This thesis argues that the religious rhetoric of white Georgians created an environment in which violence against African Americans was not just an option, but a sacred duty. In 1904, a mob in Statesboro, Georgia lynched two black men who had been repeatedly described as "black devils" and "demons." A year later, Thomas Dixon accompanied his play The Clansman to Atlanta. His stage production and his best selling novels celebrated racial violence as a component of progressive religion. Meanwhile, soon-to-be-elected Hoke Smith ran a religiouslycharged gubernatorial campaign that included black disenfranchisement among his central objectives. Holy Hoke, as some called him, promised to secure white supremacy with violence, if need be. In the months preceding the 1906 Atlanta riot, Atlantas newspapers drew on religious language familiar to all of these events, particularly that violence was justified in defense of sacred white womanhood and the sanctity of the white home.