I thought I'd heard it all when that church with a predominantly Black membership decided to pay white people to attend.

House of Prayer joins KKK in Ten Commandments rally
Black church group among those protesting at Barrow courthouse

By ERNIE SUGGS
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

More than 200 people gathered in front of the Barrow County Courthouse this afternoon to support the county's decision not to remove the Ten Commandments from the government building.

The rally was organized by J.J. Harper, the self-proclaimed imperial wizard of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and members of the controversial African-American church, the House of Prayer.

The groups were protesting against the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a lawsuit to force the removal of a framed poster of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse. Barrow County commissioners voted in June to fight the ACLU over the poster, and county officials have said there are no plans to take it down.

Both groups -- at least for one day -- seemed to disregard issues of race in favor of supporting what they viewed as an attack of Christianity.

"Did somebody say they were black?" Harper, of Cordele, asked rhetorically. "I thought they were Christians, who have done nothing more than study the word of God."

About 100 House of Prayer members, including 50 children, attended the rally. The Atlanta-based House of Prayer is led by the jailed Rev. Arthur Allen, who is serving a two-year prison sentence for violating probation on a child cruelty conviction.