Blog | Is South Carolina’s Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Christian? Is ISIS Islamic? Who gets to decide?
When I was growing up, I remember rumors about the Ku Klux Klan, and the reality of the group, which sometimes included marches down our streets or in nearby towns. The last KKK march I remember was held in the summer of 1990 in downtown Charleston. It was a pitiful-looking group, with most of the members looking malnourished and poverty-stricken, so much so that it unnerved and made me feel more sorry than angry with them.
But the group has a long, bloody history in the U.S., which began after the Civil War. The KKK was founded by former Confederate soldiers and over much of the next century unleashed daily terrorism against mostly black people, but also Jews, white people who helped or befriended black people, and a few other groups they declared undesirable.
The kind of terrorism it unleashed throughout much of the South was in a real way much worse than what we face today. Unlike in the 21st century, those terrorists were our neighbors and sat on juries and wore black robes during court proceedings during the day and white hoods at night. They were bankers and business owners and teachers and governors and teachers.
The KKK was very much part of the Southern power structure, which is why it should come as no surprise that the group, and those who held similar views, was able to lynch thousands of (mostly) black Americans with little recourse. Many of those murderers never faced justice.
That’s the background many of us are familiar with. But in the aftermath of the awful terror attack in France, the question about the danger of Islam has come back once again, led by South Carolina’s senior U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham.
We are in a religious war, Graham said.
Not sure how he plans to fight Islam, but I digress.
ISIS claims that it is doing its nasty deeds in the name of Islam, as have the people who killed the French cartoonists.
That, according to Americans on the left and right, is evidence that Islam is at the heart of the terrorism we are witnessing.
Question: If bad actors can define Islam, can they also define Christianity?
South Carolina is home to a group called the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terror group that goes back about a century and a half.
If ISIS is Islam, why isn’t the KKK Christian?
That alone should put to rest the lie that people don’t do awful things in the name of Christianity, or as Christians. But there are other examples.
Eric Rudolph set off a bomb at the 1996 summer Olympics in Atlanta. There have been people who shot and killed abortion doctors.
The architect of the worst domestic terror attack before 9-11 was not a Muslim extremist - but a man bathed in the Christian faith.
A Christian beheaded someone in America last year, even though there was more coverage when a recent Muslim convert did.
Let’s not forget that a self-described “cultural Christian” orchestrated the horrific terror attacks in Norway.
So I’ll ask again:
If ISIS gets to define Islam, why can’t the KKK define Christianity? Graham wants to declare a religious war against Islam today. Should civil rights leaders in the ‘60s have declared war against Christianity? Remember, Christians were on both sides of the civil rights movement and the fight against domestic terror then just as Muslims are on both sides of what’s happening today.
Or maybe we shouldn’t allow bad actors to define either group?
This story was originally published January 12, 2015 at 11:54 AM with the headline "Blog | Is South Carolina’s Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Christian? Is ISIS Islamic? Who gets to decide?."