Turning Point USA has announced that a memorial service for Charlie Kirk has been scheduled for Sunday, September 21, in Glendale, Arizona. As an indication of their founder’s cultural significance, the service will take place at State Farm Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Cardinals, which can seat 73,000 people.

If last week’s assassination of the thirty-one-year-old conservative activist had been an isolated event, it would be tragic but of little relevance to the rest of us, like an earthquake in California or a wildfire in Texas. More than twenty-two thousand Americans are murdered each year, roughly sixty-three a day. Unless one of them is a family member or friend, that statistic evokes little visceral reaction from us.

But this is not that. The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy that affects every American and especially every American evangelical in ways that may not be obvious but are deeply significant.

“Cheers from the balcony”

An eyewitness to Kirk’s murder at Utah Valley University last Wednesday said, “When he was shot, there were cheers from the balcony” behind him. “It was horrific to be a part of,” she added. “There was just no human empathy.” At a vigil Wednesday night, a person said, “I would have killed him myself.” The assassin, he claimed, “did us a favor.”

In the hours after Kirk’s death, young people flooded the internet with rhetoric justifying his killing. Numerous others have been fired or placed on leave for their hateful responses to the murder.

Presumably, none of them knew Charlie Kirk personally. So far as we know, the alleged shooter did not, either.

Why, then, do they feel justified in causing and celebrating his death?

According to Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, the accused gunman had recently become “more political.” The governor referenced a family conversation in which the alleged shooter said Charlie Kirk was “full of hate” and “spreading hate.” According to authorities, inscriptions on unfired gun casings recovered by investigators contained overt references to political and cultural issues.

So, from what we know, this man disagreed with Charlie Kirk’s ideas, so he killed him. Those who are celebrating Kirk’s death are doing so for the same reason.

Here are three reasons this is so dangerous for our nation and especially for evangelicals.

One: The “veto of violence”

Democratic senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut responded to Kirk’s murder: “The beating heart of a free society is the ability for citizens to engage in political life with no fear of violence.” New York Times columnist Ezra Klein agreed: “The foundation of a free society is the ability to participate in it without fear of violence. Political violence is always an attack against us all.”

His colleague David French added, “The assassin didn’t just take aim at a precious human being, created in the image of God, he took aim at the American experiment itself.” The Free Press editors noted: “Charlie Kirk was murdered while practicing the very act that gave birth to this nation—and the only thing that will ensure its survival.”

A commentator in the British press wrote that “Kirk was killed, doing what he lived for: demonstrating the crucial importance of free speech in a democracy.” Andrew Sullivan agreed that Kirk “did the hard work of democracy: talking to those who disagreed with him.”

If our nation loses its First Amendment right to free speech via the “veto of violence,” our democratic process is imperiled. As Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel warned, political violence has politicians as “its primary target,” with the result that “soon, none will be safe.” Cultural commentators are facing rising threats as well.

Presidential biographer Jon Meacham noted: “If this is open season on everybody who expresses an opinion, then the American covenant is broken.”

Two: “Words are violence”

This threat is amplified by the claim that “words are violence.” As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in the Atlantic, this “dangerous” idea has been “percolating on college campuses these days.” The argument is that if words can cause stress, and prolonged stress can cause physical harm, certain types of speech can be a form of violence.

This psychological claim has been extrapolated into the belief that it is fair to respond violently to words with which we disagree. In a new survey, a record one in three college students now consider violence to be justifiable against a speaker uttering “hate.”

It’s therefore unsurprising that so many are lauding the violence against Charlie Kirk as an appropriate response to his “violent” message. Taken to its logical conclusion, this thinking robs our democracy of free speech protections and imperils the political process itself.

Three: “Oppress the oppressors”

A third cultural factor behind Charlie Kirk’s murder is the Critical Theory (CT) claim that all relationships are based on power struggles between “oppressors” and the “oppressed.” According to CT, the appropriate response by the oppressed is therefore to “oppress the oppressors.”

For example, if a speaker such as Charlie Kirk defends biblical morality with regard to homosexuality and abortion, they are “oppressing” homosexuals and women. And if words are violence, violence becomes an appropriate response to words.

You can see why this belief is threatening to all Americans but especially to evangelicals.

Unashamed and unafraid

How should we respond?

As my wife often says, lost people act like lost people. So did we before we met Jesus. We need to remember that “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). The more they reject our words and our faith, the more they need them.

In an increasingly secularized culture, such compassion will increasingly require courage. But this is nothing new for us. Paul was warned by the Holy Spirit that “imprisonment and afflictions” awaited him in Rome (Acts 20:23), but he went anyway to “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (v. 24).

He told the Romans, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16). Even when imprisoned in Rome and awaiting execution, he testified that “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Timothy 1:7).

Unashamed and unafraid are commitments God’s people especially need in these days.

Will you pray for the courage to be both today?

Quote for the day:

“Let nothing frighten you. Who has God, lacks nothing. God alone is enough.” —St. Teresa of Avila

Our latest website resources:

• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?
• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988

Denison Forum

The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk continues to dominate headlines this morning.

