One night in May 2021, Ken Graves, longtime pastor and founder of Calvary Chapel Bangor in Orrington, ceded his lectern to a leader of a different kind: Charlie Kirk.
A year earlier, incensed by a ban on gatherings of more than 10 people instituted to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Graves had loudly brought his Orrington church together for worship, violating state policy. The church also sued the state, alleging that the restrictions violated the First Amendment. Kirk, the firebrand conservative commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, took notice, and added Graves to a group chat of pastors “fighting against tyranny,” as Graves would go on to describe it.
By the time Kirk ended up in front of the congregation the next year, Liberty Counsel had appealed the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately denied the church’s petition to intervene after restrictions had already been lifted.
At the Orrington church, Kirk expounded on the idea, increasingly popular on the Christian right, that the “separation of church and state is nowhere found in the U.S. Constitution.” It was a theme he hit on repeatedly as he toured the country, speaking at churches and universities, and gaining influence as the leader of a right-wing political group focused on motivating young people, until his assassination in September 2025.
Kirk’s death led to calls for a religious revival and spurred renewed interest in his organization, through which he invoked Christianity to oppose transgender rights and encourage young women to prioritize marriage and children.
Eight months later, Maine has at least 28 church-based Turning Point Faith chapters, more than twice as many as any other state in New England. The majority are hosted by Calvary Chapels. Chapters meet monthly to discuss the church’s role in cultural issues, and the organization aims “to eliminate wokeism from the American pulpit,” according to the Turning Point Faith website.
On Friday, Calvary Chapel Greater Portland will test Maine’s appetite for a conservative Christian revival with its “Make Heaven Crowded” event at the Portland Expo Center. It is one of 20 large-scale events being hosted by Turning Point Faith this year that aim to spur “repentance, faith, and bold obedience to Jesus,” according to the tour website.
The event is one of Calvary Chapel’s most public forays into the limelight in Maine but not the first. The growing network of evangelical churches has become increasingly vocal in state politics in recent years, fighting high-profile religious liberty cases, leading worship services at the State House and inviting Republican candidates to speak to congregants on Sundays.
Political realm
Graves has been a pastor at Calvary Chapel Bangor since founding the church in 1985, and he has been instrumental in its growth. A core part of his approach has been to send out male leaders to launch churches of their own when he believes they’re ready. Currently, Calvary Chapel Bangor has 28 active church plants, or congregations his church helped to start, mostly in Maine, he said.
Graves has long been political, even before his 2020 lawsuit against the state for its pandemic restrictions. He used to participate in Pulpit Freedom Sunday where pastors would preach political sermons during tax season and send recordings to the Internal Revenue Service, daring the federal government to revoke their tax-exempt status for violating the 1954 Johnson Amendment, which bars nonprofits from engaging in political campaigns. (Last year, in a win for the Trump administration, the IRS reinterpreted the amendment as allowing churches and other houses of worship to endorse candidates to their congregants. But the change was later shot down by a federal judge.)
In his sermons, Graves often comments on Maine politics with a particular focus on what he describes as the “radical social agenda” of public schools. He also endorses candidates — including Penobscot County Sheriff Troy Morton in his bid for reelection this year — but said he doesn’t aim to speak for the church or tell people what to do when he makes endorsements.
The absence of religion in public places, and especially in schools, Graves said, is effectively a government endorsement of secularism, which he described as its own religion. He said his outspoken and at times abrasive political comments are protected by the same rights granted to irreligious people under the Constitution.
Like the Orrington church, both Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, which is located in Westbrook, and Calvary Chapel Belfast have also been involved in religious liberty cases. A parent at the Westbrook church has appealed to the Maine supreme court after a judge ruled that she could not bring her daughter to church services or allow her to communicate with other members of the congregation without the father’s permission. The Belfast church has a pending lawsuit alleging religious discrimination after the University of Maine System rescinded its agreement to sell a building to the church.
Calvary pastors have regularly preached at the State House on Tuesday mornings since early 2025, when the Legislature’s Prayer Caucus began working with a Texas-based group to bring in preachers and musicians to lead worship services. A Calvary pastor helps coordinate who leads the services.
