A number of hours after Charlie Kirk was killed, Sean Feucht, an influential right-wing Christian worship chief, filmed a selfie video from his dwelling in California, his eyes brimming with tears.
The capturing of one of many nation’s most outstanding conservative activists, Feucht declared, was at least “a line in the sand” in a rustic descending right into a religious darkness.
“The enemy thinks that he won, that there was a battle won today,” he mentioned, referencing Devil. “No, man, there’s going to be millions of bold voices raised up out of the sacrifice and martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”
Quickly afterward, Pastor Matt Tuggle, who leads the Salt Lake Metropolis campus of the San Diego-based Awaken megachurch, posted a video of Kirk’s killing on Instagram, including the caption: “If your pastor isn’t telling you the left believes a evil demonic belief system you are in the wrong church!”
Individuals place lighted candles under a photograph of Charlie Kirk at a vigil in his reminiscence in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson / Related Press)
Kirk’s dying has triggered a spread of reactions, a lot of it mournful sympathy for the 31-year-old activist and his household. However it additionally has sparked conspiracy theories, hot-take presumptions the left was accountable and requires vengeance towards Kirk’s perceived enemies.
At a vigil for Kirk in Huntington Seaside this week, some attendees waved white flags depicting a crimson cross and the phrase “JESUS,” whereas some chanted, “White men, fight back!” Kirk unfold a philosophy that liberals sought to disempower males, and a few of his male supporters see his killing as an assault towards them.
Whether or not the requires vengeance will ebb or intensify stays to be seen, particularly with President Trump’s announcement on Friday that authorities “with a high degree of certainty” have apprehended a suspect within the deadly capturing.
In life, Kirk, 31, spoke of what he referred to as a “spiritual battle” being waged in america between Christians and a “Democrat Party that supports everything that God hates.”
In dying, Kirk, one of many Republican Occasion’s most influential energy brokers, is being hailed by conservative evangelical pastors and GOP politicians as a Christian killed for his non secular beliefs.
Trump referred to as Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom,” and ordered flags to be flown at half-mast in his honor. He additionally blamed Kirk’s dying on the rhetoric of the “radical left.” Vice President JD Vance, who helped carry Kirk’s casket to Air Drive Two, retweeted a submit Kirk wrote on X final month studying, “It’s all about Jesus.” And Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, quoting Jesus, wrote on X: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
A lady lays her head down on a seat throughout a vigil at CenterPoint Church for Charlie Kirk in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson/Related Press)
Consultants on religion and far-right extremism say they’re troubled by the non secular glorification of Kirk on this period of elevated political violence — and the potential vengeance that will spring from it. The activist’s dying, they are saying, appears to have ignited varied factions on the fitting, starting from white supremacists to hard-core Christian nationalists.
“The ‘spiritual warfare’ rhetoric will only increase,” and Kirk is now being lifted up as “a physical manifestation” of a non secular battle, mentioned Matthew Boedy, a professor of rhetoric and composition on the College of North Georgia, who has written a forthcoming ebook about Christian nationalism that prominently options Kirk.
“Spiritual warfare rhetoric was a big part of January 6,” he mentioned of the lethal 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. “Making a martyr out of Charlie Kirk will change our nation in severe ways.”
Samuel Perry, a sociologist on the College of Oklahoma and skilled on Christian nationalism, mentioned he’s a Christian himself however that faith, cynically used, “has the potential to amplify what would otherwise be very secular political conflicts between Democrats and Republicans.”
“What if those are amplified with a cosmic and ultimate significance?” he mentioned. “It becomes, ‘This is God vs. Satan. This is angels vs. demons — and if we lose this next election, we plunge the nation into a thousand years of darkness.’ … It basically provokes extremism.”
Feucht, a Christian nationalist and failed Northern California Republican congressional candidate, mentioned “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church” and that, within the wake of Kirk’s dying, “we have to do something.”
Kirk — who rallied his tens of millions of on-line followers to vote for Trump within the 2024 election — declared that God was on the aspect of American conservatives and that there was “no separation of church and state.” He was additionally recognized for his vitriol towards racial and spiritual minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, childless ladies, progressives, and others who disagreed with him.
A memorial is about up for Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley College in Orem, Utah.
