Inside Turning Point USA’s Pastors Summit
Below is a guest report from Matthew Boedy, a professor at the University of North Georgia. He was one of the original names on Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist in 2016. He is the author of a forthcoming book on Turning Point, The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy.
There was one question I wanted answered by attending an event last week in my city of Gainesville, Georgia, put on by Turning Point USA. What does Christian Nationalism say when it wins?
After years of writing about Charlie Kirk and his $100 million organization dedicated to remaking America for God, I wondered whether victory would change their message and show a change in action. The message from the victorious two months on from Inauguration Day of a deeply troubling if not already era-ending presidency cements the danger to democracy from the kingmaker Kirk and the national movement he has created.
That message can be summed up by Kirk’s words during a panel at last week’s TPUSA Faith Pastors Summit with conservative provocateur Matt Walsh: This country needs a 10-15 year “exorcism.”
This call to divine cleansing is also a call for a stronger, deeper, wider taking of dominion by those who follow Kirk. It was put in less stark imagery by other speakers who exhorted those in the audience to not be tempted by victory to step back.
“We have to press in,” said pastor Marty Baker from Stevens Creek Church in Augusta, Georgia.
How Turning Point and its allies plan to accomplish their goal is in part by convincing pastors to lead from the front like generals. Pastors speaking directly from the pulpit about social issues would cleanse the culture around them. Before the election, Turning Point stressed calls to endorse candidates, to defy the IRS’s political campaign activity ban (often called the “Johnson Amendment”). Now post-victory, the pastors are spurred to justify their sermons on a wide variety of issues by ignoring any link to partisanship: “It’s not political, it’s biblical.”
Turning Point called for all pastors of all denominations to do this. The director of TPUSA Faith, a charismatic-inclined pastor from Indiana named Lucas Miles, specifically thanked Catholics in the crowd.
Turning Point claimed it wants the Christian church to be united about “primary doctrines.” But the doctrines Turning Point wanted to unify the church around were not traditional theological topics — soteriology, ecclesiology, or even eschatology. Instead, they wanted churches to unify around, to use one example, what Kirk called the “social contagion” of “transgenderism.” And as expected, many of the speakers repeated false claims and conspiracies about media, education, science, and, of course, politics.
Whatever call to unity it had, Turning Point was also clearly leaning into division. It only would unify with churches that agree with its primary doctrines. In that manner, each call to unity was daunted by the rhetorical creation of division. There are certainly biblical messages to be preached about the Imago Dei that affect gender, among other modern topics. But to suggest that “transgenderism” can be “caught from a teacher” like the flu, as Kirk said, implicitly paints a certain picture.
At times, the division was made explicit. When Miles tried to answer a hypothetical pastor who didn’t want to engage with politics in his church for fear of dividing his congregation, Miles responded: “Your church is already divided.” The implication was that those who are on the wrong side of politics — even as Christians — should not be welcome in that church. Kirk went so far as to say that churches who supported the Black Lives Matter movement were “traitorous” churches.
This and other words nodding to themes of authority and revolution kept tying the Christian church more and more to the rebellion of 1776. Kirk resurrected his one-liner from last year about “sunshine patriots,” plucked from a Thomas Paine pamphlet about people who only wanted to fight during the summer months. He previously used it in the context of what could have happened if Donald Trump lost. Kirk wanted the church to fight in that event and he wanted those who would not be as courageous as he to be shamed for not doing so.
The rebellion analogy was fit for a moment when Christian Nationalism didn’t have political power. Now that it does, one might have expected Kirk to embrace rhetoric free from fighting. Instead, he turned the war for freedom from tyranny into a final battle against the devil. Kirk said the church was in “wartime” now. And he was quick to say it was a spiritual war, not a physical one, lest anyone in the media confuse his words with those from Jan. 6.
Conquering the Seven Mountains
Why does the new face of Christian Nationalism say the church is in “wartime” when Trump is in the White House and his party controls D.C.? The simple answer is there are more areas of culture beyond politics to be conquered, more dominion to be had. Kirk labored this point with his claim that Jesus wants the church “to be expansionist, to be in every single domain.”
This is a nod to the Seven Mountains Mandate, the strategy of Christian Nationalism to retake from demonic control seven influential areas of culture. One of its originators, Lance Wallnau, was expected to speak at the summit, but was a late scratch. Kirk turned Turning Point to the Seven Mountains Mandate in 2019 and famously announced in 2020 that Trump was the first president to understand the mandate’s seven areas.
