White and non-white evangelicals: do their politics differ?

Evangelicals are usually spoken as a group that supports political and social conservatism. They are identified as a religious group that votes as a block and as it is close to 20-30% of the population, its views become very important during the US elections. However, while almost all evangelicals are socially conservative, research shows that, politically, evangelicals have diverse opinions and positions. Then, why it seems that evangelicals vote as a block for the Republican Party. There are three reasons:

• About two-thirds of the evangelicals are non-Hispanic white;
• White non-Hispanic Americans, including white non-Hispanic evangelicals, are more likely to vote than African-Americans or Hispanics;
• Many conservatives, who are not evangelicals according to most religious/doctrinal definitions, identify themselves as evangelicals.  

Add these three factors and it would be easier to see why more than 80% evangelicals regularly vote for the Republican Party even when the party leadership has regularly supported racist and anti-immigrant policies. President Trump's nomination, election, and continued popularity among evangelicals show that the political choices of evangelical voters (who are mostly white) are informed as much by race as they are by religion. 

A previous blog post discusses in detail the debate over how to define an evangelical and whether self-identification (which is the way most political polls identify evangelicals) is the right way to identify evangelicals, so we will not explore these issues here (for those who want to read about it: Who are evangelical Christians?). 

Here are two articles that explain the link of evangelism, race and voting behavior. 

The FiveThirtyEight article How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? contends that race and President Trump are dividing evangelicals or exacerbating their differences:

 America’s community of self-described evangelicals, about a fourth of the population, is increasingly divided between a more conservative, Trump-aligned bloc deeply worried about losing the so-called culture wars; and a bloc that is more liberal on issues like immigration, conscious of the need to appeal to nonwhite Christians and wary of the president. The split in evangelical Christianity isn’t new, but it appears to be widening under Trump. 

Two factors appear to be driving this divide. First, the number of white evangelicals is in decline in America at the same time that the evangelical population is becoming more racially diverse. According to 2016 data from the Public Religion Research Institute, about 64 percent of evangelicals are non-Hispanic white, compared to about 68 percent in 2006... 

And these nonwhite evangelicals see politics differently than white evangelicals. While the largest plurality of white evangelicals identify as Republicans, most black evangelicals are Democrats. A plurality of evangelical Latinos, in contrast, identify as political independents — and they’re less supportive of the Democratic Party than Latinos overall — but they are still more likely to consider themselves Democrats than Republicans.

Source: How Trump And Race Are Splitting Evangelicals? 

The second factor driving this divide among evangelicals is Trump himself. His governing style is, in effect, forcing evangelical leaders to choose between embracing the white evangelicals who overwhelmingly support the president or distancing themselves from the president — and even politics generally — as part of an appeal to their diversifying congregations.

The Religion & Politics essay We Are All Evangelicals Now blames a "sense of “racial embattlement," the belief that one's group faces more discrimination than any other group in the US, for the voting pattern of evangelicals, who are mostly white. The author, Janelle Wong, argues that evangelicals are not outliers and their views are close to those of white Americans as white Americans also feel being discriminated against. The only difference is intensity, "Evangelicals embody U.S. racial attitudes on steroids." Wong concludes the essay by focusing on narratives of white persecution: 

The bottom line is that the racial divides and racial anxieties we see in evangelical America are not so different from the views of white Americans more generally. I speculate that these attitudes are more extreme than those of other white Americans because their fears of demographic change are even more exaggerated than other whites. A narrative of religious persecution runs deep in white evangelical theological circles. Believers expect to be attacked for their religious commitments. Hence, their defenses may be easily raised by “the War on Christmas.” Narratives of persecution have primed them to expect a broad cultural assault, despite the fact that white Christians face the least religious persecution of any religious group in the United States. These fears of religious persecution, unfounded or not, interact in an especially potent way with fears of racial embattlement to produce the political conservatism detailed above. That being said, the racial patterns we observe among evangelicals are more intense, but consistent with the racial patterns that define the country as a whole. In this respect, we all share something very deep with evangelicals.