When the Christian Civic League of Maine planned an event at the State House to coincide with Gov. Janet Mills’ final State of the State address, the conservative lobbying group tapped Travis Carey, pastor at Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, as one of the event’s preachers.
Calvary pastors have been featured in more than a dozen videos on the Christian Civic League of Maine’s social media feeds since September where they described faith as a “public calling,” referred to marriage between men and women as the “basis of civilization” and called Judas the “father of all wokeness.”
Both Graves and Carey preach from lecterns adorned with swords. At the start of many videos on the Orrington church’s YouTube channel, a voice describes a “war going on … between truth and lies” and says that only “God’s word” and “God’s sword” can cut through “all lies and opinions.”
Carey started a podcast commenting on cultural, political and spiritual issues this year, and the conservative outlet The Maine Wire regularly posts the episodes to its website. In a May 1 episode, he spoke with Chip Moore of Turning Point Faith about the upcoming “Make Heaven Crowded” event, which is set to be the largest event his church has held since it was founded in 2020 — and its most controversial.
Turning Point
Even before Kirk died, Carey had been planning an event at the Portland Expo, which he hoped would help the church reach a larger crowd and encourage what he calls “unchurched people” to attend future services. Turning Point Faith asked to collaborate in late October, he said, and he agreed, saying their mission to “equip the church to engage the culture” aligned with his vision for the event. It was announced as an official part of the group’s “Make Heaven Crowded” tour in December.
Though Carey discussed the event with his congregation as far back as September, just weeks after Kirk’s death, it didn’t attract widespread attention until independent journalist Crash Barry reported on the church’s rental contract with the city in March. Barry suggested the church had misled city officials and received a discounted rental rate. But a city spokesperson told the Portland Press Herald the $2,720 charge was standard for nonprofit organizations holding “exhibit” events that don’t require tickets.
The event is set to feature Carey and Graves, as well as former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and others. Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, has appeared at some of the group’s events, but she is not an advertised speaker for the Portland stop. During a May 10 church service, Carey said the city plans to deploy 18 police officers, a bomb squad and the Maine National Guard in case of protests.
A coalition of more than two dozen religious organizations is planning to hold another event, “Love is the Point,” to counter Calvary Chapel’s outreach that same evening. The Rev. Norman Allen, minister of First Parish Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Portland, where the event will be held, said the organizers were concerned the Turning Point event could misrepresent faith communities that don’t hold conservative policy positions. The event will raise money for several local organizations supporting transgender rights, gun safety and immigrants’ rights.
The Rev. Devin Green, an interfaith minister who helped organize the counterprogramming, said she sees the Turning Point event and what it represents as a threat to American democracy.
“White Christian nationalism is political,” Green said. “They’re trying to change our country. They’re trying to remove democracy. They’re trying to remove equal rights in every possible way.”
‘Our duty influencing public policy’
When Republican voters from Calvary Chapel Greater Portland head to the polls in June, they’ll have the benefit of having seen all seven Republican candidates for governor in person — if they’ve kept up on Sunday attendance.
Since January, Carey has opened the floor to each Republican candidate for governor, as well as several local candidates, to briefly address the congregation.
“We have abdicated and been derelict in much of our duty in influencing public policy,” Carey said at a Feb. 1 service as he introduced gubernatorial candidate Garrett Mason. “We gather on the Lord’s Day to worship, and we gather to study his word, and we’re going to do that. But it also is an opportunity for us to realize, ‘Okay, where are we going to put our vote in this coming year?’”
Diana Kushnar, a Republican candidate for State House District 109 in Gorham, addressed the congregation on March 29, asking for signatures and volunteers. She decided to run a month earlier when an organizer spoke at the church and said Maine needed more Christians in all levels of government.
Before attending Calvary Chapel, Kushnar said she felt like Christianity and politics didn’t mix.
“It’s not everybody’s cup of tea that [politics] is talked about so much,” she said, “but that’s OK because I do believe that, if we want to make a difference, not just complain about something, then we need to be involved.”
According to her website, Kushnar’s top issues are parental rights, fiscal responsibility and affordability. She told The Monitor that parental rights for her includes preventing transgender students from participating in girls’ sports.
Peter Violette, a Republican candidate for Senate District 26, which includes his hometown of Windham, made his case to Calvary Chapel in January. He’s running in a contested primary against Kenneth Cianchette, who spoke to the congregation in April.
