Vocab Malone, a pastor and urban apologist who has spent years in conversation with Hebrew Israelites, noticed something about where the young men he met came from: “Every single one I met grew up in the church.” The camps are recruiting from our pews, and before you answer the teaching, it helps to understand the pull.

Malone admits the movement’s appeal plainly: “This religion does have an appeal. And I think circumstances right now make it extra appealing.”

The numbers say the same. In Lifeway Research’s 2019 survey of U.S.-born Black adults, 4 percent called themselves Black Hebrew Israelites and 19 percent agreed with most of the movement’s core ideas. Among adults 18 to 34, that rose to 29 percent, and men were twice as likely as women to agree, 26 percent to 13 percent. D.A. Horton, a pastor who grew up in Kansas City, remembers how it started for him: camp members approached him when he was 17, told him Christianity had stolen his real identity, and walked him through Deuteronomy 28:68.