Matthew Avery Sutton is the author of the new book Double Crossed: The Missionaries Who Spied for the United States During the Second World War. His other books include American Apocalypse. He is the Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor of History at Washington State University, and he lives in Pullman, Washington.
Q: Why did you decide to focus your new book on missionaries
who spied for the U.S. during World War II?
A: I am a historian of American religion and politics. I
stumbled across the story of some missionaries who had worked for the CIA
during the Cold War. I was curious about the origins of this history, and what
I discovered was that the U.S. government began recruiting missionaries as
spies during World War II.
So from there I embarked on a long research process, which
essentially entailed finding needles in haystacks. But once I started finding a
few elusive missionary-spies, I got really excited about what I was learning,
about the role they played during the war, and about what they tell us about
the role of religion in American foreign policy, American culture, and American
intelligence.
Q: You look at the careers of four men. Why did you choose
these four, and what is the relationship between John Birch, one of the four,
and the John Birch Society?
A: I had a few goals in mind as I selected the main
characters.
First, I wanted to tell the story of the war in all of its
major theaters. So one of my characters is based in Western Europe, one is based
in North Africa, one is based in the Middle East, and one is based in China.
Through their lives I'm actually telling the story of the entire war as it
unfolded between 1939 and 1945.
My second goal was to make sure I could tell the complete
stories of these individuals' lives. So I began with the histories of many
missionary agents, whose records were buried in the National Archives.
But those records only told half the story. For each of
these characters, I also found the personal memoirs, diaries, and/or wartime
letters to their families. In these personal sources, they explained what they
were thinking and feeling during the war.
Of course in their letters and diaries they don't talk about
their clandestine operations, but everything is dated, so I was able to
triangulate between the government documents that laid out their operations
with the letters or diary entries in which they reflected on what was happening
in their lives.
Between the two kinds of sources, I was able to tell the
full story of what the war meant to them, their contributions, and how the
conflict affected them and their families.
John Birch was long gone by the time the John Birch Society
was formed. To answer this question would require me to give away a little bit
of the end of the book, and I don't really want to do that.
But the founder of the John Birch Society believed that John
Birch was a hero in the line of the biblical and early church martyrs, so he
named his group the John Birch Society to honor the legacy of John Birch.
Q: The Kirkus Review of the book says, "Sutton rescues
a crucially important story that raises profound questions regarding the
relationship between God and country." How do you think these four people
saw that relationship?
A: This was one of the most interesting parts of the
research. Every one of my main characters really wrestled with the moral and
theological and ethical dilemmas of what they believed they were called by God
to do.
They had all developed very particular, very specific, very
valuable skill sets for the purposes of spreading the Christian gospel around
the globe. But they found that those very skills also made them excellent
intelligence agents.
Despite their doubts about what the government was asking
them to do--the lying, manipulating, deceiving, and killing--they all believed
that in serving the United States, they were serving God.
Generations of missionary work in Asia and Europe were at
risk, and they wanted to do everything they could to stop the empire of Japan
and the Nazi regime.
Q: How did you research this book, and did you learn
anything that especially surprised you?
A: I spent a lot of time in the National Archives working
through recently declassified documents. I also traveled all over the country
tracking down the personal papers of the various spies who I focused on. That
led me to libraries and archives all over the country.
I also tracked down some of the family members of my main
characters.
Finally, I also had a file a few freedom of information act
requests.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm just getting started on a new book that will take a
few years to write. It explores the role of Christianity in American life from
colonial times to the present.
I want to understand how Christianity has shaped the United
States--it culture, its politics, its global role--and how Americans have so
significantly reshaped Christianity.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: This was a very fun book for me to write, and I hope and
trust that my readers will enjoy immersing themselves in these amazing
lives.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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