Originally published in The Christian Post
Elon Musk, a man who once quipped that he’s okay with going to Hell because more people will be there, is now encouraging his followers to attend church.
Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX, and CEO of the social media platform X, reposted a message from Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk on Sunday, in which she encouraged people to “Go to church.” Musk, who has taken a prominent role in American politics and public discourse since the first assassination attempt on Trump’s life, has identified himself as a “cultural Christian” in the past but has stopped short of fully embracing Christianity.
In a 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson, Musk explained, “While I’m not a particularly religious person, I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise and that there’s tremendous wisdom in turning the other cheek.” He also described himself as a “big believer in the principles of Christianity,” which he praised as “very good.”
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Musk also agreed with the characterization of himself as a “cultural Christian,” a label used by atheist Richard Dawkins to describe his philosophy in recent years. “I was brought up as an Anglican, and I was baptized,” Musk said during the interview.
In 2022, Musk responded to a post from an X user urging him to confess a Creator by declaring, “Thank you for the blessing, but I’m ok with going to hell, if that is indeed my destination, since the vast majority of all humans ever born will be there.”
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In a 2021 interview with the Christian satire site The Babylon Bee, Musk also declined to explicitly accept Jesus Christ as his “Lord and Saviour,” while stressing that he respects and agrees with “the principles that Jesus advocated,” including forgiveness and “treating people as you wish to be treated.”
Musk echoing Erika Kirk’s pitch for Americans to go to church constitutes the latest example of people who do not necessarily practice Christianity or who have stopped practicing the religion promoting or re-embracing it following Charlie Kirk’s assassination on September 10.
JP De Gance, the founder and president of Communio, a ministry designed to help churches improve their evangelism and outreach, provided anecdotal examples of increased church attendance in recent weeks in an interview with The Christian Post.
De Gance told CP about “a lot of anecdotal feedback from churches in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Colorado reporting that they’ve seen an increase [in attendance] over the last two Sundays.” He specifically noted “one church in Michigan that said a number of young adults who were raised in the church [but] who hadn’t been there, and people hadn’t seen them for years, showed back up.”
He suggested to CP that people learning about Kirk’s Christian beliefs after his death has led to “a level of introspection” that “causes people to ask: ‘What am I living for right now?’”
Erika Kirk offered a similar analysis during an address at her husband’s memorial service on September 21, reflecting on the events that have unfolded following his death. “We didn’t see violence, we didn’t see rioting, we didn’t see revolution. Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed we would see in this country: we saw revival,” she proclaimed.
“This past week, we saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade. We saw people pray for the first time since they were children. We saw people go to a church service for the first time in their entire lives,” she added.
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