Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley. Now It’s the New Religion Says one entrepreneur, “There are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.” (h/t @tweetbit on X) - April 2025 … 1/ archive.ph
2/ Peter Thiel signed this. He has used NatCon to form/expand his alliance. Fundamentalist Christians who seek to persuade SCOTUS to obliterate the separation between church & state are a key part of that alliance. bsky.app
21/ NatCon’s Statement of Principles (signed by Russ Vought, William Wolfe, Hammer, Thiel, & others) also states: “Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity & its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private.“
3/ All three of these men signed NatCon’s Statement of Principles (as did Thiel). bsky.app
👀 The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy has just published an article by A3P Sr. Counsel Josh Hammer, Timon Cline, & Yoram Hazony. It calls on SCOTUS to reverse the 1947 Everson case, which held that the Establishment Clause applies to the states & requires a separation of church & state. 1/
4/ bsky.app
5/ bsky.app
This needs ⬆️ attention. Russ Vought (Trump OMB Director pick) signed NatCon’s Stmt of Principles, which says in part: “Where a Christian majority exists, public life shld be rooted in Christianity & its moral vision, which shld be honored by the state & other institutions both public & private.” 1/
6/ bsky.app
21/ Trump OMB Director pick Russ Vought (a NatCon signatory & Project 2025 leader) is the treasurer of America First Legal, which in 2022 similarly called upon SCOTUS to “disincorporate” the Establishment Clause, an implied reference to the 1947 Everson case. rollingstone.com
7/ bsky.app
10/ Yoram Hazony founded the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes NatCon. He’s also a co-author (with Hammer & Cline) of the soon-to-be-released law review article calling for the 1947 Everson case (on separation of church & state) to be reversed. He posted this on 5/1/25. x.com
8/ bsky.app
“Orthodox Jews in America…need to be supportive of…efforts to establish a Christian public life in those parts of the country where…that’s still possible” - Yoram Hazony, chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which has received Peter Thiel $$$ & organizes NatCon, which helped promote JD Vance. 1/
9/ Again, Timon Cline is another NatCon signatory. He’s employed by American Reformer whose board includes Claremont Institute alum Chris Buskirk (who co-founded tve Thiel-backed Rockbridge Network with JD Vance!) bsky.app
21/ Hazony’s NatCon has also platformed Timon Cline who is employed by American Reformer & the Hale Institute at Saint Andrews College (founded by Doug Wilson). During NatCon 4, Cline presented “The Case for Renouncing Separation of Church and State” youtu.be
10/ Chris Buskirk seems to be an important connector in tbe “Thielverse”, but almost no i e has heard if him (other than “New Right” operatives). bsky.app
9/ “Vance and Buskirk were introduced to each other by Thiel and first met in San Francisco following Trump’s 2016 election victory, according to the source familiar with Rockbridge. At the time, Vance was working for Thiel’s venture capital firm, Mithril Capital.” 8/20/24 wtaq.com
wtaq.com
11/ bsky.app
11/ Peter Thiel has invested in Chris Buskirk’s media site, American Greatness, per this excellent article published in 2017. stanfordpolitics.org
stanfordpolitics.org
12/ bsky.app
3/ The Rockbridge Network was co-founded by Chris Buskirk (a Claremont Institute alum) and JD Vance. monitoringinfluence.org
13/ bsky.app
3/ From Reuters: “Rockbridge hasn’t disclosed its financial backers & isn’t required to reveal them under campaign-finance laws. But according to two sources w/ knowledge of Rockbridge, they include Peter Thiel … Rebekah Mercer … is also a backer.“ reuters.com
14/ bsky.app
20/ I haven’t seen many articles about Chris Buskirk who was heavily involved with defending and promoting the first Trump administration in the media—including the transition led by Bannon and Thiel. But I found this one published by @mmfa.bsky.social in 2022. mediamatters.org
www.mediamatters.org
15/ Again, Buskirk is on American Reformer’s board of directors. bsky.app
8/ American Reformer (also founded by Fischer) employed William Wolfe, a self-professed Christian Nationalist as a fellow, and it supports William’s Center for Baptist Leadership.
