My Involvement with Christian Exodus

by Keith Humphrey (keith@christianexodus.org)

Back in 2003, I saw the inside of divorce court in the State of Oregon. I was shocked to see how the judge disparaged Christianity, encouraged adultery, suborned perjury, and disregarded basic principles of law. I had thought that courts were a place where they would at least follow laws that were on the books. I had no idea what a cesspool of liberal activism they had become, and how they used government power to wage war against the human family.

That same year, the Episcopal Church consecrated their first openly gay bishop. I thought to myself that any self-respecting Episcopalian should be compelled to leave their church at that point. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which was an openly activist promotion of homosexuality. I then saw my own hypocrisy, in that I had blamed the Episcopalians for failing to leave their church; but now I, a true American, lacked the initiative to disaffiliate from the apostate United States.

As I pondered these things, I made a sincere prayer for direction. The following morning, I had a dream about a remnant of faithful Christians migrating to somewhere in the American Southeast to make a stand, with a fallback point to somewhere in Central America. After I awoke, I saw a news story online about Christian Exodus, an organization recently formed to promote planned migration to the Upcountry of South Carolina, and to work toward secession. It was a Christian alternative to the Free State Project, which was a Libertarian movement which elected to colonize New Hampshire. I considered this the answer to my prayer and the meaning of my dream.

I contacted them and offered to set up their website, and through continuing to volunteer on various projects, I soon became part of the leadership team. At this time there was no Facebook or other social media, but people were just starting to realize that they could use the Internet to meet others of like mind and to get alternative news. Christian Exodus received significant media attention over the next few years, with Cory Burnell appearing on national television several times. Coverage was couched in a sort of mockery, as if to say, "See, we told you that these Christians were real nut-jobs." All of the negative media attention just fueled the movement, however; and led thousands of seekers to join.

In 2005, we had a conference in Greenville, which was similar in many ways to the OSA conference which was held there almost exactly 20 years later in 2025. At the time, we were attending various conferences where I was representing Christian Exodus. There were conferences on secession with the Middlebury Institute and the League of the South, and national committee meetings of the Constitution Party (where I was the Oregon delegate). At one of these conventions, Howard Phillips (a prominent politician and leader in the movement of Christian Reconstructionism) pulled me aside and gave me a private invitation to some other meeting he had organized. I went into this room full of old guys, many with careers in Washington DC. Someone was lecturing about how Washington really worked, and how everything was essentially controlled by the Jewish lobby on every level. This was a big eye-opener for me at the time, as it sounded very "anti-Semitic".

As I tried to understand the mechanisms of the powers-that-be, I became focused on economics and currency. I minted a physical silver coin for Christian Exodus and launched a community currency system in Oregon called AgScrip, which was a paper currency backed by physical silver. This was before cryptocurrency was invented. I tried to promote this among friends and local businesses in the community. I traveled and spent only the physical silver coin that I had minted. It did not take much to convince people to accept a silver coin as payment, as it is a great store of value which is easy to recognize; but it was a poor medium of exchange, because they would hide this in their sock drawer and not re-spend it. Paper currency was a better system, but it was much harder to convince people to accept it. Cryptocurrency is superior in many ways, and has since made these systems obsolete.

I was still living in Oregon at the time, but I would travel to South Carolina when opportunities arose. Once I was going around visiting various members of Christian Exodus who had moved there. After having many face-to-face visits, I realized why this whole undertaking was so difficult. It took a very strong-willed and independent sort of person to reject mainstream thinking and to move to a new place; which by the same token, these people were not suited to work together with others. Each of them was doing their own thing, and didn't care to follow along with what anyone else might be doing. They each had their own dream of starting a church, building a business, writing a book, or working in some activist cause. I remember one of them telling me that he was working with the "We the People" foundation (a group which opposed the Federal Income Tax), and I brought to his attention that there was someone else just down the road doing the very same thing (since I had data on other members.) He had not even heard of that person. The same tenacity of mind that was needed to establish oneself as a truly independent thinker led to all kinds of infighting over minor differences in opinion; and obstinacy was amplified when the disagreements were over religion or politics, which is essentially everything that we were talking about. The only thing that really inspired everyone to lay aside their differences and come out in force was when Ron Paul came to town.

