ABOUT THIS BOOK

A surprising look at the 28 Catholic radicals who raided a draft board in 1971—and got away with it.

When the FBI arrested twenty-eight people in connection to a break-in at a Camden, New Jersey, draft board in 1971, the Bureau celebrated. The case should have been an easy victory for the department—the perpetrators had been caught red-handed attempting to destroy conscription documents for draftees into the Vietnam War. But the results of the trial surprised everyone, and in the process shook the foundations of American law, politics, and religion.

In Spiritual Criminals, Michelle M. Nickerson shares a complex portrait of the Camden 28, a passionate group of grassroots religious progressives who resisted both their church and their government as they crusaded against the Vietnam War. Founded by priests, nuns, and devout lay Catholics, members of this coalition accepted the risks of felony convictions as the cost of challenging the nation’s military-industrial complex and exposing the illegal counterintelligence operations of the FBI. By peeling away the layers of political history, theological traditions, and the Camden 28’s personal stories, Nickerson reveals an often-unseen spiritual side of the anti-war movement. At the same time, she probes the fractures within the group, detailing important conflicts over ideology, race, sex, and gender that resonate in the church and on the political Left today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Michelle Nickerson is professor of history at Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right and coeditor of Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region.

REVIEWS

"Spiritual Criminals beautifully illuminates not only one of the most contentious court cases of the Vietnam war era but the forgotten religious and political worlds beneath the trial. Radical priests, nuns, and Catholic laypeople emerge from these compelling pages as central to the anti-Vietnam war effort, and their successes and travails tell us much about the trajectory of 1960s era activism."

— John McGreevy, University of Notre Dame

"In Michelle Nickerson's often moving Spiritual Criminals, twenty-eight mostly lay Catholics confronted their Church and the US government to end the Vietnam War by destroying draft board records. Nickerson's story of faith, betrayal, theology, and a trial that shockingly acquitted the Camden 28 offers poignant testimony to the power of moral suasion in a compromised world—a deftly researched, powerfully written, deeply touching book."

— Jon Butler, author of 'God in Gotham: The Miracle of Religion in Modern Manhattan'

"Spiritual Criminals takes us into the lost but thrilling world of the Vietnam-era Catholic Left, where young people wrestled with great moral questions in dramatic and daring ways. The story of the Camden 28 is a political page-turner, wonderfully well told. It reminds us that the terms 'religious' and 'right' did not always go together. It also has much to teach today's antiwar activists, as both a model and a cautionary tale."

— Beverly Gage, author of 'G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century'

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures

Introduction

Part I The Catholic Left

Chapter 1 A Movement within a Movement

Chapter 2 Civil Disobedience

Chapter 3 One Big Catholic Movement Family

Part II Exit 4 to Camden

Chapter 4 Camden Calls the Catholic Left

Chapter 5 Where’s Bob?

Part III Putting the Vietnam War and the FBI on Trial

Chapter 6 Research, Preparations, and Communion

Chapter 7 A Prosecution Disarmed by Loving Kindness

Chapter 8 No Guilt, No Apologies

Chapter 9 Aftermath and Results

Conclusion: Is There Anything Left of the Catholic Left?

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Index