A two-nation founding team is launching a Christian marketplace designed to connect Christian retailers and sellers with faith driven shoppers—with a focus on integrity, trust, and purpose.

VANCOUVER, BC — ARK, The Faith Driven Marketplace, is preparing to launch what its backers describe as the first Christian marketplace built for global scale—an Amazon-style multi-vendor platform designed specifically for Christian retailers, sellers, and shoppers worldwide.

ARK is currently in final development and is scheduled to launch the world’s first Christian marketplace, similar to Amazon, eBay and Etsy, by May 1, 2026.

While online commerce is abundant, explicitly faith-aligned shopping ecosystems remain fragmented. ARK’s strategy is to consolidate discovery and trust into one destination: a marketplace where Christian identity and purpose are not treated as an afterthought, but as the organizing principle for community, commerce, ministry, and social impact.

ARK’s World Headquarters is located in Las Vegas, NV United States.

ARK is a U.S. company with it’s world headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, and their Canadian headquarters in Vancouver, British Columbia. The company is being built by a compact, execution-focused, agile and executive team of Christian academics in the United States and Canada:

• Steph Drennon: Founder & CEO, United States
• Osagie Anolu: Technical Co-Founder & CTO, Canada

The Importance of ARK Spiritually, Psychologically & Missionally

Spiritually, ARK is not merely an e-commerce platform; it is a literal redemptive response from the Kingdom of God to a cultural and economic void. ARK provides a restorative Christian marketplace, rooted in Christian identity and purpose, where faith driven consumers and retailers can transact without compromise, belong without apology, and build without fear of exclusion. By addressing Faith Driven Consumers desire for both spiritual alignment and participating in a Christian economy, ARK affirms their identity and empowers their eternal impact for Christ.

Psychologically, ARK carries profound significance for the 2.6 billion Christians across the globe. In a world where the consumer marketplace is often shaped by secularism, relativism, and ideological neutrality, Christians face a growing sense of dissonance—between what they believe and what they must support when engaging economically. This creates a persistent internal conflict, often forcing them to choose between conscience and convenience.

Missionally, in this fragmented world, ARK becomes the unifying space. It restores coherence to Christian identity in the marketplace and empowers believers to pursue Kingdom purpose with undivided hearts. For the global Body of Christ, ARK is therefore spiritually empowering, psychologically vital, and missionally strategic.

ARK’s Canadian Headquarters is located in Vancouver, BC Canada.

ARK Leadership

Osagie Anolu, ARK’s Technical Co-Founder and CTO, said his commitment to the venture is rooted in both faith and urgency, “I really believe in this mission. Everything that has happened since I joined ARK on this mission is exactly what God showed me in visions, which is why I know I am on the right path. Our mission is to create a Christian marketplace that serves both buyers and sellers with integrity, innovation, and purpose—and we must operate in a way that matches the urgency of the mission.”

Steph Drennon, Founder & CEO, added, “As a Christian marketplace, ARK is not simply another e-commerce platform, it is a faith driven economic movement, combining commerce, community, and calling. Its value proposition is not only serving an underserved 2.6 billion consumer segment, but also by serving and leading in the global marketplace with Kingdom-aligned exclusivity and irreplaceable cultural positioning. In this context, ARK is not just important, it is indispensable. ARK is the new leader of the global Faith Driven Economy and we understand the responsibility this solemn obligation carries for the entire team. For us, it’s the apex of Belief and Tribal Network Effects. It’s total ministry.”

ARK is building more than a marketplace: it is building a trust-forming institution for the digital economy—one that treats commerce as a daily arena for integrity, stewardship, and human dignity. In a strife-ridden world, this is not an abstract aspiration; it is a strategic intervention. ARK aims to move people forward—economically, relationally, socially, and eternally—by strategically designing a Christian marketplace to reward what strengthens human flourishing, and by anchoring that vision through FAITHx as ARK’s official ministry partner and outreach mechanism.

Faith Driven Consumers Faith Impacts Their Shopping Decisions

Faith Driven Venture Capital, the venture firm backing ARK with LP’s in Texas, frames the opportunity in clear consumer terms. Faith Driven VC states that “89% of all faith driven consumers would like to see the global marketplace do more for them in terms of being adequately acknowledged, welcomed and provided for as Christians.”

