BLACK ROCK CITY — Amid a blinding dust storm not far from where “the Man” was going to burn in a few hours, two Christian ministers — one dressed in a crusader costume, ski goggles, and a cowboy hat with a cross on it — were taking turns preaching about Jesus. “Jesus is Lord, even of Burning Man,” said the pastor in the crusader outfit with a big red cross on both sides. A giant metal heart emerged from the desert floor on one side. On the other, there was a big blue and gold Persian head with cones for ears to transmit sound. It was a post-apocalyptic scene more suitable to a sci-fi film than real life. But it was real.
Within minutes of starting to preach at this particular location, as curious onlookers passed by either naked or wearing some of the strangest costumes you ever saw, another man approached on a bicycle. “Moloch is god, and he needs more baby blood,” the man on the bike said in a deep, creepy voice through a microphone and amplifier, referring to the Old Testament Canaanite deity infamous for endless child sacrifices. “Worship Moloch. Sacrifice more children. Moloch demands more baby blood. Moloch is god.”
The pastor, well known in the “Default World” for his advocacy for the unborn and his work for the late Charlie Kirk, just kept on preaching — and smiling at the man. It was not clear whether the self-styled Moloch worshiper was trying to make a joke, or whether he was serious. More than a few Christians at Burning Man told The New American they had witnessed overt demonic possession there. One man on stage proudly channeled a spirit so the audience could ask questions of entities from beyond this dimension.
In any case, a whole Christian camp had already been kicked out for preaching, so all the Christians at Burning Man — and those who hate them — were on high alert. After a few more calls for baby blood, the demon worshiper or deranged trickster on the bike rode off into the dust storm. “You can be made right with God through Christ,” the pastor exclaimed through his make-shift mega-phone, a cut up water jug he used to try to amplify his voice over the constant techno and the howling wind.
Right after that, though, a black Land Rover flying a flag with the word “@$$” on it pulled up carrying a team of “Black Rock Rangers,” a sort of volunteer police force. Parking about 25 yards from the dynamic duo, the rangers stopped and stared. The truck sat there for about five minutes watching before the preachers and the TNA team got on bikes and rode off. Immediately after they pulled out, the Land Rover left, too, as if the threat of Gospel preaching had been successfully neutralized. The whole experience was one of the more surreal moments in perhaps the most surreal few days in this writer’s life.
Christians and “Christians” Everywhere
Amid the sea of dust, art, music, orgies, and masses of burners on magic mushrooms and LSD, multiple Christians and small groups of believers were fishing for the lost in the inhospitable desert. Some were practically undercover — even talking to them, it would be hard to tell they were Christians. Others were so vocal and vigorous as they preached, worshipped, and prayed that they were ordered to take down their camp and leave within hours or face arrest for criminal trespass. Literally.
Almost incredibly, some of the self-proclaimed Christians at the event were there to dance and partake in the festivities. One girl wearing a Jesus hat and sunglasses at night was enthusiastically dancing the evening away while hugging people and telling them, “Jesus loves you.” When The New American tried to interview her, she danced her way toward the music in the middle of her answer after introducing her male companion, a self-described “agnostic.” The progressive “Religious As #^&*” camp, too, was quite enthusiastic about the festivities and all Burning Man represents.
Despite claiming to represent the same Lord, many of the Christians of Burning Man had profound disagreements with each other on everything from doctrine to tactics to the event itself. In fact, a handful were more inclined to condemn their fellow Christians than the overt and outrageous sin and demonic practices all around them. Although plenty of Christians would quibble with how “Christian” some of the groups were, there were at least five explicitly Christian camps set up in the temporary city this year.
But aside from wearing the same label, it was clear that the Christians moving about the “Playa” were on a wide variety of very different missions. The most vocal and noticeable one, Shift the Atmosphere, made headlines nationwide for being expelled. Others were much more cautious. Some participants at the Sozo Experience did not even use the term “Christian,” fearing it may scare away people who might need help or hope. Another camp, The Veil, put on a dramatic re-enactment of key biblical stories, with actors dressed as angels or demons. The goal: Offer people a unique gift: truth from the Bible. The New American spoke with all of them.
