Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith (February 27, 1898 – April 15, 1976) was an American Disciples clergyman, politician and organizer known for his populist and far-right activism. He began his career as a leader of the Share Our Wealth movement during the Great Depression. After the death of Huey Long he shifted away from advocating wealth redistribution towards anti-communism and later anti-semitism, becoming known for far-right causes. He founded the America First Party in 1943 and was its 1944 presidential candidate, winning fewer than 1,800 votes. In 1947, he founded the Christian Nationalist Party, which would become the Christian Nationalist Crusade, a vehicle that would lead to the emergence of Christian Identity as an organized movement.

Smith has been noted as "the most persistently successful of America's anti-Jewish propagandists" and "the most infamous American fascist".

Late in life, he built the Christ of the Ozarks statue in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and initiated the Passion Play there.

Early life and education Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith was born on February 27, 1898, in Pardeeville, Wisconsin, to Sarah and Lyman Z. Smith. He had one sister, Barbara, who was ten years older. His father was a traveling salesman and preacher who spoke on patriotic occasions and was a supporter of politician Robert La Follette. Gerald Smith said of his childhood, "We took it for granted that the word 'Christian' was the companion for the word 'American.'" The family moved to rural Richland County, Wisconsin, and Gerald Smith received a public education, first at rural schools and then at a larger school in Viola. After Lyman Smith recovered from pernicious anemia, which he had suffered from during most of his son's childhood, the family moved to Viroqua, Wisconsin, where Gerald Smith graduated high school in 1915.

In 1918, after two and a half years of study, Smith graduated from Valparaiso University in Indiana with a degree in biblical studies. Smith enlisted in the United States Army but was not deployed before the end of World War I. An attack of nephritis forced him to return to Viroqua to recuperate.

Ministry Smith said that he determined he would be a Disciples of Christ minister, like three generations of his family before him, when he was twelve. He was ordained in 1916, while at Valparaiso. Upon his recovery from nephritis in 1919, he became a temporary pastor in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin, then at a larger church in Footville, then organized another church in the larger community of Beloit. On return from a trip to Chicago, he expressed his earliest recorded views on race in a letter to his parents: "[W]hen you see the white and black mixing it is terrible. White girls dancing cheek to cheek with black men. ... It sickens one."

After marriage and another period of illness, Smith joined a larger church in Kansas, Illinois. In 1922, he drew national attention for a sermon at a ministerial convention in St. Louis and moved to Indianapolis, where he preached to a congregation of two thousand. In Indianapolis, rumors circulated that he was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, an accusation Smith denied throughout his life.

In 1929, Smith's wife contracted tuberculosis, and he moved his family to Shreveport, Louisiana, to seek treatment. He became minister of Kings Highway Christian Church, where his congregation included the city's mayor, two bank presidents, and the president of the Chamber of Commerce. In his early time in Shreveport, Smith was ecumenical, preaching at B'Nai Zion Temple and in return sharing his pulpit with the temple's rabbi.

Politics Huey Long and Share Our Wealth

Upon his move to Shreveport, shortly after the 1929 stock market crash, Smith began to engage more actively in politics. He became chaplain of the Louisiana American Federation of Labor and delivered a keynote at the Louisiana chapter meeting of the American Bankers' Association. He also began preaching radio sermons calling for social reform and denouncing the Standard Oil Company.

Shortly after his arrival in the city, Smith met Governor Huey P. Long, who maintained a law office there. His friendship with Long ultimately forced his resignation from his church in 1933, as many of the congregation were opposed to Long. Following his resignation, Smith allegedly turned toward fascist politics by contacting William Dudley Pelley and attempting to reach Adolf Hitler to discuss "Semitic" and "anti-German" propaganda.

In 1934, Long formed the Share Our Wealth Society, which proposed minimum and maximum limits on household wealth and income, and named Smith its national organizer. In describing his campaign philosophy, Smith wrote that "in order to succeed, a mass movement must be superficial for quick appeal, fundamental for permanence, dogmatic for certainty, and practical for workability." Smith delivered campaign speeches for Share Our Wealth throughout the country, described as "a combination of Savonarola and Elmer Gantry" and often drawing large crowds of supporters and hecklers. In 1935, he boasted to a reporter that he might "duplicate the feat of Adolph Hitler in Germany". Behind the scenes, he encouraged Long to challenge President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.

After Long was assassinated in 1935, Smith failed to take control of the Long faction in Louisiana and was effectively expelled from the state politically by Seymour Weiss. Smith was fired from Share Our Wealth, which was soon abolished.

