Howard B. Rand

Howard Rand, also known as Howard B. Rand and Howard Benjamin Rand (June 13, 1889 - August 17, 1991) was a lawyer, inventor, and three-time candidate for Massachusetts state office on the Prohibition Party ticket, He headed the former Anglo-Saxon Federation of America, a British Israelist group. He served from 1937 to 1968 as editor of its affiliate Destiny Publishers, which put out Destiny magazine (distinct from the magazine of the same name about Black culture).

Rand was born in Haverhills, Massachusetts in 1889. He was raised as a British Israelite, and his father introduced him to J. H. Allen's work Judah's Sceptre and Joseph's Birthright (1902) at an early age. He later graduated from the University of Maine with a bachelor's degree in law, becoming a successful lawyer but also worked as a construction worker and had other business interests.

Rand is considered the key transitional figure between British Israelism and Christian Identity, but he is not credited as the actual founder of the Christian Identity movement. However Rand first coined the term "Christian Identity". As early as 1924 Rand claimed that the Jews were not really descended from the tribe of Judah, but were instead the descendants of Esau or Canaanites. This view sharply contrasted with the standard British Israelite teaching that Jews are descended from Judah. Paradoxically while early British Israelites were philo-semites such as Edward Hine and John Wilson, Christian Identity emerged in sharp contrast to be strongly anti-semitic. Professor Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke has summed up Rand as the catalyst figure behind Christian Identity as follows:

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