Faith Driven VC’s thesis is that an eschatologically-aligned Christian marketplace can serve real consumer demand while also advancing Kingdom impact through faithful leadership, business execution and ministry outreach.

About ARK — The Faith Driven Marketplace

ARK is a Christian marketplace and venture-backed faith driven tech startup developing a first-mover e-commerce platform and ecosystem aligned exclusively with Christian identity and purpose. ARK is blessed with registered Faith Driven Retailers on 6 continents and 60 countries to serve 468 million Faith Driven Consumers with an annual purchasing power of US$10 trillion, and a total of 2.6 billion Christian shoppers worldwide. Register as a retailer, seller or shopper at ARK here.

FAITHx — The Official Ministry of ARK

FAITHx is the official ministry partner of ARK. A FAITHx event focuses on Faith, Culture, Entrepreneurship & Technology through ideas, commentary, information and God’s Word. Our goal is to ignite conversation, connection & fellowship!

FAITHx is the ‘TED Talks of Christianity.’

FAITHx offers faith driven worshippers and global attendees disruptive innovation via a new engagement model using technology, media, music, education and broadcasting tools to capture hearts and minds for Christ worldwide. Learn more here.

About Faith Driven Venture Capital

Faith Driven Venture Capital is a global investment firm launched in 2021 which specializes in venture capital and invests exclusively in Faith Driven Ventures targeting Faith Driven Consumers. Faith Driven VC’s mission is to serve an underserved global Christian tech, investor and faith driven consumer community by partnering with entrepreneurs and investors committed to measurable impact and Kingdom purpose. Interested Christian investors can apply to connect with Faith Driven VC to discuss ARK’s Christian marketplace investment opportunity here.

Everything clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.

The occasion was a 40th birthday party for Trae Stephens, who is Mr. Thiel’s venture capital partner as well as one of the founders of Anduril Industries, a maker of high-tech defense systems and weaponry. It was a multiday affair, held in 2023 at Mr. Stephens’s home in New Mexico. It began with an evening roasting the birthday boy, followed by another toasting him and then a brunch with caviar bumps, mimosas and breakfast pizza. At the brunch (the theme was the Holy Ghost), Mr. Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and right-wing kingmaker, delivered a talk about miracles, forgiveness and Jesus Christ. The guests were enthralled.

“The room of over 220 people, mostly in technology and venture capital, were coming up to us saying, ‘Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know Peter Thiel was a Christian,’” recalled Michelle Stephens, Mr. Stephens’s wife. “‘He’s gay and a billionaire. How can he be Christian?’”

That reaction — eyebrows raised, curiosity genuine — gave Ms. Stephens an idea: Gather influential people, including in Silicon Valley, to talk about Christian belief. Last year, she started a nonprofit called ACTS 17 Collective, which holds events where the bigwigs of the tech and entertainment industries discuss their faith. For those seeking not just spiritually but also professionally, it’s a chance to get close to industry demigods.

Mr. Thiel was the featured speaker at the first ACTS 17 event last May, at the San Francisco home of Garry Tan, the chief executive of Y Combinator. He talked about how Christian theology informs his politics and which of the Ten Commandments he finds most meaningful. (The first and last: Worship God, and don’t covet what others have.) A D.J. added ambience, mixing worship beats for the more than 200 attendees.

Garry Tan, the chief executive of Y Combinator, at a fund-raiser for female Asian politicians. Mr. Tan has hosted events for ACTS 17, a nonprofit devoted to introducing Christianity to the tech world, at his home. Credit: Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times

In October, the nonprofit hosted another talk at Mr. Tan’s home, this time with Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the National Institutes of Health, who has long talked about how he reconciles science with his Christian faith. Ms. Stephens is planning more events in San Francisco, as well as one in Los Angeles, and has reached out to potential speakers like Pat Gelsinger, the former chief executive of Intel, as well as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an activist and Muslim turned critic of Islam who converted to Christianity.

