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By Root 684 0

the Klan did take part in vigilante violence because lynching was an established part of their culture, but nationwide the Klan did not promote it per se. Although Bessie Tyler recommended that blacks be sterilized, in many areas fears about Southern and Eastern European immigrants were stronger and more potent than fears about blacks. Tyler best summed up the Klan’s philosophy when she said that to be for the white race meant to be against all others—and that meant against anyone who was not Protestant and of Northern European descent.

Catholics were a particular focus of Klan mistrust. According to one mid-1920s newspaper article, devotion to the Pope was evidence of Mediterranean people’s “servility,” while “the spiritually-minded, chivalrous, and freedom-loving Nordic peoples have always been hostile to Rome.”

Ironically, given this pervasive antipathy to Catholicism, the Klan’s secret rituals were strangely reminiscent of the Catholic Church (and of the Masons, with whom their membership often overlapped). Klansmen were baptized and anointed, made to swear oaths of fealty and introduced to a world of mysterious and complex symbolism. The mask, rendering members anonymous, represented altruism and the denial of the self; the fiery cross denoted members’ noble self-sacrifice to a higher cause.

Lurid conspiracist tales of female enslavement and exploitation by gangs of perverted priests and Jews fed into the fears and prejudices of potential Klan members. In Muncie, Indiana, a woman claimed that Catholics had developed a powder that would bleach the skins of black men—so that they could trick unsuspecting white girls into marrying them.

Fundamentalist Protestants were seen as particularly sympathetic to the Klan cause. Kleagles were ordered to approach fundamentalist ministers when they arrived in new towns and Klan preachers promoted fundamentalism in their sermons. These men were deliberately non-intellectual inheritors of the “Know-Nothing” tradition of the Southwest. In the words of the evangelist Billy Sunday, “I don’t know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knows about ping-pong, but I’m on my way to glory!”

Just as Bruce Barton’s best-selling book The Man Nobody Knows reinvented Jesus not as the mild lamb of God but as a manly, driven leader, so too did the Klan deliberately project to its members a virile Christian militancy very attractive to men who found themselves emasculated and excluded by the onward march of modern society. Parading around town in a sheet was seen as empowering. Klan discipline and its code of loyalty—and the severe punishments meted out to those who betrayed it—reinforced this sense of brotherhood and masculinity.

The Klan used its connections with the Church as a way of sanctifying and justifying its actions. Klansmen were constantly reminded that the movement was “not a lodge” but “an army of Protestant Americans” fighting to protect their birthright. “The Klan is engaged in a Holy Crusade against that which is corrupting and destroying the best in American life,” declared its newspaper, the Searchlight.

While the Church was passive, the Klan saw itself as an active force for moral reform: the defender of America’s traditional values against modernity, urbanization, secularization, divorce, immigration and the sinful influence of the movies and jazz. “The Klan stood for the same things as the Church, but we did things the Church wouldn’t do,” said one Pennsylvania Klan’s Exalted Cyclops (local leader). “They talked about morals in the churches, but if some young fellow got into trouble or some couple was about to get a divorce, the churches wouldn’t mess in it. We acted.”

Local chapters of the Klan posted signs reading, “Fooling around the other fellow’s home is not wise” and “Wife-beaters, family deserters, home-wreckers, we have no room for you.” The Denver Grand Goblin placed his Klan recruits at the disposal of the Chief of Police to aid the local fight against crime. Klansmen conducted “Clean Up Your Town” campaigns and worked closely with the Anti-Saloon League.