All the pieces clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.
The event was a fortieth celebration for Trae Stephens, who’s Mr. Thiel’s enterprise capital associate in addition to one of many founders of Anduril Industries, a maker of high-tech protection programs and weaponry. It was a multiday affair, held in 2023 at Mr. Stephens’s house in New Mexico. It started with a night roasting the birthday boy, adopted by one other toasting him after which a brunch with caviar bumps, mimosas and breakfast pizza. On the brunch (the theme was the Holy Ghost), Mr. Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and right-wing kingmaker, delivered a speak about miracles, forgiveness and Jesus Christ. The company have been enthralled.
“The room of over 220 folks, largely in know-how and enterprise capital, have been coming as much as us saying, ‘Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know Peter Thiel was a Christian,’” recalled Michelle Stephens, Mr. Stephens’s spouse. “‘He’s homosexual and a billionaire. How can he be Christian?’”
That response — eyebrows raised, curiosity real — gave Ms. Stephens an thought: Collect influential folks, together with in Silicon Valley, to speak about Christian perception. Final 12 months, she began a nonprofit known as ACTS 17 Collective, which holds occasions the place the bigwigs of the tech and leisure industries talk about their religion. For these looking for not simply spiritually but in addition professionally, it’s an opportunity to get near business demigods.
Mr. Thiel was the featured speaker on the first ACTS 17 occasion final Could, on the San Francisco house of Garry Tan, the chief govt of Y Combinator. He talked about how Christian theology informs his politics and which of the Ten Commandments he finds most significant. (The primary and final: Worship God, and don’t covet what others have.) A D.J. added atmosphere, mixing worship beats for the greater than 200 attendees.
In October, the nonprofit hosted one other speak at Mr. Tan’s house, this time with Dr. Francis S. Collins, former director of the Nationwide Institutes of Well being, who has lengthy talked about how he reconciles science along with his Christian religion. Ms. Stephens is planning extra occasions in San Francisco, in addition to one in Los Angeles, and has reached out to potential audio system like Pat Gelsinger, the previous chief govt of Intel, in addition to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an activist and Muslim turned critic of Islam who transformed to Christianity.
The title ACTS 17 is an acronym (Acknowledging Christ in Know-how and Society), however it additionally refers back to the biblical chapter wherein Paul the Apostle crisscrosses Athens and Thessaloniki to unfold the Gospel amongst Greek “kings and queens of tradition,” as Ms. Stephens places it, the eminent and prosperous demographic that she goals to minister to in the present day. It’s a considerably counterintuitive Christian calling, she acknowledged.
“We have been all the time taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized,” Ms. Stephens mentioned. “I believe we’ve realized that, if something, the wealthy, the rich, the highly effective want Jesus simply as a lot.”
Silicon Valley executives are accustomed to chasing the elusive — fortune, breakthroughs, energy — however God has not tended to rank excessive on the checklist. The Bay Space is likely one of the least churchgoing elements of America, the place folks have been extra apt to fulfill their religious longing with meditation, ayahuasca, intermittent fasting or chilly plunges. An episode of the HBO present “Silicon Valley” as soon as satirized this with a homosexual entrepreneur aghast at being “outed” as Christian. In a spot constructed on stretching human limitations, the place folks exert dominion over all the things from fertility to outer house, even turning mortality right into a enterprise alternative, the divine has appeared, to some, out of date.
Mr. Thiel has lengthy been an exception to the atheism and agnosticism of his friends. He has mentioned his Christian religion is on the middle of his worldview, which he expounds upon with a heterodox strategy — fusing references to Scripture and conservative political principle, parsing historical indicators and wonders for his or her connection to tech wonders in the present day. In latest podcast interviews, he attracts on biblical prophesies to warn of an Antichrist who will promise security from existential threats like synthetic intelligence and nuclear struggle however carry one thing a lot worse: one-world authorities. (Mr. Thiel declined to be interviewed by Ms. Stephens; his spokesperson didn’t return an e-mail.)