The name ACTS 17 is an acronym (Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society), but it also refers to the biblical chapter in which Paul the Apostle crisscrosses Athens and Thessaloniki to spread the Gospel among Greek “kings and queens of culture,” as Ms. Stephens puts it, the eminent and affluent demographic that she aims to minister to today. It’s a somewhat counterintuitive Christian calling, she acknowledged.

“We were always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized,” Ms. Stephens said. “I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”

Silicon Valley executives are accustomed to chasing the elusive — fortune, breakthroughs, power — but God has not tended to rank high on the list. The Bay Area is one of the least churchgoing parts of America, where people have been more apt to meet their spiritual longing with meditation, ayahuasca, intermittent fasting or cold plunges. An episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley” once satirized this with a gay entrepreneur aghast at being “outed” as Christian. In a place built on stretching human limitations, where people exert dominion over everything from fertility to outer space, even turning mortality into a business opportunity, the divine has seemed, to some, obsolete.

When Peter Thiel, pictured here in 2022, delivered a talk about his Christian faith at Trae Stephens’s birthday party, attendees were intrigued. The response inspired Michelle Stephens to start ACTS 17, which holds events where the bigwigs of the tech and entertainment industries discuss their faith. Credit: Getty Images

Mr. Thiel has long been an exception to the atheism and agnosticism of his peers. He has said his Christian faith is at the center of his worldview, which he expounds upon with a heterodox approach — fusing references to Scripture and conservative political theory, parsing ancient signs and wonders for their connection to tech wonders today. In recent podcast interviews, he draws on biblical prophesies to warn of an Antichrist who will promise safety from existential threats like artificial intelligence and nuclear war but bring something much worse: one-world government. (Mr. Thiel declined to be interviewed through Ms. Stephens; his spokesperson did not return an email.)

Other tech and entertainment gurus also seem to be embracing religion. Last year, Joe Rogan talked about the importance of faith in multiple podcast episodes, saying he had at times been “pretty atheist” but became more spiritual after the death of his grandfather. “As time rolls on, people are going to understand the need to have some sort of divine structure,” Mr. Rogan said in an episode last February. “A lot of very intelligent people, they dismiss all the positive aspects of religion.”

Credit: Joe Rogan/The Joe Rogan Experience & Elon Musk/Pool Photo by Kenny Holston

Elon Musk, in a recent interview with Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who has become a sort of manosphere guru, said he was a “big believer in the principles of Christianity.” Mr. Musk summed this up in a ditty on X: “Atheism left an empty space, secular religion took its place,” he wrote. “Maybe religion’s not so bad to keep you from being sad.”

ACTS 17, which is nondenominational, aims to give people an easy, approachable introduction to religious belief. Its website deploys the hallmarks of millennial direct-to-consumer branding, featuring pretty people in puffy jackets talking and smiling alongside floating sans serif promises about “redefining success for those who define culture.”

If religious rituals offer up old ways of muddling through newly tumultuous times, it’s unsurprising that they’re resurging now in Silicon Valley, which seems to be going through its own cycle of rebirth. Pride-themed trivia nights and Black History Month playlists have given way to tech moguls feting President Trump, decrying the snowflakery of their young workers and crusading for a return to a bygone era of higher birthrates.

This political flip has prompted some skepticism about the new religiosity in the tech community, with even some Christian thinkers questioning whether some of it might be more self-serving than sincere. “When you look at the Bible, it’s all about supporting the poor, helping the other, inviting the stranger in,” said Anne Foerst, a theologian and computer scientist at St. Bonaventure University in New York and the author of the book “God in the Machine.”

“There’s a certain attitude with some evangelicals that when you accept Jesus as your savior you are saved,” she continued. “Then you don’t have to worry — about drone building, rejecting foreigners, rejecting wokeness, all that sort of stuff.”

But many Bay Area clergy make the case that theology and Scripture offer something vital to people whose technological work touches on white-hot ethical and existential questions.

“We really feel a burden to help people consider how the model of Christ might help them think about how they change technology,” said Paul Taylor, an Oracle employee turned pastor who leads the Bay Area Center for Faith, Work & Tech, another group helping to bring religion to technologists. “How do they think about technology for the sake of the good of the world, for the sake of people who might not have a voice?”

