Steven Weitzman & Sylvester A. Johnson 
The FBI and Religion 
Faith and National Security before and after 9/11

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has had a long and tortuous relationship with religion over almost the entirety of its existence. As early as 1917, the Bureau began to target religious communities and groups it believed were hotbeds of anti-American politics. Whether these religious communities were pacifist groups that opposed American wars, or religious groups that advocated for white supremacy or direct conflict with the FBI, the Bureau has infiltrated and surveilled religious communities that run the gamut of American religious life.

 

The FBI and Religion recounts this fraught and fascinating history, focusing on key moments in the Bureau’s history. Starting from the beginnings of the FBI before World War I, moving through the Civil Rights Movement and the Cold War, up to 9/11 and today, this book tackles questions essential to understanding not only the history of law enforcement and religion, but also the future of religious liberty in America.

Table of Content

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments


Introduction. “True Faith and Allegiance”— Religion and the FBI

Sylvester A. Johnson and Steven Weitzman


1. American Religion and the Rise of Internal Security: A Prologue

Kathryn Gin Lum and Lerone A. Martin


2. “If God be for you, who can be against you?” Persecution and Vindication of the Church of God in Christ during World War I

Theodore Kornweibel, Jr.


3. The FBI and the Moorish Science Temple of America, 1926–1960

Sylvester A. Johnson


4. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, and the Religious Cold War

Dianne Kirby


5. Apostles of Deceit: Ecumenism, Fundamentalism, Surveillance, and the Contested Loyalties of Protestant Clergy during the Cold War

Michael J. Mc Vicar


6. The FBI and the Catholic Church

Regin Schmidt


7. Hoover’s Judeo-Christians: Jews, Religion, and Communism in the Cold War

Sarah Imhoff


8. Policing Public Morality: Hoover’s FBI, Obscenity, and Homosexuality

Douglas M. Charles


9. The FBI and the Nation of Islam

Karl Evanzz


10. Dreams and Shadows: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference

Sylvester A. Johnson


11. A Vast Infiltration: Mormonism and the FBI

Matthew Bowman


12. The FBI’s “Cult War” against the Branch Davidians

Catherine Wessinger


13. The FBI and American Muslims after September

Michael Barkun


14. Policing Kashmiri Brooklyn

Junaid Rana


15. Allies against Armageddon? The FBI and the Academic Study of Religion

Steven Weitzman


Notes

Index

About the author

Sylvester A. Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at Northwestern University.Steven P. Weitzman is the Abraham Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.