Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Permalink:

The second Ku Klux Klan began with a dream. William J. Simmons, a de- frocked Methodist minister, fraternal organizer, and eventual Imperial Wizard of the Klan’s Invisible Empire, claimed that his reinvention started with an aus- picious vision on a hot summer night in Alabama.4 While gazing out his window, Simmons “caught sight of something mysterious and strange in the sky.” A “row of horses seemed to be galloping across the horizon,” and their riders were distinct “[w]hite-robed figures.” As the clouds scattered, “a rough outline of the United States appeared as the background.” Simmons looked on as each “big problem” in “American life” shifted across the celestial map. The horses and their riders remained a part of the troubling tableaux. Simmons “fell to his knees and offered a prayer to God.”5 Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

In his prayer, he promised to “solve the mystery of the apparitions he had seen in the sky” and vowed to build “a great patriotic fraternal order” as “a memorial to the heroes of our nation.” The heroes of his vision were the

*Many thanks to Edward J. Blum and Chris Baker for their excellent suggestions and revisions and to Mike Altman who encouraged me to think more about the Klan’s evan- gelicalism.

1William J. Simmons, Kloran (5th ed; Atlanta: Ku Klux Press, 1916), 2. 2Idem, The Klan Unmasked (Atlanta: Wm. E. Thompson, 1923), 101. 3Ku Klux Klan, ‘ideals of the Ku Klux Klan,” (Atlanta?: s.n., 1925?), 3. Archives

and Special Collections, Ball State University Archives, Muncie, Ind. 4William J. Simmons founded the second incarnation o f the Klan, and he composed

the Kloran, the fraternal manual, and several books defending the Klan, including The Klan Unmasked (1923). However, he was eventually ousted from leadership in January of 1924 when the dentist Hiram Wesley Evans became the second Imperial Wizard of the order. For this article, I rely heavily on Simmons’ hopes for his order and his crafting o f the early image of the national order.

5Winfield Jones, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (New York: The Toscin Publishers, 1941), 76.

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES262

members of the first Ku Klux Klan (1865-1870).6 Simmons felt that these Southern Klansmen triumphed against the evils of Reconstruction in the South by affirming white supremacy and racial order, though he did want to distance his Klan from its predecessors tendency to employ vigilante violence. For Simmons, the first order saved the South from the horrors of racial equality, destruction of the white home, and the emasculation of white Southern men. Now, the nation proved to be in similar peril, and America needed a new gener- ation of defenders. These religious visions coupled with a memory of those first Klansmen led Simmons to create the second Klan (1915-1930), a fraternity ded- icated not only to white supremacy and social order but also nationalism and religious faith.

While borrowing some of the costumes and symbols from the original Klan, Simmons imbued his fraternity with Protestantism in Klan rituals, cos- tumes, position papers, manuals, oaths, news magazines, and books to bolster a new movement of white Protestant men.7 The 1920s Klan crafted a nostalgic vision of the Reconstruction South, in which heroic Klansmen saved white southern ways of life against the supposed threat of African Americans, and this regional vision expanded to encompass the nation. Much like the Reconstruc- tion Klan saved the South, the second Klan hoped to save America’s white, Christian civilization.8 Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Historian Charles Reagan Wilson notes the one key difference between the first and second Klan appears in this emphasis on religion. He argues that the “second Klan was less Confederate and more Christian in its symbolism that the earlier group.”9 The first Klan was an organization intimately bound to the Lost Cause, a mythology which “white southerners” created a “religion out of their history, with beliefs, creeds, myths, symbols, rituals and organizations that nurtured an authentic religious system of southern culture.”10 The 1920s Klan seemed more removed from Wilson’s rendering of “the religion of the Lost Cause,” a powerful combination of Confederate memory, evangelical Protes- tantism, and dedication to white superiority.”

While Wilson is correct that Christian faith is a much more prominent component of the second order than the first, this does not mean that Simmons’ Klan abandoned Lost Cause religion. Rather, Simmons reinvented the Recon- struction Klan as the symbol for southern identity and southern victory after the Civil War. By emphasizing that the Reconstruction order saved the South, Simmons and other Klan leaders were able to distance themselves from the

6Ibid., 77. 7For a discussion of the Reconstruction Klan’s use o f symbols and costumes, see

Elaine Frantz Parsons, “Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction- Era Ku Klux Klan,” The Journal o f American History 92 (2005): 811-36.

