Phineas Priesthood

American domestic terrorists

The Phineas Priesthood, also called Phineas Priests, are American domestic terrorists who adhere to the ideology which was set forth in the 1990 book Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood by Richard Kelly Hoskins. The Phineas Priests are not an organization, and it has no discernible leadership or institutional structure. For ideological adherents, a "Phineas Priest" is someone who commits a "Phineas action" – meaning the person follows the example of Phineas, a Hebrew man who was rewarded for killing an interfaith couple by God, according to the Old Testament. The term "Phineas action" is broadly used by white supremacists, as a term for murders of interracial couples and as a term for attacks on Jewish people, members of other non white ethnic groups, "multiculturalists," and anyone else who they consider their enemy.

The ideology which is set forth in Hoskins's book includes Christian Identity beliefs which oppose interracial relationships, the mixing of races, homosexuality, and abortion. It also is marked by anti Semitism and anti multiculturalism. The Phineas Priesthood is not considered an organization because it is not led by a governing body, its members do not hold gatherings, and it does not have a membership process. One simply becomes a Phineas Priest by adopting the Priesthood's beliefs and acting upon them. Adherents of the Phineas Priesthood ideology are considered terrorists. According to the Anti Defamation League (ADL), "Many people mistakenly believe that there is an actual organization called the Phineas Priesthood, probably because there was a group of four men in the 1990s who called themselves Phineas Priests. The men carried out bank robberies and a series of bombings in the Pacific Northwest before being sent to prison. But there is no evidence that their organization was any larger than those four individuals." In 2012, Drew Bostwick renamed a splinter faction of the neo Nazi group Aryan Nations the "Tabernacle of the Phineas Priesthood Aryan Nations" when he replaced August Kreis as the group's leader. Four men who professed to follow the "religious philosophy of Phineas priests" were convicted of crimes that included bank robberies and bombings, and each of them was (initially) sentenced to life in prison in 1997 and 1998. A copy of Hoskins's book, War Cycles, Peace Cycles, was found in a van that was driven by Buford Furrow when he killed one person and wounded five others in an attack on a Jewish Community Center in California in 1999. Although that book is about economics, Michael Reynolds of the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Furrow's actions were consistent with the Phineas Priesthood as described by Hoskins in Vigilantes of Christendom. On November 28, 2014, 49 year old Larry Steven McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at a federal courthouse, a Mexican consulate building (which he also tried to set on fire), and a police station in Austin, Texas; he was killed by return fire from police. A copy of Hoskins's book was found in McQuilliams's home.

The Phineas Priesthood is named after the Israelite Phineas, grandson of Aaron According to Numbers 25, Phineas personally executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were together in the man's tent, ending a plague which had been sent by God in order to punish the Israelites for intermingling both sexually and religiously with Baal worshipers. Phineas is commended for having stopped Israel's fall into idolatrous practices that were introduced to it by Moabite women. God commends Phineas as zealous through Moses, gives him a "covenant of peace," and grants him and "his seed" an everlasting priesthood. This passage was cited in Hoskins's book as a justification for using violent means against people who have interracial relationships and practice other forms of alleged immorality.