Every thing clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.
The event was a fortieth party for Trae Stephens, who’s Mr. Thiel’s enterprise capital companion 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 dwelling 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 friends had been enthralled.
“The room of over 220 individuals, largely in know-how and enterprise capital, had 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 individuals, together with in Silicon Valley, to speak about Christian perception. Final 12 months, she began a nonprofit referred to as ACTS 17 Collective, which holds occasions the place the bigwigs of the tech and leisure industries focus on their religion. For these searching for not simply spiritually but additionally professionally, it’s an opportunity to get near trade demigods.
Mr. Thiel was the featured speaker on the first ACTS 17 occasion final Might, on the San Francisco dwelling 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 dwelling, 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 together 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 identify ACTS 17 is an acronym (Acknowledging Christ in Expertise and Society), nevertheless it additionally refers back to the biblical chapter during which 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 at the moment. It’s a considerably counterintuitive Christian calling, she acknowledged.
“We had been all the time taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized,” Ms. Stephens mentioned. “I feel 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 listing. The Bay Space is without doubt one of the least churchgoing components of America, the place individuals have been extra apt to satisfy their non secular 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 individuals 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 heart of his worldview, which he expounds upon with a heterodox strategy — fusing references to Scripture and conservative political concept, parsing historical indicators and wonders for his or her connection to tech wonders at the moment. In current 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 way of 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 occasions been “fairly atheist” however became more spiritual after the loss of life of his grandfather. “As time rolls on, persons are going to grasp the necessity to have some form of divine construction,” Mr. Rogan said in an episode final February. “Quite a lot of very clever individuals, they dismiss all of the constructive facets of faith.”
Elon Musk, in a current interview with Jordan Peterson, a psychologist who has turn out to be a form of manosphere guru, mentioned he was a “huge believer within the rules 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 unhealthy to maintain you from being unhappy.”
ACTS 17, which is nondenominational, goals to provide individuals a straightforward, approachable introduction to non secular perception. Its web site deploys the hallmarks of millennial direct-to-consumer branding, that includes fairly individuals in puffy jackets speaking and smiling alongside floating sans serif guarantees about “redefining success for many who outline tradition.”
If non secular rituals provide up outdated methods of muddling by way of newly tumultuous occasions, it’s unsurprising that they’re resurging now in Silicon Valley, which appears to be going by way of its personal cycle of rebirth. Delight-themed trivia nights and Black Historical past Month playlists have given strategy 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 is perhaps extra self-serving than honest. “If you have 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 laptop scientist at St. Bonaventure College in New York and the writer of the e-book “God within the Machine.”
“There’s a sure angle with some evangelicals that if you settle for Jesus as your savior you’re saved,” she continued. “Then you definately don’t have to fret — about drone constructing, rejecting foreigners, rejecting wokeness, all that form of stuff.”
However many Bay Space clergy make the case that theology and Scripture provide one thing very important to individuals whose technological work touches on white-hot moral and existential questions.
“We actually really feel a burden to assist individuals think about how the mannequin of Christ may assist them take into consideration how they modify know-how,” mentioned Paul Taylor, an Oracle worker turned pastor who leads the Bay Space Middle 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 great of the world, for the sake of people that may not 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 Huge Tech. Why not get them bowing additionally to God?
Token Christians
If an A.I. mannequin had 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 take pleasure in 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 observe — why Ms. Stephens prayed to the Virgin Mary, as an example, and Mr. Stephens on to God.
After faculty, Mr. Stephens labored as a computational linguist for U.S. intelligence companies and Ms. Stephens as a pediatric intensive care unit nurse. In 2008, Mr. Stephens acquired a proposal to hitch Palantir, now an information analytics behemoth.
Mr. Stephens ascended into the ranks of the tech elite. In 2013, he was invited by Mr. Thiel, who financed Palantir, to turn out to be a principal at his enterprise agency, Founders Fund, and moved together 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 way in which, that they had two sons, “the munchkins,” as Mr. Stephens referred to as them.
All through this era, they held on to their religion, which typically 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 want to share their beliefs planted the seed for ACTS 17. Every occasion the nonprofit holds will function a dialog with some high-profile individual whom the viewers may not know as a Christian. The talks up to now 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 folk 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) had been supplied. There have been selfies. There have been identify tags. There was the echo of bygone buoyant tech comfortable hours, when the frosé was on faucet and the cheese boards had 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 useful connections that may improve your profession.”
The concept individuals 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 acquired 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 lately as 2018, Google faced protests from 1000’s of staff over its efforts to make use of synthetic intelligence to assist the Pentagon goal drone assaults.
“There are lots of 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 consider 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 turn out to be 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 advised the Zoom viewers that entrepreneurs typically got here to him for profession recommendation after they felt they had been “wandering within the desert,” lonely and spiritually unfulfilled. He suggests they undertake a matrix he created, which places jobs into 4 classes: unhealthy and straightforward (making senseless iPhone video games), unhealthy and onerous (creating a brand new e-cigarette), simple and good (constructing encrypted messaging companies), onerous and good (“Colony on Mars”).
Anduril, in line with Mr. Stephens, falls into that latter class: work that’s advanced 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 account for a job 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 individuals to discover these huge 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 fully averted. “There’s nothing we information the moderator to ask or not ask — all the things is honest recreation,” she mentioned. “We ask God to information the moderators and audio system.”
Nonetheless politics, or a minimum of 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 in some way the free market libertarians, the protection hawks and the social conservatives,” he advised the economist Tyler Cowen in a recent interview. “What does the millionaire, and the overall and the priest — what do they really have in frequent?”
He continued: “But the coalition labored extremely properly, and the reply I submit that they’ve in frequent is that they’re anti-communist, they usually have a typical 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 companies.
Epic Church is nondenominational and acquired help from an evangelical Dallas-based community that locations church buildings in “spiritually onerous to succeed in” components of the US. Because it started weekly companies in San Francisco in 2011, Epic has ballooned, drawing roughly 1,000 individuals — together with a number of 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 need to consider the time they’re pouring into their careers has a better function.
“When you’ve been referred to 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 top 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 had been a number of the high-profile friends who dropped in. (The group is beginning up once more this 12 months.)
This Stephens-led small group typically studied the work of René Girard, a literary theorist who has turn out to be Silicon Valley’s favourite theologian. Mr. Girard’s identify 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 provide a view of faith that matches tidily into the assumption programs of Silicon Valley. He theorized that every one want is mimetic — we would like what different individuals need — and one one that broke that cycle of rivalry was Jesus Christ. Decoding his work, readers conclude {that a} strategy to transcend petty needs 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 at the moment are exacerbated by social media: Is Instagram making you jealous of different individuals? No drawback; hold scrolling, however bear in mind you need to solely need to be like Christ.
One other clarification for Mr. Girard’s rising affect is mimesis itself. Folks need 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 referred to as knowledgeable “idol”: If Mr. Thiel was worshiping Jesus, maybe he needs to be doing the identical.
