Last week, several news outlets reported on court documents that revealed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had recently spied on five churches in Minnesota and Michigan. The covert activities were part of an investigation into last winter’s opposition to controversial ICE activities that resulted in the deaths of two protesters at the hands of ICE agents.
Although the espionage appears limited to activities run by outside groups and hosted by the churches, it is raising questions about whether DHS’s activities violate a court injunction against warrantless investigations. It also draws attention to a history of U.S. federal agencies conducting similar activities in houses of worship and other faith-based organizations.
Sanctuary
In 1986, officials with the Presbyterian Church USA and the American Lutheran Church* filed a suit against the U.S. government, alleging federal agents had secretly recorded church activities. Church leaders argued these activities discouraged worshippers from practicing their First Amendment rights to assemble and worship peacefully. In the suit, the churches alleged a “decrease in participation and attendance at church services, a suspension of Bible study classes, and the diversion of pastoral time and energy to manage the distrust, anger, fear, and uncertainty of anxious church members.”
That case also involved immigration. The churches that had been surveilled were part of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, a campaign of various religious groups organized to protect Central American refugees who were fleeing violence.
Government activities against those involved in the Sanctuary Movement resulted in several religious workers being convicted of smuggling Salvadoran refugees into the country. However, the surveillance suit brought against the government resulted in what some observers described as a “partial victory” for religious freedom.
In his decision in the case, US District Judge Roger Strand concluded that “the government is constitutionally precluded from unbridled and inappropriate covert activity which has its purpose or objective the abridgment of the First Amendment freedoms of those involved.”
Practicing Belief
The 1980s lawsuit and recent DHS activities highlight distinctions between religious groups in the United States and how they are viewed as threats to federal activities. Then, as now, the case involved mainline denominations whose Christianity is shaped by the social-gospel tradition, which teaches that practicing justice isn’t ancillary to faith; it is central to what it means to follow Jesus. The social-gospel tradition has been especially prominent in Black churches, which have an even longer and more deadly history of government surveillance.
Although the evangelical tradition within Christianity has long warned against covert state powers infiltrating their gatherings for nefarious purposes, there are few examples of this actually occurring in the United States.
*Editor’s Note: In 1988, the American Lutheran Church merged with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.