Why Christians rush to label Charlie Kirk a martyr

Following yet another shooting at a U.S. college campus, Thursday morning’s class on American religious history at USC called for a different focus. Rather than lecture my students on Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism who was killed by an angry mob, I asked students their thoughts on a newly emerging martyr filling online newsfeeds.

Charlie Kirk, the right-wing evangelical and political activist who led a youth movement he thought would help restore Christian morality in America, had just been killed the day before, shot at long range across a field at Utah Valley University by a gunman who was at that point still on the run. Almost everyone had something to say.

One student spoke about a family member who was on site in Utah where the shooting occurred. Another heard Kirk when he visited USC last spring. Still another had followed Kirk’s Turning Point USA crusade for years. All said that their social media had “blown up” with videos of the shooting and unhinged rants from both the left and the right.

Most of the students were upset and confused. They wanted time to reflect on the ramifications of Kirk’s death and understand how quickly dangerous rhetoric and senseless violence can spread. No one was ready to make the same leap of faith many conservatives already had: They weren’t willing to label Kirk a Christian martyr. Most wouldn’t even know what a 21st century evangelical martyr would look like.

American evangelicals share several basic convictions: the need to be born again, the Bible is the authoritative word of God, the call to spread the Gospel and the understanding that salvation is only possible through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

After World War II, a small group of Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. — including Southern Baptist minister Billy Graham — felt a need to engage with the wider culture. They shaped a new version of their faith that dialogued with outsiders and provided material aid as a means to share God’s love, through organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse and World Vision. They eventually called themselves evangelicals.

They understood Jesus to be the model for human behavior. Unlike the God of the Hebrew Bible, whom evangelicals saw as harsh, vengeful and legalistic, their God was kind, loving and forgiving. Christianity had dogma and doctrine, but it also had the Sermon on the Mount, which called for sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, tending the sick and caring for the stranger.

Evangelicals, in other words, had empathy.

Charlie Kirk displayed very little. “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually,” he said in 2022. “I think empathy is a made-up new-age term that does a lot of damage.” When asked about gun deaths in 2023, he replied, “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.”

In other instances, he belittled Black women, working women and Martin Luther King Jr. He helped create a Professor Watchlist to “expose” those with whom he disagreed. Jewish people ran “not just the colleges,” he said, but the nonprofits, the movies, Hollywood, “all of it.” On LGBTQ+ issues? He felt the Old Testament mandate to kill homosexuals was “God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.” And just last month, he declared that the U.S. had welcomed enough Indian immigrants: “We’re full. Let’s finally put our own people first.”

Kirk was not always so blunt when he spoke on college campuses. He liked young people, showed up for them and recruited them to his cause. He was celebrated as the rare right-winger who was willing to engage in debate, but was he? He listened without hearing, often reframing arguments to fit his opinion or switching topics entirely. He asked students to “Prove Me Wrong” but showed no willingness to actually change his perspective. He just wanted to spar.

This resistance to empathy and unwillingness to hear different ideas are why so many right-wing religious and political leaders now call Kirk a martyr. They share his convictions as well as his belief that right-wing politics and right-wing religion represent the future of the United States. They believe in a nation where white, Christian males set the rules and the rest of us follow. They are certain that Jesus would support gun rights, racism and misogyny.

My students may or may not have agreed with Kirk’s message, but they all felt his killing was tragic. Kirk left behind a wife, two children and a community of close friends. Several noted that the swell of shootings nationwide is equally tragic, and that few people are posting about or lamenting the two Colorado high school students in critical condition who also were shot Wednesday. Equally overlooked, they said, are the scores of men, women and children who have been victims of gun violence during the students’ short lifetimes.

Like my students, I mourn the tragic death of so many Americans cut down by senseless shootings. Some have died in churches, synagogues, mosques and gurdwaras — martyrs for their religious beliefs. Still others, especially children and teenagers, have become martyrs in the struggle for safer schools and stricter gun laws.

Does Charlie Kirk deserve to live on among their ranks? I suppose that depends on what it means to be an evangelical Christian. I once thought I knew the answer. I’m no longer sure.

Diane Winston is a professor in the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.