Bernhardt Klassen
Church of the Creator
Bernhardt “Ben” Klassen was born in Molotschna (now Zaporizhzhia Oblast Ukraine) on February 7th, 1918, living in the harsh soviet region until he was 5 years old when his family moved to Mexico, living there for one year until again moving in 1925 to the small rural community of Herschel, Saskatchewan Canada. Klassen eventually left Canada in 1945 moving to California.
A year after moving to California Klassen married Henrie Etta McWilliams beginning their 47 year marriage having one child together. In 1955 Klassen began attending a presbyterian church in Glenmore Gardens CA, by 1967 Klassen had enough of Christianity beginning to analyze the bible heavily. In 1971 Klassen’s total rejection of Christianity began, looking through the bible with an objective lens he begun to realize that Christianity often presents “suicidal advice” to its adherents therefor not being suitable for White people.
In 1972 Klassen begun writing his most important book “Nature’s Eternal Religion” a two volume piece, book 1 outlining the “unavenged outrage” being issues of world jewry and the aid it receives from christianity, book 2 outlines “The Salvation” which is posed as Klassen’s newly developed religion “Creativity”. Creativity is a religion Klassen created based off of the laws of nature, holding a foundational focus on the survival, expansion, and advancement of the White race. With the release of this book in 1973 Klassen as a result founding “The Church Of The Creator” (COTC).
Under Klassen’s leadership in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s COTC began to grow steadily, some well known names began to build a reverence for Klassen and his controversial writings (David Lane, Ron McVan, William Pierce, etc). In 1982 Klassen and the COTC purchased a 30 acre property in Otto North Carolina to serve as the Church headquarters. The property had multiple structures including Klassen’s personal residence, a three story church building, and a school for boys. This property would remain operational until its sale in 1992 to William Pierce. The sale of the property was unfortunately necessitated by the murder conviction of COTC affiliated minister George Loeb which Klassen feared would lead to property forfeiture and other actions taken against COTC. Pierce owned the property for a short amount of time until the Southern Poverty Law Center finally sued both COTC and Pierce calling the protective sale “fraudulent”.
Just before the sale of the Otto headquarters Henrietta, Klassen’s wife of 41 years passed of cancer in January of 1992. Klassen received his own cancer diagnosis a year later in 1993, Klassen passed shortly after.
Klassen’s death was tragic, with many mistakenly thinking that COTC would never recover. Klassen spent his life building a faith and an organization that served as a foundation for many men and organizations, with COTC still active today after 52 years, operating under the name The Creativity Movement.
If you would like to learn more about Ben Klassen check out the autobiography “Against the Evil Tide”.
Rest In Peace
