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.

Breaking News

Fr Calvin Robinson, an Anglican Deacon in the Free Church of England, has accepted an invitation to speak and give a FAITHx Talk at the inaugural FAITHx Vancouver 2026 ministry event this coming December 19, 2026. Final venue to be announced soon.

FAITHx is the official ministry arm of ARK – The Faith Driven Marketplace.

The expectations are high that Robinson will deliver an outstanding FAITHx Talk, inspire attendees and drive Faith Driven impact for Christ. With Robinson’s prolific brand name growing worldwide via the UK media, (formerly of) GBN and YouTube, FAITHx leadership believes he will attract, engage and educate attendees with his level of knowledge and expertise in the Word of God. He is known for his willingness to be outspoken and is clearly set for the defense of the Gospel amidst the culture wars.

Calvin Robinson Bio

The Reverend Calvin Robinson, a rising star and thought leader within the Body of Christ, is a political adviser, TV/radio presenter, and conservative commentator. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph and the leading voice in England and the UK for upholding the values of God in Christ Jesus against the backdrop of several culture wars, including within the Anglican Church. Robinson formerly held a weekly TV show called Calvin’s Common Sense Crusade which enabled the gentlemanly preacher the opportunity to strengthen the UK Body of Christ and inject biblical values into the national conversation on a myriad of subjects and culture war issues.

YouTube Prominence

Robinson was catapulted into greater international prominence for his sterling debate performance as a Christian apologist at the Oxford Society Debate holding the line for the Kingdom of God advocating against the Church offering blessings of any kind on same-sex civil unions and/or marriages. The video has been watched by over 3.5 million YouTubers around the world. He rightfully noted that, “God sets the terms” for marriage and that they cannot be changed. He admonished the clergy who were involved in the sin of affirming same-sex unions to repent!

Recent Church Positions

Calvin Robinson, like the late Pastor John MacArthur, has rejected the ordination of women in the church and upholds the biblical view of men only in places of pastoral leadership as written by the Apostle Paul in the first epistle to the disciple Timothy.

ARK Digital Parables

ARK which has produced Digital Parables on Calvin Robinson, President Trump, John MacArthur, Joel Osteen, Noah and Jordan Peterson, is the parent company of FAITHx and is currently in development and is projected to launch in late Q1 of 2026. ARK will donate 10% of all annual net-profit to FAITHx to host FAITHx events worldwide. You can learn more about FAITHx ministry focus here. Christian retailers, sellers, bible bookstores and shoppers can register here to be notified of ARK‘s launch. ARK has registered retailers on 6 continents and 59 countries to date pre-launch. and continues to grow with unique Christian gifts and retailers worldwide.

Sponsors FAITHx Vancouver 2026

Interested Christian companies, brands, educational institutions, ministries and sponsors for FAITHx Vancouver 2026 can contact FAITHx on their site here and learn more about FAITHx sponsorship opportunities here.

FAITHx Vancouver 2026 Tickets

Tickets to FAITHx Vancouver 2026 will go on sale as soon as the choice of venue is formally announced. Follow FAITHx, ARK and Calvin Robinson on X (formerly known as Twitter) to keep up with all venue and ticket sales announcements and new speakers added to FAITHx Vancouver 2026 lineup.

Calvin Robinson on Wikipedia

Political Views

Robinson opposes the teaching of critical race theory in British education and argues that the teaching of black history and lessons concerning black people should be taught within the context of British history and not taught separately. He has also defended colonialism and the British Empire, and has opposed reparations for slavery.

In July 2021, Robinson appeared in an interview on Channel 4 News with the singer and left-wing political activist Billy Bragg on the decision of England’s football team players to “take the knee” in a protest against racism. He said the action was “disgusting” and argued that, in taking the knee, the team was promoting “Black Lives Matter“, which he described as “a neo-Marxist, anti-British, anti-family organization”.

Robinson is a eurosceptic, having stood previously for election as a candidate for the Brexit Party, now Reform UK.

