From afar, little distinguished the squat rental building from its surroundings in a quiet stretch north of the Bronx. No cars passed. The only sound was the rumble of a nearby train station. But when I visited in November 2017, a group of assistants guarded the space as if it was a secret fortress, patrolling the entrance and watching the empty street through window slits.
Inside, a man known simply as the Bishop was waiting for me. He was the leader of a fast-growing and often controversial religious group called Israel United in Christ, or IUIC, that had recently been thrust into the spotlight because of its connection to rap superstar Kendrick Lamar. I had been working for weeks to secure this interview, going back and forth on the phone with junior members of this cagey organization who used military titles, like ‘officer’ and ‘soldier’ and answered the phone with a gruff, “Shalom.” The IUIC headquarters sat next to a vacant industrial plot and around the corner from a sunken bodega. The men acting as sentinels slowly unlocked the door and led me through a classroom adorned with maps and instructional Hebrew charts. In an adjoining office, Bishop Nathanyel Ben Israel sat behind a large wooden desk. Dressed in leather biker jacket, an enormous graying beard spilled down the front of his shirt. As I walked in the room, members of IUIC group lined the walls; one member trained a video camera on me. The Bishop gestured theatrically for me to sit.
As a journalist, I’d been writing about Hebrew Israelite groups for a number of years, visiting and interviewing congregations in Virginia, Washington, DC, New York, and Florida. In early 2017, this body of work gained new relevance when Kendrick Lamar gave a platform to Hebrew Israelite beliefs on his latest album. He paraphrased what were to me familiar doctrines, repeating the foundational belief that African Americans are the true children of Israel, and featured snippets of other boilerplate Israelite messages. “I’m an Israelite,” he rapped, “Don’t call me black no more.”
What’s more, far from a haphazard reference, I found there was a family connection here: Lamar had learned about the doctrines from his older cousin named Carl Duckworth, a part-time security worker in Florida who was a member of IUIC. In the following months, I interviewed IUIC members and other Hebrew Israelites about Lamar and watched the impact of this would-be celebrity endorsement with interest.
Across the groups I knew through my reporting, the news of Lamar’s involvement spread, and communities celebrated. IUIC is just one organization within a broader family of religious groups known as One West and it was here that the excitement was the greatest. Aspiring community rappers released their own songs in homage, repurposing instrumentals from Lamar’s album and interpolating some of his lyrics.1 A whole genre of internet memes blossomed, in which Lamar was cast in the distinct colorful garb of the groups he appeared to be endorsing. It was easily the biggest celebrity encounter for the under-the-radar tradition and people were excited. Though they may not have put it in these terms, there was a sense of validation.
But dissenting voices also emerged, with many actors working to limit the spread of the tradition or police communal boundaries. Outside critics, activists, and media figures, warned that Lamar was venturing into an unusual and heretical religion and possibly cavorting with what the Southern Poverty Law Center had deemed a hate group. Over time, some One Westers also grew wary of Lamar, seeing him as a Johnny-come-lately to the tradition whose celebrity status might bring unwelcome scrutiny to the community. His foray also comes amid a number of internal feuds that have been simmering for decades. The Lamar saga offers a window into the complex internal and external challenges facing the Hebrew Israelite strain known as One West, a dynamic but little-studied tradition that is appealing to a new generation of seekers.
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While Lamar only recently discovered these beliefs about black Israelites, they have a deep and wide set of roots. Religious fascination with the biblical Lost Tribes of Israel had animated Jewish and Christian imagination since the early Medieval period, exciting End Time beliefs and generating legends to explain the origins of myriad peoples from across the world. These myths, for example, inspired 16th century British Israelism, the belief that British peoples are the genealogical descendants of the ancient Israelites. In the Americas, Lost Tribe beliefs – in dialogue with notions of America as a New Jerusalem – animated religious groups like the Church of Latter-day Saints.2 Enslaved Africans had also identified with the Hebrew slaves of the Bible since perhaps the eighteenth century, seeing parallels and inspiration in the biblical narrative of bondage and divine emancipation.3 In the years after Reconstruction and the following Great Migration, when large numbers of African Americans migrated from southern states to urban centers in the American west and northeast, a new group of religious teachers emerged that emphasized a literal, not just figurative, identification with the biblical Israelites. In historian Jacob S. Dorman’s words, there was a shift among African Americans “from metaphoric identification to literal identification as the people of the Book.”4
A diversity of creed and practice grew from this core doctrine that African Americans were the true literal children of Israel.5 For example, some groups read only the books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible and did away with belief in Jesus as Messiah; others read the New Testament and the Apocrypha and maintained belief in Jesus. These groups engaged with the myriad other religious and metaphysical currents of the time – drawing from New Thought, Masonic and Spiritualist sources. For leaders and congregations, sections of the book of Deuteronomy took on great importance. A passage from the 28th chapter – that describes the disobedient Israelites being sent into captivity “in ships” – was employed to argue that the slave trade of Africans was a God-sent curse, meted out to the true but wayward nation of Israel. This oppressive curse was the cause of contemporary hardships, according to this exegesis, and would only be lifted when black people returned to the Hebrew heritage. This ‘reawakening’ of ethnic Israelites identities was often cast as the fulfillment of prophecy and the “restoration of Israel,” as described by the Hebrew prophets such as Isaiah and believed to signal the messianic era or the End Times.6
One important predecessor of modern-day groups like IUIC was William Saunders Crowdy, a former slave in Maryland who, in the 1890s, formed a group called the Church of God and Saints of Christ and adopted ritual practices drawn from Old Testament liturgy as a way to draw connections between African Americans and the ancient Israelites of the Bible.7 From the 1920s on, scores of other African American groups drew from this same narrative. Cities like Philadelphia and New York, swelling with new arrivals from southern states, became home for congregations employing this identification.8 One prominent figure of this later period was the Harlem teacher Wentworth Arthur Matthew, a carpenter, boxer, and cleric born on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts who rose to prominence in New York City. Matthew founded a congregation called the Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of the Living God Pillar & Ground of Truth, Inc. in 1919 and in the next decades became one of the most recognizable African American leaders to preach the emergent creed of black chosenness.9
Matthew’s Commandment Keepers emerged at a time of mass upheaval, as many African Americans relocated from the south to northern cities and found new ways of ordering family life and religious identity. Old labels and affiliations fell away and made way for new ones. In the words of religion scholar Judith Weisenfeld, Matthew was fostering “novel understandings of the history and racial identity of people conventionally categorized as Negro in American society.”10 With this new Israelite identity, Matthew and others were challenging the racial classification of the era. Other small and creative black-led traditions cropped up during this period – like the Moorish Science Temple and Father Divine’s Peace Mission – that similarly offered new understandings of racial and religious expressions outside of the Christian church, with which the majority of African Americans had been affiliated. Groups like Matthew’s presented these new racial and spiritual identities as ancient and sacred truths that had been lost or concealed but which were now being reclaimed.