So I learned something about human nature. People have an innate need to believe in a strong authority figure. Often when people heard about Christian Exodus, they would shrug it off as just another religious cult. This was ironic, because we were like the opposite of a cult, with a sort of Libertarian respect for the freedom of each individual to do their own thing. This ideal sounds nice, but it is pretty useless as an organizing principle. People need a strong authority figure to inspire and motivate them to unite with others in a common cause. Without this, there is not enough political will to lift people above their petty differences to work together effectively.

I organized a potluck for Christian Exodus members, and invited hundreds of people. In the end, maybe only a few dozen people actually showed up, and yet even among so few, there were infiltrators. Part of the effect of all of the media attention was that we showed up on the Federal radar; and they would send crazy people to our meetings who were working for them. These people would talk about doing illegal stuff that none of us wanted to do, as a way of trying to entrap people in some kind of Federal scheme. This was another thing that we exposed. Any kind of political movement that has any real steam behind it comes up against a wall of the entrenched establishment bureaucracy with infinite money- whose full-time job is specifically to infiltrate, subvert, confuse, and entrap any genuine patriotic movement. This was similar to the entrapment of the election integrity protestors of January 6th, 2021. The Feds have been doing this for a long time, and they have all the time and money in the world to do it. We were all greenhorns when it came to how the real levers of power are manipulated. We realized that the whole idea that we could vote our way out of this mess is merely another layer of mind-control.

There were a few limited political victories. One Christian Exodus member who had migrated from Pennsylvania named Aaron Bolliger was adept at political organization and understood how the legislature worked. He successfully organized a movement in South Carolina to push back against the Federal implementation of REAL ID in 2007, and this set the Feds back a decade in their plans. He also helped to train young men like Josiah Magnuson, who went on to become a State House Representative.

After being involved in this for several years, I had become the recognized leader of the movement; but I eventually realized that it was never really going anywhere, and that it was time for me to wrap it up. So I shut down the organization and website in 2015. We sold our house in Anderson in 2020 and moved to Panama. Even among closest friends, people have sincere differences of opinion, and are motivated by personal economic objectives in ways that cannot scale to take over government at the County level, let alone at the level of a State or Nation.

So what are the life lessons from this whole undertaking?

1. The Tribe Comes First

Long before you can even think about taking over any of the institutions of government, you have to have people who share a set of unifying principles with a strong sense of cultural identity. A group of individuals or an extended family is too small, and a religious denomination or political party is too large. You need something in-between, which is essentially a group of large families with a unifying cultural identity, and strong patriarchal leaders which can settle internal disputes. You need at least three extended families which are close enough to intermarry and physically live together with a shared vision. You cannot bring together people from vastly different walks of life and expect them to assimilate rapidly.

2. Economics Drives Everything

The simple fact is that most of the business of living revolves around practical economic concerns. You will never achieve freedom if you are still working for the large institutions and using only their money. A single family farm is too small to amount to anything, and a big company or economic system is too large to take over. You need something in-between, which is a network of family businesses and cottage industries, such that different people fulfill various economic roles, and there can be built a parallel system of barter and trade which evades the drains of taxation and inflation which are built into the wider economic system. This should be healthy enough that someone could join the tribe and immediately be put to work in a way that is sufficient for them to earn their own livelihood, without them having to receive assistance from outside the tribe.

3. New Wine Goes Into New Wineskins

The allure of taking over decaying institutions is a seductive distraction. Even if takeover of an existing institution of society were possible, the problems inherent in the very decay of said institution would be the undoing of those who might wish to infiltrate it and take it over. Old and broken systems cannot be fixed with fresh resources. You cannot convince old people to do things in a new way. It does no good to give an old and dying man another shot in the arm. You need to create new and more effective systems that render the existing systems obsolete. Over time the old will pass away, and the new will rise up to fill the void.

4. Systems Must be Scalable

A tribe has to be able to grow exponentially through the physical birthing of new babies and/or the influx of new converts. Critical mass cannot be achieved through a slow process of addition. It has to be something that grows rapidly and takes on a life of its own. Imagine a family that has 10 children, and each of these children has 10 children. Or imagine a church where each member is able to go out and make 10 new converts or plant a new church. Time continues in a perpetual march, and if you are not growing you are dying. This growth needs to be owned by the members. Nobody out there is going to do it for you. Mere publicity is not enough.

5. Things Take Time

The tribe must have a multi-generational vision. All of the powers-that-be are already in the process of being swept away by God as time is gradually shuffling them into oblivion. The future always belongs to the next generation. The world can be changed, but it does not happen in a day or a year. It takes decades and generations.