Charlie Kirk: Man Of Christendom

Some Thoughts About Sunday's Extraordinary Memorial Service

‘I forgive him’

I wrote a long take on the Charlie Kirk memorial service for The European Conservative, so I don’t want to take too much away from that. I’ll post a link when it appears. But I do have to say something. I watched highlights of the nine-hour event, and it was one of the most extraordinary, and clarifying, things I’ve ever seen.

Charlie was an Evangelical Christian, and the service was very much an Evangelical event. Though not Evangelical, I found it very, very moving, and am grateful for my Evangelical brothers and sisters in Christ. People keep saying online that the assassin has no idea what he has awakened in this country. I think it’s true. I hope it’s true. The service was not officially a church event, but it was utterly saturated with Christianity.

It is impossible not to observe the contrast between how the Left behaved when its martyr George Floyd — a thief and drug addict killed while resisting arrest by a police officer trying to subdue him — and the way the Right behaved when its martyr, a young Christian conservative activist, was slaughtered in the act of engaging his opponents in peaceful public debate. We know that the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, grew up in a normie conservative Utah family, but at some point gave himself over to deep perversion, both online and in real life. He shot Charlie to silence the voice of an influential activist who opposed transgenderism and gender ideology.

The Left burned down wide swaths of cities, looted stores, and set off a crime wave, as well as a revolt among institutional elites that led them to oppress people who opposed their radical racial ideology. The Right? Well, it prayed. I am entirely supportive of the movement to crack down on people who, in the aftermath of the Kirk murder, cheered on political violence. That is a firewall we must hold and defend. I hope our institutional leaders don’t mimic the Left’s in 2020, and punish people indiscriminately who oppose conservative opinions.

It looks at this point that Donald Trump is eager to go after people who criticize him. This is wrong, and we on the Right have to stand against it. But ordinary liberals and progressives who simply dissent — their right to do so much be defended. It seems to me that that is what Charlie Kirk would want.

That said, I have no sympathy for those on the Left whining about a new censoriousness on the Right. Where have you people been for the last decade, when conservatives were driven off of campus, out of jobs and institutions, out of the public square? I’ll tell you where: silent, if not cheering it on. You had better hope and pray that the Right doesn’t dole out the same treatment to you. I definitely do not want to see that happen, and I will publicly oppose it (I’m doing that now). But come on, do you really think that normies on the Right give a damn about you, after seeing what you did to them, and to their children?

Hear me clearly: I’m just describing the political and cultural reality of the moment, not endorsing retribution. Why do you think so many normies voted for Donald Trump in the first place? Because they were sick and tired of crazy people abusing them and shoving crazy things (like gender ideology) down their throats. And they were sick and tired of voting for Republican politicians who didn’t do anything serious to oppose it.

I don’t think Donald Trump is a particularly honorable man, and I thought his closing address at the Kirk event was so deflating. Maybe his purpose was to show what a life without a living faith in Christ turns you into. I am really alarmed by his recent instruction to his Attorney General to go after his political enemies. Seems like barely a week goes by without Trump doing or saying something that makes me cringe. But we know what the alternative is. Biden went full woke, and opened the southern border. I can put up with Trump’s personal corruption as long as he gets the big things right.

Besides, we all know perfectly well that a decent, normie Evangelical like George W. Bush would never have produced a cabinet capable of standing there at the stadium and testifying as those men and women did. I thought even the non-Christians — Tulsi Gabbard (Hindu) and Stephen Miller (Jewish) — made galvanizing speeches. It’s like the saying goes, God writes straight with crooked lines.

Similarly, some of the things Charlie Kirk said publicly were cringe, and I didn’t agree with them. But you know what? Even when he stepped over the line in his rhetorical opposition to leftist ideology, I am grateful that he at least had the stones to speak boldly — unlike so many priests and pastors in this country, who muted themselves out of fear of being unliked, or controversial. Christians have been desperate for leadership. It is a scandal that a young uneducated Christian man was a more courageous and effective advocate for Christian moral teaching than countless of the ordained, professional clerics.

Similarly, it is a scandal that a vulgar real-estate operator from Queens has had more courage and effectiveness in advocating and implementing basic things conservatives believe in than all the normie Republicans who preceded him. But that’s where we are.