Camp of the Unknown God:
On Sunday morning, the Camp of Unknown God was preparing to host a church service. For seven years, the group has been a staple at Burning Man. Based on Paul’s use of the statue to the “unknown god” to evangelize Athens as recorded in Acts 17, the purpose of the group’s mission is to have conversations, research, and even quietly witness inside this emerging culture.
The camp’s leader, author and researcher Carl Teichrib (See article on page??), has been studying Burning Man and adjacent movements for years. His goals there include making sure that Jesus Christ is represented while seeking to equip the church to understand Burning Man and the broader phenomenon he describes as “re-enchantment.” This year, hoping to stimulate discussions, he even created an art piece that was displayed at the prominent “Center Camp” right in the middle of Black Rock City.
With more than a dozen campers from at least three different countries this year, the group was able to have many conversations with burners. But on Sunday morning, as they did every morning, they gathered to read the Bible, pray, and worship. Next to their sign reading “Camp of the Unknown God,” they offered free coffee to any burners who may be interested.
There was at least one self-proclaimed “witch” there, a nice young man who had previously served in the U.S, military, watching, listening, learning. Speaking to one of the evangelists, there, he offered to do a ritual that would supposedly help him accomplish his goals. Most of the rest in attendance were Christians at Burning Man to research, gather information, and even engage in subtle evangelism when the opportunity arose. Some were quite deliberately participating in the Burning Man experience, too.
The teacher opened his Bible to Daniel, chapter three. After discussing the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol and the fiery furnace punishment that followed, the man teaching said the Christians who had been kicked out by Burning Man the previous day were not being persecuted. In fact, that was the first thing he told The New American/FreedomProject Media team upon arrival. He was adamant that those Christians had been disrespectful and that other Christians should not be associated with them.
Before long, a debate broke out during church. Another Christian not formally associated with the camp who serves as a pastor in the “default world” disagreed with the condemnation of Shift the Atmosphere. Yes, by bringing in a baptismal pool, the evicted Christians may have technically broken Burning Man’s rules about having open tubs of water. And the vigorous evangelism may have been officially against Burning Man’s regulations, too. But, the pastor asked, was this not a case of obeying God, rather than men? Did Acts 17 Christians obey the laws when they defied Roman rule and proclaimed another king—king Jesus—as they “turned the city upside down”?
The debate went on for a while, with different Christians offering their thoughts. But before it got too heated, Teichrib, the unofficial camp leader, stepped in, summarized the discussion as charitably as possible for all sides, and finished it all with a nice prayer. For days afterward, many of those who were there pondered the debate, and the broader questions about Burning Man, sin, paganism, the Bible, and more. Quiet side discussions took place all day.
The whole situation brought up profound questions: What is the proper Christian response to something like Burning Man? Is it a “city,” just like any other, with good and bad? Is it a culture to be studied and even respected? Are there redeeming elements—creativity, art, community? All agreed that the lost should be loved, but should the event and the movement instead be seen as a demonic abomination to be exposed and eliminated, as Saint Patrick boldly overthrew paganism in Ireland? Should the goal be to study Burning Man and understand it, or end it as Christian civilization ended Viking paganism or Aztec and Maya human sacrifice? There were a wide range of views on the subject.
Austin, a young man with a double mohawk, first came to Burning Man in 2019, exchanged wedding vows with his ex-wife on playa, and later, after being jailed, getting sober, and becoming a Christian, returned on a mission. Despite his faith, he still finds the concentration of open minds at Burning Man remarkable, and refuses to call the place simply “the Devil’s den.” But he also will not pretend the Man and the Temple are just neutral art. “I don’t subscribe to the burning of the effigy,” he said of the central organizing ritual. “You give those things to God. You don’t burn them with an effigy.” Christians who come, he said, need “the armor of God.” But the goal, for him, is seed planting.