At the start of his campaign, Violette, who is Catholic, reached out to a dozen churches in his district asking if he could speak to their leaders to learn about their congregations’ priorities. Only one responded, he told The Monitor, and that was to say no. Meanwhile, Calvary Chapel Greater Portland, which Violette’s son attends, invited him in to speak.
“I applaud Travis for understanding … we’re in the mess that we’re in politically because we’ve worked so hard to separate the two,” Violette said, referring to faith and politics. “They’re the outlier, hands down.”
The response has been “very positive,” Carey said. He has given a platform to every candidate who has asked for one and said he would let Democratic candidates speak, too, but none have asked. The church’s monthly Turning Point events have also featured prominent politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle; Rep. Reagan Paul, R-Winterport; and Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn.
Even when the church doesn’t open the floor to candidates, the services are often infused with political messaging. A Maine Monitor analysis of transcripts found that Carey spoke about gender and sexuality in nearly half of his sermons from September 2025 to March 2026. He mentioned abortion, Planned Parenthood or the unborn in a quarter of them.
Graves, in Orrington, mentioned gender and sexuality in more than a third of his sermons from October to March, and brought up immigration in about one in seven. Both mentioned Charlie Kirk by name more often than any other figures outside of the Bible, and both repeatedly referenced the role of faith in politics.
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began an operation in Maine in January, Graves described protesters as “rented fit pitchers” and immigrants as “invaders” who have “robbed us of millions, if not billions” in tax dollars.
At a February service, he described “trans madness” as “producing mass murderers.” (Despite isolated high-profile incidents, fewer than 0.1% of mass shootings between January 2013 and September 2025 were committed by transgender individuals. Transgender people are four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, a 2021 study found.)
For his part, Carey has in recent months called AIDS a “physical judgment” against the “error” of homosexuality, referred to coffee shops as hotbeds of “liberal godlessness” and prayed for God to open Mills’ eyes “so that she would not spend eternity in hell.”
Carey said his job as a pastor is to interpret the Bible and apply it to modern-day life. “I think oftentimes things are deemed political,” he said, “but they’re not political; they’re biblical. So whether you’re talking about marriage, sanctity of human life, even government, God’s the creator and founder of government.”
Attendees in both Orrington and Westbrook who spoke to The Monitor seemed to appreciate this approach.
Tania French has attended Calvary Chapel Greater Portland for two years and was attracted to its verse-by-verse teaching. Carey’s willingness to speak on current political issues, she said, is evidence of his convictions and helps members of the congregation to live their own lives according to the Bible.
“That’s exactly what Jesus tells us to do,” French said. “We’re supposed to stand against the things that are wrong, and having a pastor that leads us in that is essential.”
Spreading roots
Since Calvary Chapel Bangor opened in the 1980s, it has launched more than two dozen other churches across the state.
Dom Veilleux, youth pastor at Calvary Chapel Bangor, took on a second role last October as senior pastor at Calvary New Heart, the newest church plant, just seven miles from the Orrington church near Bangor’s Capehart neighborhood.
For years, Veilleux said, the leadership at Calvary Bangor had thought about opening a gym near Capehart and adding an addition to the Orrington church. After Kirk’s assassination, the church pivoted, deciding to start a new church instead.
“I kind of use the death of Charlie Kirk as my landmark in time,” Veilleux said. “Everything kind of changed for us.”
Much of Veilleux’s ministry is based around weekly physical activities for boys ages 5 to 19, including boxing, wrestling and jiu-jitsu. Veilleux described the workouts as a way to counteract what he sees as an effort by public schools and other organizations to “make young men agreeable or docile.” After each training session, Veilleux and the other coaches lead the boys in a Bible study.
The church does not currently offer any physical activities for girls, something Veilleux said could change when they have more resources.
Calvary Abide, a new church in Strong, started at the same time as Calvary New Heart and was planted by the Greater Portland church. Like Veilleux, pastor Ben Murphy had thought about starting his own church before Kirk’s death, but seeing more people attend services in Greater Portland after the assassination inspired him to move more quickly.
“People are looking for something,” Murphy said he realized. “If I’m not there, or if someone’s not there, then they’re going to go looking in the wrong places.”
This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.
