Latter-day Saints and evangelicals: divided on doctrine; united in Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point – The Salt Lake Tribune

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point Action's chief operating officer and a Latter-day Saint, speaks at an event in Logan in late September.
Minutes before Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley University, the conservative Christian political activist said, “First of all, I love Mormons.”
The 31-year-old evangelical knew he was speaking to an audience that included many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But he also recognized the contribution of his Turning Point Action team, some of whom were Latter-day Saints, particularly his chief operating officer, Tyler Bowyer.
“I love how Mormons send missionaries around the world,” Kirk said on that fateful day, adding: “I’m an evangelical Christian, but I’m not one of those guys that hates on Mormons.”
Yet within days of Kirk’s assassination, the “Turning Point USA” podcast gave the microphone to Pastor Mark Driscoll, who has said that “Mormonism is a cult. It’s not Christianity, it’s not even close. It’s a demonic cult founded by a demon named Moroni. Don’t follow an angel named ‘moron,’ kids!”
The video of Driscoll making such statements has been scrubbed from the website, but the evangelical pastor has continued to be a regular guest on the show.
And in recent weeks, there has been an uptick of evangelicals online, arguing that Mormonism is not aligned with traditional Christianity.
“Are Mormons Christians?” asks the Breakpoint Colson Center in the aftermath of a deadly shooting and arson assault on a Latter-day Saint congregation in Michigan. “They are cultural allies, but Christians and Mormons don’t worship the same God.”
Pastor Lucas Miles directs TPUSA Faith, and has given mocking lectures on Mormonism and its differences from other forms of Christianity.
Bowyer defends the organization’s pool of competing faiths.
“Charlie handled people with different viewpoints with open arms and open ears and was willing to have conversations,” he says. “We’ve always been an organization that does that.”
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Spencer Cox, Andy Biggs, Jason Chaffetz and Tyler Bowyer at the Turning Point event in Logan in late September. Bowyer acknowledges the deep doctrinal differences that exist between Latter-day Saints and evangelicals.
For his part, Bowyer has no issues with Turning Point evangelicals’ view of his church.
“A lot of evangelicals have a lot of criticism towards Mormons, right?” Bowyer tells The Salt Lake Tribune. “A lot of members of the church are sheltered from that because they didn’t grow up in the South [or outside the Jell-O Belt of Utah, Idaho and Arizona] where you hear that stuff a lot.”
He insists, though, that, even as an evangelical, Kirk took “a much softer approach towards members of the church.”
Obviously, Bowyer says, the two faiths have “very clear doctrinal differences.” Still, he insists that the work of Turning Point “is super aligned with the fundamental foundation of the LDS faith. There’s nothing in conflict.”
Those shared values, he adds, include “family, freewill and free choice…and a Christ-centered focus.”
Plus, a ton of organizing skills.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Latter-day Saint missionaries march in the Grand Parade for America’s Freedom Festival in Provo on Friday, July 4, 2025.
Bowyer isn’t surprised that Kirk embraced Latter-day Saints.
“There’s no one better to run field operations than the Mormons, in my opinion, because we’re really good at that,” says Bowyer, who also serves as the executive director of Turning Point’s political action committee. “That’s been a significant contributor to our success at Turning Point.”
Now about 50% of the team for “The Charlie Kirk Show,” he says, are Latter-day Saints, many of whom have served full-time missions for the church.
“The church runs the best missionary program in the world, bar none. It’s not even close,” Bowyer says. “Everything else is second rate and not nearly as impactful or effective or organized.”
Bowyer credits his own mission for giving him the tools, training and drive to get involved in politics.
Young Tyler took off in 2005 for Russia, where his first area included the closest Latter-day Saint congregation to Ukraine’s border (it no longer exists, he says).
Upon his return two years later, Bowyer enrolled at Arizona State University, where he attended his first meeting of the College Republicans. Although ASU boasts one of the largest student populations in the country, he recalls, only about a dozen people showed up. Bowyer immediately threw himself into organizing for the group and within a short time became its president.
Drawing on the skills he learned as a proselytizer, Bowyer says, he was able to attract thousands of students to the conservative cause, bringing in speakers like Ron Paul, who was very popular during the tea party era.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tyler Bowyer on the stage at a Turning Point in Logan in late September. He served a Latter-day Saint mission in Russia.
Years later, as Bowyer was continuing his Republican organizing, he heard about a guy in Illinois who was having success in creating a conservative field organization. It was Charlie Kirk and Turning Point.
There was an immediate connection, the Arizona native says, so he signed on as a full-time employee in 2015, overseeing field operations. Several years later, Kirk moved his headquarters to Arizona — and, on Bowyer’s recommendations, hired a number of Latter-day Saints for his leadership team.
“I needed to get involved a little bit more politically,” Bowyer recalls, looking back at the decade, “to make sure my country didn’t end up looking like Russia.”
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