Christian fundamentalist 'tech bros' growing more influential in MAGA World

15 January

White evangelical Christian fundamentalists are among Donald Trump's most ardent supporters, and the president-elect also enjoys strong support from some prominent figures in the tech world — including X.com owner Elon Musk and PayPal founder Peter Thiel. Meanwhile, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Facebook/Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom were critical of Trump in the past, made an effort to curry favor with him after he won the 2024 election.

Mother Jones' Kiera Butler, in an article published on January 15, describes a Trump-friendly trend that brings the evangelical and tech worlds together: Christian fundamentalist tech bros.

Butler cites 24-year-old Augustus Doricko, who runs the startup Rainmaker, as an example.

"Last year," Butler reports, "PayPal founder Peter Thiel's foundation granted Doricko a Thiel Fellowship, a grant awarded annually to a select group of entrepreneurs who have foregone a college degree in order to pursue a tech-focused business venture….. (Doricko) believes his work manifests God’s will."

Doricko, according to Butler, "is just one example within a rising tide of American Christianity that appears to be cresting in California's tech enclaves."

"Recent news stories have described a new generation of tech bros flocking to church in the famously secular San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley, discovering Christianity through PayPal founder and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, and investing in a Christ-centered real estate enclave in rural Kentucky," Butler explains. "There are the usual reasons for this surging interest in Christianity like yearning for community and searching for the greater meaning of life…. But there are other forces at play, which revolve around a very specific kind of Christianity: that of the TheoBros, a group of mostly Millennial and Gen Z, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists."

Butler continues, "Among the tenets of this branch of Protestant Christianity — known as reformed or reconstructionist — is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law. While the TheoBros' beliefs are extreme — many of them think women shouldn't be able to vote, and that the Constitution has outlived its usefulness and we should instead be governed by the Ten Commandments — their movement is moving out of the fringe."

TheoBros, according to Butler, favor "hypermasculine aesthetics" — including a group of tech bros in El Segundo, California who call themselves the Gundo Bros.

Butler notes, "The Gundo Bros have a way of casually mixing the realms of tech, masculinity, and Christianity…. Many of the Gundo Bros have benefitted from the largesse of tech investor Marc Andreessen, a major Trump supporter, friends with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, and close adviser to Trump's newly convened Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE….. The TheoBros’ mingling with MAGA elites is likely just getting started."

Kiera Jones' full article for Mother Jones is available at this link.

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