Bishop Barron explains the hidden Christian history of cross burning
Guess I'm going to keep writing this shit as long as he keeps doing this shit.
“...here he was, the Attorney General of the United States, speaking at the inauguration of a great federal district judge into a great federal appellate court. He mentioned the Ku Klux Klan. He alluded to it several times, the Klan. And each time, he referred to its membership, the members of the Klan, he called them. Clamsmen. No question about it, that’s how he pronounced it. Clamsmen. It was no reflection on the Attorney General. True, the judge’s wife had never thought much of his diction. True, in the court’s most important decisions, he had been so often in dissent. But years had passed. He had come to speak well and to do honor. And this business of the Clamsmen, well, it may have had to do with molluscs, bivalves. Even crustaceans. I remember a young radical, in the sixties, denouncing her roommates as prawns of imperialism.”
-from Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
Friends, it was a pleasure to join Tucker Carlson on his podcast earlier this week. He has had an extraordinary career across both old and new media, he’s a man of tremendous faith, and to be able to sit down with him was a true privilege. Our discussion covered many topics, including the future of the church under our new Holy Father, why Christianity is appealing to young men in the current moment, the excitement around Kanye West’s new music, and the details of how white men are supposed to fight. But after we stopped recording, our conversation continued, and Tucker had some wonderful insights into American history, and I want to tell you about them, as I learned quite a bit this week and I believe that you will, too.
There’s a tendency in American culture to denounce the practice of burning crosses as “hateful” or “racist”; it’s the same tendency that we see in the contemporary professoriate, the forces of wokeism, really anyone taking their cues from the Frankfurt school. But this is something where I think more Americans could use a history lesson. I’m a big American history buff myself, although of course not as much as Tucker, and he had a lot to say about this topic.
Going back to pre-industrial Scotland, the burning cross was a call to defense, the same call to defense that we receive now in this secular culture. In Scotland, crosses were burned and carried from town to town to rally the people to defense of their land, their culture, their families, and, yes, their faith. In much the same way, we are called to proclaim Christ in our culture, to defend the Word in a world that is constantly attacking Him, to show people, perhaps literally, the “Word on fire”. So many of the values that we in the West hold dear—respect for the dignity of the person, limited government, equality, human rights, and perhaps especially, reverence for the poor and victimized—come not from Enlightenment rationalism, but from Christianity. What will happen to our society if, having denigrated Christianity into marginalization or oblivion, no one any longer hears the story of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan, attends to the Sermon on the Mount, or gazes with awe on the cross of Jesus? We would be living, not in some utopia, but in a blasted cultural space.
At the same time, this call is one that brings us joy. Again: Jesus is the Word, and by burning a cross, we show that the Word is, literally, on fire. I find comfort in the fact that the practice of cross burning did not end in Scotland, but has a rich history in America, where it has been practiced by dedicated groups of Christians, all with an ardent desire to speak to the changing culture around them and defend what was most precious. When the forces of secularism, materialism, and relativism crept into American culture in the early twentieth century, these civic groups - who often counted the luminaries and leaders of their communities among their members - were there to show that Christianity stood most powerfully against these philosophies trying to infiltrate the institutions of Western society: education, business, government, entertainment, and the like. Burning a cross was a powerful visual statement, one that spoke to everyone who saw it. It sacramentalized the passion that these groups felt for defending what they held dear. It was like reading our theology, written in lightning. That theology, that literal “Word on fire”, showed up in front of picket lines, civil rights demonstrations, boycotts, and everyday neighborhoods across the southern states and also Indiana, to remind everyone what was really important: keeping Christ at the center of a culture that felt like it was eroding.
Thankfully, religious faith remains strong, despite its detractors. In varied and sundry ways, they are trying to mock and bully us into irrelevance. I say to my fellow Christians: Speak up, resist, and get in their way. Show them that the Word is on fire in your heart and in your community. If you have any groups in your community that participate in cross burnings, show up, tell them that you’re Catholic. They’ll no doubt find a way to involve you. Indeed, it’s our hesitancy to connect with like-minded Christians to defend our culture that contributes to the “beige Catholicism” about which I’ve been worried for years. Tucker agreed with me on this, and lamented the “beige nationalism” that he had witnessed throughout his career. Both of us agree: we need a Catholicism, and a nationalism, that is not beige, but a different “color”, something that the world recognizes as purer and clearer.
One final comment: in this new era of the church, I have been struck by Pope Leo’s commitment to listening, to building a listening church. Listening has always been an important ministry of mine as a bishop, and it’s part of the reason why I was so grateful to have a chance to listen to Tucker’s history lesson. I continue to listen to the people who can teach us a great deal about our faith and culture: Congressman Riley Moore and his remarkable Catholic commitment to immigration reform, Chris Rufo and his incredible vision for education in America, or my fellow members of President Trump’s new Commission on Religious Liberty. I am truly taking the words of all of these people to heart, and using them to inform my work as your shepherd. With all that I’ve learned from this commitment to listening, I can assure you that the future of the Catholic church in America is bright. Because of all the crosses that are going to burn.