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In this episode, Dialogue editor Margaret Olsen Hemming interviews historian Matthew L. Harris about his article “Saving the Constitution” with White Christian Nationalism: Ezra Taft Benson, W. Cleon Skousen, and Their Attempt to Solicit the Help of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, published in the Fall 2025 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Harris traces how Mormon theology, constitutional exceptionalism, free-market capitalism, and militant anticommunism converged during the Cold War to produce a powerful form of white Christian nationalism.
The conversation explores the ideological alliance between Mormon apostle Ezra Taft Benson, anticommunist writer W. Cleon Skousen, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, examining their opposition to the welfare state, their hostility toward the civil rights movement, and their belief that “Mormon elders” were divinely tasked with saving the U.S. Constitution. Harris also unpacks why Hoover ultimately distanced himself from Benson and Skousen, how conspiracy thinking fractured conservative anticommunism, and why these Cold War dynamics continue to shape religion and politics today.