At Sunday morning church companies across the nation, conservative non secular leaders discovered the identical phrase to explain Charlie Kirk, the podcaster and political activist killed on Wednesday: martyr.
“Today, we celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old God-fearing Christian man, a husband, father of two, a patriot, a civil rights activist, and now a Christian martyr,” mentioned Rob McCoy, the pastor emeritus of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in California.
Kirk, a outstanding ally of President Donald Trump who attracted an ardent conservative following and criticism for his anti-feminist, anti-immigration views, was fatally shot Wednesday at Utah Valley University. He was speaking to a crowd of thousands as a part of “The American Comeback Tour,” which featured Kirk’s signature occasion: debating school college students about tradition warfare subjects.
Several evangelical megachurches – which Kirk typically visited on weekends to pitch his imaginative and prescient of conservative politics – devoted their Sunday companies to the assassinated political commentator, full with video compilations of the viral moments that helped propel Kirk to fame. Pastors mourned Kirk each as a pal who constructed shut private relationships with evangelical leaders and a bombastic advocate for conservative Christian causes, who brazenly combined politics with faith.
And though authorities haven’t introduced a motive in Kirk’s shooting and he was talking at a secular college when he was shot, a number of non secular leaders framed his killing as an assault on the Christian church.
“The attack on Charlie Kirk was much deeper than a political attack on the First Amendment,” mentioned Jackson Lahmeyer, the pastor of Sheridan Church in Oklahoma and the founding father of “Pastors for Trump,” a group of pastors who lobbied for Trump’s reelection, at his Sunday morning service. Some 5,631 folks attended his 10 a.m. sermon, together with each on-line and in particular person, he instructed NCS.
“The attack on Charlie was spiritual in nature and an attack on the very institution of the church,” Lahmeyer mentioned.
Pastors echoed Trump, who called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom” in an tackle Wednesday night from the Oval Office and blamed “radical left political violence.”
Several pastors in contrast Kirk to the biblical determine Stephen, who was stoned to dying and is thought to be the primary Christian martyr of the New Testament.
“Make no mistake, this was not random,” mentioned McCoy, who known as himself Kirk’s “friend and his biggest fan,” and mentioned Kirk known as him his pastor. “We are in a spiritual battle. The same murderous spirit that raged against the prophets, that crucified Christ and that martyred Stephen is raging again in our day.”
The dying of Kirk – who typically disparaged racial and spiritual minorities and the LGBTQ+ neighborhood – hasn’t been mourned by everybody. Social media posts expressing apathy or making jokes about Kirk’s dying have led to customers being focused by an anonymous doxxing website and have even led some workers to be fired.
But his killing has propelled curiosity in Turning Point USA Faith, the non secular arm of Kirk’s right-wing youth group, in line with McCoy. He mentioned that the variety of Turning Point USA Faith’s companion church buildings has doubled within the days since Kirk’s dying.
Sunday’s sermons mirrored the intimate relationships Kirk constructed with Christian leaders, a lot of whom are additionally public advocates for Trump. White evangelicals served as a crucial voter base for Trump throughout each elections he received.
Lahmeyer instructed NCS that Kirk was a private pal for years. “Obviously we’re mourning because we lost him,” he mentioned. “It’s just tough.”
His congregants have responded to the taking pictures with “a range of emotions,” together with anger, he mentioned. It’s “hard to believe, hard to process. You don’t think it’s real, but it’s real.”
He instructed NCS he canceled a beforehand scheduled visitor sermon to ship a sermon himself Sunday devoted to Kirk, titled “Turning Point.” He mentioned that he hopes for listeners, the sermon can function “a turning point where they become even more devout in following Jesus.”
“I hope that Charlie’s life would inspire people to live a life worth living,” Lahmeyer instructed NCS. “Beyond the political influence that Charlie made, the greater influence that Charlie made was upon the body of Christ.”
McCoy, who says he met Kirk throughout a conservative occasion in 2019, additionally shared private tales about their relationship. “I miss my friend,” he mentioned. Godspeak Calvary was the primary church at which Kirk ever spoke, he mentioned.
The two had not too long ago traveled to Seoul, South Korea, the place they met with Mina Kim, a conservative activist.
Kirk’s “life was scheduled in 15-minute increments, and everybody wanted a piece of him,” McCoy mentioned. “I was so grateful to have that moment with him in Korea, hear his heart.”
At Grace Church in St. Louis, lead pastor Wes Martin described Kirk as “one of the most humble, kind, generous and respectful young men that I had ever interacted with at the time.” He described how the pair constructed a friendship in 2022 and mentioned Kirk would textual content him Bible verses throughout laborious occasions.
Justin Sparks, the lads’s ministry director at Grace Church, mentioned of Kirk, “When he was assassinated, I felt like I lost a member of my own family.”
“He wasn’t just a man that was struck down and died, which is tragic, of course,” Sparks mentioned. “What you saw was a righteous man martyred, and Americans haven’t seen that before. He was martyred because he had an explicit worldview of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and he shared it everywhere he went.”