In many ways, Turning Point is claiming through events like these that the mandate should outlive the Trump presidency. Whether the presidency will end is an open question. But it’s clear Turning Point and Kirk want to define the mandate as the substance of Trumpism, however extended its life may be.
The future is the warrant for the mandate. The call for a 10-15 year cleansing allowed Kirk and other speakers to press the audience to see the future of their faith beyond Trump and claim a MAGA doctrine for future generations.
While only mentioned a few times, Trump certainly was a presence in the room. Behind me sat a man with a hat that showed a gold 47. A woman wore a bedazzled gold “jersey” with 47 on the sleeves and Trump on the back. Those were outliers though. When Miles said that “you don’t have to have a red hat to preach politics,” there were indeed no red MAGA hats in the crowd. But the victory God brought through Trump to stall the death of White, conservative Christianity was praised.
Beyond the implication of the Seven Mountains Mandate, Kirk’s claim the church is in “wartime” opens the door for him also to say as he did that traditional church activities — running food pantries and having a marriage ministry are two examples he gave — are not enough in this war era. Pastors who thought they were entering ministry during “peacetime” need to recognize the change in era. And to be clear, it is not for Turning Point a “gospel-plus” era — adding other subjects on top of proclamation of the gospel. Kirk and Turning Point are saying the gospel includes these new issues they want highlighted.
Political Worship
It’s unclear how many pastors were in attendance. Miles said from the stage the summit had about 1,800 attendees. While billed as a pastors summit, registrants were offered seats for their wives. Many females in the crowd shouted “amen” or other agreements to the speakers. Even further complicating the attendance question, the first night the entire seating area was filled with people of all ages.
The man with the gold 47 hat sat next to his wife who carried their newborn on her chest. Teens and young adults sat in sections together to listen both to Kirk and the “house band” at Free Chapel, the megachurch that hosted the event. Free Chapel is pastored by Jentezen Franklin, a longtime Trump ally. The church offered free attendance to its congregation. The following days were significantly less attended than the first day.
That first session made the pastors summit at times resemble less a preacher’s convention and more a spiritual rally. Billy Graham was invoked many times, with one person even suggesting he should have preached politics more.
Worship songs began each day. Songs about holiness and the power of God’s name thundered into the large open area outside the chapel. Preachers such as Lorenzo Sewell exhorted the crowd to choose today to believe in Christ’s love. It was like a Passion Conference with an Eric Metaxas book signing.
Beyond the faith, fear was also a palpable presence in the room. This call to continue Christianizing the nation beyond the victories in D.C. was justified by threats from rising evil.
Kirk’s mentor in Christian Nationalism, California megachurch pastor Rob McCoy, was direct about his home state: “Don’t think you are safe here in Georgia. The cancer spreads.”
A pastor from Australia, Andrew Sedra, spoke to Kirk during a podcast recording on site of the summit about Australian threats against pastors who speak against secular values. Kirk also described an Islamic take-over of Europe that would come soon.
And Megan Basham spoke about the alleged infiltration of mainstream Christian media by money from George Soros. She told pastors who might trust outlets such as Christianity Today: “You’re being worked on. Know how you’re being worked on.”
The fear of losing the next generation was also made clear. Many speakers invoked the theme that youth were leaving the church. Especially young men. This was contrasted at times with Kirk and others pointing to signs of youth revival. More traditional calls to sustain the faith into the next generation were paired with a political call to save the nation. By the end of the event, the marriage between what is political and what is biblical was consummated.
And this marriage has already begun to produce and disciple children. Reaching the next generation was the subject of a panel filled with young social media influencers from secular enclaves like California and New Mexico aiming to undercut the assumed opinion that the Internet was too much of a moral cesspool to have Christians spend time in it. Each had their own reasons for starting their online platforms. But each agreed they were extensions of the local church, not replacements.
And that is how Turning Point sees itself. Not as a traditional parachurch evangelical operation, but as the moral conscience of the church, calling out and encouraging its leaders to do more. But the reality is Turning Point has become the church in the same manner it has become the Republican Party. Its call for churches to do more is a call for churches to do what it is doing. Turning Point certainly is a danger to our democracy. It’s also a more insidious danger to the church because it calls the church to say that its victory can be hers if she would only follow its lead.
As a public witness,
Matthew Boedy
I am surprised George Soros has any money left considering how many movements and people the far right claims he pays