Matthew trained more than twenty rabbis and influenced a generation.11 He was a very public figure – speaking regularly with both the African American and Jewish press – but also concealed details about his past and embellished others (such as his birthplace and education) confounding journalists and also frustrated some of his followers.12 Local press, like the New York Amsterdam News, the Yiddish Forverts and Jewish Daily Bulletin sent reporters to write fascinated (and a bit bewildered) reports about the group of Caribbean and African American congregants who draped themselves in prayer shawls, studied Hebrew and worshipped the God of the Torah. Philip Mack of the Jewish Daily Bulletin described Matthew’s group as an exotic congregation of “dusky Jews” whose services combined “the chant of the African jungle, the jazz of America, and the orthodox and reform practices of the Hebrew faith.”13 Far from a crude imitation of Judaism, though, Matthew was building a complex new tradition of his own – drawing from many sources, including the Holiness movement, Spiritualism, Masonry, and other esoteric sources, crafting what Dorman has calls a dynamic “bricolage” of religious practice.14
In the decades after the rise of the Commandment Keepers, Israelite groups spread and diversified further. Matthew’s death in 1973 caused internal rifts over questions of succession within his New York synagogue.15 A batch of Matthew’s students also formed a group of their own, in 1970, called the Israelite Board of Rabbis, in which they sought to standardize, and in some cases reinterpret, Matthew’s earlier teachings.16 They established a revamped academy to train rabbis, where members studied Jewish texts like the Talmud and, in the following decades, moved very tentatively toward collaboration with local, largely white, Jewish organizations. Early on, some opposed this direction, believing “that leaders who incorporated rabbinic teaching as part of their theology were on a hopeless quest to gain acceptance from white people.”17 This tension grew through the 1960s and 1970s and caused a number of splinter traditions that differed from the rabbinic direction taken by some of Matthew’s students.18 The terms of identification used by the Commandment Keepers and other congregations in this orbit also shifted and have been contested – from within and without – often over the years. Members of Matthew’s community were known as “Ethiopian Hebrews” or “Black Jews” for the first half of the 20th century. By the late 1960s, some had come to prefer the term “Israelite,” in part as a way to distinguish themselves from white Jewish groups, and the 1970s and 1980s saw the more contemporary term, “Hebrew Israelite,” come into vogue.19
Around this time of diversification, in the 1960s, another Commandment Keeper attendant set off to form his own group based at 1 West 125th Street in Harlem, just two blocks from the Commandment Keepers.20 Known as Abba Bivens – sometimes Eber ben Yamin, Yamyam, or simply “Pop Bivens” – he signed his name on official correspondence as Rabbi E. Bibbins in an ornate cursive hand.21 While some contemporaneous groups, like the Commandment Keepers and a Chicago group known as the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem who migrated to Israel amid much controversy, receive a tremendous amount of popular and critical attention,22 Bibbins’s life and legacy is a relative terra incognita.23 Materials I’ve found reveal that Abba Bivens was born Edward Meredith Bibbins in Philadelphia on July 31, 1896, the son of James C. Bibbins and Emilie Bibbins.24 He spent much of his life in Pennsylvania – marrying, raising a family and working as a public school janitor.25 By the 1950s, he and his family had relocated to New York City and fallen into the Commandment Keepers orbit.26 And by the 1970s, he had split off from Matthew’s organization and founded his own religious school, called the Israeli Tanach (or Tanack) School.27
His acolytes today recall him as a reincarnated Elijah or John the Baptist; he’s also described as a tough-talking street preacher, who would brawl over theology.28 It’s difficult to know how much embellishment there is in the retellings, but the notion that Bibbins was more ‘radical’ or abrasive than Matthew, and that this was in part why he forged off on his own, is pervasive and repeated by both his boosters and detractors.29 Others say his break with the Commandment Keepers came because he couldn’t stomach Matthew’s teaching that Jesus was not the prophesied Messiah.30
Over time, students of Bibbins would become the most vocal proponents of the teaching that white people were Edomites, the descendants of Jacob’s brother Esau. This belief draws from the 25–27 chapters of Genesis, in which Esau and Jacob feud over their father Isaac’s blessing. Jacob ultimately prevails, and an outraged Esau holds a deep grudge against his brother. In the biblical narrative, the progeny of Jacob – who is later renamed Israel – are known as Israelites; Esau’s descendants are Edomites. This passage was employed by teachers like Matthew and Bibbins to argue that whites were continuing this grudge, deceptively claiming Israelite lineage, when it was black people who were truly God’s chosen people of Israel.31 Black people were the sole descendants of the Tribe of Judah, the thinking goes, making modern-day Jews either mistaken imitators or frauds. While this teaching about Edomites was widespread, groups like the Commandment Keepers inched toward some collaboration with white Jews and quietly pushed this belief into the background.32 Bibbins appears to have eschewed this move outright. Beginning in 1964, an ill-fated Jewish outreach group called Hatzaad Harishon (“the first step”) sought to integrate groups like the Commandment Keepers into the American Jewish fold.33 When Hatzaad Harishon organizers invited Bibbins to join their project, in 1971, he wrote a blistering reply, making it clear he wanted nothing to do with their project of racial integration, threatening to sue the organization in court if they used the name of his school in any of their materials. “We do not have any communication with the Edomite so called Jews,” he wrote. “To be a Jew you have to come out of the Tribe of Judah. This Jewish came from the so-called Edomite Jew. God has said nothing about Black Jews, Jewish or Jews. I know the words of God, he said ‘Israel have I loved,’ not Jews, Jewish or Black Jews.”34 Ironically, one of Bibbins’s own children, his youngest son William Chaim (or Haim) Bibbins,35 was in a senior position at Hatzaad Harishon at this same time.36
Bibbins died in the 1970s with popular retellings maintaining that he was “killed by Muslims” (alternately Nation of Islam or 5 Percenters) following a bloody street fight.37 Arayah (one of the “chief head priests” of the Tanach School) claimed Bibbins’s mantle for himself and a few other “anointed” peers.38 IUIC claims that on his deathbed Bibbins selected two of his students to “take over the teachings” of his school,39 but there are also whispers that Bibbins may have already had power struggles with a segment of his students when he was still alive.40 The remnant of Bibbins’s students made up a new guard, helmed by Arayah, and formed an organization called the Israelite, or Israeli, School of Universal Practical Knowledge (later renamed the Israelite Church of Universal Practical Knowledge, or ICUPK) which met at the same 1 West 125th Street address in Harlem. The newly renamed church, based in a building on one of the borough’s main thoroughfares, provided a military-style structure for mostly young men.41 Disobedient students would be hurled down the front steps if they stepped out of line, one member recalled, perhaps with a bit of exaggeration.42 This school – known simply as One West after its street address – was a simmering hotbed of religious creativity; it would give rise to myriad future leaders but would also be plagued with conflicts and spasmatic periods of reform in the years to come.
