Brad talks with Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton, author of the new book "Double-Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War". They discuss how missionaries became undercover agents during WWII, how religious professionals and rhetoric have shaped US diplomacy, and how the legacy of these missionary-spies still informs our public square.
Subscribe for $5.99 a month to get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, access to the entire 500-episode archive, Discord access, and more: https://axismundi.supercast.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/StraightWhiteJC
Order Brad's book: https://www.amazon.com/Preparing-War-Extremist-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1506482163
SWAJ Apparel is here! https://straight-white-american-jesus.creator-spring.com/listing/not-today-uncle-ron
To Donate:https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/BradleyOnishi
Venmo: @straightwhitejc
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Hello, welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, and I am Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Matthew Avery Sutton, who is the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State, and also the Chair of the History Department there.
Professor Sutton has written a number of books.
One of them is called American Apocalypse, which is a history of American evangelicalism, and we'll touch on that today.
And the one we're going to really focus on is called Double-Crossed, and it is Double-Crossed the missionaries who spied for the United States during the Second World War, and we're going to share that fascinating story with you today.
So, Matthew, thanks for joining me.
Thank you, Brad.
So, a lot to talk about.
I think folks are going to be totally tantalized by your book and by the idea or the history, I guess, that there are a number of missionaries turned spies who really sort of fueled the United States' war effort during World War II.
There's a lot to get into there.
I do want to start, though, with a book of yours that came out a couple years ago, and that is American Apocalypse.
And I want to touch on that just because listeners of our show will know we've talked a lot about American evangelicalism and end times theology.
We've done a lot to try to sort of flesh out what's going on with someone like Mike Pompeo or Mike Pence are talking about the rapture and how that fits into their vision of Israel and the Jewish people and all those kinds of related issues.
And so you have written this great, very accessible book called American Apocalypse.
Listeners, if you're looking for a very accessible kind of understanding of 20th century evangelicalism, this is a great place to go.
But I guess the question I want to start with, Matt, is just Could the folks who figure in your book, the folks who are sort of forming evangelicalism in the early part of the 20th century, including someone like Billy Graham, Billy Sunday, and others, could they have ever predicted that someone like Mike Pompeo, our top diplomat, would be on the, you know, the national, or I'm sorry, the international stage talking about the rapture, touting views about pre-millennial dispensationalism with
Foreign diplomats.
I mean, is this a coming to fruition of their vision or is this just sort of like completely off the rails of what they could have ever imagined?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I think it is what they envisioned and hoped for, barring the rapture.
They were always sure that the rapture might be happening at any moment, any day.
But they also believed that it was their job to get the country and then the world as prepared as possible for that event.
And so, if Jesus tarried, if it took longer before the Second Coming, then they wanted to do everything they could to influence politics and culture and American life.
And so, There was certainly a strategy involved in trying to influence the mainstream of American life and American history, but obviously the fact that they have a premillennialist at the head of the State Department is probably something that does exceed their larger dreams, or at least the early generations.
Yeah, I mean, for me, it's it is a bit surreal.
I was a sort of evangelical youth in the 90s.
And, you know, I remember the sort of excitement about having someone like George W. Bush in the White House and the idea that, you know, what could happen if there was, quote unquote, a real Christian president who who sort of believed in the Bible and in the end times?
You know, I just would have never imagined 20 years ago that that would have led to the likes of Sarah Palin and then Michelle Bachman and then now to the kinds of Yeah, the kinds of end times theology that seems to be foregrounded in our country's diplomacy and foreign policy.
It is surreal.
And listeners, if you haven't listened already to our episodes on Iran and Evangelicals, Israel and the end of the effing world, we lay out that history there in detail.
And once you've listened to that, go pick up Matthew's book on American Apocalypse.
All right.
Thanks.
And actually, Brad, can I jump in there on sort of one more piece of this?
Please, please, please, please.
I think the thing that also makes it interesting is the last part of my book I bring up to not quite the present.
The book came out in 2014, so the pre-Trump present.
But Reagan was somebody who was really interested in apocalyptic thinking and apocalyptic theology.
And so that was that moment where I think evangelicals began to realize they could have some influence, but then the irony with Reagan is while he was simultaneously writing in his diary that he thought the, you know, the four horses of the apocalypse were upon us and that the gates of Armageddon were opening, he was simultaneously working with the Soviets to de-escalate the Cold War and the arms race.
And so the argument then becomes with somebody like Mike Pompeo is, you know, is his theology going to lead us to World War III?
Or is it actually going to, you know, serve us in the sense that he's trying to prevent World War III because he believes he wants to get as many people saved as possible and in as little time as possible?
And that really is the dilemma that I think, you know, we can guess which way it goes and hope we're not wrong.
Because if we're wrong, then the answer is World War III.
But at least with Reagan, cooler heads prevailed.
So we'll see what happens with Pompeo and the Trump administration.
Thanks for listening to this free preview of our Swadge episode.
In order to get access to the full episode and so much more, become a Straight White American Jesus Premium Subscriber by clicking the link in the show notes.
It'll take you like two clicks, I promise.
In addition to getting access to this episode, you'll have access to the entire Swadge archive, over 550 episodes.
You'll also get an extra episode every month, ad-free listening, Discord access, and so much more.
All that for less than six bucks a month, and it helps us keep our flag up and continue to safeguard democracy from religious nationalism, extremism, and rising authoritarianism.
