The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, Lerone A. Martin. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2023.

Summary: A study of how J. Edgar Hoover worked in concert with sympathetic Christian leaders to foster his vision of a White Christian America.

In 1966 a stained glass window at the Capital Hill Methodist Church was dedicated in honor of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, recognizing the “Christian stature and national leadership” of this man. As it turns out, this was no isolated event, as Lerone A. Martin shows in this book, based on research of thousands of newly released files, some of which Martin sued for under the Freedom of Information Act.

Martin does several things in this book. He shows how Hoover, reflecting his own Christian beliefs built the FBI as a white, male, Christian law enforcement agency focused on sustaining a white Christian America against the forces of communism and other groups (read women and people of color) who would dilute that vision. He documents how Hoover courted and worked with white Christian leaders, Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical, who he deemed sympathetic with that vision after careful vetting. And he shows how these leaders promoted Hoover’s vision through their pulpits, platforms, and publications, fostering a broad Christian public who looked to Hoover as a spiritual authority.

He begins with the formative influences in Hoover’s life as a young man, including his strict Presbyterian upbringing, and aspirations to go to seminary and ministry. His father diverted him into the study of law, leading to work in the Department of Justice, leading a task force responding to a series of bombings targeting prominent Americans by radical elements. This forged his passion to uphold Americanism against anti-American elements, which he soon had power to pursue as the first director of the Bureau of Investigation, later the FBI, in 1924.

Hoover required, in his oath for agents, that they be both soldiers and ministers in this crusade to protect Christian America. A Jesuit retreat house in Annapolis led by Fr. Robert S. Lloyd, SJ, played a key role. Annual abd later,regular semi-annual spiritual retreats were organized with Hoover’s blessing for agents, with FBI leaders as retreat organizers, with Fr. Lloyd leading them in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius. The militant character of the Jesuits fit Hoover’s vision of equiping godly soldiers for the nation’s good. Martin also traces the development of Masses and prayer breakfasts that emphasized the important of Christian values in the fight to preserve a moral America. Both the religious leaders Hoover worked with and the agents who participated were white, male, and nearly all Christian in religious identification. At this time, Blacks could only work in support roles like being chauffers and could not participate.

Hoover’s Masters of Deceit, a book against communism that became a bestseller, resonated with the nascent evangelical movement birthed out of the success of Billy Graham’s crusades and the rise of their own journal, Christianity Today. It was disturbing to learn how eager Carl F.H. Henry, the editor of Christianity Today was to publish articles by Hoover in the publication. Hoover was only too glad to comply, publishing a series of articles in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, reprinted by other evangelical organizations, published as booklets, and re-printed by Hoover and the FBI, and distributed widely at government expense to churches and anyone who asked.

In the process, Hoover became a kind of arbiter, a secular pope who determined what was orthodox and what was not. His FBI investigated the Revised Standard Version, published by the National Council of Churches, which Hoover considered a communist front. As civil rights developed and Martin Luther King, Jr. arose as a leader of the movement, Hoover turned the agency’s energies toward them, not to protect them against the vicious attacks of White authorities but to ferret out communist influences and discredit the movement, protecting the White southern establishment.

The irony Martin sees in all this is that while Hoover became a white evangelical hero, he was never one of them, not sharing their focus on conversion experiences and worshipping at a “mainline” church and keeping company with Catholics. Despite suspicions about his sexuality and relationship with Clyde Tolson, he was universally honored in evangelical circles, having his picture taken with Biully Graham and many others and honored at many evangelical gatherings.

I found it disturbing to see the lack of discernment among Christians of various stripes in becoming instruments of Hoover’s rather than Jesus’s gospel, amplifying his power and influence, even while he surveiled them! The temptation to claim Hoover as “one of ours” is evident, showing evangelicalism’s pathological attachment to celebrities to give them credibility.

Finally, while Hoover did speak against the more extreme elements of the Klan, we see the patterns of using government structures to maintain White power and to advocate for a version of White Christian nationalism and the ready complicity of White evangelicals who uncritically welcomed these efforts. Some will argue aganst this book that Hoover never promoted White supremacy. What Martin shows is that Hoover simply assumed White supremacy in how he recruited agents, ran the bureau and made religious alliances to advance his agenda.

While many trace the yoking of White evangelicalism to visions of American greatness to the Reagan years, Martin reveals to us that in fact, this was a pattern from the very beginnings of this movement. Some have suggested that racism is America’s “original sin.” This work makes the case that for the contemporary evangelical movement, White Christian nationalism is it’s version of “original sin” and that J. Edgar Hoover played a leading role as Tempter.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.