8The desire for a white Protestant nation was an essential goal of the 1920s Klan. See Kelly J. Baker, Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 70-96.

9Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion o f the Lost Cause, 1865- 1920 (Athens: University o f Georgia Press, 1980), 117.

10Idem, Flashes o f Southern Spirit: Meanings o f the Spirit in the U.S. South (Ath- ens: University o f Georgia Press, 2011), 7.

11 Idem, Baptized in Blood, 14; idem, Flashes o f Southern Spirit, 56.

263JOURNAL OF THE NABPR

trauma of losing the Civil War while simultaneously establishing themselves as heroes and defenders with a southern accent. Wilson documents that Lost Cause religion ebbed in 1920 and did not resurge again until the 1950s.12 Rather than disappearing, the Lost Cause took on a new form in the hands of the new Klan. The order nationalized a different vision of the Lost Cause in its print and rituals by emphasizing southemness, white supremacy, and evangelicalism. The 1920s Klan articulated nostalgia for the Reconstruction Klan as saviors of the South and promoted visions of white Southern evangelicalism as a solution to the na- tion’s worrisome problems.

“[T]he Ku Klux rode forth . . . to save the God-given heritage of racial integrity, restore civilization, protect the

defenseless, shield that which was sacred.. . .”13 “The flower of Southern manhood belonged to the Klan (1866-1870)—men of honor, integrity, courage and sterling character,” wrote the Reverend W. C. Wright. The Reconstruction Klan contained men who were “the noblest of God’s creation.” Wright, a Texas Klansman, further asserted the importance of the first order:

That Klan saved the South from [N]egro domination, protected the chas- tity o f Southern womanhood from black brutes in human form, drove the carpetbagger-vultures from the bleeding carcass o f an outraged people, swept away the ashes of ruined homes and built a new “Dixie.”14

These original Klansmen became the heroes who saved Dixie, and the second Klan sought to continue their work on a national scale. Imperial Wizard Wil- Ham Simmons had long emphasized the direct lineage between old and new orders. In his desire to create a national fraternity, Simmons combined a new mantle of Christianity with invocations of the Reconstruction Klan as Southern defenders of white supremacy and civilization from any threat. Yet Simmons still wanted to make clear the differences between his order and its predecessor. He wrote, “The old Klan never intended to reach beyond the horizon of the Southland,” but the “present Klan” sought to bring “the supremacy of our herit- age of ideals throughout the nation.”15 The re-use of the old Klan,s name was both “memorial” and “heritage.” The new Klan was a “reincarnation among the sons of spirit of the fathers” and “a flaming torch of the genius and mission of the Anglo-Saxon.”16 The revived fraternal order embraced a nostalgic vision of both the Reconstruction Klan and the South, and Simmons hoped that his new

12Ibid., 45. 13Jones, Knights, 99. 14W. C. Wright, Religious and Patriotic ¡deals o f the Klan (Waco: W. C. Wright,

1926), 7. 15Simmons, The Klan Unmasked, 23. 16Ibid., 22.

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES264

order would “save the heritage which the fathers have left for us/’17 The order, then, was both southern bom and southern bred.18

This second Klan, like the first Klan, sprang forth from the South, Georgia and Tennessee respectively, and then spread from the region of its ori- gins to the national stage, eventually claiming four million members in the continental United States.19 However, the “South” of both orders was markedly different. The Reconstruction Klan appeared in a tumultuous South, recently battered in the Civil War by a painful defeat to Northern forces. It sought to recreate the familiar race relations of the antebellum South via terrorist tactics and acts of violence against African Americans, Northerners, and any sympa- thizers.20 For historian Michael Newton, the image of the violence and harm of the Reconstruction Klan was countered by the efforts of the William Dunning and other historians who claimed that “Klansmen redeemed the prostate South” from the terrifying possibilities of “black suffrage.”21 The Dunning school, then, cemented the image of heroic Klansmen and supposedly dangerous African Americans for the nation, which the second Klan continued.