In Hungary, where I live, my liberal friends point to this or that bad thing that Viktor Orban has done, or allowed to happen on his watch. They aren’t always wrong, and that’s a shame. But the alternative would be to allow all the respectable barbarians in Brussels to ram progressivism down the throats of unwilling Hungarians. Did you know that Hungary pays a fine of one million euros each day because it refuses the Brussels diktat to open its borders? I wish Viktor Orban had the morals of a saint, but I would a thousand times rather he be in charge than one of these slick Eurocrats who are destroying the continent with their crackpot progressivism.

Example: look at what happened in Milan today, as Muslims, Antifa, and sub-Saharan Africans assaulted the Milan train station:

How much longer will you put up with this, Europe? How much longer?

At the ISI event, I was on a panel in which my co-panelists Mary Harrington and Philip Blond, both Anglicans, said that Britain ought to return to the Catholic fold, as Protestantism is exhausted there. I understand why they are saying that, and don’t really disagree with them as an Orthodox (I wish Britain would go Orthodox, but I recognize that is highly unlikely). But Catholicism in the UK, as in the rest of Europe, is in a bad way — true, not as bad as most Protestantism, but still, largely moribund. Its institutional leaders — mostly Boomers — are heavily progressive, and are more concerned with respectability than witness.

But here’s the thing (I told the audience): if there is to be Christian revival in Europe, it’s going to come from young people who want something REAL, and who realize that you can just do things. The amazing, awe-inspiring Chartres pilgrimage of 20,000 French and European Catholic tradition-craving youth — it happens despite the fact that most French bishops either passively don’t support it, or actively oppose it. These kids, and the priests that back them, don’t care. They want the faith that their elders have denied them.

I have a sense that the Charlie Kirk mourners who filled that Arizona stadium are an American version of these French Catholic kids. That is, they are patriots and Christians who are not ashamed to love their God and their country, and who want a return to normality. It is altogether fitting that Kirk was likely murdered by a young man whose life was ruined by progressive freakery. Tyler Robinson was captured by the culture of death. I’m pretty confident I don’t share all the political or religious views of the people gathered in that Arizona stadium yesterday, but I would a million times rather live in a country in which they are considered normal than the country as it is today, with its rotten elites.

For example, look at this by liberal NYTimes columnist Lydia Polgreen, in a September 19 column:

Let’s get this straight: for this NYT columnist, to report a truth that reflects bad on a Sacred Minority “is as awful as it is dangerous.”

But it’s true! This past weekend I talked to a number of people who said that the liberals in their lives — family members, mostly — still believe that Kirk was murdered by MAGA, and that the suspended talk show host Jimmy Kimmel is the real martyr in all this.

Look, you can think it wrong that ABC station affiliates pressured ABC/Disney to pull Kimmel off the air, but the idea that he is the greater victim in all this than a man who had his throat blown out by a 30.06 bullet while engaged in the act of debating his opponent in the public square — well, it’s morally insane.

And you know, the thing that I cannot unsee is that America has more than a few people who would be delighted for people like me, who shared most of Kirk’s beliefs, to be murdered. I can’t unsee it, and I don’t think any of us should unsee it. This is the world as it is.

At ISI over the weekend, the British political thinker Philip Blond said we are entering an Age of Authoritarianism. He’s not cheering for this; he’s just describing what he sees happening.

This is both Britain and the EU today: the popular Biblical research tool Bible Gateway, a website that allows you to search various translations of the Bible, is now banned in the UK and in the European Union. I learned this myself last week when I tried to use it, as I often do:

I’m trying to get more information about why this happened from ADF International, because even in these insane days, it cannot be true that they are banning a Bible research website for the sake of “safety”. Can it?

There were so many incredible things said from the stage at the Charlie memorial. As an American, I’m used to hearing politicians talking about God … but not like this. Never like this. Here is the Catholic man who is US Secretary of State, closing out his seven-minute tribute to Charlie. I’ve cued it to the right point:

Can you imagine the foreign minister of any other country speaking that way about God, about Jesus Christ?! They must have been messing their britches on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris, and in Whitehall in London.

Here is White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speaking in terms of defending Western civilization. In his talk (earlier than the part on the clip to which I linked), Miller said:

To those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness, you are jealousy, you are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity. You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk? You have made him immortal.

Well, he’s not wrong, is he? As Matt Goodwin (who is not religious, I think) tweeted during the service:

J.D. Vance said in his speech yesterday that though he has been a believer for some years, he hasn’t spoken about Jesus as much in public ever as he has in the days since Charlie’s killing. (I’ve cued it up):

Vance was crystal-clear that the core truth that Charlie believed was that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and that every other truth flows from that. Of Charlie, he said, “He was Athens, and he was Jerusalem — the city of reason, and the city of God — in one person.” What an extraordinary statement! He’s saying that Charlie — that goofy young man from the Midwest — symbolized Western civilization. And you know, I think he’s right. I barely knew who Charlie Kirk was two weeks ago. Thought he was just a MAGA youth activist. I had no idea how deep he was.

