On Sunday night, some 90,000 people packed an Arizona stadium to commemorate the life of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, ten days after he was assassinated.
Many more thousands filled a nearby stadium and thousands more watched from a screen outside the stadium. Some of the most well-known political heavyweights were in attendance, as Kirk was eulogised by President Donald J Trump, who was flanked by members of his cabinet behind a bullet-proof screen.
Millions more tuned in to watch the star-studded memorial online, hearing from names on the right including Tucker Carlson, who said that Kirk, 31, knew “politics is not the final answer,” and that he believed the “only real solution is Jesus.”
Multiple speakers, including commentator Benny Johnson, remembered Kirk as being “Christ-centred” – testifying that he himself was a “loser with an alcohol addiction” before Kirk’s influence helped him to turn his life around. Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic, confessed to the crowd that he had just remarked to somebody backstage that he “always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public,” but that “I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have in my entire time in public life.” The crowd erupted.
The stadium was alive with worship music, as Brandon Lake performed “Gratitude” and Kari Jobe belted out “The Blessing.” The most moving address of all came from Mrs Erika Kirk, Charlie’s widow and the mother of his two small children, who correctly pointed out that “we didn’t see violence or rioting after Charlie’s assassination, but revival.”
Indeed, parallels have been drawn between the scene in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, when Black Lives Matter organised riots nationwide that injured hundreds of police officers and caused an estimated $2 billion in damages. When Charlie Kirk died, money was raised for his family, and people organised prayer vigils which swept across America. An online trend was born where those who hadn’t darkened the door of a church in years showed up to services last weekend. Many who hadn’t opened a Bible in decades did so. There were no injuries; there was no looting, and there were no riots. There is a contrast, and it’s well-worth pointing out. As many pointed out on X, ‘We are not the same.’
It’s too early to say if seeds of revival have already been sown in the wake of Kirk’s death – but it would certainly be a religious revival, a spiritual one, because with the finality of death comes the realisation that politics can only bring us so far. I’ve heard self-described agnostics, in this last ten days, use words like “demonic” – terms truly foreign to their vocabulary – to describe some of the laughing and gloating around Kirk’s death from others who complain that he was too controversial. There’s a lot of talk of darkness and evil. The conversation certainly feels more spiritual than political.
Charlie Kirk did not want to be remembered for his bright mind or his debating prowess. Yes, he liked to argue. He loved free speech and through his work, he allowed ideas to be tested. How do you know if an idea is a sound one? You test it, you tease it out, you see how it stands up when someone plays the devil’s advocate. That’s how you know if you have a good idea, or a bad one. Charlie did that at countless college campuses even when facing the weight of sometimes thousands of signatures calling for him to be cancelled. He had, reports say, been warned that that over 6,000 people had signed a petition against him coming to Utah, where he was ultimately murdered. His ‘Prove Me Wrong’ tour was causing somewhat of a firestorm. He still showed up.
But what he wanted to be remembered for most? In a resurfaced video from June, he was asked that very question.
“How would you want to be remembered?” Kirk replied:
“I want to be remembered for courage for my faith – the most important thing is my faith in my life.”
For Kirk, politics was important but it was secondary. He urged people to get involved at a local level – to take an interest in the people being elected to their councils. He cared about society and meaning and human potential. His advice to young people? “Get married.” Just two days before he was killed, he told a segment on Fox News that he felt young women were running the risk of losing meaning-long term because they were busy making “careerism and consumerism” the priority.
“Having children is more important than having a good career – my kids matter more than how many social media followers I have,” he said.
Above all, Kirk was not afraid to share the Gospel he believed in – just hours before his death, footage of him speaking at a ‘Restaurant Tour’ event in Salt Lake City, captured him telling supporters: “One of my favorite verses though, is Romans 8:28, which says that God works all things for good for those who love Him.” In the wake of his death, Kirk’s reciting of Bible verses and love for theology are huge parts of his growing virality.