The 1920s Klan, on the other hand, came into being in the New South, a more industrialized region still steeped in white supremacy and fraught with race relations, yet the Civil War was more distant and less painfully close. His- torian Edward L. Ayers writes, “The New South was an anxious place, filled with longing and resentment, for people had been dislodged from older bases of identity and found no new ones ready at hand.”22 The white people of this New South, not all but many, crafted a competing national identity that sought to explain war, trauma, and suffering in Lost Cause religion, a Southern civil reli- gion enmeshed equally in memories of the Confederacy and evangelical Protestantism.23 Moreover, historian Charles Reagan Wilson emphasized that

17Ibid., 24. 18Many scholars of the Klan have explored the regional identities of the 1920s Klan

in studies o f klavems from state participation to larger regions. Local klavems, then, in Ore- gon and Florida do have particular identities based on region. What 1 am examining is how southern identity becomes nationalized in Klan writings and rituals and transported to these varying locations across the U.S. See Michael Newton, The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 31-56; Shawn Lay, ed., The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan o f the 1920s (Urbana: University o f Illinois Press, 1992, 2004), 1-16; Leonard J. Moore, Citizen Klansman: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (Chapel Hill: University o f North Caro- lina Press, 1991), 4-6; Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask o f Chivalry: The Making o f the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), xiv-xvii; Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 62-88.

19Wade, Fiery Cross, 253. 20Baker, Gospel According to the Klan, 6-8. 21Newton, The Invisible Empire, 32. 22Edward L. Ayers, The Promise o f the New South: Life after Reconstruction (Fif-

teenth Anniversary Edition; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), viii. 23Historian Arthur Remillard, who also contributes to this issue, demonstrates that

the Lost Cause discourse is only one possibility for civil religion in the South; rather there were many different and competing types of civil religion despite a long-standing emphasis on the mythology of the Lost Cause. See Arthur Remillard, Southern Civil Religions:

265JOURNAL OF THE NABPR

this Lost Cause religion maintained a cohesive and coherent South for white Southerners.24

The Reconstruction Klan provided a new image for white Southern men to celebrate, which engaged the Civil War only to consider the “horror” of Reconstruction. The trauma of war dissipated in the paeans to white Southern heroism of the Klan. In his narration of the first order, William Simmons noted that these Knights appeared due to the “urgent necessities of the Reconstruction period.” At the end of the “War Between the States, the South was prostrated and devastation spread from the Potomac to the Rio Grande.” The defeat of the Confederacy allowed “hordes of bad white men” to attack an already harmed people.25 According to Simmons, these proved to be dire times because the pre- vious racial order was overturned. “Negroes,” he wrote, “everywhere were organized and taught to hate white people of the Southern states.” This “alien race, untaught, unskilled and incapable of government” preyed upon the proper- ties and homes of these “[w]hite men of the South who had borne arms in the defense of the Confederacy.” For this Klan leader, the purpose of Reconstruc- tion was obvious: the establishment “for all time of the supremacy of the Negro over our Anglo-Saxon people and civilization.” An already defeated South faced racial indignity until the Ku Klux Klan “sprang into existence” to counter this supposed threat.26

White civilization was in peril, and the Klan appeared to contain “the rise and assaults of an inferior race.” By exploiting the “superstition” of African Americans, the Klan averted possible social upheaval. This, in Simmons’ esti- mation, was “a most thrilling chapter in the history of the Anglo-Saxon civilization in America.” Yet this history was absent because the Reconstruction Klan was “maligned, misrepresented, and misunderstood for more than fifty years.”27 The original order’s heroism was discounted, and Simmons hoped this historical mistake would be corrected by his new order.

Simmons attempted to change the first order’s image by making his Klan “a memorial to the original organization, the story of whose valor has nev- er been told, and the value of whose activities to the American nation has never been appreciated.”28 The second Klan reached beyond Dixie to “maintain An- glo-Saxon civilization on the American continent” as a continuation of heroism of those early Klansmen. The region was not incidental to Simmons, who wrote that only “a moment’s reflection” would “indicate how natural it is to see¡ the new Klan take form first in the South.” People of the South noticed the “dangers which our brethren in other sections of the country are apt . . . to ignore.” Southerners understood the “race problem” when “fellow citizens of the North” did not.29 The region of its birth, then, molded the racial consciousness of the

Imagining the Good Society in the Post-Reconstruction Era (Athens: University o f Georgia Press, 2011), 1-14.

24Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 15. 25Simmons, The Klan Unmasked, 16. 26Ibid., 19. 27Ibid., 20-21. 28Ibid., 22. 29Ibid., 23-24.

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES266

second Klan, and Simmons hoped his order would demonstrate that race was not a regional problem but a national crisis.

