How Turning Point Contrasts With Traditional Evangelical Youth Outreach
(ANALYSIS) The massive online audience that viewed the September 21 memorial service for assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk saw a remarkable fusion of his two preoccupations: fervent evangelical Christianity, along with the type of conservative American politics personified by President Donald Trump, who appeared alongside an impressive lineup of his appointees.
Kirk promoted both causes through his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) youth outreach, which boosted Trump votes in 2024 and conceivably made the difference. The staff of 350, now led by Kirk’s widow Erika as C.E.O., claims to run “the biggest conservative movement in the country.”
TPUSA reports affiliates at some 900 colleges and 1,200 high schools, and believes one day it will reach every campus in the nation. It says 120,000 inquiries about forming new local groups have been received since Kirk’s martyrdom.
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Undeterred by its star speaker’s death, TPUSA is continuing 12 scheduled rallies at universities through this fall and the annual America Fest December 18-21 in Phoenix. Speakers include such celebrities as Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, Ben Carson, Riley Gaines, Megyn Kelly, Ken Paxton, Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump Jr. and Jesse Watters.
TPUSA’s stated purpose is organizing youths behind “freedom, free markets and limited government,” not Christianity as such. But as shown on Sept. 21, it energizes countless young enthusiasts who identify their Christian faith with political devotion. In 2021, Kirk added an explicit “Faith” arm, led by Pastor Lucas Miles of Nfluence Church in Indiana. It trains churches and individuals “to stand for biblical truth, combat cultural compromises,” and “bring about a God-centered revival in America.”
If Kirk’s movement accomplishes its ambitious goals, it would rival America’s significant evangelical youth revival that erupted after World War Two. “Parachurch” organizations formed during that era are all active today among U.S. teens, collegians, soldiers and young adults. Collectively, they report annual revenues that exceed $1.6 billion (which includes sizable international operations). That compares with TPUSA’s $85 million in 2024, double the 2020 total.
Unlike TPUSA, the prior movement was non-partisan, though it naturally won ample support from politically conservative adults, not to mention the Hearst newspapers. Sociologist William Martin writes that “apart from a decided anti-Communism and a strong patriotic strain,” which characterized the nation as a whole, “politics was neither its manifest nor hidden agenda. It was, as it purported to be, a religious movement.”
Another contrast: The prior uprising was clearly Protestant, based upon defined doctrinal statements, though nowadays these same groups are friendly toward Catholicism. TPUSA has no doctrinal creed, is now led by Catholic Erika Kirk, and welcomes Latter-day Saints (formerly nicknamed “Mormons”) whose theology evangelicals reject. It included politically conservative Jewish and Hindu speakers at the September 21 worship service. Both the traditional evangelical groups and TPUSA defend traditional man-woman marriage despite cultural controversy.
For comparison, here’s a sketch of some key organizations and white male founders in America’s prior youth uprising.
A pivotal moment occurred in 1944. Pastor Torrey Johnson (1909-2002) and colleagues decided to imitate teen rallies in New York City and elsewhere and risked renting the Chicago Symphony’s Orchestra Hall, near the city’s United Services Organization center, bustling with young soldiers in transit. Johnson chose as speaker a young suburban pastor named Billy Graham (1918-2018). The event was so popular that rallies continued week after week, moved to a church when the orchestra performed, and were held weekly for years.
That fall, the team drew 28,000 to a Chicago Stadium rally. In 1945, Johnson mortgaged his home to guarantee the rental of Soldier Field, where 70,000 youths heard track star Gil Dodds, who had broken the world record for the mile. Johnson was now president of the newborn Youth For Christ (YFC). Graham, as its first employee, organized chapters and rallies in dozens of cities before launching his own spectacular revival career. You want showmanship? How about a YFC concert with 100 pianos! By some estimates, a million teens attended rallies each week.
An important forebear of this upsurge was Dawson Trotman (1906-1956), a converted lumberyard worker whose 1933 evangelism among U.S. Navy sailors in California developed into The Navigators organization, expanded from the military into schools, and currently has 4,600 staff members in more than 100 countries. Operating under the radar, The Navigators skipped eye-catching rallies in favor of personal outreach and small fellowship groups. Trotman’s discipleship training for new Christians was so effective that Graham recruited him and successor Lorne Sanny (1920-2005) to devise follow-up programs for those making commitments to Jesus Christ at his “crusades.”
Another predecessor, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, originated at British universities. Young Australian C. Stacy Woods (1909-1983) was leading IVCF in Canada in 1938 when University of Michigan students asked him to expand across the border. Woods later helped foster the movement internationally.
Early innovations included triennial mass student conventions to promote evangelical faith and foreign missionary careers. As it happens, the latest one will occur days after TPUSA’s event at the same Phoenix venue. Starting in 1947, InterVarsity Press fostered the group’s “discipleship of the mind” purpose with Bible studies and quality books geared to issues college students face. Today’s IVCF, active on 700 U.S. campuses, includes faculty fellowships and, though non-partisan, encourages discussion of “ethnic reconciliation and justice.”
Young Life, which reports average weekly attendance of 378,000 teens, originated in 1939 with a small-town Texas club led by seminary graduate Jim Rayburn (1909-1970). It emphasizes one-on-one friendships as well as clubs and has achieved notable success with urban minority youths. One specialty is a week-long immersion at one of the organization’s 33 summer camps. Recent additions are a college ministry, Young Lives for teen mothers, and Capernaum for special-needs youths.
The Gospel behemoth is Campus Crusade for Christ, renamed “Cru” in 2012, founded in 1951 with a U.C.L.A. club led by businessman Bill Bright (1921-2003). Today, a staff of 25,000 works in 173 countries, with groups at 8,900 schools worldwide. The organization combines local clubs with occasional mass rallies, and such promotional efforts as the 1976 “I Found It!” ad blitz. It claims its “Jesus” film, with soundtracks available in 2,000 languages, has been viewed by billions.
Cru’s Athletes in Action subsidiary, started in 1966, parallels the prior Fellowship of Christian Athletes, founded in 1954 by university basketball coach Don McClanen (1925-2016). FCA sponsors 20,000 local high school and college “huddles” and nationwide events. Founding supporters included baseball’s most innovative executive, Branch Rickey, who famously broke professional sports’ color line by signing Jackie Robinson. Later boosters included the likes of Florida State icon Bobby Bowden, second only to Joe Paterno among U.S. football coaches with the most wins.
Analysts are alarmed by rising rates of loneliness, depression, eating disorders, and even suicide among 21st-century American teens. Insofar as Christian faith can help, youths have local church fellowships and denominations’ campus ministries.
Those seeking emphatic multi-denominational evangelicalism now have two choices. Kirk’s sharply partisan movement unifies such belief with the current expression of Republican conservatism. By contrast, the youth ministries that arose in mid-20th-century America continue their non-partisan tradition of evangelism and missions, Bible study and defense of the faith, preaching and prayer.
Ediotr’s note: The writer was active in InterVarsity as a student at Michigan and Northwestern, and after retirement was a founder of a regional Young Life chapter.
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.