Longtime missionary George Olson, who helps lead Camp of the Unknown God and serves as director of geopolitical and economic research for a ministry called Orbis Sentry, had strong views about it all, too. He argued that one of the first rules of missions is that, to reach people for Christ, you must understand their culture. As such, he vehemently rejected the frequent comparison of Burning Man to Sodom and Gomorra. In fact, in a public post after this year’s Burning Man, he put some of the blame for it all on Christians.
“Babylon became powerful because Israel had forsaken the covenant and left a spiritual vacuum in the ancient Near East that needed to be filled,” he said, adding that Babylon also represented an instrument of change in the trajectory of the world. “In the sense that Babylon was filling a spiritual void left by Israel’s compromise with the world around her, Burning Man is filling a spiritual void left by the church’s compromise with the secular ideas of the world around her.”
“Religious AF”
On compromising with the world’s ideas, Religious As F—, the camp burners kept pointing reporters toward, did not look at all like a mission station. It looked like a booth with a labyrinth, a “leave your religious baggage here” board, and a chaplain in a collar who introduced himself as Rev. Rainbow, also known as “Moomoo.” In the default world he works for the San Francisco Night Ministry. On the playa he walks from night spot to night spot and lets people decide whether the collar is a costume.
To him, Burning Man is a twenty-first-century pilgrimage, kin to the Camino or Machu Picchu: shared hardship, then a place where the Ten Principles might be lived rather than posted. The Saturday burn of the Man gives the event its name. The thing he wanted visitors to stay for was Sunday, when the Temple goes up. People pin notes to the dead, wedding dresses for divorces, altars for sobriety. Then forty or fifty thousand people stand silent. “There is a sacred space that is created here at Burning Man that is unlike anywhere else,” he told The New American in a sit-down interview.
He does not pretend everyone is seeking. Some are here to dance. He will not write that off either; bodies, he said, can heal in the music. What he claims for the week is discernment. Strangers tell him they just got divorced, that a grandmother died, that the job is gone, and they want to know what comes next. The gifting economy, in his telling, swaps transactional relationships for transformational ones. Religious AsF’s stated work is “religious and spiritual trauma healing” for people who were told in church that they were not enough. Morning devotions, two Eucharists, and a Playa Ash Wednesday made from ashes of earlier Men and Temples. He stands with a sign that reads “May I bless you.” People sob, ask for prayer, and sometimes find the camp again a year later to say the hug changed the week. His team handed ours some shirts with “who is my neighbor” written on it, and then all sorts of answers: MAGA, pro-lifers, immigrants, homosexuals, and more.
He knows other Christians are on the playa, and he is not impressed by all of them. Milk and Honey keeps the Jewish Shabbat. After attending, it was hard to tell whether it was a serious expression of the Jewish faith or some sort of syncretistic mockery. Buddhists chant at the Temple. A Christian Science camp washes dusty feet under a shade structure shaped like a cross; if you did not look up, he said, you would only see the gift. The camp ordered out, in his view, arrived assuming God was not already here. “I would say their God is too small,” he said. To insist otherwise, he added, turns the gospel message into an idol.
Gifting, for him, is the principle that maps onto hospitality and the imago Dei: the face of God in whoever is standing in the dust, whether or not they share his vocabulary. He hopes the CEOs and political operators who pass through take some of that home. He did not say they should take the name of Jesus with it.
Sozo Experience:
Walking past the drum circles or even reading about the Sozo experience in the official Burning Man guide, it would be hard to tell that the camp was Christian. Friendly participants dressed mostly like Burner. The camp’s official description in Burning Man literature said it offers “venerative and regenerative meditation,” drum circles, spiritual readings, healings, and an experimental “Dopamine Dump” experience, along with exotic coffee and workshops. But in the Greek New Testament, Sozo, a verb, means to save, rescue, heal, or make well.
