The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

The Ku Klux Klan (or KKK) has had three major iterations as an organization. The first came immediately after the Civil War. Six men in Pulaski, Tennessee, organized a “hilarious social” club to “have fun, make mischief, and play pranks on the public,” calling themselves the Klan.15 Within a few months the Klan turned violent, and their objective shifted to keeping whites in power by resisting Reconstruction efforts. In April 1871, the vigilante violence had become so unruly that Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act, fining or imprisoning anyone who “shall conspire together, or go in disguise upon the public highway or upon the premises of another for the purpose of . . . depriving any person or any class of persons of the equal protection of the laws.”16 Forrest sat for a Congressional hearing about his involvement with the KKK, and he apparently told a reporter, “I lied like a gentleman.”17 The next movement of the Ku Klux Klan was in the early twentieth century. It did not focus on opposing Reconstruction, since Reconstruction had already failed. Instead, it fused Christianity, nationalism, and white supremacy into a toxic ideology of hate. In The Gospel According to the Klan, Kelly Baker argues that the Klan cannot be understood apart from its unique interpretation of Protestantism. The Klan of the early twentieth century “was not just an order to defend America but also a campaign to protect and celebrate Protestantism. It was a religious order.”18 Facing rising waves...