The Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, hereafter Diyanet) is a state institution established one year after the foundation of the secular Turkish Republic in order to fill the vacuum in religious authority created by the abolition of the Islamic caliphate as part of the reforms undertaken to forge a secular nation-state. Diyanet’s role is defined in the Turkish Constitution as governing “the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam,” enlightening “the public about their religion”, and administering “the sacred places of worship”. Despite this legislative restriction on its jurisdiction, Diyanet has started establishing Family Counseling and Religious Guidance Offices (Family Offices hereafter) throughout Turkey since 2003, approximately one year after the coming to power of the Muslim-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP). Preachers working for Diyanet’s Family Offices provide pious Muslim families with religious guidance as well as advice and counseling on domestic issues. Diyanet’s Family Offices have led to secular anxieties about the role of Diyanet as an institution in particular and the proper scope of religion in a secular state in general. Such anxieties have become exacerbated by the AKP’s pledge to form a “New Turkey ,” posed as the antithesis of the Kemalist era, which is known for its authoritarian form of secularism that is antagonistic to the public expression and visibility of religion. Based on a year-long fieldwork that included interviews with the preachers working for these offices and participant observation in the training sessions of these preachers, this presentation explores how the family has recently become the primary site through which the role of Islam in governance and the proper jurisdiction of theology in a secular public have been debated, contested, and reconfigured in Turkey, which is considered the paradigmatic example of secular governance in the Middle East. I argue that the Turkish government’s attempt to govern the family through religion should not be considered simply as Islamization or an aberration from secularism. While the involvement of Diyanet in the sphere of the family may appear as Islam’s overreaching beyond its proper boundaries and jurisdiction, such intertwinements between religion and politics may serve to further consolidate and extend the secular state’s power into the intimate domains of pious citizens’ lives through the deployment of religious authority.