Lily, identified as a sort of semi-official spokesman for the group, did not arrive at Burning Man as a missionary with a plan. She arrived as a burned-out youth worker who had decided the church could not pay her. During Covid she was accepted to an MBA, paid the tuition, and told herself that if Jesus would not provide, she would. When the program went remote, she spent two years traveling from Mexico to Colombia, sleeping in a hostel dorm on a few hundred dollars a month. The free class was yoga. Ten years of ministry had taught her that yoga was an entry point for demons. She went anyway, lonely, and says she “met the presence of Jesus there.” The confusion did not stop her. The hippies seemed more wholesome than the partiers, she said. Burning Man followed.
By 2026, she has been back five years. In the tent she leads what she calls sparkly stretching: breathing into the chest, talking about identity as sons and daughters of the King, then hoping the stretch becomes a conversation. Church-hurt people shut down at Father, Son, and Spirit, so she reaches for other names — the Creator, the one who fixes what breaks, the Great Spirit who is counselor and advocate — and only then says, come, Holy Spirit.
Acid and LSD, in her telling, are spiritual highs with bad wells. She asks people their intention. They say things like “retreat” or “connection with the divine.” She points them at the well that does not run out. When she talks about her relationship with Jesus, she says, they ask how to have it. They pray. They cry. She has never told them she is a Christian. The word, she said, shuts doors and puts up walls. This was the first year she heard it used easily on the playa, and she was still adjusting.
She will not soften the setting. “It is a pagan festival. We burn a man,” she told The New American in a sit-down interview. “It is a pagan ritual.” God’s people, she said, have lived among pagans for thousands of years and stayed holy in the midst. A few years ago, the camp later ordered out, Shift The Atmosphere, walked into a Sozo drum circle. She believes the circle is worship and the tent a tabernacle, and she invited them in. They said they could not. This year her team was friendlier with the neighbors at “The Veil” camp who staged angels and demons, and on Sunday the camps read Scripture and shared communion together. She plays crystal bowls and sings Scripture in tongues over them. She climbs towers, sits in the jazz cafe, and calls herself a burner. Not everyone should come, she said. Some people could get the New Age crash course cheaper at home. But for her, the call is clear: If the people who do come are not here, who is going to shine the light?
Down the Street, More Christians
Down the street from Sozo, another Christian camp was breaking down its gift: a dramatic performance of the biblical story from Genesis, complete with angels, demons, and God Himself. It was apparently well received by burners. But the leaders, concerned about the expulsion of other Christians, had stopped posting on social media, hoping not to draw too much negative attention.
Under the tent, though, was Christian Taylor Skidmore, leader of the ministry Bloom the World and author of the upcoming book Divine Hunger. He has been to Burning Man three times. His ministry works to equip churches and Christians to reach spiritual seekers and people who are spiritually open or spiritually curious, he told The New American in an interview.
“One of the reasons I go is because I just keep chewing on that passage where Paul says, ‘I’ve become all things to all people so that by any means possible I might save some’,” he said, explaining his burner outfit. “And you know, Jesus really found me in my mess, that’s for sure. I didn’t deserve his love. I wasn’t even really seeking him out until the night I cried out to him. And so when I when I go here, I don’t I really don’t see myself that differently than them. Like even yesterday when I was riding my bike back from the temple to our camp, I just, I literally had to pull over my bike just to like, just let out the tears.”
Why would Jesus choose him, he wondered, saying he was “no better” than any of the lost people on the Playa seeking truth, meaning, and transcendence. “My heart is that He would do that for others, that they would meet Him and encounter Him,” Skidmore said in a sit-down interview. “And so, I really think of Burning Man more as missions than evangelism. Evangelism, you know, you share the gospel, maybe go through four spiritual laws or Romans Road or all these things. But Burning Man has its own culture. It even has its own language in some ways. So it’s more of a mission field.”
