Gospel According to the Klan

The KKK's Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930

Kelly J. Baker

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780700624478
• eBook ISBN: 9780700624560
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

To many Americans, modern marches by the Ku Klux Klan may seem like a throwback to the past or posturing by bigoted hatemongers. To Kelly Baker, they are a reminder of how deeply the Klan is rooted in American mainstream Protestant culture.

Most studies of the KKK dismiss it as an organization of racists attempting to intimidate minorities and argue that the Klan used religion only as a rhetorical device. Baker contends instead that the KKK based its justifications for hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans, one that employed burning crosses and robes to explicitly exclude Jews and Catholics.

To show how the Klan used religion to further its agenda of hate while appealing to everyday Americans, Kelly Baker takes readers back to its “second incarnation” in the 1920s. During that decade, the revived Klan hired a public relations firm that suggested it could reach a wider audience by presenting itself as a “fraternal Protestant organization that championed white supremacy as opposed to marauders of the night.” That campaign was so successful that the Klan established chapters in all forty-eight states.

Baker has scoured official newspapers and magazines issued by the Klan during that era to reveal the inner workings of the order and show how its leadership manipulated religion, nationalism, gender, and race. Through these publications we see a Klan trying to adapt its hate-based positions with the changing times in order to expand its base by reaching beyond a narrowly defined white male Protestant America.

This engrossing expos looks closely at the Klan’s definition of Protestantism, its belief in a strong relationship between church and state, its notions of masculinity and femininity, and its views on Jews and African Americans. The book also examines in detail the Klan’s infamous 1924 anti-Catholic riot at Notre Dame University and draws alarming parallels between the Klan’s message of the 1920s and current posturing by some Tea Party members and their sympathizers.

Analyzing the complex religious arguments the Klan crafted to gain acceptability—and credibility—among angry Americans, Baker reveals that the Klan was more successful at crafting this message than has been credited by historians. To tell American history from this startling perspective demonstrates that some citizens still participate in intolerant behavior to protect a fabled white Protestant nation.

CHAPTER 1

“Thank God for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”: The Klan’s Protestantism

As the Star of Bethlehem guided the wise men to Christ, so it is that the Klan is expected more and more to guide men to the right life under Christ’s banner.

—H. W. EVANS (1925)¹

The real interpretation of the message of the angels who announced the birth of the Christ child . . . nearly two thousand years ago, was carried forth by the Klansmen and Klanswomen of the Altoona on the eve of Christmas day, and the lamp of happiness was lighted in more than fifty homes of the poor of the city and vicinity after the Ku Klux Santa Klaus had paid his visit to the said homes.

—IMPERIAL NIGHT-HAWK (1924)²

In his Modern Ku Klux Klan (1922), Henry Fry, a former klansman, described the ritual of naturalization, the process by which one became a member of the Invisible Empire. He observed:

The Exalted Cyclops raises a glass of water and “dedicates” the “alien,” setting him apart from the men of his daily association. . . . He is then caused to kneel upon his right knee, and a parody of the beautiful hymn, “Just as I am Without One Plea,” is sung by those of the elect who can carry a tune. . . . When the singing is concluded, the Exalted Cyclops advances to the candidate and after dedicating him further, pours water on his shoulder, his head, throws a few drops in the air, making his dedication “in body,” “in mind,” “in spirit,” and “in life.”³

Previously a Kleagle for the order, Fry could no longer continue his membership when he encountered the naturalization ceremony. The ritual’s resonance with Christian baptism proved unnerving to the author, especially since he considered the rest of the order’s rituals “tiresome and boring . . . twaddle.”⁴ That ceremony convinced Fry that the Klan was a “sacrilegious mockery.”⁵ What proved most disturbing to Fry was how the Klansmen seemed to have no problem with the naturalization’s proximity to the “sacred and holy rite of baptism.” Naturalization made a “mockery and parody” of a Christian ritual that the author held dear.⁶ For Fry, the ceremony confirmed that the Klan was a moneymaking scheme parading as a religious fraternity. Such blasphemy was more than he could handle. In a resignation letter to the order dated June 15, 1921, Fry listed his many complaints against the order:

In defiance of your threats of “dishonor, disgrace, and death” as contained in your ritual—written and copyrighted by yourself—I denounce your ritualistic work as an insult to all Christian people in America, as an attempt to hypocritically obtain your money from the public under the cloak of sanctimonious piety; and, I charge that the principal feature of your ceremony of “naturalization” into the “Invisible Empire” is a blasphemous and sacrilegious mockery of the holy rite of baptism, wherein for political and financial purposes, you have polluted with your infamous parody those things that Christians, regardless of creed or dogma, hold most sacred.⁷

The Klan, Fry contended, was not a Christian order but rather a false rendition of a religious movement. Furthermore, the suggestion of baptism in its naturalization ceremony proved the order was blasphemous as well. Hiding “under the cloak of sanctimonious piety” might have served well the order’s moneymaking schemes, but Fry denounced the so-called Christian beliefs that members professed. His book detailed the contradictions and dangers of the order, but nothing ruffled the author quite as much as the Klan’s professed Protestantism.

