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Salon
Salon
Amanda Marcotte

RARE PHOTOS: Tpusas revival tour is a disaster | Vintage Vibes

“I believe wholeheartedly that you can’t force revival,” Lucas Miles declares in his stump speech for the Make Heaven Crowded tour. Miles is the director of TPUSA Faith, a spinoff of the late MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA organization, that is dedicated to equipping Christians “who are prepared to defend our God-given rights.” And he’s been on the road this spring and summer, insisting to one audience after another that he does not believe you can “manufacture a revival.”

The irony of this is thick — manufacturing a revival is exactly what Miles is trying to do. The Make Heaven Crowded tour, Miles explains to congregations and the press along the way, was started after a late September memorial service for Kirk, who was killed by a gunman’s bullet earlier that month. At the time of Kirk’s death, Miles had been serving as director of TPUSA Faith for 18 months after serving as the pastor of Nfluence, an Indiana church whose name sounds more like a bad tech startup than a Christian congregation. Miles called the memorial, which was held at the State Farm Stadium outside of Phoenix, Arizona, “the most significant gospel presentation in the history of Christendom,” insisting that 170,000 people showed up and “almost a billion” watched it.

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