By Nicole Johnson

J. Edgar Hoover curated a network of agents and prominent white evangelists to bolster Christian nationalism as a political power during his nearly half a century as director of the FBI, Stanford University religious studies professor Lerone A. Martin recently told a UC Santa Barbara audience.

The pious Hoover saw democracy as akin to Christianity, wherein “every single soul’s voice is supposed to matter” — though his leadership tactics proved otherwise, Martin said. The FBI director trained agents as “soldiers of Christ” through an overtly religious FBI culture that included oaths of allegiance and attending Christian services. And he justified FBI surveillance of those he considered political “threats,” under the guise of national interest.

“Hoover’s FBI [helped] white evangelicals rise in the halls of power, and authenticated their message as the rightful moral custodians of the soul of the nation,” said Martin, who directs the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford.

The lecture, hosted by the Walter H. Capps Center, gave a synopsis of Martin’s 2023 book “The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism.” In it, the author unveils newly declassified FBI documents in order to show how Hoover’s white evangelist ideals devised the “bedrock of the modern national security state.”

Religious studies professor Lerone A. Martin, who directs the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, reveals the Hoover FBI’s dark underbelly in a talk at UC Santa Barbara.

Martin’s address, this year’s annual Marty E. Martin Lecture on Religion in American Life, resuscitated a forgotten history that resonates now, three years after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, as many American evangelists continue to be mobilized by religious nationalism.

“This is a story that shakes me to the core,” said Capps Center director Greg Johnson.

Hoover put his federal agents into taxpayer-subsidized religious retreats for law-enforcing “ministers,” which entailed “spiritual exercises” that equated policing with piety, Martin said.

Stanford University religious studies professor Lerone A. Martin recently spoke at UCSB Walter H. Capps Center event. Photo by Andrew Brodhead

Martin’s focus on the mid-20th century was prompted by the 2014 killing of Michael Brown at the hands of the Ferguson, Missouri police department. Martin was then a junior faculty member at nearby Washington University in St. Louis and caught wind of a curious FBI investigation tactic — sending assistance inquiries to local ministers.

As a scholar of religious history, he investigated these partnerships retrospectively, pinpointing clergy the FBI “might like.” When seminal evangelist Billy Graham’s file proved untraceable, Martin wielded an unlikely research method: a civil suit under the Freedom of Information Act.

“I went to the provost of the university and said, ‘Hi, I’d like research money so I can sue the FBI. Also, please make sure I get tenure,’” Martin told the audience, to a round of laughter. The suit unearthed thousands of declassified documents that painted a sinister picture of Hoover’s collusion with countless spiritual leaders.

The director contrived his FBI as a Christian entity, Martin said, bent on subduing those opposed to the conservative project — most notably, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Hoover pitted the Christian right against those Christians, such as King, who directed their faith toward nonviolent civil rights activism.

“We have to show people your age that there is a whole other tradition in this country of faith being used for good,” Martin said.

Martin also revealed that Hoover engineered a wide-sprawling public relations campaign, contributing essays to mainstream publications of the evangelical church such as Christianity Today. Hoover’s homilies were at times delivered verbatim as sermons across the nation’s churches, cementing the FBI as “a clearinghouse for what [was] real, authentic faith in American life.” The FBI preached — and the nation listened, Martin said.

“In 1965, at the time King was alive, there was a survey done asking the American public ‘Do you sympathize more with Hoover or King?’ Fifty percent of the nation said they agree with Hoover,” Martin said.

“Part of this, of course, is because of King’s advocacy for changing America’s structural arrangements. But it’s also because of FBI intel on the airwaves, and ministers saying King was a communist — that he was not really a minister working to perfect America, but was trying to tear it down.”

Martin’s revelations hit home for Capps Center director Johnson, who still grapples with a conservative Protestant upbringing he has worked to distance himself from.

“My personal story is probably shared by a lot of people that grew up in an environment where they assume that certain kinds of religious ideas are neutral, but they’re often hinged to political agendas in ways we don’t fully understand,” Johnson said. “It’s important for us to raise the question about any of our religious ideas: could that be the case?”

Several UCSB Religious Studies courses raise such questions, said Ph.D. student Maharshi Vyas, who will be teaching a course this spring called Studies of Nonviolence.

Also among the crowd was Santa Barbara resident Tom Parker, a retired FBI agent, hired just two years before Hoover’s death, who said after the talk that he was relearning a past he didn’t know he lived through.

“I strongly agree with Martin getting the facts out publicly. [Hoover’s FBI] was a totally different era. I worked directly for FBI director Judge William H. Webster and I didn’t see any indication at all of emphasis on religion,” Parker said. “I was raised a very conservative Protestant, so I likely would have been a potential recruit to this movement.”

Stanford University religious studies professor Lerone A. Martin reads newly declassified citizen letters to former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who contributed to evangelical publications such as Christianity Today became a national “clearinghouse for what is good faith.”

Martin says there has been an erasure of Hoover’s history, which points to larger “blind spots” in the collective national memory — and that should galvanize institutions and individuals alike to turn these difficult truths into action.

“History shows us a host of ways that people who came before us are able to affect change,” Martin said. “The best way for us, first and foremost, is to arm ourselves with that history, to be informed by it, and then to move forward with that history … using our time, talent, and treasure.”

Nicole Johnson is a third-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communication. She covered this event for her Digital Journalism course.