Published in Reading Religion Martin’s prose brilliantly illustrates that to overcome these godless foes (in Hoover’s estimation), it was the FBI founder’s outlook that the nation had to succumb to his own personal faith J. Edgar Hoover, the founding director of the FBI who led the agency from 1924 to 1972, has become a prototypical avatar of today’s debates about white Christian nationalism, especially in law enforcement. In The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided a