If you were not familiar with Charlie Kirk before his assassination last week, you surely are now. Kirk’s tragic death, “a political assassination” in the words of Utah’s governor, has shaken Americans. All but the most morally callous and insensitive readily denounced his murder.
This horrific shooting is something different, though no less tragic, than a random murder of innocent victims. Kirk’s killing was a premeditated, calculated assassination, an act to silence a voice so no one could hear it, with the intent of making a political statement. Tyler Robinson targeted Kirk, not because he happened to be at a preferred venue for murdering people, but because of the ideas for which Kirk stood and publicly advocated.
Kirk stood for many things. He was a right-wing political activist who also unabashedly proclaimed a conservative evangelical Christian faith. He wanted to address socio-political issues through debate and dialogue, and partly for that reason, he founded Turning Point USA. His podcast, “The Charlie Kirk Show,” had 752 episodes. He had over 8 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, and over 5 million followers on X (formerly Twitter).
It is no wonder that Kirk alienated some people. And some of those people vociferously expressed their disapproval of the stance he took on certain topics.
“Look, we get death threats — people want to murder us,” Kirk told an audience in May. “You should not have to walk around with security for your entire family and for myself just because you support a politician or political candidate or certain values,” he said.
Though he often angered opponents, as debaters are prone to do, he listened to those who disagreed with him, engaging in dialogue. Kirk was an ardent defender of free speech. He had a deep faith in Christ, a sharp mind, and a love and devotion for his family.
The courage with which Kirk expressed his beliefs in the politically heated pool in which he swam has prompted several Christian leaders to proclaim him a Christian martyr.
Whether “Christian martyr” is an apt epithet for Charlie Kirk depends on how narrowly one defines the term. The word “martyr” originates from the Greek word meaning “witness,” and thus describes those who, from the earliest days of Christianity to the present, have died for their faith.
But in common parlance, “martyr” has come to refer to anyone who dies for a cause or principle.
Kirk could be described in H. Richard Niebuhr’s paradigm (Christ and Culture) as representative of the conversionist impulse: “Christ the transformer of culture.” In a different historical context and political environment, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), the German pastor/theologian who opposed Hitler and even plotted his death, and whom the Nazis executed for those actions, could fall into the same category, as would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though a comparison of Kirk’s religious and political views to Bonhoeffer or King would paint a stark contrast.
But like them, Kirk died for what he believed, and his political activism, like theirs, intermingled with his public expressions of a life lived for Christ as he promoted his version of how Christ would transform culture. The strength with which he fought for his vision is ultimately the reason for Kirk’s death.
Whether or not one deems Kirk a Christian martyr, reactions to his death underscore the truth of one of the early Church’s thinkers. Tertullian (160-240 A.D) aptly observed of the Christians executed for their faith, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”
He meant that the Christians who died for their faith lived on, for their blood—what they were willing to die for—planted the very seeds of faith their killers had tried to squash.
Similarly, Robert Kennedy, in a speech the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and two months before Kennedy’s own, said, “No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by an assassin’s bullet.”
Applying Tertullian’s or Kennedy’s statements to our current cultural situation, whose fabric is increasingly strained by a divisive political climate, the assassin’s bullet last week will only give rise to more of Charlie Kirk’s kind. The only question is, will that “kind” further alienate or lay a path for healing a nation plagued by violence and hatred?