Theological and Moral Views

In an interview with Premier Christianity, Robinson described himself as an Evangelical Catholic. The Catholic Herald described Robinson as an Evangelical Anglican, but also noted that he shares some high church positions, such as the use of the title “Father”, holding a “high” understanding of the Eucharist and of the institution of the church by Christ. According to the Catholic Herald, Robinson considers Michael Nazir-Ali, a former bishop of the Church of England who later converted to the Catholic Church, to be a mentor. Robinson later became a founding member of the Anglo-Catholic Brotherhood of the Holy Trinity and currently describes himself as an “Anglo-Catholic deacon” on his Instagram profile.

He has spoken in favor of disestablishing the Church of England in order to free it from political influence and allow alternative Anglican churches to thrive. Robinson himself is a deacon in the Free Church of England, a conservative Anglican church separated of the Church of England. Robinson is strongly critical of the leadership of the Church of England, accusing it of liberal political bias. Following his failure to obtain a Church of England curacy, Robinson alleged that Sarah Mullally, the Bishop of London, had personally told him off because of his rejection of critical race theory.

Robinson opposes the ordination of women. He is also opposed to the facilitation of same-sex marriage in the Church of England and has argued that the Bible only allows marriage between a man and a woman. He argues that premarital sex is a sin. He also opposes abortion and holds anti-abortion positions.

Hello @X! We hope to see you in #Vancouver in Dec 2025 for our first-ever #ministry event. Our goal is to build you up into everything #God has created you to be through conversation, connection & fellowship! Get tickets on eventbrite!

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May 17, 2025

ARK is a retail tech platform and global ecosystem for 2.6 billion Christian shoppers worldwide. A digital shopping experience designed to strategically connect Christian sellers, retailers and brands to Faith Driven consumers in the US and 194 more countries worldwide.

From ARK leadership:

“As a Faith Driven Marketplace, ARK has been greatly concerned about the direction of our country since 2016 when President Trump took office. We have went from being a disciplined, moral leader and a Shining City on a Hill, to a country that is rife with corruption and chaos, false Russia collusion and J6 narratives, stolen elections, a weaponized FBI and DOJ, a horrible economy with record inflation, an invasion on our Southern border, and our precious children are being openly targeted and sexualized in culture wars with the destructive ideology of the LGBTQ and Transgender communities.

We are not the same country and we have fallen very deep into sin. We’re asking God’s forgiveness and His gracious hand upon us and call on all Americans to be diligent in prayer, morality and petition God continually for strong Christian men and women of God to assist President Trump and his incoming administration and that the Lord would give him uncommon wisdom and establish Jesus back on top of the political throne of America so help us God.

We sincerely feel President Trump is in the best position to restore American greatness in 2024.”

ARK is currently in pre-seed development with registered retailers on 6 continents and 59 nations worldwide to date, and projected to launch in late Q1 2026. Christian bookstores, retailers and sellers worldwide register to open your own store and reach 468 million Faith Driven Consumers in the US and worldwide here.

ARK has a strong ministry outreach and will be holding their first inaugural FAITHx event at FAITHx Vancouver 2026 this coming December. ARK has also developed a new Christian social network at FAITHx which includes free biblical education for men featuring the BetterMan® course which educates Christian men on the biblical definition of manhood. ARK will donate 10% of all net-profit annually to FAITHx for various ministry outreaches which includes building the most modernized private Christian schools K-12 in the world with advanced level courses, STEM courses, financial literacy courses, and Christian biblical courses among others.

ARK’s US world headquarters is based in Las Vegas, and their Canadian headquarters and development office is located in Vancouver.

Christian and Faith Driven pre-seed Investors interested in joining ARK global ownership group are welcome to schedule a Discovery meeting here. ARK is a portfolio company of Faith Driven Venture Capital.

Photo Credit: NY Times

For the uninitiated, Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a successful confessional church in a place many Christians regard as the heart of darkness. Keller is also a best-selling author who does not shrink from dipping his toes into political waters as so many ministers do. He is something of an unofficial pope to a large segment of the evangelical Christian population. His influence on this demographic is vast, and he leverages it in books, interviews, and a robust social media presence. For our purposes, the question is this: is it a good influence?