Trump, Merry Christmas and White Christian Nationalism

Here are few articles on President Trump's focus on Christmas and "war on Christmas."

Independent informed the readers about Trump's ending the "war on Christmas":

For those who felt they needed the President's permission, Donald Trump has declared: "We can say Merry Christmas again."

Mr Trump repeatedly vowed during his campaign to end the so-called “war on Christmas", a commonly held belief among many of the President’s Christian supporters.
His comment came during a speech celebrating the passage of the tax reform bill.

Some of Mr Trump's supporters have felt that saying the more neutral and inclusive “happy holidays” to mark celebrations of Hannukah, Eid, or other holidays taking place around the same time, has undermined the Christian majority in the country.
The "war" extends to some feeling as if political correctness is a forced and unnecessary social practice as well. 

Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University told CNN that Mr Trump “is no one's idea as an evangelical Christian, but he is very much using the same rhetoric as the war on Christmas...And it fits very much into his worldview that the people he's representing have been left behind by this liberal society".

Mr Trump claimed on the campaign trail that Americans would say “Merry Christmas in every store” during his presidency, implying that the phrase had gone out of use. (read the article Donald Trump announces 'we can say Merry Christmas again')

The CNN informed its readers that almost one in three adult Americans are bothered by at least some degree by the declining emphasis on religion in the way Americans celebrate Christmas:

Did President Donald Trump live up to his promise to end the "war on Christmas"? Depends on who you ask.
While some would quibble with the very idea that a war on the holiday exists, recent polling does suggest that the Christian nature of Christmas is less culturally prevalent than in the past.

A Pew Research Center survey, published last week, found that most US adults believe the religious aspects of the holiday are emphasized less now than they used to be. But overall, just 31% of adults said "they are bothered at least 'some' by the declining emphasis on religion in the way the U.S. commemorates Christmas."
Meanwhile, the "remaining two-thirds of the U.S. public either is not bothered by a perceived decline in religion in Christmas or does not believe that the emphasis on the religious elements of Christmas is waning," according to the Pew poll.

Throughout his presidential campaign -- and during his first year in office -- Trump emphasized he would "make Christmas great again" by ending the "war on Christmas," a concept that is the revival of a quintessential conservative culture war.
"If I become president, we're going to be saying Merry Christmas at every store," he promised supporters in 2015, among the many times he made such a yuletide pledge.
Fast-forward to October 2017 -- two months ahead of the annual holiday -- and Trump repeated such rhetoric at the Values Voter Summit. "Guess what?" the President told those gathered. "We're saying 'Merry Christmas' again."

His Christmas rhetoric -- and interest in making speeches in front of Christmas trees -- has inspired everything from "Saturday Night Live" sketches to merchandise (there is an official "Make Christmas Merry" hat sold on the Trump campaign website, and dozens of Trump-inspired Christmas-themed sweaters on websites such as Etsy and Amazon).
The Pew survey suggests that while most Americans still celebrate Christmas, the way they think about and commemorate the holiday appears to be moving in a more secular direction.
About 55% of US adults "say they celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, including 46% who see it as more of a religious holiday than a cultural holiday and 9% who celebrate Christmas as both a religious and a cultural occasion." That's slightly down 4 percentage points from 2013, when 59% of Americans said they celebrated Christmas as a religious holiday, including 51% who saw it as more religious than cultural.

A vast majority of Americans — including 56% of Republicans — say the "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays" debate is "made up" and not a "real issue," according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. (Read the article In his 1st year in office, did Trump end the 'war on Christmas'?)

Newsweek article reminds the readers that Nazis also used Christmas to promote a divisive nationalism, albeit Trump does not promote genocide or violence against minorities like Nazis:

Trump isn’t the first political figure in history to co-opt Christmas. In fact, some see parallels between Trump’s speeches in front of Christmas trees and attempts by authoritarian regimes like the Nazis to manipulate popular celebrations to promote a political ideology. But by weaponizing Christmas in this way, Trump is bringing a dangerous tradition of politicizing religious holidays into the United States, one expert says.  

