This paper will analyze the intersection of orientalism, racialization, and sexualized anxieties around new religions in the early-twentieth-century United States. I will argue that 1920s rhetoric around predatory “love cults” inscribed a racialized, heteronormative script of vulnerable, white femininity requiring protection from a rational, appropriately sexed, white masculinity against the sexualized threat of religious and racialized others. As a case study, I will highlight 1920s press coverage of the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) and the followers of his religion Thelema. Crowley received considerable negative press attention in his life, often highlighting his allegedly deviant sexual morals and influence over women and youth. His movement was frequently described as a “love cult”, a term often used in sensationalist journalism of the time to denote male-led religious movements that emphasized permissive sexual morals and attracted female members. Amidst cultural anxieties around declining births and changing gender roles, U.S. conservative press in the early twentieth century frequently portrayed these and other new religious movements as a threat to the (white) nuclear family. Further, as the example of Crowley and his treatment in U.S. tabloids highlights, white spiritual teachers perceived as sexually deviant could be orientalized and construed as a threat to white femininity and heterosexuality. I will link Crowley’s case to a longer history of racialization and sexualization of religious minorities in the U.S., tracing how religious otherness has had the potential to signify ruptures in whiteness and heterosexuality.