Different tech and leisure gurus additionally appear to be embracing faith. Final 12 months, Joe Rogan talked concerning the significance of religion in a number of podcast episodes, saying he had at instances been “fairly atheist” however became more spiritual after the loss of life of his grandfather. “As time rolls on, individuals are going to know the necessity to have some kind of divine construction,” Mr. Rogan said in an episode final February. “Plenty of very clever folks, they dismiss all of the optimistic facets of faith.”
Elon Musk, in a latest interview with Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who has develop into a kind of manosphere guru, mentioned he was a “large believer within the ideas of Christianity.” Mr. Musk summed this up in a ditty on X: “Atheism left an empty house, secular faith took its place,” he wrote. “Possibly faith’s not so dangerous to maintain you from being unhappy.”
ACTS 17, which is nondenominational, goals to offer folks a straightforward, approachable introduction to non secular perception. Its web site deploys the hallmarks of millennial direct-to-consumer branding, that includes fairly folks in puffy jackets speaking and smiling alongside floating sans serif guarantees about “redefining success for many who outline tradition.”
If non secular rituals supply up previous methods of muddling by newly tumultuous instances, it’s unsurprising that they’re resurging now in Silicon Valley, which appears to be going by its personal cycle of rebirth. Delight-themed trivia nights and Black Historical past Month playlists have given approach to tech moguls feting President Trump, decrying the snowflakery of their younger staff and crusading for a return to a bygone period of upper birthrates.
This political flip has prompted some skepticism concerning the new religiosity within the tech group, with even some Christian thinkers questioning whether or not a few of it could be extra self-serving than honest. “Once you take a look at the Bible, it’s all about supporting the poor, serving to the opposite, inviting the stranger in,” mentioned Anne Foerst, a theologian and pc scientist at St. Bonaventure College in New York and the creator of the guide “God within the Machine.”
“There’s a sure perspective with some evangelicals that while you settle for Jesus as your savior you might be saved,” she continued. “Then you definately don’t have to fret — about drone constructing, rejecting foreigners, rejecting wokeness, all that kind of stuff.”
However many Bay Space clergy make the case that theology and Scripture supply one thing very important to folks whose technological work touches on white-hot moral and existential questions.
“We actually really feel a burden to assist folks contemplate how the mannequin of Christ would possibly assist them take into consideration how they modify know-how,” mentioned Paul Taylor, an Oracle worker turned pastor who leads the Bay Space Heart for Religion, Work & Tech, one other group serving to to carry faith to technologists. “How do they consider know-how for the sake of the nice of the world, for the sake of people that won’t have a voice?”
With ACTS 17, Ms. Stephens’s mission appears extra tactical, much less pointed. Begin-up and tech staff are used to kneeling earlier than the powers of enterprise capital and Large Tech. Why not get them bowing additionally to God?
Token Christians
If an A.I. mannequin have been to conjure a picture of a Silicon Valley energy couple, it would resemble Mr. and Ms. Stephens. They dwell in a scenic nook of San Francisco the place they get pleasure from gathering the “kings and queens” of native tradition; each took subjects that had consumed them and spun them into start-up endeavors, in Ms. Stephens’s case that being non secular perception.
Mr. Stephens grew up because the grandson of a Southern Baptist pastor in a small Ohio city. Ms. Stephens was raised in a Roman Catholic household within the suburbs of Philadelphia, with a father who restored and renovated church buildings.
The 2 met at Georgetown College and bonded over the position that religion performed of their lives. They took lengthy walks throughout which they talked concerning the Bible and the variations of their non secular follow — why Ms. Stephens prayed to the Virgin Mary, as an illustration, and Mr. Stephens on to God.
After school, Mr. Stephens labored as a computational linguist for U.S. intelligence providers and Ms. Stephens as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse. In 2008, Mr. Stephens acquired a proposal to affix Palantir, now a knowledge analytics behemoth.
Mr. Stephens ascended into the ranks of the tech elite. In 2013, he was invited by Mr. Thiel, who financed Palantir, to develop into a principal at his enterprise agency, Founders Fund, and moved along with his household to San Francisco. He helped begin Anduril, which makes autonomous drones and underwater vessels and is about to obtain a spherical of funding valuing it at $28 billion. (Founders Fund has backed Anduril since its begin.) Ms. Stephens began a digital well being care firm. Alongside the best way, that they had two sons, “the munchkins,” as Mr. Stephens known as them.