Innovations, both strategic and doctrinal, came to the new One West church. Through the 1970s and ’80s, this remnant of Bibbins’s acolytes dressed in colorful clothing, donning capes and turbans; some wore studded leather outfits and camouflage – theatrical reimaginings of what an ancient Israelite might look like transported into the street culture of New York City. Confrontational street corner ministry became a mainstay of their outreach. From their early days, One Westers understood the power of public provocation and embraced popular media; they ran a local TV program and later taped their street ministry. With the advent of the web years later, they would upload those videos online, maximizing the controversy their street ministry sparked.43
Arayah is widely credited with introducing two major additions – said to be the product of divine inspiration – to the group’s doctrine.44 The first was the creation of a modified form of Hebrew, “Lashawan Qadash,” a spin on “Lashon Kadosh,” a common Hebrew phrase which means “holy tongue.” Unlike standard Hebrew, Lashawn Qadash is spoken with only one wide “a” vowel, instead of the standard dozen vowel sounds. This version of Hebrew was meant to be free of the “Yiddish-contaminated” modern Hebrew.45 The second One West innovation was a new chart of the nationalities and ethnic groups purported to constitute the “true Israelites,” which became a popular tool for outreach. A chart of these tribes – photocopied on handouts or collaged on a sandwich board – was a sort of genealogical decoder, claiming to connect descendants of the Twelve Tribes of Israel with modern-day corollaries. Significantly, these ‘tribes’ were not limited to only African Americans. While African Americans held the primary places as the Tribe of Judah, Haitians were said to be from the Tribe of Levi, for example, and Puerto Ricans from the Tribe of Ephraim. This chart also included other groups – like Mexicans, Cubans, and Native Americans, who composed the Tribes of Issachar, Menasseh and Gad, respectfully – in their ethnic chart of the ancient Israelites. These groups were the downtrodden of the earth, One Westers argued, whose heritage had been forgotten. “These are the people that constitute the nation of Israel,” said another one of the leaders, known as Masha, in a television appearance in 1992. “That is their identity, their true identity.”46
One of the many young people drawn to ICUPK at this time was a teenager named Nathaniel Ray. Ray was raised in Harlem as a Baptist, but was never satisfied with church life.47 He came across different teachers and esoteric philosophies growing up – like the black Egyptologist Dr. Yosef Ben-Jochannan and the Nation of Islam – but nothing clicked, until Ray came across the One Westers of Harlem, who he learned of after seeing fliers at the printing supply store where he worked.48 He began attending ICUPK, where the church would gather in their second-story space and, dressed in flowing garb and using what they said was their newly recovered ancient language, read the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.49 Ray was so moved by the camaraderie and experience that, in 1990, he formally joined and took on a new name, Nathanyel Ben Israel.50 “For a young man at that age, it was great,” he told me. “Learning the Bible, that we are the people of the book, that we do have a history.”51
The early One Westers saw themselves as radical reformers to earlier Hebrew Israelite traditions like Matthew’s. This pattern of reform and rebellion, it seems, was baked into the One West character. Though ICUPK was gaining followers, disputes soon arose. According to former members, the school taught that reincarnation, or “regeneration,” was happening in their own time.52 Masha, one of the most charismatic elders, second only to Arayah, was seen as the reincarnated biblical King David, a claim that over time didn’t sit well with everyone.53 After some elders sought to strip him of this title, Masha led a large exodus in the mid-90s to form a new offshoot, called the House of David.54 More disputes followed. Masha’s group of loyalists further fractured after his death, giving rise to smaller groups called House of Israel and Great Millstone and Twelve Tribes.55
Meanwhile, at the parent organization of ICUPK, another crisis was brewing. A rich strain of apocalypticism had run through One West since the church’s early days. And like so many other religious groups of the time, the group placed millenarian hopes on the year 2000. The leaders – calling themselves the Seven Heads, a number that gestured to the numerology of Revelation – had, for years, preached the End Times were nigh and promised that the era of the white man would come to an end in 2000, making way for the true house of Israel to rule. As the millennium neared, the elders became increasingly specific about how and when this would come about.56 Christ would return amid nuclear warfare, they taught, and bring an army of flying saucers to rapture the Israelites to safety as the world burned. ICUPK decorated its headquarters with a painted mural, which members proudly showed curious visitors, of a muscled Black Christ on horseback, a bloodied Catholic pope at his feet.57 But the promised Armageddon failed to rain down in 2000, causing a devastating crisis of faith to rip through the ICUPK. “People’s lives crumbled,” one former ICUPK member, Kahanyah Panyagha, told me. “They fell apart.”
