Author: Lerone A. Martin

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-02-07

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 069117511X

"This book examines one powerful but largely neglected ally of this rising white conservative coalition: J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI he led for almost a half-century. Revered by the evangelical faithful, Hoover was a powerful ally of and partner to the mainstream evangelical movement, working alongside Billy Graham, the mass circulation magazine Christianity Today, the National Association of Evangelicals, and other evangelical institutions and leaders to advance a Christian nationalist vision of America. In some ways it was an odd partnership. Hoover, for one thing, was not himself a "born-again" evangelical. And he maintained a domestic partnership with a male senior FBI agent that did not cohere with Christian conservative family values. Yet white Christian conservatives readily looked to Hoover and his FBI for their civic and political salvation. The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover explains why white evangelicals from the pulpit to the pew honored Hoover as their anointed Christian champion. Part one of the book illustrates how Hoover made white Christian nationalism the bedrock of the modern national security state by shaping the FBI in his own image as soldiers advancing toward a white, Christian America. The second part explains how Hoover materially supported the white Christian nationalist project of fusing conservative Christianity with American civic life. Along the way, Martin considers broader questions about the relationship between religion and national security in American history, and what Hoover's bureau might reveal about the nature of white evangelicalism"--