The Texas minister and Klansmen, W. C. Wright, sought to bind the first and second orders more firmly. “To honor their sacred memory and perpet- uate their noble achievements, we have builded [s/c] no monuments of marble or granite,” he wrote, “but we have done more.” Rather than create something hard and unchanging, Wright insisted that the creation of the second order was something more, a living memorial. In November of 1915, three “veteran Klansmen” joined around “30 other good men” atop Stone Mountain, Georgia to witness the birth of the new order. On top of the mountain, they created a “sacred altar” out of “small boulders” upon which rested the American flag and a Bible, “opened at the twelfth chapter of Romans.” 30 A fiery cross burned near the altar while stars “gleamed from a Southern sky of azure blue.” This ritual linked the orders, old and new, and Wright emphasized the religious and histor- ical legacy of the moment. He proclaimed:

Here, between heaven and earth, with God as their witness, these men took a thrice binding obligation, solemnly dedicating themselves to the sacred ideals of Protestant Christianity symbolized by the old rugged, blood-stained fiery cross . . . and consecrated their lives. . . to the glori- ous cause o f Patriotic Americanism . . . to perpetuate the memory a noble ancestry.

This moment, according to Wright, sparked “the greatest movement of modem times,” a memorial to “our splendid ancestors,” the original Klan.31

Wright’s narrative signaled that the founding moment of the second Klan added to the example of Reconstruction Klansmen while sanctifying its purpose. Memorial and heritage remained important as Protestantism and Amer- icanism emerged as the twin messages of the second Klan. It is not surprising, then, that the sacred altar of the new Klan rested on Stone Mountain, which later became a Confederate memorial with carved reliefs of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, all heroes of the Lost Cause. This harkening back to the earlier Klan established the importance of Southern iden- tity and Lost Cause mythology to the order’s rebirth.

The Klan was not alone in this narrative, as even Klan detractors em- phasized the heroic feats of the Reconstruction Klan. Henry Fry, a Klan apostate and vehement anti-Klan writer, worried that the second order harmed the image of the noble Reconstruction Klansmen. Fry wrote that the “agency by which the South was saved” was the “original Ku KIux Klan!”32 While not bowing to “Northern condemnation” nor “extreme Southern justification,” Fry emphasized that the original Klan was “the last desperate resort of the Anglo-Saxon to resist and overthrow the attempt to Africanize his country.”33 Whether one appréciai- ed the “methods” of the order or not, Fry assured his readers that this “silent

30Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 7. 31Ibid., 8. 32Fry, The Modern Ku KIux Klan, 124. 33Ibid., 125.

267JOURNAL OF THE NABPR

force of white men” proved more effective than “state governments under car- petbag control, negro militia, acts of Congress, and proclamations of the President backed by the army of the United States.” The Reconstruction Klan made a “last desperate stand for all they held sacred.”34 For the anti-Klan writer, as well as for Simmons and Wright, these original Klansmen were heroes who protected a southern way of life based on racial hierarchy and white supremacy. The first order restored the racial norms designed not only for the South but for the larger nation. Fry noted a sentiment similar to Simmons, “[T]he entire coun- try is gradually beginning to see that the South is right, because the South has demonstrated that the white race and the black race can live side-by-side.” Yet, this cohabition without friction was predicated on segregation.35 For Fry and Klan leaders, the South would prove to be the model for national race relations because America was “a white man’s country” even if those in the North had not realized this yet.36 Thus, the anti-Klan writer and the Klan could agree on the importance of white supremacy for not only the South but also the larger nation. The South’s racial norms, they all agreed, would become nationally rec- ognized. The region would surely triumph.

It was faith that became the dividing line between Fry and Simmons’ Klan. Fry agreed with the order’s racial vision, but eventually left the order due to the “blasphemy” of the Klan’s fraternal rituals. Rather than see the Klan’s rituals as recreations and affirmations of Christian ritual, Fry declared the order sacrilegious.37 He hesitated to see any religious impulse in the order’s rituals, even though Klan ceremonies, rituals, and altars affirmed evangelicalism, with emphases on the Bible, Jesus, prayer, and a keen desire to (re)create Christian civilization.38 Evangelical Protestantism long dominated the American South from revivals in the early eighteenth century, which brought Baptists and Meth- odists to the region, through the twentieth century.39 Moreover, churches were “not just theologically conservative and mostly evangelical” but “deeply South- em” reflecting the clear schisms of Protestants north and south as the nation advanced to Civil War, which lingered long into the twentieth century.40 This so-called “southern religion” was an “interdenominational evangelical tradition” that dominated the region in all walks of life: religious, political, social, and