With ACTS 17, Ms. Stephens’s mission seems more tactical, less pointed. Start-up and tech workers are used to kneeling before the powers of venture capital and Big Tech. Why not get them bowing also to God?

Token Christians

If an A.I. model were to conjure an image of a Silicon Valley power couple, it might resemble Mr. and Ms. Stephens. They live in a scenic corner of San Francisco where they enjoy gathering the “kings and queens” of local culture; both took topics that had consumed them and spun them into start-up endeavors, in Ms. Stephens’s case that being religious belief.

Mr. Stephens grew up as the grandson of a Southern Baptist pastor in a small Ohio town. Ms. Stephens was raised in a Roman Catholic family in the suburbs of Philadelphia, with a father who restored and renovated churches.

The two met at Georgetown University and bonded over the role that faith played in their lives. They took long walks during which they talked about the Bible and the differences in their religious practice — why Ms. Stephens prayed to the Virgin Mary, for instance, and Mr. Stephens directly to God.

After college, Mr. Stephens worked as a computational linguist for U.S. intelligence services and Ms. Stephens as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse. In 2008, Mr. Stephens got an offer to join Palantir, now a data analytics behemoth.

Trae and Michelle Stephens met at Georgetown University. In the San Francisco social scene, their Christian faith has sometimes set them apart. Credit: Aaron Wojack The New York Times

Mr. Stephens ascended into the ranks of the tech elite. In 2013, he was invited by Mr. Thiel, who financed Palantir, to become a principal at his venture firm, Founders Fund, and moved with his family to San Francisco. He helped start Anduril, which makes autonomous drones and underwater vessels and is set to receive a round of funding valuing it at $28 billion. (Founders Fund has backed Anduril since its start.) Ms. Stephens started a digital health care company. Along the way, they had two sons, “the munchkins,” as Mr. Stephens called them.

Throughout this period, they held on to their faith, which sometimes set them apart in the Bay Area social scene. It was their first time living somewhere where churchgoing wasn’t the norm, Ms. Stephens recalled, and where they sometimes felt like the token Christians in the room.

That desire to share their beliefs planted the seed for ACTS 17. Each event the nonprofit holds will feature a conversation with some high-profile person whom the audience might not know as a Christian. The talks so far have drawn devoted, lapsed and non-Christian audiences. Tickets go for $50, and attendees are recruited by word of mouth and on social media.

“After an ACTS 17 event, all we would like is for folks in attendance to take a next step in their faith journey,” Ms. Stephens said. “Maybe they’d never heard of Jesus, and a next step is reading the Bible.”

It is a gentle introduction to Jesus, without the Styrofoam coffee cups and humdrum sermons that some nonbelievers associate with church. In October, the talk with Dr. Collins was themed “Code & Cosmos,” and aptly named cocktails (Mango-Orange Cosmos) were provided. There were selfies. There were name tags. There was the echo of bygone buoyant tech happy hours, when the frosé was on tap and the cheese boards were bountiful. And for the 20-somethings and 30-somethings in attendance, the potential for advancement as well as enlightenment. As the ACTS 17 website promised in pitch deck-ese: “These intimate gatherings promote engaging discussions and valuable connections that can enhance your career.”

The idea that people go to ACTS 17 jostling for connection to its speakers and founders doesn’t worry Ms. Stephens. “Maybe they show up to initially hear from a speaker and network,” she said. “Then the surprise and delight is — ‘Oh, I also, in this environment, get to explore matters of faith.’”

In November, ACTS 17 hosted two events in the United Arab Emirates. Ms. Stephens explained that after her San Francisco events, she had received invitations to take ACTS 17 to other American cities, but she said entrepreneurs in the Emirates had been more persistent (and Mr. Stephens had a longstanding professional interest in the Middle East). So the couple flew to Abu Dhabi and Dubai and gave two talks: one on how Christian faith can steer career planning, another on how God shapes their views of artificial intelligence and defense.

In Abu Dhabi, a member of the audience asked Mr. Stephens after the event what he thought about the social stigma around working in defense technology. As recently as 2018, Google faced protests from thousands of employees over its efforts to use artificial intelligence to help the Pentagon target drone attacks.