“Because Americans have enjoyed a relatively stable political system, Christmas in the U.S. has been relatively immune to the overt politicization of the holiday,” Joe Perry told Newsweek. He is the author of the book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History, which examines the way Nazis used Christmas to spread fascism.

“But not completely immune. The far right’s engagement in the ‘war on Christmas’ explicitly posits that there is one single true or correct Christmas. The holiday’s true nature is somehow under threat from outsiders and liberals who act as forces of degradation, multiculturalism and secularization,” Perry continued.

In this context, Trump has been using the so-called war on Christmas to wage a culture war that pits multicultural liberals against Christian conservatives. He began doing this long before Christmas. Meanwhile, some members of the religious right support Trump’s most nationalist, race-baiting form of political rhetoric, including his reclaiming of Christmas.
Likewise, Nazi Germany’s propagandists rooted their idea of Christmas in visions of ethno-nationalism. They rewrote the lyrics of Christmas carols, promoted Nazified holiday traditions and launched numerous Christmas charity events for poor Germans. The ultimate goal was to draw a clear line between those who belonged and those who should be excluded and not benefit from the joys of Christmas.

Trump’s rhetoric differs from that of Nazi Germany’s, most notably because he has never advocated genocide. But Trump’s talk about Christmas coexists with re-emerging white identity politics, Randy Blazak, a sociology professor who studies white nationalism, told Newsweek.

“Committed white nationalists love Trump’s bring back Christmas campaign almost as much as evangelicals,” he said. “His followers see this as gospel and a rebuking of multiculturalism and political correctness, and the growing influence of Jews, Muslims, atheists and other non-WASPs.”

President Donald Trump signs a proclamation in front of a Christmas tree, as Vice President Mike Pence stands behind him

Source: How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism

Perry said that Trump hasn’t gone nearly as far as the Nazis in promoting his vision of the holidays, and he sees major flaws in describing Trump as a Nazi-like figure. But there are some clear parallels.

“Trump and the Nazis share aspects of race baiting and perhaps broader aspects of extreme conservatism—many political ideologies do,” Perry said.

“Frankly, I’m not sure how far Trump himself is willing to go to use the holiday to promote anti-Muslim or anti-minority visions of America, or if he even really understands what he is doing with his ‘merry Christmas’ tirades.” (Read the article How Trump and the Nazis stole Christmas to promote White nationalism)

Religious nationalism in the US is foundational and one should be wary of Trump's rise

Jack Jenkins's Historians of Christian nationalism are alarmed by its appearance in American pulpits

A lesson on the dangers to the United States article in Think Progress is informative and warns Americans about what can happen. Christian nationalism is nothing new to the US and countries, like Germany between world wars, have some similarities with the present day US, although there are certainly many differences as well. Following are few excerpts of the article:

Christian nationalism isn’t just common in America. It’s foundational.

At least that’s the argument Aeon editor and former Harvard Society fellow Sam Haselby makes in his book The Origins of American Religious Nationalism, in which he insists American Christian nationalism is an inescapable part our national political discourse. He points to some of the earliest revolutionaries as proof: A band of (apparently laughably bad) poets calling themselves Connecticut Wits were among the first to protest for American independence, calling for a society that was “hierarchical, theological, and anti-racist” in nature.

“[Christian nationalism is] an old debate, as old as the United States itself,” Haselby wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

Granted, the Connecticut Wit social framework didn’t win out against its eventual rival, the so-called Jeffersonian or Virginia model of American identity, which Haselby describes as ultimately “evangelical, egalitarian, and racist.” But like the savior they worship, religious nationalism would not die. As the United States evolved, Haselby says two Protestant Christian ideological frameworks — which he calls “national evangelicalism” and “frontier revivalism” — began to vie for power. Their intellectual dimensions are complex, but the result of their feud was the creation of a shared political rhetoric Haselby describes as religious nationalism, primary articulated through the lens of Protestant Christianity.