34Ibid., 134. 35Ibid., 94. 36Ibid., 94. 37For more on Fry’s reaction, see Baker, Gospel According to the Klan, 34-35. 38When I use the term “evangelicalism,״ I am referring to Protestants who, accord-

ing to historian George Marsden, affirm “Christ’s saving work through his death on the cross and the necessity o f personally trusting him for eternal salvation.” Evangelicals emerge as a “broad coalition” composed of many different denominations (2). Marsden characterizes five “essential evangelical beliefs” including “the final authority of the Bible,” the “historical character of God’s saving work recorded in Scripture,” salvation in Christ, “the importance of evangelism and missions,” and “the importance of a spiritually transformed life” George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 4-5.

39For a discussion of southern religious diversity, see Ayers, The Promise o f the New South, 160-161.

40Wilson, Flashes o f Southern Spirit, 131.

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES268

cultural.41 The inescapability of southern religion and its foundation in evangel- icalism naturally molded the Klan’s approach to faith and nation. Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

After all, the second Klan began with Simmons’ religious vision, which figured prominently into Colonel Winfield Jones5 sympathetic history of the 1920s order.42 Simmons5 revelatory moment marked “the real beginning of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” and “set” Simmons “to dreaming” about the pos-

sibility of a bold new fraternity that could rectify all the problems facing the American nation.43 This vision provided guidance and moral order, and it af-

firmed the centrality of faith and white supremacy as the vehicles to deliver a nation gone astray. Moreover, a religious vision signaled that Klansmen had a

vision י special role to play. Ever the dutiful narrator, Jones noted how Simmons might prove troubling. He wrote, “Readers will smile or scoff at this story, but it is a well-known fact that men who headed great movements have seen visions, or thought they saw them.”44 Jones further assured that Simmons was “a real Christian,”45 converted at a Methodist camp meeting when he “ ‘got the old- time religion.’ ”46 The Imperial Wizard’s faith proved authentic and evangelical, and his order crafted a vision of evangelicalism in the Klan’s fraternal rituals and material.

47”“Prepare the sacred altar The Kloran, the Klan’s ritual manual, begins with the Ku Klux Kreed, a version revised from the Reconstruction Klan’s original creed by William Simmons. This short statement codified the order’s position on God, nation, race, and fra-

temity from the importance of divine “providence” to the “distinction between the races.”4® In the recitation of the Kreed, Klansmen proclaimed “the majesty and supremacy of the Divine Being,” the “faithful maintenance of White Su-

premacy,” and “the intrinsic value of a real practical fraternal relationship among men of kindred thought.”49 Simmons penned the Kloran based on his imaginings of Reconstruction Klan rituals as well as his experiences as a mem- ber of other fraternities. The Kloran was the sacred text of the Invisible Empire, which provided the guidelines to all Klan ritual from the reading of minutes and reports of committees to the elaborate naturalization ceremonies.50 Examining the Kloran provides a method to see how the order combined heritage, white supremacy, and faith in the creation of their sacred space of the klavem (a local

.meeting hall) and later in the naturalization, or ritual creation, of Klansmen

41Ibid., 132. 42Jones was a former Washington reporter who was claimed to provide a more neu-

tral history o f the second Klan. His publisher made note that Jones was “not a member of the Ku Klux Klan and was not bom in the South, so that he made his investigation without any prejudice one way or another.” Jones, Knights, 6.

43Ibid., 77. 44Ibid., 77. 45Ibid., 81. 46Ibid., 76. 47Simmons, Kloran, 35. 48Ibid., 2. 49Ibid., 2. 50Ibid., 5.