Sometime after the disaster of 2000, a younger ICUPK member named Jermaine Grant, going by the Hebrew name Tazadaqyah, wrested control for himself. With the elder Ahrayah at his side, Grant changed the name of this group to the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ. Dissatisfied with this turn, a man known as Yahannah split off to form his own school, reclaiming the original name of Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge for himself.58 Adding to the now-dizzying number of splinters, another member named Rawchaa Shayar left to start a group today called Gathering of Christ Church that has faced criticism for allowing white people to join.59
Meanwhile, at the rival Twelve Tribes, where Nathanyel was now a leader, disputes over doctrine boiled up again – in particular, members began to debate whether all the laws of the Hebrew Bible must be observed, or if Jesus had rendered such laws obsolete. In Nathanyel’s telling, he openly butted heads with leadership over this point, maintaining that all of the Hebrew laws must still be followed. In 2003, Nathanyel forged off on his own to form another group, called Israel United in Christ, or IUIC. At first, they would hold meetings in his Harlem living room, attended by Nathanyel’s family and a small group of supporters, but IUIC saw prodigious growth over the next decade, blossoming into one of the largest schools in the One West family, with satellite outposts in places like Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, and, leaders claim, some 5,000 members.60
A military aesthetic permeates One West groups, and this extends to rigid gender roles, which seem to put women in subservient roles. Promotional IUIC literature, circulated on social media, for example, carry messages like “Black women are not empowered if black men are not in power,” and lessons that teach women that their true domain is the home and that they must keep quiet in church.61 Still, there are numerous female members. In IUIC, there is a separate body expressly for women, called Daughter of Sarah, created in 2010 by Shamarah Israel, Nathanyel Israel’s wife.62 This group provides support to women in IUIC, like tips on modest dress, childrearing and teaching the “proper image” of “repentant Israelite women.”63 The role that women play in One West splinter groups – though at times out of sight – is more complex than meets the eye.
In recent years, the One West groups have continued to spar with each other, each jockeying to present themselves as the true inheritors of Bibbins’s legacy. For years, the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ held the mantle as the most prominent group, hosting lavish Passover celebrations in Harlem. The most impressive event, in 2009, even boasted a performance from the pop group Boyz II Men.64 But in 2016, ICGJC was dealt a major blow when their headquarters was raided by law enforcement as part of an investigation into financial irregularities.65 Tazadaqyah, the group’s leader, and a church treasurer were later accused by the U.S. Attorney’s Office with embezzling $5.3 million from the organization.66 ICGJC contracted and went underground, leaving the field open for others to expand. Nathanyel’s IUIC had proven to be particularly adept with media outreach, producing slick videos, their own clothing line and teaching sessions broadcast live every Saturday online.67 While the street ministry remains a mainstay of One West culture, IUIC outreach has increasingly gone online, where Nathanyel turned his organization into a school for the digital age. It was these robust online resources that were the basis for Kendrick Lamar’s introduction to Hebrew Israelite beliefs.68
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Around 2015, Carl Duckworth was beginning to feel frustrated and unfulfilled with his religious life at a small Methodist church in Florida. He had been worshipping at Murray Hill Christ Community Church for more than ten years but felt like he’d hit a dead end. Duckworth called himself a proud Christian, even recording devotional music for a spell and training to become a minister. But he had lingering doubts about God and salvation and felt like his longtime pastor couldn’t quell his unease. Then, matters came to a head in 2015, when Duckworth started to have disturbing and vivid dreams. In one, his soul burst into flames. “It was on fire,” he said. “Little insects, like spiders and ants, were eating my soul,” Duckworth told me.69 “It was a scary dream and I had that dream again. I knew it was a spiritual fight.” Back at church, Duckworth shared his dreams and pressed his pastor on certain parts of the Bible – like a passage from the book of Matthew where Jesus says that he didn’t come to “abolish the teachings of the prophets,” but rather to fulfill them.70 Duckworth had been taught that Christians did not need to observe certain rules of the Hebrew Bible (like not eating pork), because Jesus had done away with such restrictions. So, how should he interpret passages like the one from Matthew? The pastor apparently didn’t have a good answer. Duckworth started digging around for himself.71
On Google and YouTube, Duckworth found answers to his Jesus question and access to a whole new spiritual world. One of the most compelling videos he found featured a man dressed in bright purple garb reading the Bible and analyzing it with a virtuosic skill he’d never seen before. The purple-clad man told him that all African Americans were, in reality, the true Hebrews of the bible and that they should return to all the ancient laws of the bible, none of which had been negated by Jesus. The videos, he learned, were put together by a group named IUIC. Not only did these teachers speak about ancient prophecies, they spoke about today’s political turmoil, about racism, about the government, and a grand white supremacist conspiracy against blacks to keep them ignorant of their true and hidden identities. These were the same verses Duckworth had grown up with, but with completely different meanings. “I’ve been in this Christianity and I don’t know the scriptures like that,” he said.72
Through IUIC, Duckworth came to believe he was heir to a sacred heritage: the people he had thought were Jews were not Jews at all, these online prophets said, he was a true Israelite. “I always thought that the Israelites were white, or so-called white, people,” Duckworth told me. “But the so-called black people, Hispanics and Native American Indians are the true Israelites.”73 Duckworth tore up the ministerial certificate he’d earned and stopped going to Sunday services. Instead, he’d spend long stretches watching IUIC videos. “I was just mesmerized, addicted. I started watching the videos all day,” Duckworth told me.74 He called up a phone number that scrolled at the bottom of his screen to see how he could take his learning to the next level. A deacon in the organization answered and said though IUIC didn’t have a school in his area, Duckworth could take the two-hour drive to Orlando to meet with the chapter there.75
After an afternoon in Orlando, Duckworth began meeting with other new IUIC members at a public library closer to his home to study in person. He wore the uniform of the group, a purple T-shirt decorated with ornate gold script, and, in keeping with the organization’s tradition, he took on a new Hebrew name, Karni Ben Israel.76 (Members take the surname Israel and often Hebraize their given name, choosing a Hebrew name that shares some phonetic similarities to their born name, as Duckworth did.)