The scholar differentiates his definition of Christian nationalism from more contemporary iterations by pointing to three defining (but broad) characteristics.
“Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the ‘political religion of the nation,'”

The first is the almost sacred status Americans often bestow upon the Founding Fathers and the nation’s founding documents. In 1838, for instance, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln called on his fellow countrymen to revere American revolutionaries and the U.S. Constitution as part of the “political religion of the nation,” which he argued should be “breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe…taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges…let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls.”

Haselby says this reverence for historical figures is unusual when compared to other industrialized states in Europe, where “founders” in the American sense are an alien concept.

“There is no counterpart in, say, Britain,” he said in an interview with ThinkProgress. “The figure that comes closest to that is probably Winston Churchill.”
The second feature of American religious nationalism, Haselby says, is the fact that leaders of U.S. social movements often invoke what he calls the “Jeremiad” narrative, or the idea that their political cause is in keeping with the spirit of America’s founding. The third facet is the most obvious: The undeniable prevalence of religious rhetoric or “God talk” in political spaces, no matter which party is in power.

“There’s a lot of liberals and progressive people who theologize,” he said. “When it comes to nationality, Americans are people of the word. They’re textual exegetes, whether they’re liberal or conservative.”

It’s easy to find evidence of these tendencies—sometimes described as our country’s “civil religion”—in modern American political disputes. Fervent debates over what is “constitutional” have defined Trump’s young presidency, with advocates on all sides invoking founding documents in ways that can resemble a theological discussion. Trump supporters and “resistance” activists alike insist their movement carried the torch of liberty lit by the Founders. And appeals to the Almighty were present at both the RNC and the DNC this year, with the latter arguably more overtly religious than the former.

Moment of prayer after Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the US Supreme Court

Source: The US President official twitter account

Robert Ericksen, a historian and professor at Pacific Lutheran University, has written about Christians active participation in Adolf Hitler’s rise in his book Complicity in the Holocaust: Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany. Hitler was a product of Christian nationalism and Professor  Ericksen wants to learn from that era.

Direct conflations between Nazi Germany and U.S. politics are prone to gross hyperbole, and Erickson was quick to list a number of differences between the modern political moment and the rise of the Third Reich. 1930s Germany, for instance, was still reeling from a humiliating defeat during World War I while also enduring the Great Depression—neither of which are directly applicable to the United States in 2017. And while Trump-supporting Nazi sympathizers have made news in recent days, virtually none have any major institutional faith affiliation.

But Ericksen argues the past is meant to inform the present, which is likely why he was one of the first scholars to point to broad parallels between Trump’s Christian nationalist supporters and those that backed the infamous German dictator.

In a Huffington Post op-ed published in September of 2016, Ericksen observed that evangelicals were already falling in line behind the businessman despite his questionable ethics during the campaign—and observed similarities between their fervor and that of 1930s German Christians. Like modern American Christians, these Germans emerged out of a deeply Christian Europe, where religious nationalism was embedded in many cultures. Although obviously distinct from Haselby’s understanding of faith-fueled political discourse, fusions of faith and politics permeated German society in ways not altogether dissimilar from American “civil religion.”

“To be loyal to God and country was a very powerful emotion and a common slogan,” Ericksen said.
“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,”

There are also eerily familiar cultural factors that accelerated Hitler’s rise—including appeals to what modern observers might describe as “family values.” The infusion of women into the workplace during and after World War I altered traditional perceptions of gender roles, for instance, and the forced imposition of democracy on Germany as a byproduct of losing the war didn’t sit well with many citizens.
“All of these things were perceived by the Christian community as a moral breakdown,” he said. “Democracy we believed to have encouraged that moral breakdown, because democracy believed in political equality.”

What’s more, the relatively few residents who were able to celebrate aspects of the “roaring 20s”—dance halls, the emergence of the movie industry, and a “more open sense to people having a moral right to express themselves”—suddenly became targets.
“They were perceived as not accepting Christian values and standards,” Ericksen explained. “They were aggressively blamed for pornography and prostitution.”
The result was broad support for Hitler’s rise to power among German Christians and their leaders, some of whom took their devotion to an extreme. Hitler’s numerous flaws were often explained away or, in some cases, replaced with complete fabrications about his faith.