In Ireland and in Britain, we’ve been so conditioned to accept the total secularisation of politics, to the point where it seemed somewhat shocking to watch Charlie Kirk’s memorial and hear US leaders talk about Jesus Christ and eternity and faith. We think: are they really allowed to do that? Should religion not be separate from politics?
It’s worth asking: where has the sheepish denial of our faith gotten us? I ask that as someone who believes in God and to others who also believe. It’s easy to want a quiet, convenient life, but it’s not what you’re called to as a Christian.
When I lived in London, it became clear to me that the departure from practising Christianity has opened the door wide to the influence of Islam, which seems to be growing stronger than Christianity. The concept of the Christian West seems dead and buried when you can go days without seeing decorations for Easter, or when ‘Christmas’ is a word all too easily swapped out for pagan offerings like ‘Winterfest’ yet supermarkets are colourfully and enthusiastically decked out for Eid Murabak, marking the end of Ramadan for Muslims. We know that Christianity would not be celebrated in an Islamic country.
It’s hard not to think that just maybe as Christians we have been too compromising, too sheepish, and too cowardly when it comes to standing up for our own values and living by them. We’ve allowed a vacuum to emerge and it will be filled by something. I think that, in the US, it’s a positive thing that public figures can express faith in God and professing biblical values.
In Ireland, we’ve been told for so long to shake off the remnants of Catholic guilt, to not appear old-fashioned, to care more about not offending anyone than being a public Christian. But private Christianity has not gotten us very far, has it? Church numbers are in free-fall because our religious leaders often care more about being liked than shepherding a flock that will one day end up facing eternity. Vanilla-flavoured Christianity has kept young people in their beds on Sunday mornings. It’s boring, and it’s too close to the tone of the world to offer anything different. Sunday morning yoga on the beach? That’s far more appealing to the young women of my own generation, and sometimes, I don’t blame them.
What I took from Kirk’s memorial is that it’s ok to publicly believe in heaven and to strive for it. Not only is it ok, but it is required if you do believe. That it’s a good thing to be unapologetic and to assert that good and evil exist, and we should differentiate between them. We should not be complacent, but we shouldn’t be cowards as Christians and too many of us are. Charlie Kirk was effective because he had a backbone and he was brave.
I didn’t quite realise how brave he was until the news flashed through that he had been shot in the neck for showing up at a college campus to have a debate. He was not afraid to be hated. He let himself become indifferent to the hatred aimed at him, and was always open to debate. Seems like a different brand of Christianity to the watered-down kind we have here in Ireland, but there’s a lesson for us in it. The other lesson, evidenced in the memorial, is that politics is good and debate is good and we must be engaged – but these things only bring us so far. What do we cling to when everything goes wrong in our lives? Suffering ultimately leads us to faith when there is no other way out. You can choose despair or you can choose hope.
Most powerful of all was Erika Kirk’s decision to forgive her husband’s killer. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend you watch it:
Watching her do so was the reason I started writing this article because a moment like that cannot go by without a response. It’s hard to find the words when we see something so counterintuitive play out in front of our eyes, in front of millions. A beautiful young woman, now a widow forgiving the killer who left her children without a father. To much of the world, it must seem bizarre.
“Our Savior said, “Father, forgive them, for they not know what they do.” That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did in his. What Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love,” Kirk, who is a baptised Catholic, said, before almost collapsing, exhausted with emotion.
People expressed suspicion in the comments. After all, to err is human, but to forgive, divine – is there any greater proof that God’s grace is real and active than someone finding the power, in the pits of debilitating turmoil, to forgive? It goes against everything in our human nature and every fibre of our being.
More than anything her husband could have said whilst he was alive, and Charlie Kirk said many good and wise things, Erika Kirk’s simple three words through tears, “I forgive him” will do more to make people question if maybe, just maybe, there is a God. If the spiritual world is, in fact, real, and if we really can be transformed through faith. The words of St Paul to the Phillippians, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” take on a whole new meaning. Erika Kirk’s act of forgiveness may confound us all, but it may also have the power to point thousands to faith in the midst of suffering.