The shooter who killed the thirty-one-year-old author and podcast host is still evading capture at this writing. A new video showing the suspect fleeing the scene was released last night by the FBI and Utah officials. Police also released new images of a “person of interest” wearing a black T-shirt with a US flag on it and Converse shoes as officials asked for the public’s help in finding the suspect.

President Trump said yesterday that he would award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously, the highest civilian honor in the US. Vice President J. D. Vance flew Kirk’s casket on Air Force Two from Utah to Arizona, where he lived with his family.

We know what Charlie Kirk’s death means for his family: his wife is now a widow, his three-year-old daughter has lost her father, and his one-year-old son will not remember him.

But what does it mean for the rest of us?

“The dark fruit of passionate conflict”

We do not yet know with certainty the motive behind this tragedy. However, investigators have found ammunition engraved with expressions of transgender and antifascist ideology inside the rifle that authorities believe was used in the shooting. Three unspent rounds were also found in the magazine, all with wording on them.

Commentators are responding on the assumption that the assassin was motivated by political animus and opposition to Kirk’s beliefs:

• Political philosopher R. R. Reno writes in First Things, “In our history, assassinations are symptoms. They are the dark fruit of passionate conflict over the future of our nation.”
• In The Atlantic, George Packer calls Kirk’s death “a disaster for the country” and warns, “In an atmosphere of national paranoia and hatred, each act of political violence makes the next one more likely.”
• CNN headlines, “Kirk assassination is a national tragedy in a polarized America.”
• Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute agrees, writing in the Free Press that Kirk’s death is “the most stunning evidence yet that America is becoming two nations.”

Continetti observes that we are “divided not only by politics but by culture, lifestyle, psychology, and epistemology. Weak institutions, corrupted data, rampant distrust, political enmity, and an apparent inability to control criminality and the dangerously mentally ill tear us apart like a centrifugal force.”

How we became the “United” States

Violence is endemic to our fallen human nature, “a kind of dark matter inside the human race,” according to public intellectual Ryan Holiday. He describes this “dark matter”:

It is a kind of dark oppositional energy that goes from issue to issue, era to era. It’s rooted in self-interest, self-preservation, in fear, in not wanting to be inconvenienced, not wanting to change, not wanting to have to get involved. It manifests itself a thousand ways, but once you recognize it, you spot it everywhere.

Political violence is especially prevalent in a day when America’s external enemies are not strong enough to unite us and we therefore focus our “dark oppositional energy” on other Americans.

Partisan divides have existed in our nation from its founding. As historian Joseph J. Ellis notes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, the arguments colonists made against being ruled by a distant power in England applied equally to a distant national government on these shores. The most likely outcome of the War for Independence was that the thirteen colonies would become independent nations linked together in a Europe-like confederation.

It was the threat of future conquest by European powers, the necessity of paying the national debt, and the drive to settle the western frontier that forged these disparate colonies into a “United” States of America. In the generations since, our unity has been strongest when we were fighting world wars, economic depressions, and terrorist threats.

In our day, however, partisan politics have taken the place of foreign enemies. More than three-fourths of voters now believe that Americans who strongly support the other side are a “clear and present danger” to our nation.

When you are facing an enemy, you feel motivated to do whatever is needed to defeat them. The resurgence in political violence of recent years illustrates this tragic narrative. Reuters has documented more than three hundred cases of politically motivated acts of violence across the ideological spectrum in the last four years.

“As you wish that others would do to you”

Here we find one of the most urgent reasons Americans need Jesus. He alone can transform terrorists like Saul of Tarsus into missionaries like Paul the apostle. He alone can turn racial prejudice such as what Peter harbored against Gentiles into passionate compassion for all peoples (cf. Acts 10). He alone can heal our broken hearts and divided nation.

Because Christ now lives in his followers (1 Corinthians 12:27), you and I can animate a movement that replaces partisan animosity with transforming grace. But this can happen only by the power of God’s Spirit, since the first “fruit” when he operates freely in us is “love” (Galatians 5:22), the passionate desire to seek the best for others at our own expense.

This means that Christians can be the catalysts for healing our culture needs most.

What are our next steps? Consider three interconnected facts:

1. We can measure the degree to which we love our Lord by the degree to which we love our neighbor (Matthew 22:37–39; John 13:34).
2. We can measure the degree to which we love our neighbor by the degree to which we love our enemies, since the two are so often the same (Matthew 5:44).
3. We can measure the degree to which we love our enemies by the degree to which we “do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), seeking their best at any cost to ourselves (vv. 28–30).

In short,

“As you wish that others would do to you, so do to them” (v. 31).

Imagine the transformation if everyone lived by this simple mantra. Now imagine the difference when you do.

What do you “wish that others would do to you” today?

Quote for the day:

“Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does.” —Henry Drummond

Our latest website resources:

• How should Christians respond to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and rising violence in our culture?
• A quick word on the death of Charlie Kirk, Pentagon’s rebrand, US hope in decline, viral sports fails, US Open, NFL & Emmys weekend
• Encouraging stories of faith in sports
• Can Bonton Farms show us a better way to restore hope to struggling communities?
• Having suicidal thoughts? Call or text 988

Denison Forum