People attend a vigil for Charlie Kirk in Provo, Utah. Calling Charlie Kirk a martyr, conservatives see an opportunity to supercharge the movement the right-wing leader began and to cement conservative Christian values in American life. Photo / Loren Elliott, The New York Times
The United States Vice-President escorted Charlie Kirk’s casket home on Air Force Two. Thousands of people across the country gathered at candlelight vigils. A Republican congresswoman called for him to be allowed to lie in honour in the Capitol.
The gestures signal not only how conservatives see Kirk as a martyr, but also their view that his assassination could be a watershed moment that will propel their cause and cement both conservative and conservative Christian values in American life for decades to come.
Kirk’s death has “unleashed the dragon”, Luke Barnett, a pastor, told the congregation last Thursday at Dream City Church in Phoenix, where Kirk had hosted monthly “Freedom Night in America” events.
He addressed young people specifically.
“It is time for you to rise up because of what has happened to Charlie Kirk today,” he said to cheers.
“I can just envision, right now, 10,000 Charlie Kirks rising up in campuses right across America, proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ.”
It was a moment not just of mourning but of opportunity, he suggested: “Charlie is gone. Who’s going to fill his place?”
Less than a week after Kirk was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University, the anger and grief remain raw for many across the US, and it’s difficult to predict the long-term political impact of Kirk’s death amid a highly charged climate.
The movement he led may require more time to take shape without him. But many of Kirk’s allies have vowed to pick up his mantle and expand the reach of his beliefs.
“This is what happens when you make a martyr – you embolden everyone who believes like they do,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, a popular Christian conservative writer and podcaster who offered both an emotional eulogy of Kirk as a friend and a fierce condemnation of his critics on her podcast last Friday.
“Charlie and the truth he represented will spread further and wider than they ever have before,” she said.
Amid widespread horror at the assassination, there are also now concerns that his death will be used to target Democratic organisations, liberal values and institutions already under siege.
“The whole country is holding its collective breath, wondering what might unfold,” said Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
As it has in the past, the non-partisan organisation has warned against the suppression of speech as a result of a vengeful online campaign against people who celebrated Kirk’s death online or were critical of his views.
“I don’t think that either party has a complete grip on what will happen next, and I sure as hell don’t,” Creeley added. “I just hope it’s peaceful.”
Other figures have been held up by conservatives as symbols of what they see as persecution or liberal policy failures.
The family of Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and January 6 rioter who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer that day, was recently offered military funeral honours for her.
Last week, billionaire Elon Musk pledged to help fund murals across the country of Iryna Zarutska, the young Ukrainian woman killed on a North Carolina light rail train.
And US President Donald Trump’s narrow escape from an assassin’s bullet last year was a galvanising moment during his re-election campaign.
Kirk’s assassination on a college campus, seen by many conservative Christians as an act of biblical evil, is poised to surpass all of that.
For some conservatives, there is grim resolve that the death of the founder of a group called Turning Point USA could supercharge the generational rightward shift he had worked to fuel in life.
While Kirk championed several inflammatory positions on gender, gun control and race, among other issues, he spoke for many conservative evangelicals across the country and is credited with helping draw many young voters, particularly men, to support Trump.
Some members of Trump’s Cabinet and lawmakers were among those who gathered on Monday for a tribute at the Kennedy Centre.
“I think he’s a true American martyr,” said Carson Carpenter, a recent Arizona State University graduate who met Kirk while serving as president of the school’s College Republicans.
Speaking while travelling to a vigil in Prescott, Arizona, he added that Kirk’s influence “will live on for many generations to come, with the conservative movement but also everybody in the US”.
There are already signs that the anger and resolve generated by the killing could lead to a more defined shift. Online, Kirk’s supporters and Turning Point staff have circulated anecdotes of newfound interest in Kirk’s beliefs or queries about how to approach going to church for the first time in years.
Turning Point has seen a surge in interest. In the span of 48 hours, a spokesperson said, the organisation received more than 32,000 inquiries about starting a new chapter.
He added that the organisation currently has about 3500 chapters on high school and college campuses.
“We know our voices are important – Charlie Kirk isn’t allowed to speak anymore, but we still can,” said RaeAnna Morales, 20, the media director for Vanderbilt University’s College Republicans and one of the students interested in starting a chapter. She added, “This has to be the turning point”.
Using the website domain fightforcharlie.com, Turning Point USA announced a memorial event on September 21 in Arizona.
The group pledged that “we will move forward together, fighting harder, standing taller and refusing to surrender”. The organisation has also begun to sell memorial shirts, featuring vows to “never surrender” or pairing a drawing of Kirk with the phrase “this is our turning point”.
Zac Segal, the president of the College Republicans chapter at Boston University, co-wrote a letter to the school asking for more support for conservatives on campus after the killing.
“This is our time to speak up, this is our time to create change,” he said in an interview. “And I think that’s what Charlie Kirk wanted.”
Some conservative officials and supporters of Kirk have gone so far as to compare his assassination to the deaths of Socrates or the Rev Martin Luther King jnr, even though Kirk called King a “bad guy” and declared the Civil Rights Act “a mistake”. King’s daughter, Bernice King, has also rejected the comparisons with her father.
Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia who has written about Kirk and his conservative trajectory, said that when he learned of Kirk’s death, he was shaken by the horrific act.
“I knew at that moment that our nation, we had crossed a line there,” he said.
Boedy, who was placed on the list that Kirk’s organisation drew up of “professors that advance a radical agenda”, said political martyrdom could have a distinct effect, especially on those who disagreed with Kirk.
“To honour him by giving him such a religious title is one thing,” he said. “To suggest they’re going to live out his agenda and push – we’ll say, make – America into the Christian culture he wanted is perhaps an anti-democratic move.”
That sense of mission is seismic to his followers, especially the young generation that he helped draw into the embrace of conservative evangelism. For some, he is the most significant loss of a public figure they can remember.
“There’s no space for apathetic Christianity anymore,” said Abigail DeJarnatt, the founder of Counteract USA, a Christian organisation based in Arkansas.
Since Kirk’s death, she said, she had received several messages or questions about how to get more involved both politically and evangelically.
“There’s no option for Christians to just sit on the sidelines anymore,” DeJarnatt, 24, added.
“The sideline’s gone. The world needs Jesus, and it’s up to us to tell them about him.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Emily Cochrane
Photograph by: Loren Elliott
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