“There are a lot of easier ways to build start-ups than what we’re doing at Anduril,” Mr. Stephens said during a Zoom follow-up conversation with people who had participated in the event. “We’re doing it because we believe it’s just and moral.”

He drew a parallel between his work and that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who oversaw the creation of the atomic bomb and who famously recalled that after the first nuclear test, the words of scripture from the Bhagavad Gita came to him: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

“That was accepting the fate of the divine in the execution of justice,” Mr. Stephens added. “There’s no love of violence.”

Mr. Stephens told the Zoom audience that entrepreneurs often came to him for career advice when they felt they were “wandering in the desert,” lonely and spiritually unfulfilled. He suggests they adopt a matrix he created, which puts jobs into four categories: bad and easy (making mindless iPhone games), bad and hard (creating a new e-cigarette), easy and good (building encrypted messaging services), hard and good (“Colony on Mars”).

Anduril, according to Mr. Stephens, falls into that latter category: work that is complex and good, situated where God is pointing him, he said. (The company is forming a consortium with other technology groups to bid for defense contracts, and Mr. Stephens was previously under consideration for a role in Mr. Trump’s Pentagon.)

Ms. Stephens is quick to say ACTS 17 has “no political affiliation.” “There’s no agenda,” she said. “There’s no specific movement happening here. We are just creating a space for people to explore those big questions that they just aren’t finding solutions to in the current world, in the current social and societal order.”

She added that the group didn’t intend to discuss political issues, though she realizes they can’t be entirely avoided. “There’s nothing we guide the moderator to ask or not ask — everything is fair game,” she said. “We ask God to guide the moderators and speakers.”

Still politics, or at least a whiff of it, cannot be ignored when Mr. Thiel is part of the group’s origin story. An outspoken libertarian, Mr. Thiel was an early supporter of Mr. Trump in 2016, and Vice President JD Vance is among his acolytes. He seems also to recognize the strength that comes from an alliance between political and religious conservatives.

“The Reagan coalition was somehow the free market libertarians, the defense hawks and the social conservatives,” he told the economist Tyler Cowen in a recent interview. “What does the millionaire, and the general and the priest — what do they actually have in common?”

He continued: “Yet the coalition worked incredibly well, and the answer I submit that they have in common is they’re anti-communist, and they have a common enemy.”

Imitation as a Form of Faith

For years, the Stephenses held a Faith and Work group at Epic Church, which they attend. Credit: Aaron Wojack The New York Times

It was the first Sunday of 2025 and Epic Church, in downtown San Francisco, was jammed. Mr. Stephens went downstairs to drop the couple’s 9- and 11-year-old sons at a children’s service. Ms. Stephens doled out hugs to other churchgoers. Then the two took their seats in the second row of the converted industrial space where Epic holds services.

Epic Church is nondenominational and got support from an evangelical Dallas-based network that places churches in “spiritually hard to reach” parts of the United States. Since it began weekly services in San Francisco in 2011, Epic has ballooned, drawing roughly 1,000 people — including some of the city’s poorest along with its tech wealth — every Sunday. It now has its own building: $12 million of office space.

Ben Pilgreen, Epic’s pastor, preaches a message that has resonated with San Francisco locals: He believes that any job someone does — ad sales, software engineering, H.R. — can be sacred. It’s not just clergy doing the Lord’s work. This is an appealing notion to those members of his congregation who want to believe the time they’re pouring into their careers has a higher purpose.

“If you’ve been called to be a graphic designer,” Mr. Pilgreen said, “that’s a sacred vocation.”

Epic Church, which is nondenominational, got support from an evangelical Dallas-based network that places churches in “spiritually hard to reach” parts of the United States. Credit: Aaron Wojack The New York Times

Mr. Stephens and Ms. Stephens became members of the church shortly after moving to San Francisco. It was in the Epic community that they sharpened their own thinking of how Christian faith should inform their Silicon Valley endeavors. For four years, until the end of 2021, they hosted a Faith and Work group, which met Tuesday mornings and discussed ways religion was relevant to their professional lives. Mr. Thiel and Mr. Tan were some of the high-profile guests who dropped in. (The group is starting up again this year.)