Over the course of his career, Tim Keller has been a light for the Christian faith in the pulpit. He has also written several helpful books. Yet, bizarrely, he has recently embraced the so-called social justice movement. In a series of articles and tweets this year, Keller, confusing Christianity with the Democrat presidential platform, pronounced authoritatively on issues ranging from “systemic racism” to the “corporate guilt” of white America. All of this, of course, was simply a precursor to his inevitable conclusion:

When it comes to taking political positions, voting, determining alliances and political involvement, the Christian has liberty of conscience. Christians cannot say to other Christians “no Christian can vote for … ” or “every Christian must vote for … ” unless you can find a biblical command to that effect.

Such a position would seem reasonable in, say, the 1916 presidential election between incumbent Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican Charles Evans Hughes. But in 2020, a year when Democrats represent all that is unholy? I can think of several biblical commands that made the choice for any Bible-believing Christian absolutely clear in this election. I mean, would Jesus endorse a radical pro-abortion and pro-infanticide policy; every sordid sexual agenda, even the sexualization of small children; a complete disregard for the rule of law; and open hostility toward His followers? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, Keller is not an evangelical anomaly. While he was giving theological justification to those who would betray their faith and defect to the opposition with their votes, popular Baptist pastor John Piper was encouraging Christians not to vote at all. In a recent blog post, he maintained that Republicans aren’t morally rigid enough. Whipping out the ultimate tool in the pastor’s mystification toolbox, he employed biblical Greek to add authority to his case against President Trump. (Some pastors love to do this. It is their way of saying, “Don’t try this at home.”) Piper says the president is guilty of “unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), [and] unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai).”

One wonders how he knows Trump is unrepentant and why he is the one to blame for factiousness. Did the president concoct a Russia collusion narrative? Did he spy on Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Did he illegally use the FBI to push false evidence? Did he do anything justifying impeachment? Did he support the looting, burning, and rioting in our streets? Did he take money from China through a family member serving as a proxy? No. As for his vulgarity and boastfulness, I suggest Piper get out more. Trump is fairly typical of the chest-beating, plain-speaking businessmen one finds in places like New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia.

I am reminded of a quotation attributed (perhaps inaccurately) to George Orwell: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Orwell or not, the sentiment is true. Like many of those who do violence on our behalf for the sake of our freedom, Trump is a rough man. That’s too much for Piper. Oddly, Piper represents a segment of the evangelical population that demands his president bear the characteristics of a Mother Teresa. Does he make the same demands of his barber, his mechanic, his accountant, or his surgeon? One suspects not.

In July 2012, I was speaking at a youth retreat in the mountains of Tennessee when I received a call from CNN. It seemed that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy had publicly commented on the issue of same-sex marriage, and now the gay mafia was lining up to do both him and his restaurant chain as much harm as possible. Would I, asked CNN, be willing to offer the orthodox Christian perspective on homosexuality and defend Chick-fil-A in this controversy? After reviewing Cathy’s remarks and concluding that they were neither outrageous nor biblically incorrect, I agreed to the interview, and later that day I defended the Christian position on the network as vigorously as possible.

Shortly thereafter, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called for Christians to mobilize and show their support for the embattled fast food restaurant with “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” They did. Lines at the restaurant stretched for blocks. This event marked the first time in modern memory that Christians fought back rather than meekly submitting to the media and special interest bullies.

But not all evangelical Christians were supportive of the Home of the Chicken Sandwich. In an article for WORLD magazine, Barnabas Piper, son of John Piper, wrote that he was against Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day because, he said, it “clearly promote[s] an ‘us versus them’ mentality.” Thus, taking a stand was too divisive.

At the time, I was stupefied by these remarks and wondered how the elder Piper, whom I respected, felt about his son’s views. Now I know the apple does not fall far from the tree. Perhaps it had escaped the young Piper’s notice, but it is us versus them. Besides, Huckabee wasn’t asking Piper or other Christians to die for their faith. He wasn’t asking them to take to the streets and destroy property as protesters on the left so often do. He was asking them to do nothing more than eat a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries for Jesus. Has any protest in history been easier or tastier?

A generation ago, pop star Bonnie Tyler famously asked the question, “Where have all the good men gone?” Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, Bonnie. As C.S. Lewis noted, men in the Western world have largely been emasculated, and men in the Church are seldom an exception to this decades-long trend. To stand strong for one’s faith in Jesus Christ and push back at a culture that, in the words of Isaiah 5:20, “call[s] evil good and good evil” is today seen to be “divisive,” “unloving,” “bigoted,” and “intolerant.”

