Using Religion to Gain Power Over Others

Slavery and segregation used Christianity as the basis for prejudice against black people. Christianity is being used today as the basis for prejudice against gay people and women. Ulysses S. Grant, leader of the Union Army and President right after the Civil War understood that the passion of one group to have power over others would not stop at civil rights for black people but would spread throughout the society. He championed a Department of Justice which houses the FBI for the purpose of stamping out groups that sought such power. 

Shortly after the Civil War, 1871, the Enforcement Act of April, commonly known as The Klan Act, was passed. It prohibits use of "force, intimidation, or threat" to prevent government official from executing their responsibilities. A suit has been brought by the N.A.A.C.P against Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keeper for violating this law. The law also makes it illegal to imped the right to vote.

Despite this law, the Klan spent much of the century that followed lynching, burning, beating and blocking black people from voting. There was a Department of Justice and an FBI. The attitude of Federal law enforcement can be summarized in the career of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI for decades of my life. 

That the Klan was terrorizing and killing did not interest him much. But, a hundred years after Klan Act a group formed which he was all over. It was the Black Panthers. It was the Black Panthers Hoover and his supporters thought the Klan Act was aimed at. While the Panthers committed some violence they were a tiny fraction of the cruel and violent acts of the Klan. What a better country we would have been and would be today if the Klan had been prosecuted with enthusiasm. But, the Klan had some religious and patriotic creds with the public. That meant they were not so bad.

Today is a time when we should see clearly what President Grant saw. Prejudice and violence infiltrated a large part of the U.S. public--so much that praying and flag waving armed people organized and invaded our Capitol. A group armed to fight for lies of election fraud marched in. 

Using the flag and the cross to claim of election fraud is no more valid than using the flag and cross to claim  black savagery and inferiority. People blinded by such thinking were at the heart of The Klan Act.