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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
After Charlie Kirk’s killing, conservative evangelical leaders hail
him as a martyr
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
Updated:
12:45 PM EDT, Mon September 15, 2025
Source: CNN
At Sunday morning church services around the country, conservative
religious leaders found the same word to describe , the podcaster and
political activist killed on Wednesday: martyr.
“Today, we celebrate the life of Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old
God-fearing Christian man, a husband, father of two, a patriot, a civil
rights activist, and now a Christian martyr,” said Rob McCoy, the
pastor emeritus of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in California.
Kirk, a prominent ally of President Donald Trump who attracted an
ardent conservative following and criticism for his anti-feminist,
anti-immigration views, Wednesday at Utah Valley University. He was as
part of “The American Comeback Tour,” which featured Kirk’s
signature event: debating college students about culture war topics.
Several evangelical – which Kirk often visited on weekends to pitch
his vision of conservative politics – dedicated their Sunday services
to the assassinated political commentator, complete with video
compilations of that helped propel Kirk to fame. Pastors mourned Kirk
both as a friend who built close personal relationships with
evangelical leaders and a bombastic advocate for conservative Christian
causes, who openly mixed politics with religion.
And although authorities haven’t announced and he was speaking at a
secular university when he was shot, several religious leaders framed
his killing as an attack on the Christian church.
“The attack on Charlie Kirk was much deeper than a political attack
on the First Amendment,” said Jackson Lahmeyer, the pastor of
Sheridan Church in Oklahoma and the founder of “Pastors for Trump,”
a group of pastors who lobbied for Trump’s reelection, at his Sunday
morning service. Some 5,631 people attended his 10 a.m. sermon,
including both online and in person, he told CNN.
“The attack on Charlie was spiritual in nature and an attack on the
very institution of the church,” Lahmeyer said.
Pastors echoed Trump, a “martyr for truth and freedom” in an
address Wednesday evening from the Oval Office and blamed “radical
left political violence.”
Several conservative pastors compared Kirk to the biblical figure
Stephen, who was stoned to death and is regarded as the first Christian
martyr of the New Testament.
“Make no mistake, this was not random,” said McCoy, who called
himself Kirk’s “friend and his biggest fan,” and said Kirk called
him his pastor. “We are in a spiritual battle. The same murderous
spirit that raged against the prophets, that crucified Christ and that
martyred Stephen is raging again in our day.”
The death of Kirk – who often disparaged racial and religious
minorities and the LGBTQ+ community – hasn’t been mourned by
everyone. Social media posts expressing apathy or making jokes about
Kirk’s death have led to users being targeted by and have even led
some employees . And several Black pastors rejected the celebration of
Kirk’s legacy during their Sunday sermons.
But his killing has propelled interest in , the religious arm of
Kirk’s right-wing youth organization, according to McCoy. He said the
number of Turning Point USA Faith’s partner churches has doubled in
the days since Kirk’s death.
A close friend of church leaders
Sunday’s sermons reflected the intimate relationships Kirk built with
Christian leaders, many of whom are also public advocates for Trump.
White evangelicals for Trump during both elections he won.
Lahmeyer told CNN Kirk was a personal friend for years. “Obviously
we’re mourning because we lost him,” he said. “It’s just
tough.”
His congregants have responded to the shooting with “a range of
emotions,” including anger, he said. It’s “hard to believe, hard
to process. You don’t think it’s real, but it’s real.”
He told CNN he canceled a previously scheduled guest sermon to deliver
a sermon himself Sunday dedicated to Kirk, titled “Turning Point.”
He said that he hopes for listeners, the sermon can serve as “a
turning point where they become even more devout in following Jesus.”
“I hope that Charlie’s life would inspire people to live a life
worth living,” Lahmeyer told CNN. “Beyond the political influence
that Charlie made, the greater influence that Charlie made was upon the
body of Christ.”
McCoy, who says he met Kirk during a conservative event in 2019, also
shared personal stories about their relationship. “I miss my
friend,” he said. Godspeak Calvary was the first church at which Kirk
ever spoke, he said.
The two had recently traveled to Seoul, , where they met with Mina Kim,
a conservative activist.
Kirk’s “life was scheduled in 15-minute increments, and everybody
wanted a piece of him,” McCoy said. “I was so grateful to have that
moment with him in Korea, hear his heart.”
At Grace Church in St. Louis, lead pastor Wes Martin characterized Kirk
as “one of the most humble, kind, generous and respectful young men
that I had ever interacted with at the time.” He described how the
pair built a friendship in 2022 and said Kirk would text him Bible
verses during hard times.
Justin Sparks, the men’s ministry director at Grace Church, said of
Kirk, “When he was assassinated, I felt like I lost a member of my
own family.”
“He wasn’t just a man that was struck down and died, which is
tragic, of course,” Sparks said. “What you saw was a righteous man
martyred, and Americans haven’t seen that before. He was martyred
because he had an explicit worldview of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
and he shared it everywhere he went.”
‘A spiritual war’
Just hours after Kirk was fatally shot, Dream City Church in Phoenix,
which had partnered with Turning Point, addressed his death. said Kirk
“gave his life doing what the preachers of America oughta be doing,
speaking the truth from the pulpits.”
Like McCoy, Barnett framed the assassination as an attack on
Christianity.
“We really are in a spiritual war,” Barnett said. “And by the
way, Charlie Kirk, what killed him today was not his political views.
It was his biblical views, his biblical views of truth.”
His comments mirror those of Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk, who said
“the spiritual warfare is palpable” in after her husband’s death.
Kirk himself often invoked similar language, calling the 2024 election
a spiritual battle.