This is because evangelicals in the English-speaking world have confused Christ’s command to love others with being civil as if that were an attribute of God. (It isn’t.) As a consequence, a superficial, self-righteous, good-for-nothing pietism that prefers tone to truth and style to substance has displaced authentic Christianity in many of the roughly four hundred thousand churches in America. This doctrinal malpractice has given us a generation of men, Christian and otherwise, who are what Lewis called “men without chests.”

Don’t know the sort of Christians I am talking about? I’ll give you a hint. They are the sort who will, upon reading this article, take great offense at what I have written here and waste no time in letting me know it, but are not particularly offended by the sixty-one million children murdered in the holocaust of abortion since 1973, by universities that are incubators of radicalism, by Democrats who are compiling a “hit list” of Trump supporters, or by the godlessness of the Marxism they openly advocate, which has killed no less than 125 million people in the twentieth century alone.

Too many Christians today are risk-averse. They prefer the safety of the family life center to engaging the culture in any way that might cost them something. God forbid they might sacrifice their wealth or comfort, endure the social media mob, or be excluded from the neighborhood barbeque. To such Christians, the “woke” messages of pastors like Tim Keller and John Piper et al. are a justification to do what they were inclined to do anyway: nothing.

But that doesn’t strike me as Christian at all. C. S. Lewis called Christianity a “fighting religion.” Think on that. These days, such a statement strikes a somewhat absurd note with a generation that has never known war, privation, or suffering in defense of anything, much less of noble ideals. For them, Jesus has been reinterpreted to meet a lifestyle preference. One might wonder if they truly know him. Because when Jesus said to turn the other cheek, he did not mean to turn a blind eye. And the highest calling of a Christian is not to be civil; it is to be salt and light.

Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?

Two words: Absolutely not.

New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the “secularization thesis,” which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.

Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy “persistent and exceptional intensity” in America. These researchers hold our nation “remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.”

What Accounts for the Difference in Perceptions?

How can their findings appear so contrary to what we have been hearing from so many seemingly informed voices? It comes down primarily to what kind of faith one is talking about. Not the belief system itself, per se, but the intensity and seriousness with which people hold and practice that faith.

Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected. In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found.

The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today. These authors describe this continuity as “patently persistent.”

The percentage of such people is also not small. One in three Americans prays multiple times a day, while one in 15 do so in other countries on average. Attending services more than once a week continues to be twice as high among Americans compared to the next highest-attending industrial country, and three times higher than the average comparable nation.

One-third of Americans hold that the Bible is the actual word of God. Fewer than 10 percent believe so in similar countries. The United States “clearly stands out as exceptional,” and this exceptionalism has not been decreasing over time. In fact, these scholars determine that the percentages of Americans who are the most vibrant and serious in their faith is actually increasing a bit, “which is making the United States even more exceptional over time.”

This also means, of course, that those who take their faith seriously are becoming a markedly larger proportion of all religious people. In 1989, 39 percent of those who belonged to a religion held strong beliefs and practices. Today, these are 47 percent of all the religiously affiliated. This all has important implications for politics, indicating that the voting bloc of religious conservatives is not shrinking, but actually growing among the faithful. The declining influence of liberal believers at the polls has been demonstrated in many important elections recently.

These Are Not Isolated Findings

The findings of these scholars are not outliers. There has been a growing gulf between the faithful and the dabblers for quite some time, with the first group growing more numerous. Think about the church you attend, relative to its belief system. It is extremely likely that if your church teaches the Bible with seriousness, calls its people to real discipleship, and encourages daily intimacy with God, it has multiple services to handle the coming crowds.

Most decent-size American cities have a treasure trove of such churches for believers to choose from. This shows no sign of changing. If, however, your church is theologically liberal or merely lukewarm, it’s likely laying off staff and wondering how to pay this month’s light bill. People are navigating toward substantive Christianity.