16/ bsky.app
9/ William Wolfe co-edited this explicit and extreme draft “Christian Nationalism” manifesto, as I reported for @buckscountybeacon.bsky.social buckscountybeacon.com
17/ bsky.app
48/ In 2022, American Reformer held a “CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM” symposium, per its tax filing. As shown above, Chris Buskirk (who co-founded Rockbridge w/ JD Vance) is a director of American Reformer, & Rockbridge is reportedly backed by THIEL & MERCER. projects.propublica.org
18/ bsky.app
4/ NatCon’s website, for example, explicitly promotes The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe. The book was published by Doug Wilson’s family publishing company. nationalconservatism.org
19/ bsky.app
4/ Stephen Wolfe wrote “The Case for Christian Nationalism”, which was published in 2022 by Canon Press, Christ Church pastor Doug Wilson’s family publishing company. It advocates an “ethnically uniform society ruled by a Christian Prince,” per Reason Magazine. reason.com
20/ Stephen Wolfe & Doug Wilson posing with NatCon signatory William Wolfe—a former fellow of both American Reformer & of Russ Vought’s Center for Renewing America. bsky.app
14/ The panel was attended by William Wolfe (Russ Vought’s former Visiting Fellow) and Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William). Stephen wrote the Case for Christian Nationalism, which was published by Doug Wilson’s family publishing company. Photo from that day.
21/ NatCon signatory Russ Vought with Doug Wilson and Nate Fischer (co-founder of New Founding & American Reformer). bsky.app
17/ In September 2023, American Moment organized a panel featuring Russ Vought, Doug Wilson, and Claremont Institute alum Nate Fischer (co-founder of New Founding & American Reformer). The event was co-sponsored by American Reformer & New Saint Andrews College (founded by Doug Wilson).
22/ ICYMI, this is Doug Wilson. bsky.app
Pete Hegseth attends a church that belongs to the CREC, the evangelical denomination founded by Doug Wilson. This guy. 👇 via @edwam.bsky.social 1/
23/ Also Doug Wilson. bsky.app
25/ Here, Doug Wilson says that women have a “responsibility” to be “submissive” in marriage.
24/ More. bsky.app
21/ Here, Doug Wilson says that “What happened in the women’s suffrage movement is it looked like we were enfranchising women now,” but “what we were [really] doing is disenfranchising households.”
25/ bsky.app
25/ I wrote about Doug Wilson here. crownewsletter.substack.com
26/ bsky.app
15/ Doug Wilson is slated to speak at NatCon5. (He also spoke at NatCon4.)
27/ Notice Peter Thiel (among others). bsky.app
21/ Look who else plans to speak at NatCon5.
28/ More info on Peter Thiel. bsky.app
10/ “Father Arne befriended Thiel when Thiel was an undergraduate at Stanford and Father Arne ran the Opus Dei house.” By Austin Ruse h/t @thcarter123.bsky.social crisismagazine.com
crisismagazine.com
29/ bsky.app
Peter Thiel backs the Hallow prayer app, which is now promoting “The Way,” a book composed by Josemaría Escrivá, the initiator of Opus Dei. Leonard Leo (Federalist Society, Teneo) reportedly belongs to Opus Dei. 1/
30/ Vance wrote that Thiel was an original inspiration for his path to Christianity. bsky.app
9/ “In 2019, Vance also converted to Catholicism, a move that aligned him with the young, religious crowd of the New Right. In 2020, Vance wrote that Thiel was an original inspiration for his path to Christianity despite previously calling himself an atheist.” salon.com
www.salon.com
31/ Also in 2019. bsky.app
12/ It was also in 2019 that Peter Thiel, JD Vance, and Chris Buskirk spoke during NatCon in Washington DC. (Although Curtis Yarvin didn’t speak on stage, he attended the conference. See post 13.) nationalconservatism.org
32/ Also in 2019 bsky.app
33/ Also in 2019. bsky.app
2/ “Founded in 2019, Rockbridge Network seeks to influence U.S. politics through a centrally controlled network of right-wing political groups backed by some of the same deep-pocketed tech investors who helped bankroll Vance’s political rise." fastcompany.com
www.fastcompany.com
34/ Also 2019. I had forgotten that Andreessen was a Narya investor too. Figures. bsky.app
21/ “After two years, Vance broke out on his own, cofounding Narya Capital in 2019 with investments from Thiel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and VC veteran Marc Andreessen.” businessinsider.com
www.businessinsider.com
35/ Marc Andreessen and New Founding bsky.app
Those of us who study the Theo Bros have long suspected a financial connection between them & the Tech Bros, but were unable to find it. Forbes just did. The connection is thru Marc Andreessen (who advises DOGE & is involved w/ Network States) & New Founding (led by Nate Fischer & Josh Abbottoy). 1/
36/ bsky.app
4/ Joshua Clemans’ LinkedIn profile says that he’s a partner at New Founding and that he graduated from New Saint Andrews College (the college founded by Doug Wilson). linkedin.com
37/ Again, Peter Thiel ally Marc Andreessen is an investor of New Founding. bsky.app
11/ Like Joshua Clemans, Santiago Pliego is a partner at New Founding (backed by Marc Andreessen) and graduate of New Saint Andrews College (founded by Doug Wilson).