Watch this from Vance. He said that Charlie’s life teaches us that being murdered for your beliefs is not the worst fate:

It is better to face a gunman than to live your life afraid to speak the truth. It is better to be persecuted for your faith than to deny the kingship of Christ. It is better to die a young man in this world than to sell your soul for an easy life with no purpose, no risk, no love, and no truth.

That ought to be carved in stone somewhere.

And then came the crowning glory of the day: Erika Kirk’s address. I’ve cued it from the beginning, but the point you will want to see comes when she says, fighting tears, that Charlie fought all his life to save young men like the one who killed him. Look:

Have you ever seen anything like that? The power of it! She said that she is doing it because that’s what Jesus did, on the cross (“Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”), and because she knows Charlie would want her to.

I’m not going to bother linking to Trump’s meandering remarks. It’ll just say: he needs Jesus. But like I said above, none of these incredible testimonials would have been possible if Trump were not president. Who can fathom the ways of the Lord?

Look:

Thank you, my English brother. I do have some sympathy for this, from a philosopher:

That mega-Evangelical world we saw yesterday — it’s not my world, aesthetically at least. But you know, that is mainstream American Christianity, and just as I think Europe’s recovery depends on Catholicism, Evangelicalism is in a position like no other form of Christianity to rebalance America. I wish it were Orthodoxy, as it is in Russia and other Eastern Christian lands! But this is the world we live in. I was deeply put off by some Catholics I saw on X yesterday getting all piously judgmental about the Evangelicalism there. Charlie’s widow is Catholic! She told the NYT that Charlie died wearing a St. Michael the Archangel medal she gave him — a medal that is now stained by his blood, and that she herself wears. That couple was a model of the best kind of ecumenism — not the wishy-washy kind, but a deeply shared love of the Lord, one that transcends confessional differences.

We need each other, we Christians. I never tire of saying how the Christians of the Soviet world jailed by the Communists learned in prison that they weren’t there because they were Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox. They were there because they professed Jesus, and refused to live by lies. And so, they prayed together, and loved each other. I wrote about it in Live Not By Lies. You can seem some of it in the Angel Studios docuseries. This is so important now! Show the film to your kids, to your Christian youth groups, to everybody. Now is the moment!

In Living In Wonder, I write about how we need to sort ourselves out spiritually so that we are staring at the right corner of the night sky when a comet blazes past. We all saw yesterday, at that service, a constellation of comets blazing past. By their light, we see more clearly in this present darkness. What are we going to do with that? What am I, myself, going to do? I’m thinking hard about it, and praying about it. We are accelerating towards open conflict — a conflict that is ultimately spiritual. What will your role be? What will mine? The great Kamila Bendova, a devout Catholic, told me she and her late husband Vaclav allied with courageous non-believers who were willing to live not by lies; most of their fellow Catholics kept their heads down and hoped to avoid trouble.

Charlie Kirk, our Evangelical brother, did not keep his head down to avoid trouble. And he paid the ultimate price for it. His death was an apocalypse in that it showed us the worst of humanity, and the best. Philip Blond might be right: that liberalism as we have known it is dead, and we are entering into an Age of Authoritarianism. If he’s right, it’s because the conditions under which classical liberalism flourishes no longer exist. This great civilization we call the West did begin as liberal, though as Tom Holland showed in Dominion, it produced liberalism and its blessings. If it is going to survive liberalism’s demise — a demise brought on by casting aside God — we who believe its founding principles — especially its founding religion — have work to do.

No more living by lies, even if it means they kill us for it. Solzhenitsyn, in his 1974 letter entitled “Live Not By Lies,” wrote:

The more of us set out together, the thicker our ranks, the easier and shorter will this path be for us all! If we become thousands—they will not cope, they will be unable to touch us. If we will grow to tens of thousands—we will not recognize our country!

Yes! Many, many of us, on both sides of the Atlantic, do not recognize what our countries have become. We don’t have to live this way. What would Charlie do? We know; he showed us. So now: what will we do? Tucker Carlson said in his Kirk memorial address that it begins with personal repentance.

[W]hat Charlie was really saying is that change begins, the only change that matters, when we repent of our sins. We! Me! A recognition that the real problem is me, how fallen I am. And that is the reason that Charlie was fearless.