All through this era, they held on to their religion, which generally set them aside within the Bay Space social scene. It was their first time dwelling someplace the place churchgoing wasn’t the norm, Ms. Stephens recalled, and the place they often felt just like the token Christians within the room.
That need to share their beliefs planted the seed for ACTS 17. Every occasion the nonprofit holds will characteristic a dialog with some high-profile individual whom the viewers won’t know as a Christian. The talks to this point have drawn devoted, lapsed and non-Christian audiences. Tickets go for $50, and attendees are recruited by phrase of mouth and on social media.
“After an ACTS 17 occasion, all we wish is for people in attendance to take a subsequent step of their religion journey,” Ms. Stephens mentioned. “Possibly they’d by no means heard of Jesus, and a subsequent step is studying the Bible.”
It’s a mild introduction to Jesus, with out the Styrofoam espresso cups and humdrum sermons that some nonbelievers affiliate with church. In October, the speak with Dr. Collins was themed “Code & Cosmos,” and aptly named cocktails (Mango-Orange Cosmos) have been supplied. There have been selfies. There have been title tags. There was the echo of bygone buoyant tech glad hours, when the frosé was on faucet and the cheese boards have been bountiful. And for the 20-somethings and 30-somethings in attendance, the potential for development in addition to enlightenment. Because the ACTS 17 web site promised in pitch deck-ese: “These intimate gatherings promote partaking discussions and beneficial connections that may improve your profession.”
The concept folks go to ACTS 17 jostling for connection to its audio system and founders doesn’t fear Ms. Stephens. “Possibly they present as much as initially hear from a speaker and community,” she mentioned. “Then the shock and delight is — ‘Oh, I additionally, on this surroundings, get to discover issues of religion.’”
In November, ACTS 17 hosted two occasions within the United Arab Emirates. Ms. Stephens defined that after her San Francisco occasions, she had obtained invites to take ACTS 17 to different American cities, however she mentioned entrepreneurs within the Emirates had been extra persistent (and Mr. Stephens had a longstanding skilled curiosity within the Center East). So the couple flew to Abu Dhabi and Dubai and gave two talks: one on how Christian religion can steer profession planning, one other on how God shapes their views of synthetic intelligence and protection.
In Abu Dhabi, a member of the viewers requested Mr. Stephens after the occasion what he thought concerning the social stigma round working in protection know-how. As not too long ago as 2018, Google faced protests from 1000’s of workers over its efforts to make use of synthetic intelligence to assist the Pentagon goal drone assaults.
“There are numerous simpler methods to construct start-ups than what we’re doing at Anduril,” Mr. Stephens mentioned throughout a Zoom follow-up dialog with individuals who had participated within the occasion. “We’re doing it as a result of we imagine it’s simply and ethical.”
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 primary nuclear take a look at, the phrases of scripture from the Bhagavad Gita got here to him: “Now I’m develop into loss of life, the destroyer of worlds.”
“That was accepting the destiny of the divine within the execution of justice,” Mr. Stephens added. “There’s no love of violence.”
Mr. Stephens informed the Zoom viewers that entrepreneurs usually got here to him for profession recommendation once they felt they have been “wandering within the desert,” lonely and spiritually unfulfilled. He suggests they undertake a matrix he created, which places jobs into 4 classes: dangerous and straightforward (making senseless iPhone video games), dangerous and arduous (creating a brand new e-cigarette), straightforward and good (constructing encrypted messaging providers), arduous and good (“Colony on Mars”).
Anduril, in accordance with Mr. Stephens, falls into that latter class: work that’s complicated and good, located the place God is pointing him, he mentioned. (The corporate is forming a consortium with different know-how teams to bid for protection contracts, and Mr. Stephens was beforehand into consideration for a task in Mr. Trump’s Pentagon.)