Interweaving authoritarianism with American-style Christian nationalism isn’t just theoretical: it’s happened before.

“There was a widespread belief in Germany among Christians that Hitler kept a copy of the New Testament in his breast pocket, and he read from it every day—which was completely false,” Ericksen said. “[Hitler] was happy to nurture or not confront those kind of misconceptions, because he wanted that kind of Christian support. And the Christians were so willing to bend over backwards — they accepted or in some ways maybe even invented explanations of how he could be a real Christian leader.”

By the time his power crescendoed, the difference between Hitler and religious leaders was almost nonexistent. The most extreme form of Christian nationalism had taken hold.
“There were a lot of comparisons to [famous theologian] Martin Luther, who was, up until then, probably the biggest German hero,” he said. “He saved Germany or created Protestantism by his response to the Bible and God’s word, and now Hitler had come along to save Germany in this time of need in a different way—but still according to God’s will.”

Ericksen pointed out that Christians did this even as Hitler exhibited behavior to contrary—much as Christian nationalists have publicly ignored Trump’s attacks on the press, democratic institutions, and other evangelical faith leaders. And even if Trump ultimately has little in common with Hitler, Ericksen noted that Trump has more dangerous weapons in his arsenal—weapons Christian nationalists such as Robert Jeffress has proclaimed God gave him the authority to use.
“In the end, Trump could be more dangerous than Hitler, because Trump has the nuclear option,” he said.

Robes, hoods and burning crosses of KKK: Artifacts of white supremacy and religious nationalism

Was the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) inspired by religious nationalism? A study of the KKK artifacts certainly seems to answer 'yes' to this question.

An artifact (or artefact in British English) is an artificial/manmade product as opposed to a natural product. According to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Aristotle first made this distinction. Since artefacts are made, they have a maker and a purpose. Researchers learn about a society by analyzing its cultural artifacts as they reveal not only the intentions of their makers but also provide information about the specific functions they used to perform in that society.

Kelly J. Baker in her amazing article The Artifacts of White Supremacy enlightens the readers about the purpose/meaning of the things associated with the extremist, white supremacist American organization KKK. Religion or more specifically Protestant religion formed a very significant part of the how the KKK understood itself and the purpose of burning crosses, robes and hoods was directly linked with their understanding of God, nation and the Protestant religion. For instance, Ms Baker informs that the revival of the KKK in 1915 started because of a vision that was thought to be divinely-inspired:

The second Ku Klux Klan (1915-1930) began with a dream. William J. Simmons, an ex-Methodist minister, fraternal organizer, and founder and eventual Imperial Wizard of the Klan’s Invisible Empire, claimed that his recreation of the Klan began with a vision on a summer night in Alabama. As he looked out a window, Simmons saw “something mysterious and strange in the sky”: horses “galloping across the horizon” with riders dressed in white robes. Then, “a rough outline of the United States appeared as the background.” Simmons watched as each “big problem” in “American life” shifted across the celestial map, and he “fell to his knees and offered a prayer to God.” He prayed 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.”

These heroes were the members of the first Klan that flourished between 1865 and 1870. Simmons believed the earlier Klansmen fought for the vanquished (white, Protestant) nation, helped restore the divinely-ordained racial order and saved the nation from the iniquitous and malicious Reconstruction forced on the South by the North. 

His religious visions and adoration of those first Klansmen, as well as the theatrical release and popularity of Birth of a Nation (1915), led Simmons to create the second Klan, a fraternity dedicated not only to white supremacy and social order but also nationalism and religious faith. On November 25, 1915, Simmons and 16 men climbed atop Stone Mountain, Georgia and lit a large wooden cross on fire. At midnight on that Thanksgiving night, these men pledged allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, American ideals, and “the tenets of the Christian religion.”.....

