Despite calls for analysis of how authoritarian regimes employ state structures to protect their rule and evidence that authoritarian regimes exhibit higher levels of religious regulation than democratic regimes, there has been strikingly little attention to the key state institution through which regimes manage religion: religion ministries. Religion ministries mediate between the state, political actors, religious actors, and society at large. Muslim-majority countries are more likely to have ministries of religious affairs than other countries. Regimes in the Middle East have expanded these ministries during the twenty-first century in the name of providing “spiritual security” to Muslim populations targeted by jihadist groups. In Arab monarchies, all of which have an Islamic identity, the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs or a ministry of a similar name fulfills the majority of religious functions exercised by the state, such as regulating the fatwa or religious rulings by clerics (‘ulama); hiring, training and supervising imams and other lay religious leaders; managing religious endowments (waqf); managing pilgrimage (hajj) and collecting charity (zakat). Arab regimes’ behavior of expanding these ministries suggests that regimes perceive that they are reaping tangible benefits from their activities, but what these ministries achieve is not well understood. This paper responds to the question: what is the work that religion ministries do for the authoritarian state? Understanding why and how authoritarian regimes regulate religion is a step toward a stronger understanding of why states, whether authoritarian or democratic, use so many resources managing religious affairs while also contributing to our understanding of how authoritarian regimes make use of state resources to protect their rule. This paper assesses the work that religion ministries do on behalf of authoritarian regimes by analyzing three core functions of these ministries: repression, co-optation, and legitimation. We argue that by fulfilling these functions, religion ministries are not benign bureaucracies but impactful institutions that facilitate authoritarian persistence. Through an analysis of the religious bureaucracies of Morocco and Jordan, two authoritarian monarchies, we illustrate the intricate web of incentives that these regimes construct to discipline religion and non-state religious actors. We choose Jordan and Morocco for close study because unlike other Arab monarchies, which rely heavily on patronage funded by oil and natural gas, these regimes have to be more creative in how they manage opposition. In our conclusions, we lay out a research agenda for systematizing our understanding of the relationship between the bureaucratization of religion and democratization.