Fry was not the only skeptic of the order’s religious leanings. W. C. Witcher of Texas created a pamphlet exposing the hypocrisies and supposed scams of the Klan. Witcher opined that the Klan “seduc[ed] the preachers of this country into believing that they should encourage and support” the order and all of its actions. He also claimed that “to impress ministers with its sham benevolence . . . it adopted the old worn-out political trick of ‘donating to the preacher.’”⁸ The author suggested that the Klan would be rebuked rather than accepted by Jesus and that the Imperial Wizard, the leader of the Invisible Empire, was the “Ruler of Darkness.”⁹ To demonstrate the devious attempts of the Imperial Wizard to mold Jesus to the Klan’s message, Witcher provided a fictional account of a chance meeting between the two. Witcher described the Imperial Wizard as a manipulative figure who sought to overcome Jesus by wooing Him with worldly things. In the account, the robed leader emerged as the Devil, in the guise of a Klan leader. His desperate attempts to entice Jesus with power and prestige ultimately failed, and the parallels between Witcher’s tale and the biblical narrative of Satan’s temptation of Christ were quite deliberate. Jesus berated the Imperial Wizard for his blatant manipulation and cunning. The Klan leader, a “cringing coward,” “crumpled at His feet like a conquered beast before its master.” Jesus had won, and the Klan lost the support of its savior. The order’s deceptive commitment to the Christian tradition, at least for Witcher, became visible. He continued:

The echo of that rebuke rings down through the centuries like the voice of a nightingale, and if these commercialized ministers who have prostituted their pulpits with the white-robed children of the Imperial Wizard were even susceptible of a rebuke, they would drive these character assassins from their services with the whips of scorpions. Judas committed suicide for the same kind of offense. My God! How long wilt Thou suffer these miserable hypocrites to insult Thy Name, and defile Thy Sanctuary!¹⁰

Those vituperative statements affirmed the belief of both authors that the second revival of the Klan was not religious but heretical, devious, and dangerous. Witcher suggested that Klansmen who offered such false religion were no better than Judas, and he begged God to hold them accountable because of their defiance. He even advocated that members might want to imitate the suicide of Judas, since their actions were comparable to his. The author clearly found the Klan to be a significant threat to Christianity because of its declaration to be a Protestant Christian order. Both authors engaged the Klan’s professed Christianity and quickly dismissed the possibility that the Klan and its members could be legitimately religious. Ultimately, they disagreed with the Klan’s presentation of the Christian (Protestant) faith. They saw only “false” religion in the actions of the fraternity. In that way, their attacks highlighted how the Klan’s allegiance to Christianity caused unease among critics and former Klansmen. Those authors, in particular, were nervous about the order’s association with their personal faith tradition, and vitriol spewed forth. The order’s practiced faith proved too similar to the faith of its detractors. The resemblance required both authors to demarcate the religion of the Klan as foreign from their own religious commitments. The Klan, in its founding, bound Christianity with Americanism, and members professed allegiance to both despite their relentless critics. In the order’s white Protestant America, the order envisioned not only that members were the defenders of Protestant Christianity, but also that God had a direct hand in the creation of the order.

They built in their crude altar greater than they knew.

On the “bleak Thanksgiving night” of 1915, seventeen men climbed atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, with a purpose and a large wooden cross. They set the cross on fire, and under its light those “pilgrims” committed themselves to the U.S. Constitution, “American ideals and institutions,” and “the tenets of the Christian religion.”¹¹ The men built an altar of granite boulders and spread the American flag over the rocks. William Simmons, the leader of the ceremony, wrote that “they built in their crude altar greater than they knew.”¹² The eerie glow marked the beginning of the second Ku Klux Klan. The new order harkened back to the Reconstruction Klan, but its founder, Simmons, proclaimed a new path of militant Protestantism and sacred patriotism.¹³

Simmons, who became the Imperial Wizard of the order, and his successor, Hiram Wesley Evans, promoted a vision of the Klan as a patriotic, benevolent, and Christian order. For Simmons, that altar on Stone Mountain was the “foundation” of the Invisible Empire, which was committed to “the preservation of the white, Protestant race in America, and then, in the Providence of Almighty God, to form the foundation of the Invisible Empire of the white men of the Protestant faith the world over.”¹⁴ Evans noted, “As the Star of Bethlehem guided the wise men to Christ, so it is that the Klan is expected more and more to guide men to the right life under Christ’s banner.”¹⁵ The second incarnation of the Klan, therefore, was transformed and dressed in Christian virtue and metaphor. Protestantism served as the foundation of the movement, and the protection of its religious faith was a key component of the Klan’s mission. The nation, it seems, functioned better in the hands of the faithful. The religious foundation of the order, as we have seen, was not without its detractors.

