When did Turning Point USA host events featuring Christian nationalist speakers (years/dates)?
Executive summary
Turning Point USA began explicitly staging events with Christian nationalist speakers and programming at least as early as 2019 and accelerated that activity after launching its faith arm in 2021, with recurring, visible manifestations in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025—including Freedom Square/Freedom Night series in 2021, an ongoing “Pastors Summit” by 2022–2023, and faith-focused components of flagship conferences like AmericaFest through 2023–2025 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. Reporting documents a clear timeline of events that moved TPUSA from occasional church stages into a sustained Christian nationalist organizing effort, even as defenders dispute labels and the organization promotes its student outreach mission [1] [7] [8].
1. Early signs: 2019 — Charlie Kirk on megachurch platforms
Reporting shows Charlie Kirk was already courting evangelical megachurch audiences in 2019, speaking at Calvary Chapel in Leesburg and at Jack Hibbs’ Chino Hills megachurch in December 2019, occasions that reviewers say cemented his Christian nationalist credentials by linking political rhetoric to explicitly Christian appeals [1].
2. Institutional pivot: 2021 — Turning Point Faith launches and Freedom Square nights begin
Turning Point Faith, an offshoot created by TPUSA in 2021, launched “Freedom Square” or “Freedom Night in America” gatherings beginning in May 2021 at Dream City Church in Phoenix, marking a formal organizational commitment to events that fuse worship and political messaging and explicitly aim to “restore traditional American values,” according to specialized reporting and academic analyses [1] [2].
3. Early-to-mid 2020s: 2022–2023 — Pastors Summit and Kingdom-to-the-Capitol activity
By 2022–2023 TPUSA was hosting higher-profile faith-focused convenings: Rolling Stone reported TPUSA’s second annual “Pastors Summit” in October 2023 in Nashville, indicating the summit began the prior year and had become a recurring, explicitly Christian-nationalist-facing event, and the organization also presented the “Kingdom to the Capitol” series with events in Washington, D.C., earlier in the cycle [3].
4. Flagship conferences adopt faith programming: AmericaFest and Student Action Summit, 2023–2025
TPUSA’s major conferences layered in worship, “Faith Night” programming and Christian-rock elements: AmericaFest and the Student Action Summit continued to feature pastors, Christian bands and faith-driven sessions in 2023 and into 2024 and 2025, with coverage documenting Faith Night services at AmericaFest 2025 and a roster of conservative and religious speakers across events [4] [9] [6] [5].
5. Volume and intensity: 2021–2025 as the sustained era of Christian nationalist platforming
Taken together, the most consistent body of reporting places the sustained period when TPUSA hosted Christian nationalist speakers and programming from roughly 2021 onward—after Turning Point Faith’s 2021 launch—while earlier appearances in 2019 demonstrate preparatory outreach to megachurch audiences that presaged the institutional shift [2] [1] [3]. Sources document recurring events across 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, including church-hosted Freedom Nights, annual Pastors Summits, and faith-centered tracks at AmericaFest [2] [3] [5] [6].
6. Competing interpretations and organizational posture
Critics and watchdogs characterize these events as an explicit pivot toward Christian nationalism and as part of a strategy to “ambassador” Christian nationalist ideas into politics, while TPUSA and sympathetic outlets frame the programming as faith engagement, student outreach and celebration of “trad life” values; the ADL and investigative outlets note both the promotion of Christian nationalist themes and attendance by extremist figures at some TPUSA events, and TPUSA has disputed charges that its programming crosses into impermissible territory for its nonprofit status [1] [7] [5] [8].
7. Limits of available reporting and what remains unclear
Public reporting provides multiple date-stamped examples (2019, 2021, 2022–2025) but does not supply a definitive, exhaustive calendar of every Christian nationalist speaker across every TPUSA event; therefore conclusions rest on documented, recurring instances and organizational milestones—Turning Point Faith’s 2021 founding, Freedom Square nights from May 2021, Pastors Summit recurrence by 2023, and faith programming embedded in AmericaFest through 2025—rather than an assertion that the list of dates is complete [2] [3] [4] [5].