269JOURNAL OF THE NABPR. Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

“Prepare the sacred altar,” declared the Exalted Cyclops (president). Before the start of each meeting, Klan officers were to construct the altar, locat- ed in the center of the klavem, by placing symbolic Klan objects in a precise pattern. Simmons even provided a hand-drawn diagram of the proper position- ing of people and objects. The second Klan emphasized seven primary symbols: the Bible, the cross, the flag, the sword, water, the robe, and the mask. The altar incorporated the American flag, the Bible, water or “dedication fluid,” and a sword. First, the Klaliff (vice-president) draped a flag over the altar with stars to the left and the sword positioned in the center.51 The Reverend W. C. Wright commented that the flag symbolized the “blood and suffering of American he- roes.”52 The flag’s presence signaled the Klansman’s duty to “forever defend the sublime principles of a pure Americanism” and to “perpetuate the sacred memory of our venerable and heroic dead.” Patriotism materialized in the flag was “a precious inheritance,” which Klansmen were to defend as part of “their solemn and sacred vow.”53 The sword was a “symbol of military defense, con- stituted authority and law enforcement.” The “unsheathed sword” demonstrated the Klan’s support for law enforcement. The Klan, Wright reminded, believed in “America for Americans,” and the order would defend its vision of the nation by “all justifiable means and methods.”54

Second, the Kludd (chaplain) placed the Bible, “opened at the 12th chapter of Romans” on the left comer with the “vessel of fluid” to the right.55 Reverend W. C. Wright noted in every “klavem you will always find this won- derful old Book opened at the twelfth chapter of Romans” because this passage became a guide to “Christian living,” the “Klansman’s Law of Life.” For Wright, “no sane man” could look at “this sacred volume without thinking of God as its author . . . and Eternal life as its ultimate end.” The Bible “teaches us that there is a God to fear, a hell to shun and a Heaven to gain.”56 As a part of the sacred altar, the Bible symbolized commitment to God, the reality of sin, and the promise of salvation. It was “the basis of our Constitution, . . . the source of our laws,. . . the most practical guide of right living, and the source of all true wisdom.”57

After the Kludd walked away from the altar, the Klaliff returned to place a mounted American flag to the left. Then, the Night-Hawk (an officer in charge of candidates for naturalization) advanced with the cross placed “against the center of the sacred altar” and then lit it. “[Tlhe old rugged, but Holy, cross” was a symbol of the order’s devotion to Christ. The Reverend Wright empha- sized that the blood of Christ “sanctified” the cross, which became “an emblem of Faith, Hope and Love.”59 The cross, then, stood “in every klavem of the . . .

51Ibid., 11. 52Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 33. ” Ibid. 54Ibid., 34. 55Simmons, Kloran, 11. 56Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 32. 57Klan, ‘Ideals,” 8. 58Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 33. 59Ibid., 33-34.

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES270

Klan and leads us in every parade . . . to constantly remind us that Christ is our criterion of character.” To light the cross on fire was to show that Jesus was “the light of the world.” Wright continued, “[A] knowledge of the truth as it is in Christ Jesus will dispel ignorance, superstition, intolerance, and enable one to walk . . . without falling into the pitfalls of sin.”60 Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Finally, the Klokard (lecturer) inspected the altar to guarantee that it was “properly prepared.”61 The Exalted Cyclops then opened the meeting, which began with “devotions” including prayer and songs about the Klan often sung to the tune of popular and sacred songs. Alongside the construction of the altar and guidelines for rituals, Simmons also included many prayers in the Kloran, which the Kludd supposedly recited word for word. For instance, the opening prayer began:

Our Father and our God. We, as [KJlansmen, acknowledge our depend- ence upon Thee and Thy loving kindness toward us; may our gratitude be full and constant and inspire us to walk in Thy ways. Give us to know that each Klansman by . . . thought and conduct determines his own des- tiny, good or bad: May he forsake the bad and choose and strive for the good.62

Invoking God as merciful, Jesus as role model, and a Klansman’s choice of righteous or sinful behavior, Simmons’ evangelicalism became more apparent. A pamphlet, Ideals o f the Ku Klux Klan, further clarified Simmons’ aim to demonstrate that the 1920s Klan was a “PROTESTANT ORGANIZA- TION” based on the examples of “our forefathers” who founded America as a “Protestant country.”63 This particular faith was a “Christian ideal,” which in- eluded devotion to God, “Christ, as the Klansman’s only criterion o f character,” and the Bible. The Klan worshipped “the Lord thy God” while hon- oring Christ. Klansmen sought redemption “at His hands,” a “cleansing from sin and impurity, which only He can give.”64

For Klan leader Edward Young Clarke, Jesus was the main reason for the Klan’s growth in membership. He claimed that “an inside secret” of the or- der was that “Jesus is the real head of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.” The centrality of Jesus to the order’s theology resonated with white Protestant Americans who found the order’s message appealing and significant. Clarke noted:

I find that men and women are hungering and thirsting for the old time religion o f Jesus, the Saviour of the World— for practical Christianity, free from all dogma and all petty denominational lines. I find people

60Ibid., 33. For more on the Fiery Cross as an artifact, see Kelly J. Baker, “Robes, Fiery Crosses, and the American Flag: The Materiality o f the 1920s Klan’s Christianity, Pat- riotism, and Intolerance,” Material Religion 7 (2011): 332-37.