It’s noteworthy that Simmons’ vision included figures in robes and that the order started with a fiery cross. These are the most recognizable objects of the Klan past and present. His retelling of that vision and recreation of the order points toward an often-overlooked part of the history of the 1920s Klan: the reliance on artifacts in the order’s daily operations, meetings, naturalizations, marches, picnics, and other public events. These artifacts communicated the order’s ideals—Christianity, white supremacy, and patriotism—as well as their vision of America as a nation created and maintained solely for white Protestants.

Artifacts of the KKK

The artifacts of the KKK, like artifacts of other historical organizations, have remained the same but their meaning has changed over the years. Furthermore, the meaning of the artifacts for the KKK was  quite different than what was perceived by others:

Yet, the meaning of an object is never settled, and often the story the Klan wanted objects to tell was not the one that everyone else heard. Robes, fiery crosses, and the American flag ended up telling competing narratives about the Klan’s idealized vision of white Protestant America and their promotion of intolerance and racism. The Klan couldn’t control how other people interpreted their actions or their objects, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

In the following section, excerpts from the article are reproduced to highlight the meaning of the different KKK artifacts. It is clear that the meaning of all these different artefacts was/is religiously-inspired.

White Robes

The infamous white uniforms were, and continue to be, the most distinctive feature of the Klan. The Reconstruction Klan created the distinctive outfit: long, white robes decorated with various occult symbols and tall hoods with aprons, or masks.7 The uniforms evoked the ghosts of the Confederate dead, and Klansmen employed them to terrify African Americans and sympathetic white people. The 1920s Klan adopted the uniform from the Reconstruction Klan, but also changed it to mimic the Klansmen in Birth of a Nation.  

Imperial Wizard Simmons admitted that his initial purpose in adopting robes “was to keep in grateful remembrance the intrepid men who preserved Anglo-Saxon supremacy in the South during . . . Reconstruction.” However, the uniform’s importance grew and its meaning changed....No longer a ghoulish disguise, the robes became a sacred object....

According to an Exalted Cyclops (a Klan leader) from Texas, Klansmen wore “this white robe to signify the desire to put on that white robe which is the righteousness of Christ, in that Empire Invisible, that lies out beyond the vale of death.” Putting on their uniforms, then, commemorated the life and death of Jesus. 

But more than that, to wear the robes was to wear Christ’s example on one’s body, to embody it. Each robed Klansman wasn’t supposed to appear terrifying, frightening, or dangerous, but Christ-like. The theology of the robes tried to counter the violent legacy of the robes’ use in the Reconstruction Klan’s terrorism. Klansmen imagined themselves as Christian Knights, who supposedly were beyond the violent legacy of the artifact.

Hoods

The mask concealed the members’ faces, wiped away the last traces of the individual, and allowed each Klansman to become part of the larger Klan community. While the mask protected the identities of members, the Klan also claimed that it symbolized the Klan’s dedication to selflessness. In the minds of the order’s leadership, each individual Klansman sacrificed a sense of self to become an active and valued member of the order.

The motto of the Klan—“not for self, but others”—was realized in the indistinguishable multitude. The Klan claimed that if the uniform terrified, it was only because the robes and mask conjured images of Christianity, Americanism, and white supremacy. The enemies of nation, particularly the Klan’s vision of the nation, would have rightly felt terror upon glimpsing the hooded Klansmen because of what they stood for. The uniforms did represent exclusion, after all. Unsurprisingly, the order favored its own interpretation of the Klansman’s uniform as an artifact of Christian brotherhood and selfless service rather than outsiders’ claims about terror and intimidation.

Source: White supremacist says KKK group recruiting around Ohio

American Flag

In the Klan’s story, the flag became a powerful artifact created by a people’s love of their nation. The American flag, particularly, was an emblem of not only patriotic devotion but also the freedom and liberty of Americans granted by the founders. It was the physical symbol of the peculiar history and destiny of Americans, particularly white Americans....
For the Reverend W.C. Wright, a Klan minister, the flag was “purchased by the blood and suffering of American heroes,” which was the “price paid for American liberties.”...

