliated with Baldwinâs âBlack Regimentâ of âpatriot-preachersâ), Pastor Warren Mark Campbell addressed an audience of 200 â including 30 state officials â at the Montana State Capitol. Politics, he told them, is a âholy calling, not a secular calling. You have an obligation to rule and serve in the name of Jesus Christ.â
âTo Teach Them Warâ
Another frequent guest of the Church at Kaweah is Pastor John Weaver, former âchaplain-in-chiefâ for the Southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans who has been a member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. Last July, Weaver conducted weapons training at a conference sponsored by the neo-Confederate League of the South, a meeting that focused heavily on preparing for battle â presumably against the government. âDivine providence always arranges the time for fighting,â Weaver told the attendees. âYou must remember, God is the god of war.â
Warren Mark Campbell, who took over the Church at Kaweahâs pulpit after his father died in 2008, seems to agree. Preaching on the virtues of âmilitant discipleshipâ in a 2009 DVD titled âTo Teach Them War,â the balding and decidedly uncharismatic pastor exhorts his audience to be âanimated with a fireâ in âthe battle against the New World Order and against whatâs going on in this land.â
The DVD depicts men, women and clergy training with rifles and handguns. Among them is Weaver. In one scene, Campbell flings himself to the ground to shoot.
At the end, Campbell speaks directly to the camera: âWeâve produced this DVD to encourage Christians to acquire military skills and be militant in the kingdom of God. Itâs our desire that fathers will learn these skills and pass them on to their children, and that Christians everywhere in this great land will train together martially.â
Backing up Campbellâs call to action is David âDutchâ Johnson, who leads the churchâs militia. Johnson, who goes by the name âDutch Joens,â is a longtime veteran of the militia movement who claims seven years of service in the Army and National Guard.
Ten years ago, the churchâs militia prowled the banks of the Kaweah River as the North Fork River Patrol, mainly looking out for gangs. Under Johnsonâs leadership, it has since trained with other âconstitutional militiasâ along the Arizona-Mexico border and invited likeminded paramilitary groups to conduct joint trainings.
Johnson, who says he looks forward to the battle that will begin when âDictator Obongoâ institutes martial law, also hosts a daily radio talk show out of the church. A cheerful bigot, he cuts the harshness of his message with moments of whimsy. The introduction to his show is replete with quotes from the animated TV series âThe Simpsons,â and he compares the structure of his combat and survival workshops to Dungeons and Dragons, the classic role-playing game beloved by high school nerds. His wife and children, who gave him a machete for Fatherâs Day last year, can often be heard in the background as he broadcasts.
But his playful style does little to mask a message of hate. In a June 2011 broadcast, for example, he called Mexicans savages âwho canât run their own governmentâ and recommended sending guns to drug cartels in hopes they could âdecrease the excess population in Mexico so they donât come north.â
Johnson told the Intelligence Report in an E-mail that he is âagainst any racially exclusive groupsâ and âhate[s] Nazi groups and Socialists equally.â But, in a âBible studyâ on his website several years ago, he wrote, âWe must at all times be ready to defend the FAITH and our RACE from ALL enemies.â
Heâs also an ardent defender of anti-immigrant vigilante leader Shawna Forde, who was sentenced to death in 2011 for the murder of a 9-year-old Mexican-American girl and her father during a 2009 home invasion in Arizona.
And Johnson expresses virulently antigovernment views. On a message board, he issued a vigorous defense of Jerry and Joseph Kane, the father-son team of sovereign citizens who in May 2010 shot and killed two West Memphis, Ark., police officers during a traffic stop. (The Kanes were killed less than an hour later during a shootout in a Walmart parking lot that left two additional officers wounded.)
âNow remember that this father and son have been harassed for years and were being targeted for persecution because they were preaching a way to get out from under your debt using the rules of the enemy,â Johnson wrote. âRather then be taken to a cell and beaten or handed over to the scum in jail they fought back. I do not blame them. The time has come to resist TYRANNY. How will you answer when they come for you?â
The Muslim Menace
Despite all the talk about Mexicans and government tyranny, the Church at Kaweah appears to be preparing for a showdown with a different enemy: Muslims.
The churchâs obsession with Muslims appears to have begun in 2010, when it invited white Zimbabwean evangelist Peter Hammond to speak at its Old Paths conference. A staunch defender of Zimbabweâs last white leader, the racial supremacist Ian Smith, Hammond heads a South Africa-based âministryâ called Frontline Fellowship that is anti-Islam, anti-gay, anti-abortion and anti-communist. He believes all churches should be armed and ready for attack, admonishing Christians to remember the âfour Gâs of survival: Groceries, Guns, Gold and God.â In a pamphlet titled âThe Christian At Warâ (available for purchase on the churchâs website), Hammond says, âMuch of the Bible is written by soldiers and for soldiers.â
Over the past year, Johnson and the church militia have developed a relationship with Steve Klein, a longtime religious-right activist who brags about having led a âhunter killerâ team as a Marine in Vietnam. Klein, who calls Islam a âpenis-driven religionâ and thinks Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca is a Muslim Brotherhood patsy, is allied with Christian activist groups across California. In 2011, as head of the Concerned Citizens for the First Amendment, he worked with the Vista, Calif.-based Christian Anti-Defamation Commission on a campaign to âarmâ students with the âtruth about Islam and Muhammadâ â mainly by leafleting high schools with literature depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a sex-crazed pedophile.
Klein, based in Hemet, Calif., has been active in extremist movements for decades. In 1977, he founded Courageous Christians United, which now conducts ârespectful confrontationsâ outside of abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques. Klein also has ties to the Minuteman movement. In 2007, he sued the city of San Clemente for ordering him to stop leafleting cars with pamphlets opposing illegal immigration.
In addition to working with Johnson and the Church at Kaweahâs militia, Klein conducts drills with the Christian Guardians, a San Francisco-based group headed by Andrew Saqib James, an American-born Pakistani Christian who calls Islam âa giant crime syndicateâ and hopes his group will become âthe most feared militia in the world.â For the past year, the Church at Kaweahâs website has advertised joint trainings with the Christian Guardians and other likeminded groups. Based at the churchâs sprawling grounds, the series of trainings is described as a âunique system of learning how to survive the Muslim Brotherhood as we teach the Christian Morality of Biblical Warfare.â
Clarkson, the journalist who specializes in religious extremism, said the Church at Kaweah appears to have been successful in integrating people with military expertise seamlessly into its theology of confrontation, in part by minimizing doctrinal differences that have bedeviled similar efforts by other radical churches.
âWe saw the beginnings of this during the militia movement of the 1990s, but this appears to be more advanced,â Clarkson said. âFifteen years ago, the idea of a church-based militia seemed novel. Now it seems likely to be a permanent model of far-right revolutionary organizations.â