38/ bsky.app
39/ Reminder. bsky.app
17/ In September 2023, American Moment organized a panel featuring Russ Vought, Doug Wilson, and Claremont Institute alum Nate Fischer (co-founder of New Founding & American Reformer). The event was co-sponsored by American Reformer & New Saint Andrews College (founded by Doug Wilson).
40/ Reminder. bsky.app
41/ Follow the money! bsky.app
38/ In 2021, Peter Thiel & Claremont Institute chairman Tom Klingenstein each donated $50k to the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes NatCon. The NatCon conference was sponsored by (among others) Claremont and New Founding. Remember New Founding? nationalconservatism.org
42/ bsky.app
“Meet the…investors funding a Christian nationalist community in Tennessee ….Nate Fischer heads the company [New Founding] financing the so-called ‘Highland Rim Project’ … Among its investors is tech billionaire Marc Andreesen.” By @philinvestigates.com 1/ newschannel5.com
43/ bsky.app
3/ I also recommend this excellent “New Founding” piece by @kieraevebutler.bsky.social: “Christian ‘TheoBros’ Are Building a Tech Utopia in Appalachia *** What could go wrong?” motherjones.com
www.motherjones.com
44/ bsky.app
The “Gundo Bros” are “ultra-Christian” tech entrepreneurs (eg, Augustus Doricko & Isaiah Taylor) who’ve set up shop in El Segundo, CA. Some have “benefitted from the largesse” of tech billionaire Marc Andreessen, a Thiel/Musk pal, DOGE advisor & “network state” investor. Doug Wilson ties in too. 1/
45/ Speaking of Andreessen… bsky.app
Tech investor Marc Andreessen’s VC firm, a16z, backs the “Solano Foundry” project in CA. Andreessen also backs the “Network State” movement, which seeks to build new cities w/ the goal of helping them amass enough power that they can become countries. How do we know they won’t try that here? 1/
46/ bsky.app
22/ I don’t know if Marc Andreessen is an “official” member of the stealthy Rockbridge Network or not. But he reportedly spoke during a Rockbridge event four days after Trump’s 2024 election win. So did Anduril founder Palmer Luckey. nytimes.com
47/ bsky.app
14/ DOGE advisor Marc Andreessen has called Peter Thiel his “friend & hero”. digitopoly.org
48/ bsky.app
Katherine Boyle is a partner of tech billionaire Marc Andreessen. In 2023, she wrote that there’s a “war on suffering,” which has “robbed us of resilience.” She blamed Roe v Wade & the decision to make military service optional. She said that this “war” coincided w/ the decline of religiosity. 1/
boyle.substack.com
49/ This is important. bsky.app
“Agency employees may seek to ‘persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views’ in the office, wrote Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management” - 7/28/25 (Kupor is a former partner of tech billionaire Marc Andreessen) 1/
www.reuters.com
50/ bsky.app
6/ I keep an eye on Katherine Boyle’s X account because she seems to have taken the lead in cultivating Andreessen Horowitz’s (A16z) interests in El Segundo, CA, aka “The Gundo” aka the “Bible-thumping hub of hard tech.” vanityfair.com
www.vanityfair.com
51/ bsky.app
24/ In October, during Peter Thiel’s Hereticon event, Michael Gibson (1517 Fund) thanked “Gundo Bros” Augustus Doricko (founder of Rainmaker) & Isaiah Taylor (founder of Valar Atomics) in connection with the screening of a “first cut” of a film called “Fully Kinetic: the New Arsenal of Democracy.”
52/ bsky.app
“A blind man cld see that the upcoming administration is stacked with ‘our guys’ from tech, specifically from Thiel's camp *** Our cover is blown [so stop apologizing] … We are the new elite because we are the most capable…” - Rainmaker founder Augustus Doricko, 12/14/24 1/
53/ bsky.app
4/ The Doug Wilson connection.
