More recently, Thiel has positioned himself right in the middle of the Republican Party. He served as Trumps liaison to Silicon Valley in his first term. Since then, he has convened and supported a new cohort of conservatives (many of whom also claim a right-wing Christianity), including Vice President J.D. Vance, Trumps Director of Policy Planning Michael Anton, AI and crypto czar billionaire David Sacks, and Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting Trump elected the second time around. Thiel is also close to Curtis Yarvin, the fellow who jokingly claimed that American society no longer needs poor people and believes they should instead be turned into biofuel. (A worldview that simply couldnt be more incompatible with Christianitys core tenets.)
Particularly relevant to recent political (and ideological) developments, especially the military occupation of Washington, D.C., Thiel is also close to Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir and founder of the Cicero Institute, a right-wing think tank behind a coordinated attack on the homeless now sweeping the nation. Thats right, theres a throughline from Peter Thiel to President Donald Trumps demand that the homeless have to move out immediately FAR from the Capital. In July, Trump produced an executive order facilitating the removal of housing encampments in Washington, a year after the Supreme Court upheld a law making it a crime, if you dont have a home, to sleep or even breathe outside. And Thiel, Lonsdale, and the Cicero Institute arent just responsible for those attacks on unhoused people and blue cities; they also bear responsibility for faith leaders being arrested and fined for their support of unhoused communities and their opposition, on religious grounds, to the mistreatment of the poor.
On top of this troubling mix of Christianity and billionaires, however, I find myself particularly chagrined that Thiel is offering an oversold four-part lecture series on the antichrist through a nonprofit called ACTS 17 collective that is to start in September in San Francisco. News stories about the ACTS 17 collective tend to focus on Christians organizing in Silicon Valley and the desire to put salvation through Jesus above personal success or charity for the poor. That sounds all too ominous, especially for those of us who take seriously the biblical command to stop depriving the poor of rights, to end poverty on earth (as it is in heaven), and defend the very people the Bible prioritizes.
For instance, Trae Stephens (who worked at Palantir and is partners with Thiel in a venture capital fund) is the husband of Michelle Stephens, the founder of the ACTS 17 collective. In an interview with Emma Goldberg of the New York Times, Michelle Stephens describes how we are always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized I think weve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.
In an article at the Denison Forum, shes even more specific about her biblical and theological interpretation of poverty and the need to care for those with more rather than the poor. She writes, Those who see Christs message to the poor and needy as the central pillar of the gospel make a similar mistake. While social justice movements have done a great deal to point out our societys longstanding sins and call believers to action, it can be tempting for that message to become more prominent than our innate need for Jesus to save us. Such a statement reminds me of the decades-long theological pushback I lived through even before the passage of welfare reform and the continued juxtaposition of Jesus and justice since.
A Battle for the Bible
Of course, such a battle for the Bible is anything but new in America. It reaches back long before the rise of a new brand of Christianity in Silicon Valley. In the 1700s and 1800s, slaveholders quoted the book of Philemon and lines from St. Pauls epistles to claim that slavery had been ordained by God, while ripping the pages of Exodus from bibles they gave to the enslaved. During the Gilded Age of the nineteenth century, churches and politicians alike preached what was called a prosperity gospel that extolled the virtues of industrial capitalism. Decades later, segregationists continued to use stray biblical verses to rubber-stamp Jim Crow practices, while the Moral Majority, founded in 1979 by Baptist minister Jerry Falwell, Sr., helped mainstream a new generation of Christian extremists in national politics.
Over the past decades, the use of the Bible to justify what passes for law and order (and the punishing of the poor) has only intensified. In Donald Trumps first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administrations policy of separating immigrant children from their families at the border with a passage from the Apostle Pauls epistle to the Romans: I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summed up the same idea soon after in this way: It is very biblical to enforce the law. And in his first speech as speaker of the House, Mike Johnson told his colleagues, I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority, an echo of the New Testaments Epistle to the Romans, in which Paul writes that the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Over the past several years, Republican politicians and religious leaders have continued to use biblical references to punish the poor, quoting texts to justify cutting people off from healthcare and food assistance. A galling example came when Representative Jodey Arrington (R-TX), rebutting a Jewish activist who referenced a commandment in Leviticus to feed the hungry, quoted 2 Thessalonians to justify increasing work requirements for people qualifying for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). And that was just one of many Republican attacks on the low-income food assistance program amid myriad attempts to shred the social welfare system in the lead-up to President Trumps Big Beautiful Bill, the largest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in American history and a crowning achievement of Russell Voughts Project 2025. Arrington said: But theres also, you know, in the Scripture, tells us in 2 Thessalonians chapter 3:10 he says, uh, For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: if a man will not work, he shall not eat. And then he goes on to say We hear that some among you are idle I think its a reasonable expectation that we have work requirements.
And Arrington has been anything but alone. The same passage, in fact, had already been used by Representatives Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Stephen Lee Fincher (R-TN) to justify cutting food stamps during a debate over an earlier farm bill. And Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) used similarly religious language, categorizing people as deserving and undeserving, to argue against a healthcare plan that protects those of us with pre-existing conditions. He insisted that only people who lead good lives and have done the things to keep their bodies healthy should receive reduced costs for health care.
Such Christian politicians regularly misuse Biblical passages to blame the impoverished for their poverty. There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen peoples wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
A Theology of Liberation for a Time Like This
Such interpretations of biblical texts are damaging to everyones lives (except, of course, the superrich), but especially the poor. And though you wouldnt know it from such Republicans they are counter to the main themes of the Bibles texts. The whole of the Christian Bible, starting with Genesis and ending with the Book of Revelation, has an arc of justice to it. The historical equivalents of anti-poverty programs run through it all.
That arc starts in the Book of Exodus with manna (bread) that shows up day after day, so no one has too much or too little. This is a likely response to the Egyptian Pharaoh setting up a system where a few religious and political leaders amassed great wealth at the expense of the people. Gods plan, on the other hand, was for society to be organized around meeting the needs of all people, including describing how political and religious leaders are supposed to release slaves, forgive debts, pay people what they deserve, and distribute funds to the needy. The biblical arc of justice then continues through the prophets who insist that the way to love and honor God is to promote programs that uplift the poor and marginalized, while decrying those with power who cloak oppression in religious terms and heretical versions of Christian theology.
My own political and moral roots are in the welfare rights and homeless union survival movements, efforts led by poor and dispossessed people organizing a new underground railroad and challenging Christianity to talk the talk and walk the walk of Christ. Such a conviction was captured by Reverend Yvonne Delk at the 1992 Up and Out of Poverty Survival Summit, when she declared that society, including the church, must move to the position that poor people are not sinners, but poverty is a sin against God that could and should be ended.
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