Union Party

After departing Louisiana, Smith campaigned in Georgia for white supremacist Governor Eugene Talmadge, who intended to oppose Roosevelt for the 1936 Democratic nomination. Smith then joined Francis Townsend, an advocate of pension reform, in New York City on the incorrect belief that Townsend had acquired Long's mailing list. Smith soon ingratiated himself to Townsend against the misgivings of many of Townsend's advisors. In November 1935, Smith convinced Townsend to join with Charles Coughlin, an anti-Roosevelt Roman Catholic priest, to back William Lemke for president to oppose, in Smith's words, "the communistic philosophy of [Roosevelt advisors] Frankfurter, Ickes, Hopkins, and Wallace".

Late in the 1936 campaign, Smith announced his intent to form an independent movement to oppose communism and "seize the government of the United States." He claimed support from "ten million patriots" willing to sacrifice their lives to prevent "an international plot to collectivize [the United States]" and from wealthy donors who would provide one percent of their annual incomes "to make America vigorously nationalistic." Townsend promptly disowned Smith and Lemke's campaign manager expelled him from the Union Party, despite his protests. Coughlin ignored the controversy, having already developed antipathy toward Smith during the campaign.

In the fall of 1936, Smith returned to Louisiana to join former Governor James A. Noe in a tour of Louisiana in which the two railed against Governor Richard W. Leche's sales tax on luxury items, revenue that the governor claimed was essential for the state's share of the new Social Security program. Noe charged that Leche "sold out to Roosevelt to finance Social Security.""Smith, Noe to Speak Here Saturday: Pair Will Stop in Minden in Tour of State", Minden Signal-Tribune, October 20, 1936, p. 1 On October 22, he was punched in the face after delivering a radio talk in New Orleans. On the night before the election, he was arrested for disturbing the peace, reviling the police, and using obscene language after attacking Leche on statewide radio. Despite the boasts of Smith, Townsend, and Coughlin, the Union ticket received only 2 percent of the national vote, mostly in Catholic precincts where Coughlin's popularity was strongest; within two years, the party collapsed entirely.

America First Party of 1943

As European tensions rose with the ascendancy of the Nazi Party in Germany, Smith tried to form an alliance with the non-interventionist America First Committee, but did not succeed.

In 1943, Smith formed the America First Party, essentially appropriating the name. He became a member of William Dudley Pelley's fascist Silver Legion of America, which was patterned after Hitler's brown shirts.Albert E. Kahn and M. Sayers. The Plot against the Peace: A Warning to the Nation!. 1st ed. New York: Dial Press, 1945, p. 196. "... The Cross and the Flag [was] a propaganda magazine which was soon to be named by the Department of Justice as an agency used in a conspiracy to undermine the morale of the United States armed forces. The Cross and the Flag was published in Detroit by ex-Silver Shirter No. 3223, Gerald L. K. Smith." Smith told an audience of Silver Shirts, "We're going to drive that cripple out of the White House," meaning Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

After moving to Michigan, Smith ran for the United States Senate as a Republican from there, but lost in the primary.

Smith ran as the America First Party candidate in the 1944 presidential election, winning 1,781 votes (1530 in Michigan, 251 in Texas). In 1948, with running mate Harry Romer on the Christian Nationalist Party ticket, he received 48 votes. Smith's only other bid for the presidency was in 1956, when he received eight write-in votes in California.

Of his run for president, Smith biographer Glen Jeansonne wrote, "Smith was fascinated by the Office of the President of the United States", and that "Gerald Smith ran for president because he lusted for power, but his hatred for Jews and his relentless crusade against them had no such 'rational' motivation".

Christian Nationalist Crusade

In 1947, speaking at a sparsely attended rally at the Washington Monument. Smith announced a new name, the Christian Nationalist Party, to replace the America First Party.Warren, Roger (August 11, 1947). "Washington and National Activities in Government and Politics". The Day (New London, Connecticut). p. 6. Moving forward Smith's agenda was the Christian Nationalist Crusade. The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith cited Smith's Christian Nationalist Crusade along with Merwin K. Hart's National Economic Council and the Ku Klux Klan as "organized anti-Jewish organizations... which had significant influence, resources and membership." In late 1947, Smith moved CNC offices from Detroit to St. Louis.

Christian Identity Having first visited Los Angeles in 1943, Smith traveled there every year and after purchasing a home, he moved his headquarters to Los Angeles in 1953. It was in Los Angeles that he would intersect with key figures that would emerge in the Christian Identity movement, including Conrad Gaard, Bertrand Comparet, William Potter Gale, and Wesley Swift. Smith incorporated religious issues to further his political goals by mobilizing the support of Christian Identity. Prior to Smith's involvement in the Identity movement, it had been largely a fractured amalgamation of various British-Israel groups and other derivative groups such as the Klan. Smith's organizational skills and ability to cultivate prominent figures like Swift assisted in coalescing the Identity movement into a more collaborative group of churches and individuals.