Christians in tech drive religious revival in SF

On a recent Tuesday night, a small crowd gathered across the street from Dolores Park, outside the entrance to a townhouse converted from a former Christian Science church. Tickets for the party were sold out, and bouncers checked names at the gate.

But this wasn’t a product release party, an AI hackathon, or a Burning Man spinoff. Instead, it was an event meant to explore a topic ostensibly passé in a tech-obsessed city: Christianity.

Inside a grand room with arched glass windows and exposed brick, the diverse crowd filled every seat. A DJ spun remixes of worship songs as attendees grabbed plates of Burmese coconut rice and curry and sipped on cranberry-apple cosmos. 

Among the hosts for the Code & Cosmos event and owner of the venue was one of the tech world’s most prominent Christians, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan.

San Francisco, one of America’s most irreligious cities, is experiencing something of a religious revival tied to the tech industry, led in part by a handful of prominent leaders like Tan, Founders Fund investor Trae Stephens, and his wife, Michelle. Techie-oriented churches in the city are expanding by homing in on a message that connects for spiritual skeptics grinding away in Big Tech or at a startup.

“There was probably a time where a gathering like this would be unusual and maybe a little bit reviled in San Francisco,” Tan said, after pontificating about the relationship between faith, humanity, and work. 

On a panel at the event, Francis Collins, a former NIH director who led an effort to map the human genome, discussed his own journey from atheism to Christianity.

“Science answers questions that start with ‘how.’” Collins said. “Faith answers questions that start with ‘why.’”

The event organizer was a nonprofit called Acts 17 Collective, started by Michelle Stephens earlier this year specifically to nurture a Christian community within tech. The name is a backronym for Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society and is inspired by the biblical verse where the apostle Paul visits ancient Greece to preach to intellectuals and convert them into believers. 

“Our goal is not necessarily conversion,” Stephens said, but rather encouraging the “high intellectuals of our time” to consider incorporating faith into their lives.

“There’s an opportunity for people to realize working in tech and being a Christian aren’t at odds with each other,” she said. “Ten years ago, people were whispering to each other after meetings or events, ‘Hey, I heard you’re a Christian.’ It would be really hush-hush and on the down-low. That’s definitely changed over time.”

Stephens was inspired to start Acts 17 after throwing a 40th birthday bash for her husband Trae, a co-founder of defense contractor Anduril, at the couple’s home in New Mexico. 

The multiday event was themed as “the roast, the toast, and the holy ghost.” On the holy ghost day, guests split breakfast pizzas and mimosas, and the headliner was Peter Thiel, who led a sermon on miracles and forgiveness.

“After Peter’s sermon, people were coming up to us and saying, ‘I didn’t even know Peter was a Christian,’” Michelle Stephens said in an interview. “How can a gay billionaire be a Christian?’”

To hear it from Stephens, there’s a natural affinity between tech and Christianity. People in the industry give back through the creation of jobs and wealth that are meant to provide abundance to all. Plus, forgiveness and persevering after failure is key to the culture.

“[Tech] looks at second-time founders even better than first,” she said.

One of the city’s newer houses of worship, Epic Church launched in 2011 in a room at the W Hotel. It is experiencing the kind of traction startups hope for by speaking directly to techies, acknowledging that work is a central part of life, and being OK with the fact that some people aren’t here for the God part.

Epic Church is also investing in growth, spending millions on a new location slated to open by the end of the year. Weekly services are drawing in record numbers of parishioners like Tan and the Stephens family (who have donated to the new church), not to mention any number of the Big Tech rank and file. 

In June, Trae Stephens held a talk at Epic called “The Prologue and the Promise” to a packed house of attendees from all over the country. 

“I’m from rural Ohio. Whenever I go back home, people are like, ‘Oh San Francisco, that place is super hostile to Christians, right?’ I’ve been here for 10 and a half years and, honestly, no,” he said. “Generally speaking, people are curious how someone they otherwise respect would believe something they might perceive as being somewhat backwards.”

Rob Prickett said he first checked out Epic Church a decade ago, when he first arrived in the Bay Area. At the time, the fledgling congregation didn’t have much of a community and certainly not a strong tech tie.

In a testament to the way things have changed, he first saw the announcement for Code & Cosmos on LinkedIn.

In her remarks, Michelle Stephens said attendees had told her they felt a void in their lives. They had tried mushrooms, molly, and silent retreats in search of meaning. In an interview, she said her group plans to host more events to encourage people to consider faith as an answer to that question of purpose. 

“As humans, we are all made to worship and will worship something if we don’t worship God,” she said later in an interview. “What are you putting your faith in? What are you worshiping?” 

Epic Church pastor Ben Piglreen has developed a message meant to convince somewhat skeptical San Franciscans to join his congregation.

Pilgreen said the church’s growing popularity has a bit of a counterintuitive element to it. On the one hand, he said, it seems the Bay Area — with its counterculture roots and hyperrational techies — may feel like a place that’s less inclined to have faith. But at the same time, he said, “people here are open to almost anything.” 

“People are looking for meaning, and they’re looking for fulfillment. Sometimes they’ll try whatever,” Pilgreen said. “If you say Jesus, it’s fine. If it’s mushrooms, fine. If it’s Burning Man, if it’s hot yoga. There’s a lot of spirituality.”

He estimated that at least 10% of Epic’s members are God-skeptical and are at church more for the community element. That has become all the more true in a post-pandemic world, where some people feel more isolated than ever. 

The church averaged about 750 people for Sunday services prior to 2020. After dropping precipitously during the pandemic, numbers have steadily risen. In April, Epic saw about 800 people come through for Easter and recently welcomed 900 people to its basement church services for the first time. 

At a dinner party hosted by the church at Fang Restaurant in September, Mikaela Sanders said she heard about Epic from coworkers at Google. The 23-year-old grew up in a Christian family, but her churchgoing eventually lapsed, and she still considers herself mostly agnostic.

But after visiting Epic for the first time in January, she’s been going to church nearly every week. 

“I still don’t have my feelings sorted out on whether I believe in God and how I feel about the concept of religion,” Sanders said. “Here, in this community, I don’t feel like I have to have it figured out.”

One of the church’s core values is that a person’s vocation is sacred, which Pilgreen said “hugely resonates” within the grindcore tech industry. 

In a very Silicon Valley twist, Pilgreen has even parlayed his decade-plus experience informally advising startup founders and tech executives into a side-hustle coaching business. 

He offers one-on-one coaching, holds off-sites, and advises on company culture for a few hundred dollars an hour. His rule is that a client can’t be a church member (though it’s OK if their company hires him for a program). 

As for the God skeptics who have been attending his church for about a decade? Pilgreen is still holding out hope for late-stage conversion à la St. Paul. 

“I’m praying that they would see the light,” he said.