This Stephens-led small group sometimes studied the work of René Girard, a literary theorist who has become Silicon Valley’s favorite theologian. Mr. Girard’s name is invoked by Mr. Thiel in podcast interviews, by Mr. Stephens at ACTS 17 events and by Mr. Vance.

Mr. Girard, who died in 2015, was also a mentor to Mr. Thiel at Stanford. Mr. Girard’s books offer a view of religion that fits tidily into the belief systems of Silicon Valley. He theorized that all desire is mimetic — we want what other people want — and one person who broke that cycle of rivalry was Jesus Christ. Interpreting his work, readers conclude that a way to transcend petty desires is to convert to Christianity and try to imitate Christ.

Some of his readers and critics, like the historian John Ganz, say Mr. Girard frames religion as an antidote to the sorts of vices that are now exacerbated by social media: Is Instagram making you jealous of other people? No problem; keep scrolling, but remember you should only want to be like Christ.

Another explanation for Mr. Girard’s growing influence is mimesis itself. People want to mimic Mr. Thiel. As Augustus Doricko, a Christian start-up founder, put it: “Peter Thiel could crown a circus clown his favorite philosopher and everyone would trip over themselves trying to get face time with the circus clown.”

After the first ACTS 17 event, an attendee approached Ms. Stephens and said he was shaken by the profession of faith from Mr. Thiel, whom he called a professional “idol”: If Mr. Thiel was worshiping Jesus, perhaps he should be doing the same.

Emma Goldberg is a business reporter covering workplace culture and the ways work is evolving in a time of social and technological change.

Vancouver – ARK – The Faith Driven Marketplace and Christian tech startup, continues to experience accelerated new registered retailer growth around the globe pre-launch with unique and beautiful Christian gifts and product listings from some of the most anointed and successful Christian retailers and sellers worldwide.

ARK is expected to launch in Q1 2026.

ARK has several hundred Faith Driven retailers and sellers on 6 continents and 59 nations to date to serve a global US$15B Christian retail market. The Faith Driven Marketplace will launch with Christian gifts and products in multiple industry verticals which includes but is not limited to:

• • Christian Retailers & Sellers
  • Mainstream Retailers & Sellers
  • Food & Drink Retailers & Sellers
  • Media & Magazine Retailers & Sellers
  • Christian Music Singers & Bands
  • Christian Book Authors
  • Christian Service Providers
  • Amazon Retailers & Sellers
  • eBay Retailers & Sellers
  • Etsy Retailers & Sellers
  • Shopify Retailers & Sellers
  • Largest Christian Retailer in the UK

Christian Gifts & Products: US

In North America, the United States is the largest country of registered retailers for ARK which trends exactly the same as Amazon, eBay and Etsy. Here is a beginning selection from sixteen different American Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Apparel 
• Christian Wall Décor 
• Skin Care
• Food & Drink
• Christmas Home Décor
• Smartphone Accessories
• Christian Pillow Décor
• Christmas Apparel
• Pet Supplies & Accessories
• Christian Holiday Décor
• Custom Wall & Sconce Décor
• Christian Vinyl Pack
• Wedding Décor
• Christian Media

Christian Gifts & Products: UK

In Europe, the United Kingdom is the second largest country of registered retailers for ARK which trends exactly the same as Amazon, eBay and Etsy. Here is a beginning selection from eight different British Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Bibles Hardcover & Paperback
• Bible Chapter Tabs
• Christian Digital Art
• Christian Greeting Cards
• Christian Fixtures
• Christian Drinkware
• Christian Acrylic Gifts
• Christian Pillow Décor

Christian Gifts & Products: Canada

In North America, Canada is the second largest country of registered retailers and fourth largest country of registered retailers overall for ARK. Here is a beginning selection from eight different Canadian Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Apparel 
• Christian Children’s Books
• Christian Music
• Handmade Wooden Photo Frames
• Network Hardware Equipment

Christian Gifts & Products: Israel & Palestine

From The Middle East, here is a beginning selection from three different Israeli and Palestinian Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK. The sellers from Palestine represent Palestinian Christians from Jesus’ birthplace in the West Bank of Bethlehem. The challenges Palestinian Christians face are numerous. ARK is strategically serving Palestinian Christians to bring their products to market worldwide so they may raise their families in peace and prosperity and be blessed according to John 10:10 to live a life of victory. The categories covered here are of:

• Christian Toys
• Christian Toys Crochet
• Christian Wood Nativity
• Kitchen Dinnerware Décor

Christian Gifts & Products: Australia & New Zealand

In Oceania, the countries of Australian and New Zealanders are registered retailers on ARK. Here is a beginning selection from three different Australia and New Zealand Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Women’s T-Shirts
• Christian Thanksgiving Décor
• Christian Smartphone Wallpapers
• Christian Scripture Cards

Christian Gifts & Products: South Africa

In Africa, South Africa is the largest country of registered retailers and fifth largest country of registered retailers overall for ARK. Here is a beginning selection from three different South African Faith Driven Retailers and one South African Faith Driven Service Provider registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Real Estate Services  
• Christian Drinkware
• Christian Apparel
• Christian Jewelry

ARK Retail Strengths & Social Impact

Ministry Partner FAITHx

ARK is a socially responsible marketplace and will donate 10% of all annual net-profit to it’s official ministry arm at FAITHx. You can learn more about FAITHx and it’s strategic outreaches here. FAITHx first ministry event, FAITHx Vancouver 2026, is tentatively scheduled for late December 19, 2026.

Follow FAITHx on X (Twitter).

Connect with ARK on Social Media

Connect, subscribe and follow ARK on all their social profiles via Linktree.

ARK’s New Branding Trailer

ARK uploaded their newest branding trailer for their World Premier videos and Digital Parables on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X.

“TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese company. And Chinese companies are vulnerable to the whims and the will of the Chinese government,” Times’ columnist Ezra Klein wrote.

He added, “There is no possible ambiguity on this point: The Chinese Communist Party spent much of the last year cracking down on its tech sector. They made a particular example out of Jack Ma, the high-flying founder of Alibaba. The message was unmistakable: Chief executives will act in accordance with party wishes or see their lives upended and their companies dismembered.”

Klein, who founded the left-wing site Vox, notes the widespread use of TikTok, and argues this underscores the threat it poses to American security.

“TikTok, as we know it today, is only a few years old. But its growth is like nothing we’ve seen before. In 2021, it had more active users than Twitter, more U.S. watch minutes than YouTube, more app downloads than Facebook, more site visits than Google,” he wrote.

In 2020, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of banning TikTok.

In the order, the White House warned that China can weaponize Americans’ data using the app, and that the PRC can weaponize TikTok to spread propaganda.

“TikTok automatically captures vast swaths of information from its users, including Internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search histories.  This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information — potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage,” the executive order stated.

Additionally, the executive order concluded that the social media company censored content that the Chinese Communist Party considered politically sensitive like the protests in Hong Kong and the treatment of Uyghurs.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks during an event at the White House, Oct. 4, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Upon taking office, President Biden replaced Trump’s executive order with his own. According to Klein, while Biden’s new order regulates data collection, “it does not address the other ways that China could weaponize the platform”, like TikTok’s manipulation problem.

“TikTok’s real power isn’t over our data. It’s over what users watch and create. It’s over the opaque algorithm that governs what gets seen and what doesn’t,” Klein wrote.

Klein argues that the fact that China sees a free and open internet as a threat to its government is just another indicator that they will use it to sow division and spread pro-CCP propaganda in the United States.

“China has long seen these platforms as potential weapons. As China’s authoritarian turn continues, and as relations between our countries worsen, it is not far-fetched to suspect they might do unto us what they have always feared we would do unto them,” he wrote.

Klein compares China’s influence on Americans via TikTok with the prospect of the Soviet Union having bought out local television stations throughout the country during the Cold War. He says the Soviet propaganda would actually be less dangerous because Americans would know they are viewing Russian-owned TV, whereas the lines are more blurred with TikTok.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and former President Donald Trump (Getty | AP)

“The social media platforms that hold and shape our attention need to be governed in the public interest. That means knowing who’s truly running them and how they’re running them,” Klein wrote. “On this, Donald Trump was right, and the Biden administration should finish what he started.”