The folks at Pew have been reporting for years that while the mainline churches are in drastic free fall, the group that “shows the most significant growth is the nondenominational family.” Of course, these nondenominational churches are 99.9 percent thorough-blooded evangelical. Pew also notes that “evangelical Protestantism and the historically black Protestant tradition have been more stable” over the years, with even a slight uptick in the last decade because many congregants leaving the mainline churches are migrating to evangelical churches that hold fast to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

When the so-called “progressive” churches question the historicity of Jesus, deny the reality of sin, support abortion, ordain clergy in same-sex relationships and perform their marriages, people desiring real Christianity head elsewhere. Fact: evangelical churches gain five new congregants exiled from the liberal churches for every one they lose for any reason. They also do a better job of retaining believers from childhood to adulthood than do mainline churches.

The Other Key Factor: Faithful People Grow More Children

There is another factor at work here beyond orthodox belief. The University of London’s Eric Kaufmann explains in his important book “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?” (he says yes) that the sustaining vitality, and even significant per capita growth, of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism. Globally, he says that the more robust baby-making practices of orthodox Jews and Christians, as opposed to the baby-limiting practices of liberals, create many more seriously religious people than a secular agenda can keep up with.

The growth of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism.

Fertility determines who influences the future in many important ways. He puts it bluntly, “The secular West and East Asia are aging and their share of the world population declining. This means the world is getting more religious even as people in the rich world shed their faith.”

Fertility is as important as fidelity for Christianity and Judaism’s triumph from generation to generation. Kaufmann contends, “Put high fertility and [faith] retention rates together with general population decline and you have a potent formula for change.”

It comes down to this: God laughs at the social Darwinists. Their theory is absolutely true, but just not in the way they think. Those who have the babies and raise and educate them well tend to direct the future of humanity. Serious Christians are doing this. Those redefining the faith and reality itself are not.

This why Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart proclaimed in First Things, long before the proposal of the Benedict Option, that the most “subversive and effective strategy we might undertake [to counter the culture] would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing.” The future rests in the hands of the fertile.

What About All the Millennial Ex-Christians?

But what about our young people? We are constantly hearing that young people are “leaving the church in droves,” followed by wildly disturbing statistics. This also requires a closer look at who is actually leaving and from where. Pew reports that of young adults who left their faith, only 11 percent said they had a strong faith in childhood while 89 percent said they came from a home that had a very weak faith in belief and practice.

It’s not a news flash that kids don’t tend to hang onto what they never had in the first place. Leading sociologist of religion Christopher Smith has found through his work that most emerging adults “report little change in how religious they have been in the previous five years.” He surprisingly also found that those who do report a change say they have been more religious, not less. This certainly does not mean there is a major revival going on among young adults, but nor does it mean the sky is falling.

Add to this Rodney Stark’s warning that we should not confuse leaving the faith with attending less often. He and other scholars report that young adults begin to attend church less often in their “independent years” and have always done so for as long back as such data has been collected. It’s part of the nature of emerging adulthood. Just as sure as these young people do other things on Sunday morning, the leading sociologists of religion find they return to church when they get married, have children, and start to live a real adult life. It’s like clockwork and always has been. However, the increasing delay among young adults in entering marriage and family is likely lengthening this gap today.

More Americans Attend Church Now Than At the Founding

What is really counter-intuitive is what Stark and his colleagues at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion found when looking at U.S. church attendance numbers going back to the days of our nation’s founding. They found that the percentage of church-attending Americans relative to overall population is more than four times greater today than it was in 1776. The number of attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.

The number of church attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.

People are making theological statements with their feet, shuffling to certain churches because they offer what people come seeking: clear, faithful, practical teaching of the scriptures, help in living intimately with and obediently to God, and making friends with people who will challenge and encourage them in their faith. To paraphrase the great Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor, if your church isn’t going to believe and practice actual Christianity, then “to hell with it.” This is what people are saying with their choices.

Or as Eric Kaufmann asserts, “Once secularism rears its head and fundamentalism responds with a clear alternative, moderate religion strikes many as redundant. Either you believe the stuff or you don’t. If you do, it makes sense to go for the real thing, which takes a firm stand against godlessness.”

If your Christianity is reconstituted to the day’s fashion, don’t be surprised if people lose interest in it. Few are seeking 2 Percent Christianity. They want the genuine deal, and the demographics on religion of the last few decades unmistakably support the fact.