Ms. Stephens is fast to say ACTS 17 has “no political affiliation.” “There’s no agenda,” she mentioned. “There’s no particular motion taking place right here. We’re simply creating an area for folks to discover these large questions that they only aren’t discovering options to within the present world, within the present social and societal order.”
She added that the group didn’t intend to debate political points, although she realizes they’ll’t be totally averted. “There’s nothing we information the moderator to ask or not ask — all the things is honest sport,” she mentioned. “We ask God to information the moderators and audio system.”
Nonetheless politics, or not less than a whiff of it, can’t be ignored when Mr. Thiel is a 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 amongst his acolytes. He appears additionally to acknowledge the energy that comes from an alliance between political and non secular conservatives.
“The Reagan coalition was by some means the free market libertarians, the protection hawks and the social conservatives,” he informed the economist Tyler Cowen in a recent interview. “What does the millionaire, and the overall and the priest — what do they really have in widespread?”
He continued: “But the coalition labored extremely effectively, and the reply I submit that they’ve in widespread is that they’re anti-communist, and so they have a standard enemy.”
Imitation as a type of religion
It was the primary 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 youngsters’s service. Ms. Stephens doled out hugs to different churchgoers. Then the 2 took their seats within the second row of the transformed industrial house the place Epic holds providers.
Epic Church is nondenominational and acquired assist from an evangelical Dallas-based community that locations church buildings in “spiritually arduous to achieve” elements of the US. Because it started weekly providers in San Francisco in 2011, Epic has ballooned, drawing roughly 1,000 folks — together with among the metropolis’s poorest together with its tech wealth — each Sunday. It now has its personal constructing: $12 million of workplace house.
Ben Pilgreen, Epic’s pastor, preaches a message that has resonated with San Francisco locals: He believes that any job somebody does — advert gross sales, software program engineering, H.R. — may be sacred. It’s not simply clergy doing the Lord’s work. That is an interesting notion to these members of his congregation who wish to imagine the time they’re pouring into their careers has the next goal.
“When you’ve been known as to be a graphic designer,” Mr. Pilgreen mentioned, “that’s a sacred vocation.”
Mr. Stephens and Ms. Stephens grew to become members of the church shortly after transferring to San Francisco. It was within the Epic group that they sharpened their very own considering of how Christian religion ought to inform their Silicon Valley endeavors. For 4 years, till the tip of 2021, they hosted a Religion and Work group, which met Tuesday mornings and mentioned methods faith was related to their skilled lives. Mr. Thiel and Mr. Tan have been among the high-profile company who dropped in. (The group is beginning up once more this 12 months.)
This Stephens-led small group generally studied the work of René Girard, a literary theorist who has develop into Silicon Valley’s favourite theologian. Mr. Girard’s title is invoked by Mr. Thiel in podcast interviews, by Mr. Stephens at ACTS 17 occasions and by Mr. Vance.
Mr. Girard, who died in 2015, was additionally a mentor to Mr. Thiel at Stanford. Mr. Girard’s books supply a view of faith that matches tidily into the assumption programs of Silicon Valley. He theorized that each one need is mimetic — we would like what different folks need — and one one who broke that cycle of rivalry was Jesus Christ. Deciphering his work, readers conclude {that a} approach to transcend petty wishes is to transform to Christianity and attempt to imitate Christ.
A few of his readers and critics, just like the historian John Ganz, say Mr. Girard frames faith as an antidote to the types of vices that are actually exacerbated by social media: Is Instagram making you jealous of different folks? No downside; maintain scrolling, however bear in mind you need to solely wish to be like Christ.
One other rationalization for Mr. Girard’s rising affect is mimesis itself. Individuals wish to mimic Mr. Thiel. As Augustus Doricko, a Christian start-up founder, put it: “Peter Thiel may crown a circus clown his favourite thinker and everybody would journey over themselves making an attempt to get face time with the circus clown.”
After the primary ACTS 17 occasion, an attendee approached Ms. Stephens and mentioned he was shaken by the career of religion from Mr. Thiel, whom he known as knowledgeable “idol”: If Mr. Thiel was worshiping Jesus, maybe he needs to be doing the identical.
