One other condition is imposed on all men who would be associated with the Klan, and that is subscription to the tenets of Christianity. We are in no sense a religious organization. There is no purpose of founding what has been suggested by our critics, a new American church. The Klan does not interfere, through membership, with any man's interpretation of religious truth or his connection with any branch or denomination of the Christian church. In fact, the Klan has nothing to do with dogma, creed, or ritual. Yet the Klan does insist that every man becoming a member shall strive to carry himself by the code of conduct promulgated by Jesus Christ. It is a high standard of living that the Klan undertakes to maintain, and at the very threshold of the organization one must accept this highest standard of ethics and morals that the world has ever known.
There are many who can not accept these stern conditions. But certainly it is not an arbitrary discrimination against any class, or sect, or race. We believe that, interwoven into the entire fabric of real Americanism, are the principles of Christianity. Reverent recognition of this fact has been made in the Bills of Right and in nearly every state constitution of the Union. In 1895 the Supreme Court of the United States, in a decision on the Alien Labor Contract Law, declared this to be a Christian nation, and the Court was very careful to establish its decision by referring explicitly to the principles and declarations of Christianity which run through all the organic laws of the country. So, believing as we do, that our patriotic principles and Christianity are inseparable and indivisible, we hold steadfastly to the Constitution and the Sermon on the Mount. It goes without saying that men who repudiate either can not look for fellowship in the Klan.
Is The Klan Anti-Semitic
Referring to the exclusiveness of the Klan, I am not quite prepared to admit that the conditions stipulated for membership in the organization set up the insuperable barrier that some people suspect. It has been pointed out in many hostile criticisms that the Semitic race is excluded from membership in the Klan. It is not true, for instance, that the Klan has set up arbitrary barriers to the admission of the Hebrew; but it is true that the orthodox Hebrew has established around himself barriers that preclude his admission into the organization.
The orthodox Jews are perhaps the most exclusive people in the civilized world. Their racial pride exceeds the pride of any nation or any land. They have a right to be proud in view of all their history. The Hebrew literature, the Hebrew religion, the Hebrew commonwealth, and more than all, the Hebrew jurisprudence, much of which has been adopted by our western society, entitles the race to hold to its distinctive qualities and characteristics with a pride that all the world respects and admires. They have everywhere been a peculiar people. Because of marked racial distinctiveness, not to say eminence, they have drawn a boundary line about their social and religious life, shutting themselves in and the rest of mankind out.
Perhaps there is no patriotism in the world comparable to that of the Jew. His attachment to his ancient home-land and to his institutions has been through the ages a consuming passion. In the early history of his development, when defeated in war, reduced to slavery and crushed under mountainous oppression, his loyalty to his country and his creed never wavered. There is no picture in history more pathetic and, indeed, more inspiring than that of the Jew in bondage. Toiling in the brickyards of Goshen, taunted with the despoiled glory of his country, the taskmaster demanding, as the burning lash was laid upon his bared shoulders, that he sing the songs of his native land, his intrepid spirit was unconquered and his superb loyalty unbroken: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning, and if I do not esteem thee above my chiefest joy, let my tongue cleave unto the roof of my mouth."