Duckworth drank deeply from the IUIC lessons and wanted to share his new awakening with his friends and family. On Facebook, Duckworth posted photos of uniformed members of IUIC. “Most dangerous when you see so called black men … not shooting or killing each other, not disrespecting our women,” he wrote.77 As an IUIC member he was now in the streets “Teaching God’s WORD … because we love our people to tell them the truth.”78 He also reached out specifically to his cousin Kendrick Lamar, with whom he had stayed in touch during the rappers meteoric rise in the music world. Duckworth would text his cousin the same YouTube lessons that inspired his Hebrew Israelite turn, hoping that they might similarly inspire Lamar.79 Lamar seemed receptive to these new teachings, and Duckworth had reason to think this would be the case – like him, he knew Lamar was seeking.
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Since Lamar’s mainstream breakthrough, around 2012, music critics have regularly noted religious or spiritual themes in his music.80 In popular media over the years, he’s been cast as something of a religious icon, with the musician Andy Mineo hoisting Lamar up as “the biggest Christian rapper of all-time.” But pronouncements like this flatten the much more complex religious landscape Lamar has traversed. In the words of Christ and Pop Culture writer R. S. Naifed, Lamar is better understood as “theologically idiosyncratic,”81 someone who has freely incorporated various traditions into his worldview. Tracing some of this earlier experimentation helps set the stage for Lamar’s engagement with One West tradition.
Before his mainstream breakthrough, a teenage Lamar toiled in the mixtape circuit under the performing name K.Dot, putting out a string of releases with relatively little spiritual content as he struggled to find his voice as an artist. But it was in 2009, when Lamar joined fellow labelmates Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q to form Black Hippy82 that a more mystic strain began to emerge in Lamar’s music. Others in the Black Hippy orbit, like Ab-Soul – sometimes described as the unsung guiding spirit of the collective – drew heavily from metaphysical sources.83 Among many other examples, Ab-Soul dedicated one album to the famed English occultist Aleister Crowley;84 another album featured the Cabalistic diagram of the Tree of Life.85
Around this time, Lamar began dipping into some of these esoteric beliefs for himself. At one point, he believed he was visited by a spirit from beyond the grave: the slain rapper Tupac Shakur, Lamar said, hovered over him and offered words of encouragement. “Clear as day,” Lamar recalled in a GQ interview, describing the apparition. “Like he’s right there. Just like a silhouette.”86 In his 2010 release Overly Dedicated, Lamar rapped about one of the most widely read New Thought writers of the 20th century and seemed to be inspired by what scholars call mind power metaphysics. “I read about Napoleon Hill and try to know God,” Lamar rapped. Hill, best known for his 1937 book, Think And Grow Rich, espoused the power of positive thinking and affirmations.87 “If I speak the good into existence that instant my dreams will unlock,” Lamar rapped.88
And in 2011, on his first proper studio album, Section.80, Lamar debuted his own self-designed philosophy called HiiiPower, which was also the name of a song on that album. Here, he rapped about black nationalists Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X, the Illuminati, demons, and the popular 2012 Mayan doomsday theory. In an interview with The Come Up Show at the time, Lamar summed up his eclectic philosophy as well as also his skepticism about conventional sources of information entirely. “At the end of the day everything that we was taught in school always been the half truth, in the world in general,” Lamar said. “I’m trying to start my generation on a whole new stepping stone and a whole new set of truth.” Together with Ab-Soul, Lamar promoted this philosophy with an esoteric symbol based on the Egyptian Eye of Horus and a three-finger salute, meant to symbolize the attributes of heart, honor and respect. HiiiPower was a philosophy of empowerment and “as big as a religion” in Lamar’s words.89
With Lamar’s breakthrough into the mainstream, he was increasingly praised by critics in places like The New Yorker and The New York Times as an artist who confronted social and political themes in his music and brought a sort of spiritual gravitas to his work. On his 2012 breakthrough good kid, m.A.A.d city, Lamar told a complex narrative of a young man dodging street violence and temptation. Critics interpreted the album as autobiographical, a retelling of his own coming of age and journey to spiritually and artistically “find himself.”90 The album opens and closes with a group of young men reciting a prayer of repentance (evoking the name of Jesus as savior), leading listeners to cite this as an example of how Lamar “wears his Christianity on his sleeve.”91 An article in BuzzFeed, titled The Radical Christianity of Kendrick Lamar, argued for “the centrality of Christianity to Lamar’s worldview.”92 But whenever pressed by journalists about his religion during this stage, Lamar dodged simple characterizations. “I wouldn’t say I’m the most religious person, neither were both of my parents. I always do quote-unquote religious songs or whatever you want to call them from the standpoint where I’m trying to find answers,” he told MTV. “I can’t read the bible front and back, in and out; I’m still searching and trying to find myself just like everybody else.”93
On the music website DJBooth, the writer Yoh Phillips opined that Lamar’s evasive answers about his faith showed that he was in a sort of formative “religious stage” of spiritual development – something, perhaps he would work through. “His response was what you’d expect from someone rather young,” Phillips wrote.94
