THE RELATION BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND ORGANIZATION IN A SMALL RELIGIOUS GROUP: THE BRITISH ISRAELITIES.

Some recent typologies of religious groups have taken as their basis the religious group's response to the world, implying that there exists a pattern of association between this response and the organization, which expresses it. This paper presents some of the findings from research into a group, British Israelism, is neither sect nor cult as these are usually defined; it asserts its own teachings neither as autonomous nor yet as necessary for salvation. It is tolerated, but not respected; anxious for recognition as divine truth and yet aware of its slight prospects of attaining it. To the outsider, British Israelism is a sect but this is a designation, which it has tried to resist; and, sociologically, it is not a sect. This ambiguous position has had important consequences for its organizational structure, its authority structure, its membership, and its ecclesiology. The modern British Israel movement has a short history, having begun in the final quarter of the nineteenth century. It has never had a very large following estimates of a worldwide membership of two million are usually considered high. British Israelites believe that the Anglo-Saxons are the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel; from this belief they have drawn a number of conclusions concerning the supremacy of the white race; the Divinely-appointed leadership role of the Anglo-Saxon nations; and the extent to which Protestant beliefs should enter into political and economic thinking.