Lerone A. Martin, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute discusses his book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, which is a groundbreaking new history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based on a years long Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit against the FBI and US Department of Justice, and thousands of newly declassified never-seen FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, prize-winning Historian Lerone A. Martin reveals how J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI teamed up with leading white evangelicals and Catholics to aid and abet the politics of white Christian nationalism. This never told story shows how Hoover and white evangelicals and Catholics fundamentally transformed American religion and politics, setting the terms for today’s domestic terrorism debates.
Discussant Jennifer Burns is Associate Professor of History and focuses on twentieth century United States working at the intersection of intellectual, political, and cultural history, with a particular interest in ideas about the state, markets, and capitalism. Her first book, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (Oxford, 2009), was an intellectual biography of the libertarian novelist Ayn Rand. Burns is currently finishing an intellectual biography of the economist Milton Friedman.
This event was held on May 19, 2022.