It was sometime in 2016, on the heels of Lamar’s critically acclaimed sophomore studio album, To Pimp A Butterfly, that he came across – by way of his cousin Duckworth – yet another religious tradition that he would draw from. At this time, Duckworth was getting more involved with IUIC and wanted to give his cousin a proper introduction to the lessons he was learning on YouTube and with his new faith. During one in-person visit in 2016, Duckworth gave Lamar a homemade shirt, screen printed with a verse from scripture, and read to him from the Bible. In particular, Duckworth wanted to draw his cousin’s attention to the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy, a passage where God lays out the gifts that await the ancient Israelites if they are obedient – and the curses if they disobey. God tells the Israelites he will send them “back in ships” and “scatter them among the nations” as punishment for disobedience to the law. This, Duckworth argued, explained the centuries of enslavement of African peoples in the Americas: They were being punished for disobeying the divine commandments. All they had to do was return to God’s way and these curses would melt away. It was foretold, he said, right here in the Bible, a secret meaning they’d never been taught in church. The Hebrew Israelite teachings shared elements with other esoteric traditions that Lamar had promoted or encountered, like HiiiPower, and also promised to reveal a lost knowledge and history that had been hidden from the masses. The material resonated. “When Deuteronomy 28 came out, it was like he was blown away, it was like – wow,” Duckworth said.95
Lamar’s conversations with his cousin went on for months. Sometimes they’d speak on the phone, through text messages or in person. Lamar was so moved by the material, Duckworth told me, that he wanted to put it on his new album in the works. Lamar recruited his cousin to record some of those messages about damnation and salvation, that wound up as snippets on a song titled “FEAR.” “He said, ‘I want to do that skit, I’m finishing my CD. I need that skit,’ ” Duckworth said. “He called me five or six times, put me on the microphone through the phone and this is what we have here.”96 During his DAMN. appearance, Duckworth preached a message lifted straight from the One West playbook and the very same one he delivered to Lamar in person. “You have to understand this, man, that we are a cursed people,” Duckworth said on the album, as music played lightly behind him.97
On the song “YAH.,” Lamar summarized this One West message in his own words and delivered what many heard as his own endorsement of the teaching. “I’m not a politician, I’m not ‘bout a religion, I’m a Israelite, don’t call me black no more, that word is only a color, it ain’t facts no more,” he rapped.99 “My cousin called, my cousin Carl Duckworth, said know my worth and Deuteronomy say that we all been cursed.”100 In the months after DAMN., Lamar continued to make gestures to Israelite doctrine in his songs. Nothing would be as explicit as the references on “YAH.,” but on a guest verse on the rapper Rich the Kid’s song “New Freezer,” Lamar described his car’s outside being “white, body look like gentiles.”101 (This same line is interpolated as the chorus on the song “Big Shot,” from the Black Panther soundtrack.) Equating “gentiles” to the color white is a reference to the teaching that – as opposed to the true Israelites who are black – gentiles (a Latin word for non-Israelites) are white. Just how deeply Lamar was engaging with the tradition would be hotly debated in the coming months and listeners wondered if Lamar was sincerely embracing this worldview or “just playing” with the ideas. But efforts to, again, pin Lamar to any one spiritual tradition seem like a misunderstanding of how he has approached religion for much of his life. Lamar has integrated myriad religious and metaphysical materials into his own idiosyncratic worldview. Now, elements of One West entered the mix.
Music critics noticed the new direction in Lamar’s faith. In an April 2017 article on the website DJBooth, the writer Miguelito compared DAMN. to Coloring Book, the 2017 LP from Chance the Rapper, arguing that the two artists represented polar opposites on a spectrum of religious belief. Chance seems to feel “blessed,” Miguelito wrote, continually attributing his commercial success to a benevolent God. Lamar, on the other hand, “doesn’t shy away from asking God the tough questions and plays the role of hip hop’s resident existentialist” who believes that “suffering is intrinsic” to life.102 To the surprise of the author, Lamar responded to the DJ Booth article in an email published on the site. Lamar wrote to DJ Booth that he had become disenchanted by his time in a Christian church.
Lamar went on:
Lamar wrote that he’d never learned about a vengeful God growing up. “As a community, we was taught to pray for our mishaps, and he’ll forgive you … Yes, this is true. But he will also reprimand us as well.” Church leaders, he speculated, shied away from this message because it would “run off churchgoers.” “No one wants to hear about karma from the decisions they make. It’s a hard truth,” Lamar wrote. “So in conclusion, I feel it’s my calling to share the joy of God, but with exclamation, more so, the FEAR OF GOD … I wanna spread this truth to my listeners.”105 Lamar’s account of how he dove “deeper” into his studies after becoming disenchanted with church service echo those given by many others in One West circles. Like his cousin and Nathanyel, he came to believe that “the church” or “church leaders” were concealing from him essential truths about the texts they purported to follow, leading him to strike off for his own answers.
But Lamar was only asked explicitly about Hebrew Israelites by name in one interview to my knowledge – and kept his One West association vague. In a Rolling Stone interview in August 2017, the music journalist Brian Hiatt asked Lamar:
Lamar answered that he was speaking from his cousin’s perspective, not necessarily his own. “It was taking his perspective on the world and life as a people and putting it to where people can listen to it and make their own perspective from it, whether you agree or you don’t agree.” Not completely satisfied with the answer, Hiatt followed up, “So what’s your opinion about the idea that Carl brings up, that black people are cursed by God as per Deuteronomy?” “That shit’s truth,” Lamar answered.
With DJBooth, Lamar reflected more freely, but when later faced with a direct question about belief, skirted the topic. Lamar did not respond to my own repeated interview requests.
