Ku Klux Klan

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Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a name that has been claimed by many unrelated racist, anti-Semitic groups in the United States from the Reconstruction era after the Civil War to the present. The strongest period of the KKK was during the 1920s, when the membership of male and female chapters totaled approximately three million, largely in the northern and midwestern states. Earlier and later waves of the Klan, based more exclusively in the rural South, have been much smaller, with memberships numbering in the thousands. In the latter decades of the twentieth century the Klan has become a declining segment of organized racism in the United States, losing membership to neo-Nazi and other white supremacist groups but also increasingly allied with these groups.

Over time, Klans have varied considerably in their relationship to organized religion. The large 1920s Klan recruited heavily from among the members, and sometimes the clergy, of conservative Protestant denominations, especially Baptists and Methodists. This Klan preached virulent anti-Catholicism, along with anti-Semitism and white supremacism, mobilizing its adherents in support of a white, Protestant nation by claiming that Catholics and Jews represented a threat to Christian morality and American values. Anti-Semitism was nurtured by Klan propaganda portraying Jewish leaders in the entertainment field as corrupting the morals of Protestant youth. To foment anti-Catholic sentiment, Klan chapters featured sensationalistic speakers claiming to be ex-nuns and former priests who could reveal loathsome secrets of Catholicism and distributed a forged "Knights of Columbus Oath" purporting to reveal Catholic designs to torture non-Catholics.

In later waves of the Klan, anti-Catholic rhetoric generally waned, while anti-Semitism became more central. Although some Klans continued to disparage Catholics, others, including the influential group headed by David Duke in the 1970s, welcomed Catholics as members. In contrast, anti-Semitism in the Klan deepened. This is exemplified in the distribution of the forged document Protocols of the Elders of Zion, allegedly a Jewish plan for world domination. Anti-Semitism has served as a basis for alliances between Klans and other white supremacist organizations, especially neo-Nazi and Christian Identity groups such as the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which argues that Aryans are the lost children of Israel. Some Klan organizations have become so deeply intertwined with the self-proclaimed "churches" of Aryan supremacism that Klan leaders have also served as Christian Identity ministers.

Throughout its history the Ku Klux Klan has been denounced by many religious organizations, including most Protestant denominations. Yet Klan practices mimic, often in distorted forms, the symbols and rituals of Christianity. This is most obvious in the burning cross, logs shaped into a Christian cross and set ablaze to terrorize minority group members; in ritualized practices such as Klan baptism; and in the ceremonial use of altars and texts. Christian imagery also exists in the names of many Klan organizations, such as Christian Knights of the KKK and the Assembly of Christian Soldiers.