54/ bsky.app
5/
55/ bsky.app
1517 co-founder Michael Gibson is a former Thiel Foundation VP & Thiel Capital principal who now advises Pronomos Capital (backed by Thiel & Marc Andreessen). During Thiel’s October “Hereticon” event, Gibson co-led a talk titled “Manifest Destiny:Greenland, Cuba, & the New American Colony.” 1/
56/ bsky.app
20/ Meanwhile, Michael Gibson’s 1517 Fund was first to invest in Rainmaker, a cloud seeding startup in El Segundo, CA founded by Augustus Doricko, a former Thiel fellow. Gibson wrote this articke about the burgeoning startup community in El Segundo. city-journal.org
www.city-journal.org
57/ bsky.app
8/ In this interview of Peter Thiel from 2014, Glenn Beck says that Thiel is a “gay evangelical”, & Thiel nods his head in apparent agreement. youtu.be
58/ bsky.app
More evidence of an alliance between the “Tech Bros” & the “Catholic Right”. On 7/1/24, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale used his blog to thank Catholic hardliner Leonard Leo for his “advice & support” re: a SCOTUS brief that Lonsdale’s Cicero Institute had filed to help criminalize homelessness. 1/
59/ bsky.app
21/ In March 2024, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale interviewed Leonard Leo & wrote that, “Few leaders have been more successful in rightsizing government than Leonard Leo. What's his strategy? And how can the tech world get involved?”
60/ As shown above, Rockbridge was co-founded by Vance & Buskirk & is reportedly backed by Thiel and Mercer. bsky.app
14/ Rockbridge Network is a secretive network. We don’t have a membership list but there have been leaks about the network. In April last year, for example, Leonard Leo reportedly attended a Rockbridge event at Mar-A-Lago.” accountable.us
accountable.us
61/ bsky.app
7/ Katherine Boyle—who is Catholic and a partner at DOGE advisor Marc Andreessen’s VC firm—spearheaded General Catalyst’s investment in Hallow back when she worked at General Catalyst. She reportedly saw Hallow’s founder pitch the app at Stanford in 2019. pillarcatholic.com
www.pillarcatholic.com
62/ bsky.app
6/ Pete Hegseth promoted the Thiel-backed Hallow Prayer on Fox and Friends last year. huffpost.com
www.huffpost.com
63/ bsky.app
9/ Hegseth’s Venmo contacts list has reportedly included Evan Baehr, a former advisor to Peter Thiel. (It was Baehr & Thiel who conceived of the Teneo Network, which is now led by Leonard Leo.) prospect.org
prospect.org
64/ bsky.app
10/ You can hear Evan Baehr explain Teneo’s origin story in this video clip. In addition to the Teneo part, I find it interesting that Baehr said that he was working for Thiel on a “political database” at the time. h/t @andykroll.bsky.social
65/ bsky.app
14/ Per Teneo’s tax returns, Leonard Leo became chairman of Teneo in 2021. projects.propublica.org
66/ bsky.app
13/ Evan Baehr left Teneo in 2022, per his LinkedIn.
67/ bsky.app
15/ The most recent published tax return for Teneo is from 2023. It states that Teneo paid $199K to Flourish Strategy, LLC. as an independent contractor that year. projects.propublica.org Evan Baehr is the registered agent for Flourish. bizapedia.com
68/ bsky.app
16/ “Advisor to Peter Thiel” linkedin.com
69/ Great catch by @mmfa.bsky.social from 2022. Chris Buskirk—who co-founded the Thiel-backed Rockbridge Network with JD Vance—RTd this post by William Wolfe, which states: “Christian Nationalism is trending on Twitter … Mission accomplished.” mediamatters.org
70/ As you can see, Chris Buskirk signed NatCon’s Statement of Principles too (like Peter Thiel). nationalconservatism.org
nationalconservatism.org
71/ bsky.app
Chris Buskirk—who co-founded the Rockbridge Network w/ JD Vance (reportedly w/ $$$ from Thiel & Mercer)—has invested in Patriot Mobile, per Colombier Acquisitions where he is on the board. Patriot Mobile has been heavily involved w/ school board takeovers. 1/ colombierspac.com
72/ bsky.app
4/ “How a far-right, Christian cellphone company ‘took over’ four Texas school boards *** Patriot Mobile markets itself as ‘America’s only Christian conservative wireless provider.’ Now the … company is on a mission to win control of Texas school boards.” 4/25/22 nbcnews.com
www.nbcnews.com
73/ “Chris Buskirk is supposed to be the respectable face of a new Peter Thiel-backed far-right media network. His website tells another story.” 8/9/22 mediamatters.org
www.mediamatters.org