As word spread of Lamar’s Hebrew Israelite connection, critical voices emerged instantly. Christian groups – concerned about the spread of what they saw as heterodox or unusual beliefs – felt betrayed and alarmed. The most sustained criticism of Lamar came from a group of Christian activists specializing in apologetics who saw his experimentation as part of the growing threat of Hebrew Israelite groups to Christianity. An apologist collective called Shield Squad, including a Phoenix-based blogger, theology student, and former Christian rapper named John-Mark Rieser (using the moniker Vocab Malone),108 released a number of videos on Lamar and what he and his team view as the dangers of Israelite theology.109 Rieser has made a long-term project of publicly debating theology with One Westers – sometimes adopting their badgering style in public faceoffs with groups – and devoted a chapter in a new book, Barack Obama Vs. The Hebrew Israelites, to Lamar’s One West turn.110 The book, a slim paperback written for general reading but primarily as a tool for Christian apologetics, includes a history of some of the Hebrew Israelite organizations and a summary of their beliefs. Its unusual title is a reference to a scene from the Netflix film Obama, in which a young Barack Obama briefly engages with a fictional One West-inspired Israelite camp on the streets of Harlem.111 “Sadly, the Christian observer is left with the harrowing feeling that Kendrick’s journey was headed somewhere hopeful,” Rieser writes in his book, “but took an extreme wrong turn.” Riser presented Lamar’s story as a cautionary tale about wayward youth: if Christians don’t arm themselves against this growing One West tradition, he argued, they’ll lose members. “Kendrick’s journey into Hebrew Israelism is prototypical of its appeal for millenials,” he writes. “The group targets disenfranchised minorities. Many people join because they are disillusioned with their church experience.”112
Others in Christian media also noted Lamar’s new spiritual chapter. The Christian hip-hop website Trackstarz spent a roundtable discussion on DAMN., during which a group of five hosts devoted their half-hour program to Lamar and what they knew of One West doctrine. “It’s clear that there was a black Hebrew Israelite theme,” host Sean David Grant said.113 Grant said Hebrew Israelites were everywhere and several rappers he knew, other than Lamar, were dabbling in the beliefs. “This is all over the place,” he said. Grant gave a somewhat nuanced outline of what he understood of the tradition. “As you know, African Americans, most of us don’t know where we’re from, really,” Grant said. “So this provides an identity, and in a sense the supreme identity to black people and it turns racism on its head.”114 The hosts ultimately came down against what they saw as the ethnocentrism of Israelite theology. “I fight hard that the core of my identity is in Christ,” said Maya Dawson, another host. “This theology or this form of belief can often fuel the opposite, and reinforce your identity coming from your ethnicity versus Christ.”115
Researchers at the legal advocacy group the Southern Poverty Law Center were also quietly watching Lamar’s Israelite encounter.116 The SPLC was formed in the 1970s to combat white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan, but it also monitors black religious and nationalist groups, including the One West splinter camps. In 2008, they warned of a “rising extremist sector” of the black Israelite movement and since 2015 have been keeping tabs on IUIC, listing the organization on its list of “active hate groups” in the country.117 IUIC, in the words of SPLC “oppose integration and interracial marriage and are virulently anti-Semitic, anti-white and anti-LGBT.” Researchers work to discredit or dismantle the groups they monitor and are explicitly seeking to marginalize IUIC’s brand of Hebrew Israelite doctrine.118 The SPLC places IUIC within their category of “black nationalist” or “black separatist” groups, alongside a mix of political and religious groups like the Nation of Islam, the Nuwaubians and the New Black Panther Party. While the SPLC allows that such groups may be “the predictable reaction to white supremacy,” researchers defend their designation of IUIC and other black groups on their “hate map.” If a “white group espoused similar beliefs regarding African Americans and Jews and, few would have trouble describing it as racist and anti-Semitic,” the SPLC writes. “If we seek to expose white hate groups, we cannot be in the business of explaining away the black ones.”119
One incident connected to IUIC, in particular, bears mentioning here to illustrate the most explosive incidents that have been linked to the group by the SPLC.120 In July 2016, a transgender woman in Indiana was shot in the face by a local man named Gerald Duane Lewis, a onetime member of IUIC. The woman, remarkably, survived and helped police identify the shooter, in part by describing him as wearing an “Israeli-Christian group shirt.”121 Police located Lewis’s Facebook page, where he went by the name Gadiell Ben Israel and listed himself as working at IUIC. Lewis was arrested that day and charged with attempted murder, robbery and carrying a handgun without a permit.122 IUIC released a disavowal of Lewis in the days after the shooting, which was published in its entirety on the SPLC website. Despite Lewis claiming on Facebook that he was a current IUIC member, Nathanyel wrote that, “Gerald Duane Lewis aka Gadiell is not a member of our organization… [and] was removed from the congregation months prior due to not adhering to the stringent guidelines of our organization.” IUIC, he went on “does not teach or condone violence against any person.” Lewis pled guilty but was later found mentally unfit to stand trial.123
While Lamar’s new religious curiosity was being watched by outsiders already critical of Hebrew Israelites, within One West circles, it also caused friction. Among the feuding One West groups, Lamar’s turn caused some rival camps to lob conspiratorial accusations against IUIC. As a younger man, Nathanyel had worked as a detective with the New York police.124 It’s an experience that has likely served him in his institution building, but this past is often brought up by his rivals as evidence that he can’t be trusted. With Lamar’s IUIC connection, Nathanyel’s former career was once again a topic of conversation. “This is a power move on the elite’s part,” said a man called Ayathan, an elder from Great Millstone, in an April 2017 YouTube video.125 “This is just more proof that IUIC is juiced in,” he said. Ayathan seemed to pride himself, as most One Westers do, on being a sort of embattled truth-teller in a hostile world – revealing an esoteric knowledge that has been hidden for centuries – so, what does it mean that one of the country’s biggest pop stars is thrusting these beliefs into the spotlight?