61 Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 11. 62Simmons, Kloran, 13-14. 63Ku Klux Klan, “Ideals,” 4. 64Ibid., 8.

271JOURNAL OF THE NABPR

hungry for preachers of the Gospel who can teach Jesus Christ. . . and laying off the teaching o f politics and sociology and other things.65 Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

No matter the denominational affiliation, Clarke emphasized that all could agree that Christ was “the Savior of the World.”66

The klavem, then, became a space in which Klansmen joined together to experience this saving power of Jesus. Clarke further insisted that participa- tion in the Klan aided local Protestant churches “because the life of a Klansman brings the soul of a man to hunger and a thirst for something which can only be found inside the fold of some [P]rotestant church.”67 The order’s klavem, sacred altar, and rituals provided an evangelical theology that could be reaffirmed in one,s local church. This theology became even more apparent in the ceremony of naturalization, in which men transformed into Klansmen through a ritual evocative of baptism.

iTO

“I dedicate you in mind, in body, in spirit and in life . . To become a Klansman, white Protestant men had to be “naturalized,” a shifting from the “alien world” of everyday life into “citizenship” in the Invisible Em- pire.69 Before a potential member could make this transition, he had to answer ten questions about his motivation for joining the order, including white and native-born status, faithful practice of “clannishness,” dependability, proper esteem for the nation, ability to abide by rules and regulations, and mental state.70 Each candidate had to affirm his belief “in the tenets of the Christian religion” and “the eternal maintenance of white supremacy.”71 If all answers were satisfactory, the candidate could enter the klavem “to journey through the mystic cave in quest of citizenship in the Invisible Empire.”72 These “worthy aliens” would move from “the world of selfishness and fraternal alienation to the sacred altar of the empire of chivalry, industry, honor and love.”73 After Klan officers determined whether the candidates were worthy, the Klexter ex- plained that Klan membership would be the “most noble achievement in your earthly career.”74 At this moment in the ceremony, the lights were “turned down to make the klavem almost dark.”75 The Klansmen in attendance wore their robes with their aprons and masks covering their faces. Simmons noted the sol- emn occasion by instructing “there must be no movement, talking, or noise” and prohibiting “[s]triking matches and smoking during the ceremony.”76 Ironically, Simmons also recommended that a fiery cross be lit inside the klavem for Klan

65Clarke, “Intolerance,” 6. 66Ibid., 7. 67Ibid. 6*Simmons, Kloran, 41. 69Ibid., 22. Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

PERSPECTIVES IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES272

ceremonies, though local Klans did perform some naturalization ceremonies outside.

Led by the Kladd (conductor of the ceremony), the candidates entered the “portal of the Invisible Empire.”77 After much discussion of the order’s pur- pose as a fraternity and open threats about unworthiness, the Kladd directed the candidates to the sacred altar for the dedication conducted by the Exalted Cy- clops. While holding the “vessel” of water, the leader of the klavem stated, “With this transparent, life-giving, powerful God-given fluid . . . I set you (or each of you) apart from the men of your daily association to the great and hon- orable task.”7 Each candidate then knelt on his right knee, as the gathered Klansmen sang, “To Thee, oh, God I call to Thee” to the tune of “Just As I Am Without One Plea.” In the light of the fiery cross, the Exalted Cyclops contin- ued, “I dedicate you in body, in mind, in spirit, and in life, to the holy service of our country, our klan, our homes, each other, and humanity.” After he recited this aloud, he poured “a few drops of dedication fluid” on each candidate’s back and head. The Exalted Cyclops stated, “Thus dedicated by us, now consecrate yourselves to the sacred cause you have entered.”79

The klavem leader prayed aloud to “God of all, author of all good” for the newly dedicated men with “Thine own divinely distilled fluid.”8 Finally, the candidates were “aliens” no more. Instead, these candidates emerged as newly made citizens of the Invisible Empire, Klansmen. Beginning and ending with prayer, the naturalization ceremony emphasized the importance of God to create these new men for the righteous cause of the Klan in front of a fiery cross and an open Bible.

