Abraham Vereide

Abraham Vereide (died 1969) was the Norwegian-born Methodist minister who founded The Fellowship (The Family) in Seattle in 1935. His founding vision was explicitly counter-revolutionary: he came to see local union organizing as "communist-inspired" and set out to recruit "key men" — prominent businessmen and political leaders — to "beat back the unions" [S1]. The FBI maintained files on Vereide (files 94-HQ-41137 and 100-HQ-203120), whose existence is confirmed by a 2018 NARA FOIA log but whose contents remain unreleased [S2].

Sources

[S1] "Scandal-linked The Family Says Jesus Wants You to Bust Unions" — In These Times — https://inthesetimes.com/article/scandal-linked-the-family-says-jesus-wants-you-to-bust-unions — Accessed 2026-07-17 [S2] "NARA 2018 FOIA Log" — https://www.archives.gov/files/foia/pdf/rf-2018-foia-log.pdf — Accessed 2026-07-17

See The Fellowship (The Family) for the full network context, and the research report.