The world is changing rapidly, and Christians had better get prepared. Today, we live in what Skidmore described as a “post-Christian world,” a “post-Christian era,” with many younger Americans not even familiar with the most basic biblical concepts. For New Agers and many of those at Burning Man, it represents the emergence of a “new age” and a “new era” for humanity. But for Christians, it means the “harvest field is all the more open,” he said, adding that evangelism and missions would need to adapt to the emerging new culture.
“We’re living in a very, very unique era,” Skidmore continued. “That’s kind of a new era for the history of humanity, where people can pick and choose and make their own religion of their choosing. It’s kind of like when you’re walking in a grocery store and everyone has a little bit, a few different things in their shopping cart.” Nowhere is that more obvious than at Burning Man, where every burner can pick and choose his or her own spiritual path, combining different options at will for an individualized, personal spirituality.
Like Skidmore, Mitch Cunico did not come to Black Rock City to “burn.” He came to document. A former leader in a South Korean cult, he now sits on the board of the Bible Vaccine Center, which helps people leave high-control Korean and other Asian cults. He does undercover research and documentaries, including on how those groups move inside American institutions. Two weeks before the gates opened he met another Christian at a lecture in Chicago, heard about Burning Man as a node in the new spiritual age, and bought a ticket to see it himself. It was his first year.
What he found, he said, was not one cult but a worldview with many different cultic camps inside it. Gurus had followings. Lectures mixed drugs, channeling, and politics. At one class a guide channeled what Cunico called a demon and told the room that the new age would make everyone one, that religions would end, and that the program belonged in government. Officials had already spoken on the playa. He started to read Black Rock City as a birthing place for a new order, not only a party in the dust.
The Man reminded him of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue: a golden figure, a crowd, worship aimed at man. The spiritual-age language still talked about gods, he said, but the direction was that people could become god and change the future themselves. Sex sat in the middle of it. He had seen the orgy dome, the orgy bus, the naked crowds. He was still learning how it fit. But the pattern looked old to him — pagan temple culture, men with men and women with women, Sodom rebuilt for a week and called self-expression. Not everything on the playa was evil, he said. But enough of it was.
The Temple shocked him more than the nudity. He had expected sin. He had not expected the wedding dress marked “fraud,” the notes that said “I’m glad you’re dead,” the photos waiting to be burned so grief would go with them. People who had done it before told him the pain mostly stayed. He took that as more evidence that they had the wrong remedy.
On the camp ordered out, he was careful. He had watched them work from their tent and thought the members were genuine. He also thought they had skipped the Athens step: Paul looked at the city before he spoke. Many burners, he said, are former Christians. A blunt approach can scare the field. But in any case, hearts are not his to judge.
His own method was the year’s theme. Axis Mundi — the center of the world. He asked people what theirs was, listened, and waited until they asked for his: Jesus. Sometimes, that would allow him to open up a Bible. Nobody’s worldview flipped in front of him. But planting seeds was the important part. From outside, he had assumed absolute evil. Inside, he still saw the evil, and also neighbors made in the image of God, looking for a center in the wrong place.
Shift the Atmosphere:
While most of the Christians at Burning Man were subtle, Shift the Atmosphere came in like a storm proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Their videos of sharing the Gospel, praying, and hugging the burners were going viral on social media. From the start, the eyes of burners and even fellow Christians were on the group.
Philip Renner, who led the team, does not describe Burning Man as a party he crashed. Rather, he speaks of it as a mission field the church usually ignores. Since 2022, he told The New American in a sit-down interview, his teams have seen more than 33,000 people “give their lives to the Lord” at gay pride parades, hedonistic festivals, and even “satanic” gatherings — “generally the places where the church does not go.”
If Jesus were walking the Earth now, Renner said, he would not be stuck inside four walls of a church building. Instead, he would meet people where they are. He would not leave them there. That is one of the major differences that separates his camp from other self-described Christians who also pitch on the playa. Religious AF, for example, offers “sacrament” without a pitch. Camp of the Unknown God borrows Paul’s Athens speech and waits for conversation.
