Issac Bailey | Evil, in the name of Jesus

For awhile now, I’ve been asking people a simple question.

If the terrorist organization ISIL is Islamic, and represents something profound about that faith, does the same standard apply to Christianity and the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan?

I haven’t gotten many good answers, or any direct ones, actually.

I’ve usually posed the question to people who most adamantly believe that because ISIL said it is adhering to its faith, the group’s members must be true Muslims.

“Islam is right there, in their name!” they shout.

That clarity of conviction disappears when talk turns to the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a group that had long operated in South Carolina, inflicting terror on black residents, those who supported them and others deemed undesirables.

The Christian Knights were defanged in the mid-1990s - yes, ‘90s, not ‘60s - when the Southern Poverty Law Center won a more than $20 million settlement for victims of black church burning. The group reportedly is still in existence somewhere in North Carolina.

Odd, I know, that a group calling itself Christian was known for destroying churches and ISIL kills more Muslims than members of any other group.

Go to the KKK’s website and you’ll find this message from national director Pastor Thomas Robb:

"Keep loving your heritage and keep witnessing to others that there is a better way than a war torn, violent, wicked, socialist, new world order. That way is the Christian way - law and order - love of family - love of nation. These are the principles of western Christian civilization. There is a war to destroy these things. Pray that our people see the error of their ways and regain a sense of loyalty. Repent America! Be faithful my fellow believers. "

After the Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage in Alabama this past week, Brett Waller, the imperial wizard of the United Dixie White Knights reportedly said this:

“We as white Christians intend to see that no outside agitators bully or intimidate the white Christian majority in the state of Alabama.”

Top members of the Confederacy used the Bible as the moral underpinning for its belief in black slavery. They believed it was God-ordained and the right way for Christians to live.

Atrocities through the Civil Rights era - hanging men from trees after cutting off their genatils, burning men alive - were often done in the name of Christianity.

Those scars have not left us. People who survived that era of domestic terror are still alive. As a senior in high school in 1990, I witnessed a klan rally in downtown Charleston.

Then there’s Eric Rudolph who set off a bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and men who shot abortion doctors in the name of Christ and others who use Christianity to cause a different kind of harm, to keep people they deem less than as second-class citizens.

In the fall of 2011, President Obama sent 100 military advisers to central Africa to help combat a group that called itself the Lord’s Resistance Army, which used the Christian Bible to justify atrocities and wanted to set up a society based on the 10 Commandments.

From a New York Times article detailing how conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh defended the terror group by claiming that Obama was sending troops to kill Christians:

“As Reuters reports, Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, initially attracted supporters in northern Uganda’s Acholiland in the late 1980s ‘with a creed based on a mix of mysticism and apocalyptic Christianity. Over the years the L.R.A. become known for chilling violence including what human rights groups say were the abductions of thousands for use as child soldiers or sex slaves, brutal club and machete attacks on victims.’”

A man in Florida with “strong Christian” beliefs who was said to have been watching YouTube videos about the Book of Matthew almost decapitated another man with a sword.

That happened late last year.

I’ve investigated people who’ve sold poor people used mobile homes and mortgages that resulted in a kind of financial slavery - after visiting their churches and telling them they do what they do because of Jesus.

Does he, and the others listed, represent true Christianity? Or something else?

If the men of ISIL who behead and burn people alive in the name of Allah are true Muslims, are those who do horrible things while talking up their love of Jesus true Christians?

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 11:40 AM with the headline "Issac Bailey | Evil, in the name of Jesus."