---
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-09-21
location: Wheaton, Illinois
start: 1937
summary: Illinois anticommunist organization founded in 1937, run from the 1950s by
  a former Air Force intelligence officer, which in 1975 took over the Wackenhut Corporation's
  name files after the Fair Credit Reporting Act made them a liability.
tags:
- Organization
- ChurchLeagueOfAmerica
- Anticommunism
- PrivateIntelligence
- Wackenhut
- EdgarBundy
- KarlBaarslag
- Blacklisting
updated: 2026-09-21
---

The Church League of America was founded in [Chicago](/places/chicago/) in 1937 to oppose left-wing and Social Gospel influence in the Protestant churches. Its first director was Frank J. Loesch, head of the Chicago Crime Commission. It grew in the 1950s under Major Edgar C. Bundy, a former officer of Air Force intelligence, and moved to Wheaton, Illinois, in 1961. It kept files on individuals and organizations and sold reports from them.[^1]

### The Wackenhut Files

The [Wackenhut Corporation](/organizations/wackenhut-corporation/) had files on 2.5 million people by 1971, built in part on the research files of [Karl Baarslag](/people/karl-baarslag/), which he had given or sold to it. After the Fair Credit Reporting Act took effect the company reduced its holdings to between 225,000 and 250,000 files, and in 1975 it gave many of them to the Church League, which "was not bound by the legislation, but had a similar political outlook and goals as the Wackenhut Corporation." [George Wackenhut](/people/george-r-wackenhut/) was a contributor to the league, and the company kept the right to consult what it had given away. "For years," one writer on the private security industry observed in 1978, "Wackenhut relied upon the dossiers of the Church League of America."[^1][^2]

The league dissolved in 1984. Its files went to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, which gave them in 1992 to the Tamiment Library of [New York University](/organizations/new-york-university/). The Wackenhut series fills eleven boxes and runs from 1931 to 1973. Its folders include "Subversive Activities," in 1,064 numbered serials, the [John Birch Society](/organizations/john-birch-society/), the Minutemen, the Highlander Folk School, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and the NAACP.[^1]

[^1]: Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, finding aid to the Church League of America Collection of the Research Files of Counterattack, the Wackenhut Corporation, and Karl Baarslag, TAM 148. https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/tam_148/
[^2]: Hougan, Jim. *Spooks: The Haunting of America: The Private Use of Secret Agents*. William Morrow, 1978; Connolly, John. "Inside the Shadow CIA," *Spy,* September 1992.