SAN FRANCISCO (RNS) — In early 2025, when Paul Taylor left the Palo Alto church he’d pastored for 18 years to focus on nonprofit work, he didn’t know where it would lead. Certainly, Taylor didn’t anticipate that, in September, he would be invited to a wood-paneled venue in downtown San Francisco, where the founder of PayPal expounded on the Antichrist for four Mondays in a row.
The sold-out lecture series, delivered by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, was hosted by The ACTS 17 Collective, a Christian organization that has made headlines for its big-name speaker events. But September’s lectures, billed as “Peter Thiel on the Antichrist through the lenses of faith, science, and culture,” drew a new level of intrigue — and controversy. The first night, devil-costumed protesters clogged the sidewalk while ticket-holders filed into San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club.
Taylor, who attended the off-the-record talks with Denise Lee Yohn, his co-founder at the Bay Area Center for Faith, Work, and Tech, was most struck by the audience. What initially felt like a “tech networking event” quickly turned spiritual, he said. “The idea that faith was the surface-level conversation in the room was remarkable to me.”
Given Thiel’s prominence as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and a Trump ally, the lectures have sparked dissection, alarm and parody. They’ve also brought attention to a growing Christ-curiousness …