Renner’s lane is different. The goal is explicitly to bring people as many people to Christ as humanely possible, speaking the truth boldly, loudly, and with love. “A Christian should be there to preach the gospel and preach the full gospel, not a wishy-washy, New Age gospel,” he said, adding that the only name that matters is the name of Jesus. “When you say that name, that’s where the power is. And we said that name thousands of times.”
Despite being ordered to take down his camp and leave in just three hours or face arrest, he still talks about burners with real affection. “I love them so much,” he said. They are seekers—half of Silicon Valley, wealthy, intelligent, empty. “Burning Man has some of the biggest movers and shakers in the world coming in,” he said. “The reason why they come into Burning Man is because they’re empty. They’re looking for something real. They didn’t find it in the world. They didn’t find it in money.”
The event, in his telling, is their poor substitute for the cross: people throw heartbreak, jobs, and the past into the effigy and the temple to burn it. The Temple is a place of mourning and letters to the dead. He has sung “Holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty” inside it, he said, and watched a man shake under what Renner called demonic oppression while a woman he identified as a witch doctor held the man’s feet. They prayed. The man’s eyes, Renner said, went from black to blue; he received the Lord. “Even in a place where you’re communicating with the dead, God can still come in,” Renner said.
Renner’s team of 25 was a big deal. On playa, the camp looked like a gift camp because it had to be: DJ, LED screen, coffee and matcha, bike repair, unscented tallow, about fifteen paintings by an artist named Revell — including Jesus holding a black sheep, the image Renner says made people cry and say, “That’s me.” It would have been hard to miss it.
The “city” officials in charge of placement, though, put them in front of Hushville (no generators, no sound) and across from Kidsville, where families stay and children run around half naked or even fully nude. He had written Burning Man two weeks out to confirm amplified sound; they said yes, at a set level. When a neighbor complained, Renner said they did not just turn the music down — they turned it off at 9 pm, even though they technically could have gone on until 11:30.
The now-infamous removal, in Renner’s account, did not begin in 2026. The year before, videos he shot at the Temple and the Man went viral. Organizers told him he had broken guidelines; he took the videos down so he could return the following year. But before this year’s gates even opened, he said, Facebook chats — screenshots he says he has — called for rangers to “take out” his camp.
The official complaint on playa was “filming without consent.” “Burning Man takes participants’ right to privacy seriously,” the organization said in a formal statement offered to reporters. “Seeking permission and consent before filming or engaging other participants in Black Rock City is a requirement and responsibility for anyone at the event. This camp received multiple warnings and opportunities to correct their behavior, yet continued to violate our policies and were therefore evicted.”
But according to Renner, he and his team asked every subject for verbal permission. A volunteer “Black Rock Ranger” told him that was not enough: a clipboard with name, date, and signature would apparently be required. He went to Media Mecca, where journalists are supposed to check in and receive guidelines. There, he was told that he needed a media pass because of last year and because people were complaining.
Administrators, he said, promised to visit the camp at noon the next day to talk about the pass. They never came. Instead, the “Rangers” rolled up in the afternoon to let him and his crew know they had just three hours to pack up and leave. It took them four days to build the camp. Nightfall was upon Black Rock City, and a dust storm was picking up. It didn’t matter: They had to leave, immediately.
They unscrewed a structure, then stopped when the wind caught it and it nearly became a kite. Burners helped drag the wreckage off the street. So did Christians from another camp who volunteered to help. So did two rangers who were not the ones who issued the eviction order—men who told him the expulsion was “not the Burning Man way” and jumped in the Christians’ RV to help.
With a great deal of misinformation circulating on the Playa — the rumors that The New American heard from Burners were getting wilder and wilder — Renner said he wants the public record corrected on several points. They baptized fourteen people, he said, including Muslims who brought family; they always asked first; baptism was framed as a deeper step than a mere profession of faith. They did not baptize children, he said, and they certainly did not lure children without parents. They did not hold people by the hand until they prayed. And they did not “spike” smoothies — they were not even serving smoothies. The water in their baptismal tank, meanwhile, was freezing, not “a hundred degrees” as claimed in some of the more outrageous claims that circulated afterward.
When rangers used the word proselytizing, Renner answered that he was sharing a gift in a gift culture. He asked to face his accuser. The ranger would not name anyone. Proof, Renner said, became the ranger’s word. Leave in three hours or the police would trespass them.
The numbers he repeats are 549 professions of faith in two days, fourteen baptisms, roughly two hundred visitors a day and rising, two thousand drinks they had been ready to give. The method, as he describes it: coffee or matcha, walk the art, “What do you see? Does that painting relate to you?,” then “Can I pray for you?” Always with consent, he insists; no one who refused was forced.
The prayers they prayed are standard in many evangelical circles: All have sinned, wages of sin is death, gift of God is eternal life—then an invitation to make Jesus Lord so the void fills and the formerly lost sinner can obtain eternal life and be adopted into the family of God through Christ. “Everything was done with consent, everything was done with honor, and everything was done with excellence,” Renner said.
But while he has a great deal of compassion for the lost, he is less gentle about Christians who come only to burn. “If someone says, I’m going to Burning Man just to have a good time, then I would question their walk with God,” he said. He knows other Christians are there; he will not speak for their lanes or the missions that God may have sent them on. But was definitely disappointed that some of those Christians expressed relief that his camp was ordered out. He does not fully judge that—people want to stay—but he also does not understand it. “There has to be unity in the body,” he said.
It is truly bizarre. Radical inclusion welcomes witches, warlocks, New Age teachers, and “Cosmic Cowboy” channelers. But it grows hostile when the gift being offered is the name of Jesus. Burners are often astonishingly hospitable—Renner said he would send church ushers to the playa to learn the craft. But many are also empty, hunting for an encounter after money and success failed to provide one. The Temple and the Man offer a ritual of release. Scripture offers a Person. The two claims cannot both be ultimate—and they cannot both be true. Everyone must make a choice.
Zoomed out, Burning Man is, for Renner, an escape hatch for people who did not find meaning in money or success. Decompression parties after the gate prove the point: default-world life feels unreal; the desert felt like freedom. Real life, he says, is the Kingdom. And yet he would send church ushers to Black Rock City to learn hospitality. Burners, he said more than once, are some of the nicest people on the planet. His closing word to them is almost a love letter with an altar call attached: he did not want to force a belief system; he wanted to stay and share the greatest gift he had to give: the Good News of Jesus.
Conclusion:
It is easy to see why many Christians would look at Burning Man and see Sodom or Babylon. It is less easy to say how, exactly, Christians should think about or approach Burning Man. Ezekiel is warned in Scripture that failing to warn others about sin, God will put the responsibility for the sinners’ blood on Ezekiel. In Ephesians 5, Paul warns believers to have “no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,” but rather to reprove and expose it.
One point of agreement among many of the different Christians who spoke with The New American is that atheism and materialism across the West and beyond appear to be giving way to something new: revived paganism, New Age, occult, spiritism, and even the demonic. Burning Man appears to be the tip of the spear in that transformation, as the once godless and famously atheistic culture of Silicon Valley gives way to techno-paganism and re-enchantment.
To many burners, Christians are the ultimate “Dark Wads,” a pejorative term used by burners to describe people who are not lit up at night and therefore become practically invisible. But the truth is just the opposite: the small group of Christians who each year brave the horrific conditions and the mind-numbing sin on display may be the only real light many of those burners ever see. They are without a doubt the only real light in the dark, inhospitable Black Rock Desert.
Obviously, Burning Man is not a place for most Christians. But to those called by God to minister to the lost and confused masses reveling in their sin as they seek to build a new culture for the world, it is a serious and important mission. If Burning Man is in fact a modern-day Sodom, the handful of righteous people, as discussed in Genesis 18, may be all that is holding back God’s wrath from being poured out on the whole thing. Pray for them all.
An abbreviated version of this article was originally published at The New American.
