by Edward J. Blum
“Get anything good for Christmas?” a friend nonchalantlyasked several days after J.C.’s birthday. My enthusiastic response, “Oh yeah, abook on the Klan; was actually reading it Sunday morning listening to acousticsunrise,” was met with irritation in the form of disinterest. The friend didn’treally care what I had received, and he didn’t really want to entertain aconversation about the Klan. He shot back, “weird.” I, of course, was blind tohis hopes for distance and pressed in. “It’s really neat, the author takesseriously the religious ideas of the Klan – from their white robes to theirsense of American history and exceptionalism.” Sadly, the conversation went theway most of mine go with non-academics. The harder I tried for him to see how fascinatingthis was, he just didn’t care, and once again retorted, “yeah, just soundsweird.” At this point, I got it and turned the conversation to a religiousinterest everyone seemed to share: Tim Tebow and the magical run of the DenverBroncos.
“Get anything good for Christmas?” a friend nonchalantlyasked several days after J.C.’s birthday. My enthusiastic response, “Oh yeah, abook on the Klan; was actually reading it Sunday morning listening to acousticsunrise,” was met with irritation in the form of disinterest. The friend didn’treally care what I had received, and he didn’t really want to entertain aconversation about the Klan. He shot back, “weird.” I, of course, was blind tohis hopes for distance and pressed in. “It’s really neat, the author takesseriously the religious ideas of the Klan – from their white robes to theirsense of American history and exceptionalism.” Sadly, the conversation went theway most of mine go with non-academics. The harder I tried for him to see how fascinatingthis was, he just didn’t care, and once again retorted, “yeah, just soundsweird.” At this point, I got it and turned the conversation to a religiousinterest everyone seemed to share: Tim Tebow and the magical run of the DenverBroncos.
I’ve had enough conversations with non-academics who seem togo into snooze mode when I invade their worlds with the past, but I still feltsad that my pal would rather talk about a mediocre quarterback for a mediocreteam than about heritages of hate and what they mean for our nation. But evenmore, I was bummed that my friend did not want to understand that what we thinkabout “religion” influences even stories like that of young man Tebow.
Of course, the book I was trying to tell my friend about wasKelly Baker’s Gospel According to theKlan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930. I don’t want torehearse its main arguments here – how GospelAccording to the Klan looks not just at what the Klan was against, but alsoat what they were for, how it showcases the ways in which their whiteProtestant nationalism pervaded their sense of manliness, femininity, andhistory, or how the Klan’s print culture was so crucial to their sense ofidentity and imagination. Those are all excellently fleshed out in the book andshown so nicely through the Klan’s public writings.
What I would like to draw our attention to is how ProfessorBaker’s study and a slightly older book, Tisa Wenger’s fantastic We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (2009), provide anotherlayer of religious division and redefinition during the 1920s. Wenger showsthat the 1920s conflicts over Pueblo dances became moments when notions of“religion” collided. For the United States government, religion was somethingdistinct and somewhat separable from other spheres of life, but many Pueblo hadno sense of that division. As white modernists who were sympathetic to thePueblo rallied to their side, they helped create the idea that the Indian danceswere “religious” and hence should be protected against federal legislation bythe First Amendment. Yet by forcing American governmental approaches toreligion upon the issue and by defining one aspect of Pueblo behavior asreligious, they helped sever the totality of Pueblo life into supposedlydiscreet parts (religion, land, politics, society, etc.) Thereafter, Nativeclaims to land, remains, or treaty recognitions have been battled on the legaland religious terrain established by the American government.We all know the 1920s as a time of religious dissension anddebate. Modernists and Fundamentalists raged against one another; Bryan andDarrow battled at the “trial of the century” in a small Tennessee town; SisterAimee Semple McPherson polarized the West with flappers and Pentecostals on oneside and liberals and the mainline on the other. Together, Baker and Wenger addanother layer – the layer of religion itself. In both cases, the verydefinition of “religion” was up for grabs. In Baker’s case, contemporaries ofthe Klan tried to demolish them as non-Christian or as makers of a false faith.The Klan tried hard to create a viable religious worldview, and for an“Invisible Empire,” they sure made it visible in their print culture and publicperformances. For Wenger’s folks, Native American life had to be atomized sothat certain elements could be construed as religious. By obtaining a“religion,” the Pueblo had to give up some of their definitional control.
So to my friend who would rather talk Tebow than Klan robes,I understand. It is less mentally strenuous to debate the case of Tim Tebow –whether accuracy is as important as admiration, whether completion percentagesmatter more than charismatic personhood, or whether we should privilegecomebacks over Christian being. But if we want to get to the core of Tebow orany other fascination rendered “religious” in America, we can get a little helpfrom our friends Kelly Baker and Tisa Wenger. See you all in Chicago.
