The idea of making Charlie Kirk a martyr never would have occurred to me because he espoused an ideology I find unacceptable and un-Christian. He didn’t deserve to die, but dying doesn’t make one a Christian martyr.
The idea was rather forced on me by an instant outpouring of evangelical cries to make Kirk a martyr. Evangelicals don’t even have a process for vetting candidates for sainthood or martyrdom.
Martyrdom, according to the Catholic Catechism, is “the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death.” Rather than renounce his faith, the martyr bears witness with extraordinary fortitude to the belief that Christ suffered, died and rose from the dead for our salvation, and to the truths of our Catholic faith.
The word “martyr” means “witness.” And historically, that means witness to the essential beliefs of the gospel — the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the classical sense, Kirk could only be considered a “martyr” if he were killed specifically for refusing to renounce that Christian faith.
Donald Trump shakes hands with Turning Point CEO Charlie Kirk before speaking during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Saturday, July 23, 2022, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
The rhetoric of martyrs
St. Stephen icon
St. Stephen was the first Christian martyr (Acts 6 and 7). Prior to being stoned, he said: “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God! Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”
St. Ignatius of Antioch: “Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching God. I am God’s wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ.”
St. Polycarp was burned at the stake. Before the magistrate lit the pyre, Polycarp said: ““I bless you for having judged me worthy from this day and this hour to be counted among your martyrs. …. You have kept your promise, God of faithfulness and truth. For this reason and for everything, I praise you, I bless you, I glorify you, through the eternal and heavenly High Priest, Jesus Christ, your beloved Son.”
The rhetoric of Charlie Kirk
Charlie Kirk’s last words, on the other hand, were mocking transgender people and denying the reality of mass shootings in America. He will be remembered not for testifying to the gospel itself but for demeaning people who didn’t share his political views.
He regularly attacked the LGBTQ community, saying, “God’s perfect law … (says gay people) shall be stoned to death.”
He claimed the Civil Rights Act was “a huge mistake” and called Martin Luther King Jr. “an awful person.”
He mocked the 2023 assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, and suggested someone should bail his assailant out of jail.
Kirk attempted to link Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to the assassination of Walz’s close friend and ally, State Sen. Melissa Hortman.
He used racial rhetoric to demean African American women: “Black women like Joy Reid, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Shiela Jackson Lee and Michelle Obama … used affirmative action because they do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. … So they had to steal a white person’s slot.”
Kirk used racialized language in his attack on COVID vaccines: “The perverse gift of the Chinese coronavirus is that it has given Americans an up close and personal look at the horrors of big government — and, by extension, socialism.”
He attempted to evade the content of his own rhetoric by complaining about being branded as a bigot, Nazi and racist. “Conservatives are branded bigots and we are falsely accused of hate speech when we express traditional values and ideas that have made America the greatest on Earth.”
Rush to martyr label
Despite these clear differences between Kirk and more generally accepted martyrs for the faith, MAGA evangelicals wasted no time declaring Kirk a martyr. An online Catholic journal suggested canonization for Kirk. The process to sainthood can only begin after a period of five years (like baseball’s Hall of Fame). It can take years, decades, or even centuries. But on the day of Kirk’s death, the martyrdom makers were out in full bloom.
Pastor Jack Graham, senior pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church and former SBC president announced, “Charlie Kirk is a martyr, and Charlie Kirk is with the Lord. To live is Christ and to die is gain. His voice and witness of Truth will not be silenced but will rather inspire courage in a generation of young men and women who will continue to boldly proclaim the message of Life and Hope.”
Jack Hibbs, pastor of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Southern California, declared: “Charlie was known as an intellectual giant, a very compassionate young man, and one who was tirelessly devoted to this nation’s welfare and our glorious republic.”
“Charlie Kirk is as much a martyr as anyone who was put to death during the reign of Nero. Christians, this is the future.”
Mac Brunson, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas and First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla., made Kirk’s death a portent of things to come: “What we have witnessed today in America was the martyring of a Christian. Charlie Kirk is as much a martyr as anyone who was put to death during the reign of Nero. Christians, this is the future. We have escaped the persecution that many others in the world have experienced, but it is coming to us now. There is no other reason this man was put to death than the fact that he believed in Christ and stood in his word.”
Evangelical leaders leap to canonize Kirk because in the same way they need an endless stream of enemies, they need martyrs for their dastardly mission. They try to hide behind people they believe have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, but it turns out they have robes that are soiled, dipped in the scum ponds of self-righteousness and hypocrisy.
Neither saint nor martyr
Charlie Kirk is not a martyr no matter what his apologists say. I have reasons that go far beyond the usual politics dividing our nation.
Historian Randall Balmer hits exactly the right note: “I’m sure I’m hopelessly old fashioned, but I associate martyrdom with someone who represents some combination of goodness, virtue and righteousness. Any killing is tragic, but I struggle to see how the life and rhetoric of Charlie Kirk meet any of these criteria.”
Biblically, Hebrews 11 casts doubts on claims of Kirk’s martyrdom. “For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.”
Turning to the calendar of saints in the Book of Common Prayer, no one listed reminds me of Kirk.
I also checked the most recent version of saints in the Anglican Communion, Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints. As I turned the pages, I saw Frederick Douglas, John Henry Newman, John Cassian, Justin, Joan of Arc, John Calvin, Bertha and Ethelbert, Thurgood Marshall, Frances Perkins, Dame Julian of Norwich, Harriet Starr Cannon and hundreds of other martyrs and saints. Charlie Kirk doesn’t belong here. Not in a million years would Charlie Kirk be a candidate for joining this communion of saints.
I read back through my worn copy of Foxes Book of Martyrs. The 10 persecutions of Christians and the martyrs under Roman emperors are there. The martyrs among the Anabaptists, my spiritual heirs, are there. Kirk doesn’t qualify by the criteria of Fox.
And he’s no Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero or Martin Luther King Jr.
Charlie Kirk was but a bettered dressed, more articulate, nicer version of Jim Crow. His rhetoric never veered far from the rhetoric of the lynching era. Theologian James Cone easily popped the balloon in Kirk’s hot air efforts. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Cone addressed the great contradiction white supremacy posed from white Christianity in America. Frankly, there is no cross in Kirk’s “traditional white American values.” Self-interest and power corrupted Kirk’s version of the gospel.
Kirk’s persona simply didn’t match his person. He was not a gentleman and a scholar but he was an entertainer and a troll.
Kirk was the poster child for a narrative of white superiority, racial purity, a Christian worldview, traditional values and white reproduction. His often volatile calls for preserving a “traditional” culture — a white, heterosexual citizenry — were tied to his harnessing his clean-cut, family man image to notions of security, citizenship and empire.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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