{"id":164659,"date":"2025-09-16T22:44:59","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/religious-americans-are-divided-over-charlie-kirk-but-they-all-agree-on-this-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T22:44:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T22:44:59","slug":"religious-americans-are-divided-over-charlie-kirk-but-they-all-agree-on-this-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/religious-americans-are-divided-over-charlie-kirk-but-they-all-agree-on-this-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Religious Americans are divided over Charlie Kirk. But they all agree on this. – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

NASHVILLE \u2012\u00a0Leigh-Allyn Baker rallied her fellow parishioners at Conduit Church in Franklin, Tennessee, 20 miles south of the capital, to not let Charlie Kirk\u2019s death be in vain.
In a video the church played for a service Sept. 14, Baker encouraged the audience to speak more boldly and publicly for their conservative values than ever before.
\u201cI know there\u2019s an ember of courage in all of you. And I want you to let Charlie\u2019s legacy fan that flame,\u201d Baker, an actress and speaker with Turning Point USA, the advocacy group Kirk founded, said in the video. \u201cAnd I for one am not backing down. I am charged; I am so charged. Here I am God \u2212 send me.\u201d
Baker is usually at Conduit on Sundays, but this weekend she was at church with Kirk\u2019s longtime collaborator pastor Rob McCoy, Conduit pastor Darren Tyler said at the service. McCoy, pastor emeritus at Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, is set to speak at Conduit next week.
Kirk\u2019s murder Sept. 10 swiftly produced a range of responses among religious communities. Many on the evangelical Christian right see Kirk as a martyr who died while proselytizing for the Christian faith and religiously informed conservative ideals. Other nonwhite and non-evangelical faith voices see his legacy as more complex and polarizing.
Conduit congregants welcomed Baker\u2019s video with whoops, shouts and tears, signaling a shared grief. Among those congregants, one person wore a hat that said: read \u201cPray hard, lift heavy, stay deadly.\u201d
But Christians who are angry over Kirk\u2019s death cannot be violent or retaliatory, Tyler said in his sermon.
\u201cSome of you are angry. Some of you want revenge,\u201d Tyler said. \u201cThe Bible speaks very clearly: \u2018Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,\u2019\u201d Tyler said. \u201cIf you\u2019re thinking about it, I\u2019m rebuking you right now. We do not make Jesus king by force.\u201d
Tyler\u2019s guidance is part of a broader ecosystem of faith leaders who, despite their radically different views of Kirk and his legacy, pushed back against retaliation and violence as an appropriate response to the shooting.
“Political violence is wrong. It might not be un-American, given our history, but it should be. This was an evil act that will set the country back, and Jesus weeps,\u201d Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a Sept. 12 post on Substack<\/a>. \u00a0
Empsall\u2019s small church offers classes on Christian resistance to fascism and how to reject White Christian nationalism as a perversion of Christianity. Empsall said he wants congregants to recognize that cheering Kirk’s death perpetuates violence.
\u201cYes, I have long wanted Kirk\u2019s voice to diminish \u2012 but by disgrace or conversion, never by violence. Jesus loves Charlie Kirk because he loves us all,\u201d Empsall said. \u201cHe weeps for both Kirk’s assassination and for Kirk’s legacy of hatred and harm.”
Kirk\u2019s own faith journey is partly why his death stirred conversations among religious groups.
In 2019, Kirk cofounded an evangelical think tank out of Liberty University, originally named the Falkirk Center, combining Kirk\u2019s name and that of former Liberty president Jerry Falwell Jr. Then, in 2021, Kirk and Rob McCoy, pastor emeritus at Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, partnered to create TPUSA Faith to develop and encourage a network of pastors to be more politically involved and outspoken.
McCoy, who had traveled with Kirk to South Korea days before Kirk\u2019s assassination, said in the service Sept. 14 that the shooting was a reminder for pastors to further the mission of TPUSA Faith.
\u00a0“These kids are looking for somebody to lead them,” McCoy said in a sermon, according to a recording.<\/a> “If you say ‘I don’t do politics because politics is dirty,’ you’re agnostic and you need to repent. If you’re more concerned about the fear of man than the fear of God \u2026 come on, we’ve got work to do. Roll up your sleeves.\u201d
McCoy and Kirk\u2019s more ardent Christian nationalist view of religion and politics isn\u2019t popular across the entire religious right, though Kirk\u2019s death has been more widely resonant.
\u201cChristians are rightly grateful for Charlie Kirk\u2019s public witness to Christ and for his courageous defense of the dignity of the unborn and a host of other moral issues,\u201d leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation\u2019s largest Protestant denomination, said in a statement Sept. 13<\/a>. \u201cWe rightly appreciate the profound impact Charlie Kirk has had on our young people, inspiring them to live with bold conviction and take righteous action.\u201d
The statement called for justice but added: \u201cWe pray for an end to political violence in any form. We condemn any retaliatory violence.\u201d
Other Baptist pastors viewed the SBC statement as problematic, calling it a wholesale endorsement of Kirk\u2019s polarizing politics.
\u201cThe gap between Black and White evangelicals surrounding this issue is widening,\u201d Texas pastor Dwight McKissic said in a social media post Sept. 13<\/a>. \u201cTHE SBC unqualified endorsement of Charlie Kirk will and already has set race relations back to the 50s. Really unwise move on the part of the all White entity heads.\u201d
Before McKissic\u2019s historically Black congregation left the SBC, he was an active voice when the Nashville-based organization debated issues of race \u2012 he pushed the convention<\/a> to denounce the Confederate battle flag and the alt-right, for example.
Further illustrating this gap, Virginia pastor Howard John-Wesley went over the weekend with a sermon that condemned Kirk’s murder but warned against casting Kirk as an American hero. He called the Trump ally an \u201cunapologetic racist\u201d<\/a> whose followers had \u201cselective outrage\u201d because they failed to roundly criticize the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota House speaker, earlier in 2025.\u00a0
\u201cThere is nowhere in the Bible where we are taught to honor evil, and how you die does not redeem how you lived,\u201d John-Wesley said. \u201cYou don\u2019t become a hero in death when you are a weapon of the enemy in life. I can abhor the violence that took your life, but I don\u2019t have to celebrate how you chose to live.\u201d\u00a0
Other faith communities’ are responding to Kirk’s death,<\/strong> often reflecting the emotionally charged nature of the past week.
Steve Goldberg, a retired educator from Clifton, New Jersey, who attends an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, said he viewed the murder not just as a political assassination but an attack on religion too. \u201cThe man was deeply religious. He loved Jesus and spoke about religion all the time,\u201d Goldberg said. He said he appreciated that Kirk praised the idea of the Jewish Sabbath and even wrote a book about the topic.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints took a more cautionary posture in a statement Sept. 10, one that emphasized the need for less political violence.
“We condemn violence and lawless behavior,” spokesperson Doug Andersen said in the statement. “We also pray that we may treat one another with greater kindness, compassion and goodness.”<\/p>\n

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NASHVILLE \u2012\u00a0Leigh-Allyn Baker rallied her fellow parishioners at Conduit Church in Franklin, Tennessee, 20 miles south of the capital, to not let Charlie Kirk\u2019s death be in vain.In a video the church played for a service Sept. 14, Baker encouraged the audience to speak more boldly and publicly for their conservative values than ever before.\u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":164660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}