Faith Works 3-3-23

Faith Works 3-3-23
Jeff Gill

To preach the word, in season and out
___

In 1923, as February ended and March begins, the minister of Valparaiso's First Christian Church in northwest Indiana is under fire from a major national organization that has suddenly exploded in numbers around the Midwest; our best information is from the March 9 edition of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana's weekly publication, with a March 5 dateline.

Rev. C.E. Burns opposed allowing the Klan to hold a program on Wednesday in the church's auditorium. On Feb. 27, the board met, and supported the minister over the Klan, but by a vote of 12 to 9. Not exactly a ringing endorsement. On March 4 he preached a message of opposition to the Klan's methods and agenda, while asking for cooperation on the areas where they did not disagree.

Again, we only have the Klan's side of the story here. But their indignation at being opposed, and their barely veiled thuggishness at the future of Rev. Burns's ministry, is clear. They aren't used to opposition of any sort.

For wider context, the Klan will hold a rally hosting tens of thousands in May and another with hundreds of thousands in attendance a few weeks later in nearby Kokomo. Klan candidates will sweep statewide elections in November.

Those impending events give us some sense of the pressures building, and what it meant to take any kind of public stand against a relatively new organization locally, but one not only growing, but making moves to purchase major institutions like Valparaiso University. Publicity about a collection to complete that sale would be a major feature of the May & July Klan rallies in Indiana; while all reports indicate much money was donated, somehow the closing payment never arrived, and VU would not be sold to the Klan but to the Lutheran University Association in 1925.

On my list of today's impacts of the Klan's particular mark from 100 years ago: both Lutherans & Catholics felt even more pressure from the Midwest Klan than did the racial groups we think of as the Klan's primary focus of hostility. That's because the earlier post-Civil War Klan, and the post-World War II Klan, made hostility to civil rights for African Americans their primary reason for being. But this "second era" Klan, while in the South still a racist terror group in most of its activities, was in the North and West more concerned with European immigrants in general, and Catholicism in particular. Lutheranism was swept up in that enmity, both out of their resistance to Prohibition which was a major talking point for northern Klan recruiters, and because it was seen as "less American" especially because of the common usage of German in their worship services.

So the existence of Valparaiso University as a Lutheran affiliated school derives largely from a desire to create a safe haven for Lutheran students to pursue higher education. Just down the road, the Klan attempted to march across the Notre Dame campus in South Bend. After the Klan was run off, they became known as: The Fighting Irish.

For churches caught in the middle, the battle lines often ran right through the congregation. And that's what I wonder about as I read the scraps we have available today about how it was, to preach and lead in 1923. Rev. Burns, who prevailed in keeping the Klan from holding their meeting at the church whose pulpit he served, was run out of town after three different occasions when crosses were burned on the parsonage lawn. And his "denouncing" of the Klan seems painfully mixed with pleading that the Klan allow him to do his work. I can only image how difficult that sermon was to write, and deliver.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's read enough old newspapers to know there is nothing new under the sun (actually that's in the Bible). Tell him what's new again at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.



Page 2:
http://bl-libg-doghill.ads.iu.edu/gpd-web/fierycross/192339.pdf

Picture #1, Buckeye Lake Ohio Klan Konklave, July 12, 1923:
https://ohiopix.org/contentdm-search-results/?cdm-keywords=Ku%20Klux%20Klan%20(1915-%20)--Ohio--History--20th%20century&cdm-mode=all&cdm-field=subjec