God and the FBI

It’s a cool and rainy Saturday evening here. A couple hours ago, I remembered that my husband and I are supposed to go to a neighbor’s party tonight. An hour ago, we remembered it was a costume party. We called in the kids for support. Having much more experience in this department than we do, they opened their closets to us. We have a plan. I’ll post a picture here before heading out.

All afternoon, I’ve had a song running through my head. When I stopped to pay attention to it, I realized it was Janis Ian. Long, long ago, my husband and I attended a small Janis Ian concert at a coffee shop in upstate New York. We loved every minute of it, including the multiple times we were asked by other fans, “so, what brought you two [unspoken: young, straight] people here?” I hadn’t listened to Ian in ages, but the song running through my mind was “God and the FBI.” Of course! I’ve been thinking a lot about the topic since last week’s Cushwa Seminar in American Religion, where I had the opportunity to respond to Lerone Martin’s new book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism. And I’d been meaning to post about it here, so it seemed like a good time to pull something together before we costume up.

If you follow me on social media, you know I’m a fan of the book. I had the honor of reading the manuscript while still in process and I endorsed the book when it came out: “The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover is a work of rigorous archival research that also manages to be a page-turner. In this riveting narrative, Lerone Martin shows how Christian nationalism, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism are deeply embedded not only in American evangelicalism, but also in the very fabric of our nation. A commanding and compelling reassessment of twentieth-century American religion.”

The book is a fabulous read. From the opening sentence (“I sued the FBI to write this book”) to its final page, the prose sings.

In my comments, I shared several of my favorite lines from the book and I talked about why the book is important: how it grounds discussions of Christian nationalism historically in ways that can enrich and discipline the current discourse; how it shows in very concrete ways what’s white about white Christian nationalism; how it reveals the operations of white Christian nationalism such as J. Edgar Hoover ghostwriting evangelical sermons(!); and how this is about white evangelicalism but not just about white evangelicalism.

I can go on and on, but instead of sharing my written comments, I thought I’d share the video of the event itself. Here you can hear Darren Dochuk and myself discuss the book, you can hear Lerone respond, and then you can listen to the Q&A, where all of us weigh in.

If you’re an academic, you’ll find this session engaging, I promise! If you’re not an academic, I think this offers a great glimpse at what we do for fun. On social media, debates can often be adversarial and baseless. In academic spaces (when we’re at our best), our conversations, whether affirming or critical or (more commonly) a mix of the two, tend to be rigorous. As you’ll hear, both Darren and I spend considerable time describing what the book accomplishes and why it’s important. Then we raise some points for further consideration, and members of the audience push things further still. At the end of the sesion, we all go out for lunch together.

It’s always a pleasure to return to Notre Dame, and this event was especially meaningful because the Cushwa directers announced that the Seminar in American Religion would be renamed the Jay P. Dolan Seminar in American Religion, after the center’s former director and my former professor.

Because of its proximity, I took both of my girls with me this time. My older daughter had been there before and loved it so much that she now insists on accompanying me every time I return, but it was the first time for my youngest. Suffice it to say, I’m pretty sure the highlight for her was getting her own Visa card at LaFortune (the campus has gone cashless) so that she could buy herself Starbucks and cheeseburgers. They also spoiled themselves at Morris Inn. It’s rare that I take my kids on work trips—usually I keep work and family separate for my own sanity. But this one ended up being fun for all three of us. I’ll leave you with some pictures:

And, last but not least, our costumes pieced together from our kids’ closets

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