Charlie Kirk’s death was senseless, a tragedy for his family, friends, and admirers.
On that all decent Americans agree, so let’s stop repeating the mantra that violence is never acceptable in a democracy as if somebody thinks it is. Only someone who is an extremist, or mentally disturbed, resorts to violence. The overwhelming majority of us know that such acts cannot be tolerated by a civilized society.
But in the mourning of Kirk’s passing that we are seeing, his loved ones and friends and admirers seem to be succumbing to the common temptation of trying to make someone in death what they never were in life.
I suspect we will see this magnified many times over at Kirk’s memorial service this coming Sunday, September 21st. He will be made out to be a hero, a great leader, a patriot to be admired, and an example of what it means to be a Christian.
Yet, Kirk was none of these, and it is not being disrespectful to say so. Being sorry and saddened by his death does not preclude us from being honest about who he was.
I didn’t know him personally, of course, so I have no idea what kind of person he was in private, but I did know him as a public figure, including the fact that he saw himself as a Christian, even declaring on a June podcast, “I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important. The most important thing is my faith.”
In 2022 he added Turning Point Faith to his Turning Point USA organization with the intention of helping churches lead America back to what he described as foundational Christian values.
He promoted the evangelical Seven Mountain Mandates that declared Christians should lead the seven major institutions of influence in our society – religion, family, government, education, media, arts, and business, mandates similar to the goals of those promoting Christian Nationalism.
The problem is, none of Kirk’s public statements express anything close to an informed understanding of the life and teachings of Jesus. Just the opposite, Kirk’s public life, his words and his actions, stood in marked contrast to the major themes and challenges found in what Jesus both said and did.
Search Kirk’s public declarations and you will find that he did not promote racial justice, gender equality, or respect for the rights of all Americans. Instead, he judged others, condemned LGBTQ Americans as unrepentant sinners, promoted a supremacist Christianity, and sowed seeds of hatred, division, and social conflict. Here are a few examples:
- “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified” (The Charlie Kirk Show, January 23, 2024).
- “Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact. It’s happening more and more” (The CK Show, May, 2023).
- “Reject feminism. Submit to your husband…You’re not in charge” (The CK Show, August 26, 2025, advice to Taylor Swift when her engagement was announced)
- “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. – It is rational” (Turning Point event, April 5, 2023).
- “The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different” (The CK Show, March 1, 2024).
- “America has freedom of religion, of course, but we should be frank: large dedicated Islamic areas are a threat to America” (The CK Show, April 30, 2025)
- “There is no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists” (The CK Show, July 6, 2022).
- “The American Democrat party hates this country. They wanna see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white” (The CK Show, March 20, 2024).
(Source: rsn.org (reader supported news)
These quotes are a small sampling of the kind of things Charlie Kirk said that expressed his views and beliefs, which is why I find it astonishing that anyone would suggest he was someone to admire or that he contributed to making America a better country.
I am especially aghast that he would be considered Christian when his beliefs and views could not have been more contradictory to the life and teachings of Jesus.
In listening to him “debate” students where he quotes the Bible, I would say that Kirk was a typical evangelical Christian who was taught the words Jesus spoke without the knowing the historical context that would have helped him better understand the spirit that gave those words meaning and life.
Kirk was obviously taught a Christian legalism common among evangelicals that takes the life out of faith and turns it into a narrow-minded religiosity that judges others while pretending to be loving.
He talked about the importance of faith while ignoring what Jesus described as “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).
He publicly praised the Ten Commandments, but said nothing about the summary of the whole law the prophet Micah articulated when he wrote, “He has told you, O mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God” (6:8).
None of this would be necessary to say if those who are mourning Kirk’s death didn’t want the rest of us to remember him for the kind of person he never was, and heap inappropriate praise on a life not at all well-lived.
Those who mourn his passing deserve the space to do so, as everyone does who loses someone they love. The rest of us are sad for them, and do not want to minimize the senselessness of his death.
That said, though, no amount of revisionist history about his life now can change the way he actually lived or the fact that a fair judgment of his political career did not strengthen or even reflect the values to which our nation has always aspired and been better for trying to live.
If telling the truth about Charlie Kirk’s life, and most especially his Christianity, would get me fired if I were a political commentator or late night television host, so be it.
I’d say it anyway. There is never a time not to tell the truth.
linnposts.com 