“The Spirit of the Ku Klux Klan still lives. . .”81 New Klansmen were awash in evangelical imagery with the presence of God, Jesus, and the Bible apparent in Klan ritual. The naturalization ceremony even evoked baptism with the use of water transforming Klansmen as “dedicated and set apart, in body, in mind, in spirit, and in life, to the sacred, sublime, and holy principles of Klankraft.”82 The Reverend Wright emphasized the transformative power of water and its ritual function. Sin stained, but Jesus saved. The natural- ization, then, washed away sin as Klansmen entered the order, which resonated with images of redemption and the possibility of salvation. After the naturaliza- tion guidelines and at the end of the Kloran, Simmons included a lecture for the newly dedicated Klansmen of the Κ-Uno order (first degree of obligation). This lecture moved away from religious meaning of rituals to narrate the history of the South from the end of the Civil War to the rebirth of the Klan. Simmons wrote:

77Ibid., 30. 78Ibid., 40. 79Ibid., 41. 80Ibid., 41-42. 81Ibid., 51. 82Wright, Religious and Patriotic Ideals, 35.

273JOURNAL OF THE NABPR

When the shuddering peals of the thunder o f the impending storm of American Reconstruction were heard above the fading echoes of the bat- ties o f the great Civil War, the chosen victims stood aghast and pale, wondering at the meaning and purpose o f the gathering gloom.83

“Echoes of battles” resounded as the “storm” gathered, and Simmons noted the “the blighting hand of devastation [was] complete.” The “Southern people” were “bleeding, prostrated, and defenseless.”84 The damage was wrought, and Simmons suggested that the blight of Reconstruction proved “more terrorizing than the seven plagues of Egypt.”85 Significantly, Simmons noted that “the Caucasian race” was “seriously threatened.”86

Yet all was not lost because the Knights of Ku Klux Klan emerged to save the “Southern people/’ More importantly, the first order “made possible the birth of the greatest nation of all time—the Re-United States of America.”87 Its campaign to save the South helped restore national unity. When “Right had been established over Might,” Simmons explained the “Ku Klux rode no more.”88 Yet, the nation was in need again of heroes to protect not only people of the South, but the nation. Simmons affirmed that “[t]he spirit of the Ku Klux Klan still lives” in his Klan.89 It is fitting that the naturalization created new Klansmen as Simmons finished his Kloran with the Reconstruction Klan, em- phasizing southern triumph and white supremacy. In his lecture, the Civil War received faint attention as he rushed to describe these glorious heroes who saved the South. Simmons, like many other white southerners, found resonance in the Lost Cause, but he shifted defeat into victory in his narration of the region. Moreover, his second Klan contained the “spirit” of these heroes; the southern legacy remained intact even as the order became nationalized. Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

Sin1mons, Klan hoped not only to restore America’s white Protestant glory but also to affirm that racial and religious norms of the American South were essential to this restoration. In its fraternal manual and rituals, symbology, prayers, and print, the second Klan and its leaders proposed Lost Cause religion as a method to bring white Protestant men under one patriotic fraternal order while also nationalizing the South’s moral order and mythological history. Evangelicalism became a crucial component of the Klan’s Lost Cause vision as Klansmen were remade into citizens of the Invisible Empire, who affirmed God, Jesus, the Bible, and white supremacy as crucial to their citizenship. The spirit of the Reconstruction Klan did live on in the 1920s order, but it became trans- formed. It was no longer bound by region or fixated by loss. Rather the new order combined a nostalgia for previous racial order with evangelical theology to create a vision of an American nation, which looked remarkably like the New South just on a larger scale. Faith, nostalgia, and supremacy saved, if only the second Klan could convince the nation.

83Simmons, Kloran, 48. 84Ibid. 85Ibid., 49. 86Ibid., 50. 87Ibid. 88Ibid., 51. 89Ibid.

Copyright and Use:

As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement.

No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(sV express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law.

This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder( s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of ajournai typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However, for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article. Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available, or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s). Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause

About ATLAS:

The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc.

The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American Theological Library Association. Evangelizing Clansmen, Nationalizing the South: Faith, Fraternity, and Lost Cause