“WELCOME BACK FIRST AMENDMENT!” blared Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.), in all caps. A Twitter survey by Sen. Ted Cruz asked if Musk’s purchase was a good thing, with the only options to answer being “yes” or “no, I hate free speech.” His fellow Texan, Rep. John Carter, signaled his approval with no words at all; three clapping-hands emojis were sufficient.

A pot-smoking, meme-posting evangelist for electric vehicles may be an unlikely hero for conservatives. But the Tesla chief executive’s amorphous vow to restore free speech to the social media platform has resonated among Republicans, who see themselves — starting with their de facto leader, former President Trump — as unfairly targeted by Twitter’s content moderation efforts.

Conservatives said their euphoric outpouring was bigger than the possible return of @RealDonaldTrump and changes to Twitter’s ownership. Rather, they see Musk’s takeover as a symbolic, and cathartic, blow against Big Tech, which the right has increasingly viewed with antipathy.

“There’s a gut reaction from a lot of people, going, ‘You know what, it’s about time they get their comeuppance,’ ” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) “It finally feels like someone is standing up for a principle that has been going in an opposite direction lately: less free speech, less ability to express yourself — if you are a conservative.”

Musk centered his bid for Twitter on the premise that the social media company, which he considers a “digital town square,” is too restrictive in clamping down on expression.

“I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means,” Musk tweeted Monday morning.

Musk’s own politics are idiosyncratic. He’s the foremost face of clean vehicles who called for immediately increasing oil and gas production after the Ukraine-Russia war spiked energy prices. He fled California for Texas because of high taxes but declined to weigh in on Texas’ restrictive abortion law, saying he preferred to “stay out of politics.” He has described himself as politically independent and registered to vote in California with no party preference.

For conservatives, Musk’s crusade against content restrictions has struck a chord. Roughly half of Republicans feel they cannot express themselves freely on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, according to a Morning Consult poll conducted this month, far exceeding the percentage of Democrats and independents who felt similarly.

“Twitter is a platform that I and many others believe has been more aggressive in blocking Republicans and conservatives than they have toward people on the left,” said Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.). “I’m hoping and expecting he will undo that.”

Scott is not an avid Twitter user; he does not even have the app on his phone. But he did tweet a congratulatory message to Musk, adding a plea to “restore free speech and bring back President Trump!”

Trump was permanently kicked off the platform on Jan. 8, 2021 — two days after a group of his supporters overran the U.S. Capitol in hopes of blocking the certification of Joe Biden’s win. Twitter imposed the ban “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.”

So far, Musk has not indicated how he’d handle the former president’s account. Trump, meanwhile, has shown no interest in rejoining the platform that helped power his political rise and gave real-time narration of his presidency.

“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on Truth,” Trump told Fox News, referring to his fledgling social media network. “I hope Elon buys Twitter, because he’ll make improvements to it, and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on Truth.”

Republicans see Trump as just one example of Twitter’s bias. A number of high-profile conservatives have been suspended or blocked from the platform, including the account of the Babylon Bee, a satirical news website that was suspended for a tweet naming Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine, who is transgender, “Man of the Year.”

The account was locked as a violation of Twitter’s ban on hate speech. Seth Dillon, CEO of Babylon Bee, refused to remove the tweet, asserting that “truth is not hate speech.”

“It’s completely broken,” said Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative lawyer who has sued Twitter multiple times on behalf of clients who were banned. “The company can try to affect elections, try to ban politicians from speaking … use algorithms, enable false accounts to constantly affect what people see.”

The extent to which conservatives face bias on the platform has been fiercely examined and debated. A study this month by researchers at MIT and Yale found that Republican users tend to be suspended more often than Democrats but that conservatives are more likely to share misinformation that would provoke such suspensions.

So far, Musk has offered little explanation as to how his free speech values would play out in practice. He said on Monday that his goals include “enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots and authenticating all humans.”

But such efforts would require some attempt at regulating content, especially by verifying users. A social media network without any moderation at all could swamp the platform with all sorts of unsavory or offensive material, such as pornography or terrorist content, as well as the online abuse and harassment that are already common occurrences.

“If you don’t have content moderation, you actually have less free speech. The people who are the loudest are the bullies and harassers that drive people away,” said Katie Harbath, a former Republican operative who has worked as public policy director for Facebook.