Frank Turek’s Global Gospel: How an American Apologist Became the World’s Favorite Morality Referee—Whether We Asked or Not

Frank Turek, the American apologist who insists that morality can’t exist without a cosmic referee, has lately become the improbable export the world never ordered but keeps receiving—like those plastic-wrapped “American cheese slices” that appear on supermarket shelves from Lagos to Lahore. To most of humanity, which wakes up each morning to inflation, drought, or a coup, the question of whether objective morality needs a deity feels roughly as urgent as choosing the correct emoji for “existential dread.” Yet Turek’s brand of confident, Power-Pointed certainty has slithered across borders, carried by YouTube’s algorithm and the missionary zeal of well-funded ministries. In an age when half the planet scrolls past war crimes on their phones while waiting for coffee, Turek’s tidy syllogisms offer the soothing illusion that somewhere, someone still believes in final exams.

His international footprint is modest but telling. In Manila megachurches, pastors quote his trademark “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist” as if it were a Philippine proverb. In Warsaw’s newly muscular Catholic circles, right-wing students circulate dubbed clips of Turek “owning” secular professors, the Polish subtitles giving his Southern drawl an oddly Slavic gravitas. Even in post-Christian Scandinavia—where the national pastime is politely ignoring God—bookstores stock his paperbacks next to the teething biscuits, a testament to either globalized distribution or the Nordic taste for ironic interior décor.

The world, of course, has its own pressing curriculums. South Sudanese refugees are not losing sleep over the Kalam Cosmological Argument; Sri Lankan mothers lining up for kerosene are unlikely to debate transgender athletes with reference to Genesis 1:27. Yet Turek’s ascendancy is less about the content of his apologetics than about the form: a canned certainty that travels well, like instant noodles seasoned with the MSG of American self-assurance. When everything else feels precarious, a man in a blazer explaining that the universe has an Author and He definitely votes Republican can be weirdly comforting—especially if the Wi-Fi is spotty and the subtitles are optional.

Irony abounds. Turek lambasts moral relativism while peddling books whose royalties depend on Amazon’s morally relative tax strategies. He decries secularism’s alleged nihilism from stages funded by donors whose fortunes were made in casino apps engineered to keep teenagers glued to slot machines. Meanwhile, the very global supply chains that ship his merchandise rely on labor practices that would make a first-century slave blush. Somewhere in Shenzhen, a factory worker pasting “Made for God’s Glory” stickers onto DVD cases earns in a month what Turek bills for a single campus gig—proof, perhaps, that divine providence is remarkably fluent in market economics.

Still, the broader significance lies not in Turek himself but in what his popularity reveals about the planetary mood. In a fractured century, where nations weaponize history and every tweet risks igniting a riot, the promise of one transcendent storyline retains seductive simplicity. Whether that storyline comes from a Bronze Age text or a TED Talk on mindfulness hardly matters; both are opioids for an audience nursing vertigo. Turek merely offers a particularly muscular brand, fortified with footnotes and a dash of Fox News charisma. The fact that his arguments are recycled from 13th-century monks and 1980s campus crusades only adds to the charm—nostalgia sells, especially when repackaged as rebellion against the modern.

Ultimately, Frank Turek is less a theologian than a symptom: the canary in the global coal mine chirping that people would rather buy certainty by the case than wrestle with ambiguity by the ounce. If his exported confidence helps a Brazilian teen resist TikTok nihilism or a South Korean office worker survive another 70-hour week, perhaps that’s utility enough. The rest of us can sip our ethically sourced coffee, watch the canary sing, and quietly wager that when the mine finally collapses, the deity—if He exists—will be too busy grading humanity’s moral homework to notice we spent the lecture scrolling cat videos. Until then, the merch table is open, cards accepted, receipts optional.