Ayathan outlined what he imagined was the beginning of a plot to tear down all Hebrew Israelites. “They want to expose the Hebrew Israelites,” Ayathan went on. “They can defame us very easily. I believe that’s what they plan on doing.”127
Other One Westers doubted Lamar’s sincerity and seemed frustrated that he was stealing the spotlight from the more dyed-in-the-wool devotees. “We gonna go in on these so-called celebrity Israelites,” another younger member of GMS said in a YouTube video, before launching into a long speech, the main thrust being that Lamar was still living an unrepentant life of sin.128 One Westers like this, no doubt, remembered other celebrity encounters that had not ended well.129 Other mainstream stars – including Doug E. Fresh, Chingy, and Kodak Black – have been intrigued by these teachings over the years. Some of these entertainers have openly proclaimed their affiliations; others have simply drifted within the orbit of One West or other organizations.130 One of the best-known examples came in the 1990s when the Wu-Tang associate Killah Priest became associated with GMS. In part because he refused to proclaim his complete fealty to the group’s leaders Killah Priest was badgered by elders and never seen fully as an insider.131 He, like a string of other celebrities, ultimately drifted away. With this likely in mind, the GMS members railed against Lamar. “Kendrick Lamar … not putting his whole heart into Yahawah Bahasham Yahawashi,” the young member said on YouTube, using a “Lashawan Qadash” rendering of the names of God and Jesus.132
Nathanyel himself addressed the news about Lamar in one of his weekly YouTube appearances, uploaded on April 27, 2017. Nathanyel sat alongside other leaders behind a purple cloth backdrop and claimed he’d never heard of Lamar before. “A young brother named Kendrick Lamar released an album called DAMN … this album became a buzz because he said he’s an Israelite,” Nathanyel said.133 “He didn’t say pan-African, Egyptologist, Nation of Islam – he said Israelite… . he said, ‘Don’t call me black no more, that’s the color in a crayon box,’ or something like that.” Nathanyel said he saw Lamar’s lyrics as cause for celebration and as evidence of prophecy unfolding. But, at the same time, Nathanyel sought to assure his followers that, even with mainstream exposure, IUIC members were still rebels and outsiders. Regardless of the music’s popularity, this message was still outraging the “so-called white man,” Nathanyel said. Nathanyel imagined a conversation between record executives. “ ‘Do you know how many follow him, how many look up to him?’ ” Nathanyel said, taking on the voice of an imagined white businessman speaking about Lamar. “ ‘Fire someone, I want someone fired.’ … Edomites is mad all across the country.” In closing, Nathanyel took on a cautionary tone. Lamar’s brief message reached millions and members should be on guard. “It opened the doors,” Nathanyel said. “You know what they started doing? Googling Israelites,” Nathanyel said. “Who are these Israelites? Now, they’re going to see some crazy Israelites. There are crazy Israelites. You got bum Israelites. You got overweight Israelites. You got … feminine Israelites. All kind. Anything you want, it’s out there.”134
In May 2017, Nathanyel traveled to Florida for the inauguration of a new IUIC chapter in Jacksonville, an outgrowth of the study sessions that Carl Duckworth had joined years ago. The group once met in the neighborhood library, but had now graduated to their own fully-fledged school, with membership around 50. Nathanyel also took this as an opportunity to take stock of the Lamar situation, which had captivated social media for weeks. In a video uploaded online, Nathanyel appeared with Duckworth, who sat stiffly next to the IUIC leader. While leadership had not exactly disapproved, it seemed like Nathanyel wanted to make it clear who was in charge and address the many commenters online who had been asking if Lamar was a card-carrying member. “He is not committed to IUIC.” Nathanyel said in the video, pointing at the camera. “So, just be aware of that.”135 Duckworth’s relationship with IUIC frayed in the following months and he told me he was eventually suspended from IUIC for breaking one of the organization’s rules, though he would not be more specific.136
For Nathanyel, Lamar posed a potential challenge to IUIC’s gatekeeping position. For rival One Westers, Lamar’s interest was either illegitimate or tainted by his association with IUIC. For Christian critics and the SPLC, Lamar’s turn was simply another data point in ongoing efforts to track and combat IUIC and One West. All of these opposing forces sought to neatly categorize Lamar as in or out of the One West tradition or take his foray as an opportunity to further a wholesale critique of Hebrew Israelites. But Lamar proved to be a slippery target; all of the groups he aggravated or energized were far more invested in these questions of communal legitimacy or religious authority than he was himself. For Lamar, it would seem, this was a stop on a journey. He was dropping in; they had to live here.
***
On a hot summer afternoon in 2018, more than a hundred men, some clad in long purple robes, emblazoned with golden script, gathered in downtown Memphis. They marched in tight formations, bellowed slogans and told local reporters they were the Israelites of the bible here to “gather blacks and Latinos back to their true nationality” by urging them to keep God’s commandments.137 Then – and only then – would societal ills like gun violence come to an end, they said. On August 4, the city got its introduction to Israel United In Christ, when the group organized what they called the Memphis Milestone, an event they trumpeted online, claiming that they had gathered more than 800 men in the street.
This was not the first time a One West group had paraded through the city streets of a major city. This is a decades long tradition within One West and echoed earlier street rallies from the Israelite Church of Universal Practical Knowledge and the Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ.138 In years past, the video blogger Abu Khmer argues, One West groups have rallied to show their dominance or superior numbers. Videos of the march were circulated widely, even catching the eye of Ibrahim Darden, executive of the New York City radio station Hot 97 and radio host of the show Ebro in the Morning, who shared clips of the march with his 190,000 Instagram followers. (Dardin accepts IUIC’s claims that 800 men were at the march, through news reports put the number much lower.) “These 800 Black Men (Israelites) have gathered to show solidarity, summon the ancestors in the mission to fight racism, focus on family, community & knowledge of self,” Dardin wrote.139
But the rally also faced predictable backlash. Rival camps seethed online. And while the march received relatively positive media coverage from a local CBS affiliate WREG-TV on August 4, the following day, the piece was updated to include more context about IUIC and to note, in the fourth paragraph of the piece, that the Southern Poverty Law Center had dubbed IUIC a hate group. IUIC fired back on their own website, saying the update was an “example of white supremacy and the lengths that the SPLC will go to tarnish our name.”140 Here again, IUIC faced criticism from within and without and kept up their uneasy relationship with media and celebrities. These are the stormy waters that IUIC knows well – and even thrives in.
When I visited the IUIC headquarters in November 2018, the same tensions were at play. IUIC had felt burnt or unfairly depicted in earlier exchanges with the news media5 and took a calculated risk agreeing to our interview about Kendrick Lamar. In keeping with what has become camp protocol, our interview was filmed on official IUIC cameras and uploaded on YouTube in its entirety.141 Online, comments from viewers spilled in. Two debated whether I might be Puerto Rican – which would put me in their “tribe chart” – but eventually decided that I should be classified as an Edomite. “Esau is afraid of the Bible,” one commenter typed, “like a vampire who’s afraid of the light.”142
When the cameras finally cut off, the mood lightened. One of the scowling members offered me a crumpled Dunkin Donuts box that lay in the corner. Another man poured me a lukewarm cup of coffee with milk. Nathanyel explained a series of paintings that lined the wall as I took out my camera. I snapped photos of members who posed in pairs, alternately crossing their arms, or offering timid grins. Nathanyel stepped out from behind his desk, straighten his leather jacket and flashed a broad smile. Then, after a wave of the hand, I was ushered back onto the street.