(Lindsey Wasson / Related Press)
Kirk referred to as transgender individuals “a throbbing middle finger to God.” He mentioned the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was “a huge mistake” and referred to as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “awful.” On his podcast, he referred to as with a smirk for “some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area who wants to really be a midterm hero” to bail out of jail the person who attacked former Democratic Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer of their dwelling in 2022.
In 2023, Kirk sat on the stage of Awaken Church in Salt Lake Metropolis and mentioned: “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the 2nd Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
Two days earlier than his dying, Kirk retweeted a video of himself saying a “spiritual battle is coming for the West,” with “wokeism or marxism combining with Islamism” to go after “the American way of life, which is, by the way, Christendom.”
Perry mentioned, “There’s no need to whitewash the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
“This is a tragedy, and no one deserves to die this way,” Perry mentioned. “Yet, at the same time, Charlie Kirk is very much part of this polarization story in the U.S. who used quite divisive rhetoric, us vs. them, the left is evil.”
Perry famous that Kirk’s Turning Level USA had positioned him on its Professor Watchlist, an internet site that claims it goals to show professors “who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda.” The entry on Perry flags him for “Anti-Judeo-Christian Values.”
Kirk was killed by a single sniper-style shot to the neck Wednesday throughout an out of doors talking occasion at Utah Valley College.
A few of Kirk’s most outstanding evangelical followers have mentioned his dying represents an assault on conservative Christian values and that he was gunned down for talking “the truth.”
Jon Fleischman, Orange County-based conservative blogger and former government director of the California Republican Occasion, who began out as a conservative faculty activist, knew Kirk and mentioned “there is one hell of a martyr situation going on.”
“A lot of people are getting activated and are going to walk the walk, talk the talk, and give money as their way of trying to process and deal with losing someone they care about,” he instructed The Occasions.
In recent times, Kirk had develop into extra outspoken about his Christian religion. He based the nonprofit Turning Level USA in 2012 as an avowedly secular youth group and have become recognized for his faculty campus excursions, with movies of his debates with liberal faculty college students racking up tens of tens of millions of views.
However in 2020, in the course of the begin of the pandemic, faculty campuses closed. Kirk began talking at church buildings that stayed open in violation of native lockdown and masks orders, together with Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Ventura County, which was led by Pastor Rob McCoy, a former Thousand Oaks mayor.
McCoy is now the co-chair of Turning Level USA Religion, which inspires pastors to develop into extra politically outspoken. McCoy, who couldn’t be reached for remark, wrote in a press release that Kirk “never used violence but was threatened every day with violence by those who couldn’t contend with logic and truth.”
Professor Boedy mentioned McCoy turned Kirk towards Christian nationalism, particularly the Seven Mountains Mandate — the concept that Christians ought to attempt to maintain sway over the seven pillars of cultural affect: arts and leisure, enterprise, schooling, household, authorities, media and faith.
Christian nationalism, which is rejected by mainline Christians, holds that america was based as a Christian nation and that the religion ought to have primacy in authorities and legislation.
Brian Levin, founding father of the Heart for the Examine of Hate and Extremism and a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino, mentioned, “the more violent fringes of Christian nationalism has disturbing aspects that are eliminationist and anti-democratic.”
He famous that among the similar Christian nationalists and white supremacists who at the moment are calling Kirk a martyr already deified Trump, particularly after he survived two assassination makes an attempt on the marketing campaign path final yr and mentioned he had been “saved by God to make America great again.”
Levin mentioned many Christian nationalists painting Trump as “an armed Christian warrior protecting America from a disturbing assortment of immigrants, religious minorities, genders and sexual orientations.” And so, when he makes use of martyr language to explain Kirk, his adherents latch on.
“Where do martyrs come from? From violent conflicts and wars,” Levin mentioned. “The fact of the matter is that this is a moment that Trump could have more effectively seized, but he veered into divisive territory.”
California Senate Minority Chief Brian Jones (R-Santee) additionally referred to as Kirk “a modern-day martyr.” In a press release, Jones quoted Thomas Jefferson, who mentioned, “ the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
He wrote: “Let us take care that we allow that tree to grow and blossom as it feeds on the lifeblood of Charles J. Kirk in the years to come.”
Occasions employees author Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
