The Freedom of a Christian Education: Oregon Lutherans, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Compulsory Education Bill of 1922

The Freedom of a Christian Education: Oregon Lutherans, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Compulsory Education Bill of 1922

World War I brought significant challenges for American Lutherans of German and Scandinavian descent who had remained closely connected to the language and cultural practices of their ancestral lands. Lutherans jettisoned German-language services, festooned sanctuaries with U.S. flags, and even appended “American” to the names of their congregations. While national politicians proclaimed a “return to normalcy” following the war, white nativists throughout the United States seized upon post-war anxiety about immigration and radicalism. Chief among these xenophobic and racist impulses was the development of the Ku Klux Klan, not only in the American South but throughout the country.

The state of Oregon became a Klan hotbed despite—or perhaps because of—its overwhelming racial and ethnic homogeneity. Klan power reached its apex around the time of the 1922 elections. Voters not only elected a Klan-backed candidate as governor, but also approved a “compulsory education” bill requiring all children between the ages of 8 and 16 to attend public schools. What might have seemed on the surface to represent an admirable commitment to education for all was in fact an effort to ensure Oregon’s children were not “corrupted” by Catholic parochial schools or other “un-American” influences.

Amid all this activity, Oregon Lutherans faced a choice. They had just left behind the tensions of the World War I years. As Protestants of northern European descent, they could opt to blend seamlessly into the “100 percent American” mainstream. However, Lutherans organized as the Lutheran Schools Committee chose a very different path. Rather than acceding, Lutherans organized in opposition to the Compulsory Education Bill. Despite the discrimination they had faced just a few short years previously, freedom to pursue Lutheran education for their children overrode any desire to conform to the Klan’s goals. The Compulsory Education Bill would eventually be overturned by a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1925. Catholic opposition to compulsory education has traditionally occupied the foreground of scholarship about the bill; this project broadens our view to illustrate how Lutherans, too, negotiated ever-present tensions between assimilation and distinctiveness in the fraught years of the 1920s.

This paper, then, examines the activities of the Lutheran Schools Committee during 1922 and beyond as they sought to preserve a space for Lutheran education in Klan-governed Oregon.[i] What were the theological foundations for the Lutheran Schools Committee’s strategic decisions and actions? How did questions of faith, citizenship, and even personal safety intersect as Lutherans debated how best to respond to the Ku Klux Klan? In the past, the author has researched and written on the history of the Klan in Oregon and on experiences of Lutherans during World War I. As Christians of all stripes grapple with the alarming implications of Christian nationalism in the contemporary United States, understanding how past generations grappled with similar crises becomes ever more important.

[i] Lutheran Schools Committee Records, 1921-1925, held at Oregon Historical Society, Portland, Oregon https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv11984.