Just hours after Kirk was fatally shot, Dream City Church in Phoenix, which had partnered with Turning Point, addressed his dying. Pastor Luke Barnett mentioned that Kirk “gave his life doing what the preachers of America oughta be doing, speaking the truth from the pulpits.”
Like McCoy, Barnett framed the assassination as an assault on Christianity.
“We really are in a spiritual war,” Barnett mentioned. “And by the way, Charlie Kirk, what killed him today was not his political views. It was his biblical views, his biblical views of truth.”
His feedback mirror these of Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, who mentioned “the spiritual warfare is palpable” in her first address after her husband’s dying. Kirk himself typically invoked related language, calling the 2024 election a religious battle.
Although Kirk began his profession as a extra secular conservative who highlighted the separation of church and state, through the Covid-19 pandemic he jumped to the protection of church buildings who rebuffed lockdown mandates and have become extra outwardly non secular. In 2021, Kirk launched Turning Point USA Faith in coordination with McCoy, which hosted “Freedom Night in America,” a monthly event series of “rallies designed to address current cultural and political issues from a conservative perspective.”
In the previous couple of years, Kirk brazenly advocated for the US as a “Christian state.”
“There is no separation of church and state,” he mentioned on his podcast in 2022. “It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Lahmeyer mentioned that Kirk’s dying was proof of the “persecution of Christians.” “Christianity is under attack in the United States of America,” he instructed NCS.
For Sunday’s service, he selected to learn from the Sermon on the Mount, he instructed NCS, through which Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are prosecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar on the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, instructed NCS that the “profound and visceral anger” felt after Kirk’s dying has been channeled into calls to defend Christianity.
The evangelical movement has a lengthy historical past of “a sense of embattlement,” even supposing they’ve “unrivaled cultural power” in comparison with different non secular teams, Taylor mentioned.
Although Christians are a majority within the US, many “still have a sense that culture is against them and that the world is against them and that they are the victims,” Taylor mentioned. Kirk’s killing is “fueling that narrative,” he added.
Pastors additionally took the chance to rail towards frequent conservative targets, like same-sex marriage and transgender rights, which Kirk had brazenly opposed.
Speaking on Wednesday, Barnett mentioned that within the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, the church would “double down and we’re gonna feed more people, we’re gonna see more people saved. We are also gonna call sin what it is.”
He mentioned Kirk’s dying would function a possibility for the church to oppose same-sex marriage and “proclaim like never before that there are only two sexes.”
McCoy equally denounced “transgender ideology,” which he mentioned “radicalizes people into violence.” He described the alleged shooter as “indoctrinated” and mentioned the attacker “pulled the trigger, but there were others behind him helping warp that mind.” Authorities are investigating whether or not Robinson’s romantic relationship with his roommate, who’s transgender, might be linked to the taking pictures, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox instructed NCS. Trans folks account for lower than 1% of mass shooters over the previous decade, in line with the non-profit Gun Violence Archive.
McCoy additionally known as for extra pastors to get entangled in nationwide politics after Kirk’s killing.
“If you say, ‘I don’t do politics ‘cause politics is dirty,’ you’re a Gnostic and you need to repent,” he mentioned, referring to an early Greco-Roman non secular motion. “We’re gonna demand of our shepherds that they lead these young people into a land where they can own property, build homes, raise families, and enjoy what life is all about.”
Peace and hope
But non secular leaders additionally emphasised the significance of peace and civil dialogue within the aftermath of the killing.
“We have to implement the words of Jesus in the hour that we live in in this nation,” mentioned Lahmeyer throughout his sermon. “We must be as wise as serpents. Yet we also have to be as harmless as doves.”
Speaking to NCS, he added, “We do not respond like those who are persecuting us. We don’t persecute.”
Speaking at his Sunday sermon, Barnett mentioned, “Do not let this violence divide us further.”
The “enemy wants chaos, fear and retaliation,” he mentioned. “Don’t give it to them. Instead, double down on truth, double down on courage, double down on your faith and on your families.”
McCoy known as for his listeners to hold with them the identical hope and fearlessness that Kirk harbored. “Despair is no hope,” he mentioned. “We have hope.”
Lorenzo Sewell, the nondenominational pastor of Detroit-based 180 Church who delivered a prayer at Trump’s second inauguration, instructed NCS that the church plans to carry a “Holy Ghost” celebration with “praise, worship, and prayer” in Kirk’s honor.
Sewell and Kirk had been pals, and Kirk was scheduled to talk at 180 Church Thursday night time, Sewell mentioned in a video posted after the taking pictures. Like different religion leaders, Sewell in contrast Kirk to the biblical Stephen – and mentioned he hopes Kirk’s dying might help convey extra folks into the church.
“We pray that there would be more that would come to salvation through Charlie Kirk’s death than even in his life,” Sewell mentioned. “May this tragedy become a testimony, in Jesus’ name.”