Robert Moats Miller, writing in 1956, argued that the relationship between the Klan and Protestantism should not be assumed, nor asserted, since denominational newspapers as well as national conferences condemned the Klan.¹⁶ Miller utilized Christian journals to argue that Protestant churches were not bound to the order. National conventions and denominational governing bodies, for Miller, determined Protestantism. Yet local churches still proclaimed their affiliation to the Klan despite outcry from national bodies. Miller’s study lacked detailed analysis of how religion functioned for the order, enabling him to conclude that Klansmen and Klanswomen were not authentically Protestant. The Klan specifically defined that term to match the parameters of its organization.

Interpreting the role of religion in the life of Klan members demonstrates clearly how the order defined the terms “Protestant” and “Protestantism.” “Protestant” meant not only non-Catholic but also a recoded narration of Christian history. Questions still arise. How exactly did members and leaders define Protestantism? Were they evangelical, fundamentalist, both, or neither? Religious faith became crucial to the construction of the order by leaders, editors, and members. Protestantism undergirded the membership, the rituals, and the rites of the order, as well as imbued the pages of Klan print culture. My study of Klan print suggests a different conclusion than that reached by Miller: the Klan subscribed to Protestantism, and the order created their own definition, history, and vision of the faith for its members. That vision began with Simmons and flourished in the pages of the Imperial Night-Hawk, the Kourier Magazine, and other Klan papers. In the Klan’s creation of a textual community, Protestantism emerges not only as the foundation of the order’s structure but also as the larger nation.

In his writing and speeches, Simmons sought to create a super fraternity that not only appropriated the regalia and history of the previous Klan but also imported fresh symbology, which illuminated the importance of Americanism and Protestantism. As an ex-minister, Simmons combined faith with politics in his movement, and that faith washed over the pages of the Night-Hawk. Such might seem surprising to those who envisioned the Klan as a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic political organization, which it undeniably was. However, it was also an organization that required members to be Protestant Christians, who affirmed both Jesus as well as Americanism.

The Klan leadership crafted a religious organization, and the Imperial Night-Hawk (which became the Kourier Magazine), the Klan’s official organ, molded a public persona that glorified its faith. Through weekly publication, the Klan presented the ideals of its community and attempted to fashion Klansmen to reflect those ideals. The Night-Hawk and Kourier created a unified order through text. Being a good Protestant was key to being a good Klansman or Klanswoman. The Klan’s Protestantism was defined in a multitude of ways, from uplifting the literal meaning of the word (“to be a protestor”) to aligning the Klan as successors of the Reformation who “cleansed” the church and provided Protestantism as a foundation for both democracy and religious freedom. Klansmen were to be “protest-ants” of systems of iniquity, deriving their example from Martin Luther. Additionally, the Klan envisioned its role as the “handmaiden” of the church because of its ability to unite Protestantism in the face of denominationalism and supposed enemies.

Moreover, the Klan rendered Jesus in its organizational image. Members employed Jesus’ example as a model for their lives. In print culture, robes, and rituals, the order communicated its adherence to the Protestant faith and functioned to solidify the community in the face of threats to both faith and nation. It was a tenuous process to convince readers of the Night-Hawk to live the ideals and faith that the newsmagazines described.

The Reformation has taken residence in the Klan.¹⁷

According to Hiram Wesley Evans, the second Imperial Wizard of the Klan, “...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: “Let’s Get behind Old Glory and the Church of Jesus Christ”: Religion, American Narratives, and the 1920s Klan
• Chapter One: “Thank God for the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”: The Klan’s Protestantism
• Chapter Two: “Take the Christ out of America, and America Fails!”: The Klan’s Nationalism
• Chapter Three: “God Give Us Men”: The Klan’s Christian Knighthood
• Chapter Four: “The Sacredness of Motherhood”: White Womanhood, Maternity, and Marriage in the 1920s Klan
• Chapter Five: “White Skin Will Not Redeem a Black Heart”: The Klan’s Whiteness, White Supremacy, and American Race
• Chapter Six: “Rome’s Reputation Is Stained with Protestant Blood”: The Klan–Notre Dame Riot of May 1924
• Conclusion: “Guardians of Privilege”: What the Klan Tells Us about American (Religious) History
• Afterword: “Passing the Torch”: The Klan’s Brand in America
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover