Christianity Today news editor and historian Daniel Silliman reflects on his current employer’s relationship to FBI Director (1935-1972) J. Edgar Hoover. Silliman’s thoughts were triggered by his reading of Lerone Martin’s The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover.
Here is a taste:
“From the beginning,” Martin writes, “the founders of modern white evangelicalism preached that American politics needed Christian piety and traditional morality while their political practice was marked by the gospel of amoral pragmatism.”
Martin specifically looks at evangelicals’ relationship with the man who led the FBI for almost half a century. Hoover was incredibly powerful, forcing successive presidents to cede him authority. He fashioned himself into America’s indispensable defender, as if he alone stood between the country and communism, crime, revolution, and all manner of chaos and disorder. He used that reputation to accrue more power and push a moral vision of America that maintained unjust hierarchies and brooked no criticism, especially not criticism from Black people long denied their civil rights.
Evangelicals came alongside Hoover in this project. The founding editors of CT, in particular, embraced Hoover as a moral leader and eagerly associated the magazine that was meant to define evangelicalism with the head of the FBI. They sought out and published multiple articles carrying Hoover’s byline and used them to promote the magazine.
Editors like Carl Henry were under no illusions that Hoover had been born again or had a personal relationship with Jesus. He a preached a kind of patriotic deism. But that didn’t seem to matter.
Henry, normally the more discerning member of the first editorial team, even fawned over Hoover in their correspondence.
“It is always a privilege and pleasure to carry your essays in Christianity Today,” he wrote. “You have a part not only in the message of Christianity Today but in its mission.”
Martin interprets this to mean that the magazine’s real aim was political: establishing white Christian nationalism. He even suggests evangelicalism is at bottom, at its core, in its essence white Christian nationalism.
I’m not convinced that part is right. For one thing, I don’t think it makes sense to talk about the essence of evangelicalism. It is not unchanging or unchangeable. Evangelicalism exists in the contingency of history. Reckoning with the past, as Martin challenges evangelicals to do, has the potential to bring reform.
I’m also not convinced that the CT editors were embracing Hoover’s full vision of what America should be. A close look at the record shows something sadder and smaller than that. They weren’t responding to Hoover’s grand political agenda, but just a little bit of flattery.
Read the entire piece here.