The Kourier, a Klan national newspaper, demonstrated how faith was also a key component of the flag. The red stripes manifested patriotic devotion, even if this required “the shedding of blood.” The monthly noted, “We love Jesus because He shed his blood for us, and we love the Flag because it represents the blood shed for our freedom.” The stars in the field of blue came to represent “Him [God] Who is back of the stars in Heaven above.” The Kourier continued, “We may not all understand God alike, but we do believe there is a God, and we must admit that the bases of America’s Laws are the great moral laws of God. When any man turns his back on God [,] he turns his back on the Flag.”

For the Klan, belief in God was essential to citizenship. Yet, the Kourier wasn’t promoting a universal God that would be inclusive of citizens of all faiths, but rather understood Christianity as essential to Americanism. The monthly continued, “Pure Americanism can only be secured by confidence in the fact that the Cross of Jesus Christ is the wisest and strongest force in existence.” For the editorial staff of the Kourier, American nationalism couldn’t exist without Christianity. Under the Star-Spangled Banner, Americans might claim unity, but the Klan’s unity was narrowly limited to those people they thought qualified as truly American—only white Protestants.

KKK in Washington DC in 1925

Source: A Turbulent Decade The Twenties

The Cross (on flag and robes)

A deep red patch on the chest interrupts its [robes'] whiteness. Inside the patch resides a cross with a teardrop shape in its center. The cross symbolized the order’s commitment to Christianity while the teardrop symbolized the blood Jesus shed to redeem humanity... 

The cross, which also appeared on Klan uniforms, echoed the order’s Protestantism and the magnitude of Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice. Interestingly, most Protestants viewed the cross as a potent symbol of “Romanism” until the middle of the nineteenth century, and Protestant churches avoided the object as a symbol of their faith.21 Despite the cross’s ambivalent history, the Klan claimed it was “the symbol of heaven’s richest gift and earth’s greatest tragedy.”....

The wooden artifact became a memorial of Christ’s debt, clearly attached to the Klansman’s version of Jesus. An Iowa Klansman wrote a poem about the fiery cross, claiming its light revealed that God controlled the universe. Its flames guaranteed that God would “redeem and regenerate the world.” For this particular Klansman, the cross promised that a “good” Klan would triumph over any “evil”: immigration, alcohol, threats to the public school, attacks on Protestantism, Catholicism, Bolshevism, and Judaism to name several. The Klan emerged as a force of good that would triumph in an increasingly unsafe world.

The Fiery (Burning) Cross

Imperial Wizard Simmons added the fiery cross to 1920s Klan’s rituals, but it was Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman (1905) that introduced the idea of the burning crosses as a part of Reconstruction Klan’s mythology. In the novel, the burning cross was a tool for Klansmen to communicate with each other, an attempt to connect the order to the Scottish clans of lore and larger history of Anglo-Saxons. The 1920s Klan adopted the artifact for ritual and as a warning....

For the Klan, the fire signified that Christ was “the light of the world” that vanquished darkness and evil. It was a beacon of truth given for Klansmen alone. An Exalted Cyclops [a Klan leader from Texas] reflected:  ‘Who can look upon this sublime symbol, or sit in its sacred, holy light without being inspired with a holy desire and determination to be better man? By this sign we conquer.’ The Klan leader believed the fiery cross helped Klansmen become better men and confirmed that they were Knights ready to conquer forces that opposed their nation.

To conquer, or re-conquer, the nation for Protestantism, white supremacy, and “100% Americanism” was a clear aim of the Klan. Perhaps Christ’s light did emanate from the burning cross, but lifting up the fiery cross as a central symbol of the Klan was also an attempt to “rally the forces of Christianity” to take back the nation. Conquering required purging the “hordes of the anti-Christ” and the “enemies” of Americanism from America.26 The cross served as beacon and warning. For Klansmen, its glow provided comfort, but for those “enemies,” the fire terrified.

Source: The Artifacts of White Supremacy