Although Kirk started his career as a more secular conservative who
highlighted , during the Covid-19 pandemic he jumped to the defense of
churches that rebuffed lockdown mandates and became more outwardly
religious. In 2021, Kirk launched Turning Point USA Faith in
coordination with McCoy, which hosted “Freedom Night in America,” a
of “rallies designed to address current cultural and political issues
from a conservative perspective.”
In the last few years, Kirk openly advocated for the US as a “” and
referenced the “,” an evangelical ideology calling for the church
to dominate seven sectors: family, religion, education, media, arts and
entertainment, business and government.
“There is no separation of church and state,” he said in 2022.
“It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the
Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
Lahmeyer said Kirk’s death was evidence of the “persecution of
Christians.” “Christianity is under attack in the United States of
America,” he told CNN.
For Sunday’s service, he chose to read from the Sermon on the Mount,
he told CNN, in which Jesus says, “Blessed are those who are
persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
Matthew D. Taylor, a senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic,
Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, told CNN the “profound
and visceral anger” felt after Kirk’s death has been channeled into
calls to defend Christianity.
The has a long history of “a sense of embattlement,” despite the
fact they have “unrivaled cultural power” compared to other
religious groups, Taylor said.
Although Christians are a majority in the US, many “still have a
sense that culture is against them and that the world is against them
and that they are the victims,” Taylor said. Kirk’s killing is
“fueling that narrative,” he added.
Political arguments
Pastors also took the opportunity to rail against common conservative
targets, like same-sex marriage and , which Kirk had openly opposed.
Speaking on Wednesday, Barnett said in the aftermath of Kirk’s
killing, the church would “double down and we’re gonna feed more
people, we’re gonna see more people saved. We are also gonna call sin
what it is.”
He said Kirk’s death would serve as an opportunity for the church to
oppose same-sex marriage and “proclaim like never before that there
are only two sexes.”
McCoy similarly denounced “transgender ideology,” which he said
“radicalizes people into violence.” He described the alleged
shooter as “indoctrinated” and said the attacker “pulled the
trigger, but there were others behind him helping warp that mind.”
Authorities are investigating whether Robinson’s romantic
relationship with his roommate, who is transgender, could be connected
to the shooting, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told CNN. Trans people account
for less than 1% of mass shooters over the past decade, according to
the non-profit .
McCoy also called for more pastors to get involved in national politics
after Kirk’s killing.
“If you say, ‘I don’t do politics ‘cause politics is dirty,’
you’re a Gnostic and you need to repent,” he said, referring to an
early Greco-Roman religious movement. “We’re gonna demand of our
shepherds that they lead these young people into a land where they can
own property, build homes, raise families, and enjoy what life is all
about.”
Peace and hope
But religious leaders also emphasized the importance of peace and civil
dialogue in the aftermath of the killing.
“We have to implement the words of Jesus in the hour that we live in
in this nation,” said Lahmeyer during his sermon. “We must be as
wise as serpents. Yet we also have to be as harmless as doves.”
Speaking to CNN, he added, “We do not respond like those who are
persecuting us. We don’t persecute.”
Speaking at his Sunday sermon, Barnett said, “Do not let this
violence divide us further.”
The “enemy wants chaos, fear and retaliation,” he said. “Don’t
give it to them. Instead, double down on truth, double down on courage,
double down on your faith and on your families.”
McCoy called for his listeners to carry with them the same hope and
fearlessness Kirk harbored. “Despair is no hope,” he said. “We
have hope.”
Lorenzo Sewell, the nondenominational pastor of Detroit-based 180
Church who delivered a prayer at Trump’s second inauguration, told
CNN the church plans to hold a “Holy Ghost” party with “praise,
worship, and prayer” in Kirk’s honor.
Sewell and Kirk were friends, and Kirk was scheduled to speak at 180
Church Thursday night, Sewell said posted after the shooting. Like
other faith leaders, Sewell compared Kirk to the biblical Stephen –
and said he hopes Kirk’s death can help bring more people into the
church.
“We pray that there would be more that would come to salvation
through Charlie Kirk’s death than even in his life,” Sewell said.
“May this tragedy become a testimony, in Jesus’ name.”
Pushback
While the White evangelical leaders with whom Kirk built relationships
used their Sunday sermons to eulogize him and galvanize a fight for
conservative causes, several pastors at Black churches pushed back.
In at Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev.
Howard-John Wesley decried efforts to sanitize Kirk’s legacy.
“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated,” he said. “But
I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at
half-staff, calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an
unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division
and hate into this land.”
Kirk vocally opposed , the landmark 1964 legislation outlawing
discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin,
and he called Martin Luther King Jr. “not a good person” and
“awful” at an event in January 2023. He often criticized
affirmative action and made inflammatory comments about Black people
and other racial minorities, including saying “In urban America,
prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target White people” in 2023.
Wesley criticized people with “selective rage” who condemned
Kirk’s killing but not the killing of Minnesota state Sen. and her
husband, Democrats who were shot dead in their home in June, as well as
those who “tell me I oughta have compassion for the death of a man
who had no respect for my own life.”
“You do not become a hero in your death when you are a weapon of the
enemy in your life,” Wesley said to raucous applause.
, the senior pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in
Stonecrest, Georgia, , “even in a tragic death, you cannot rewrite
somebody’s life.”
“I am all the more concerned about how America and the media is
trying to remix a life of racism and white supremacy that went forth
unchecked,” he said.
He specifically called out other faith leaders who celebrate Kirk,
saying, “My heart is mourning today from pastors and churches all
over this country, who are going to have moments of silence and
celebrate somebody who is trying to take the nation backwards.”
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