It’s been almost a month since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, leader of the far-right group Turning Point USA. Since then, American society has been in turmoil—not because people are grieving his loss, but because his death widened the ever-deepening rift in our country in an explosive way. That turmoil hasn’t let up.
At her husband’s memorial service, Erika Kirk said, “After Charlie’s assassination, we didn’t see violence, we didn’t see rioting, we didn’t see revolution. Instead, we saw what my husband always prayed he would see in this country. We saw revival.”
I assume the “we” she’s referring to were his supporters. If that’s correct, then she was telling a blatant lie.
Immediately after Kirk’s assassination, his supporters blamed trans people for his death—before there was any evidence pointing to the shooter’s identity—and called for a nationwide effort to lock trans people up. Trans people were warned by activists and journalists to stay home if possible and to travel with someone if they had to leave. The fear Kirk’s supporters created is violence.
The day after Kirk’s assassination, nearly a dozen historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) had to lock down after receiving bomb threats. The threats against the very people Kirk spent his career belittling, harassing and advocating to strip rights from are violence.
Clearly, Erika Kirk does not believe the above actions are violent. That’s because evangelical culture, which I grew up in, only understands violence as physical.
In that culture, you can manipulate someone with your words—and that’s okay because you didn’t hit them.
You can guilt-trip them into false confessions of faith by keeping them in a constant state of fear of Hell—and that’s okay because you didn’t hit them.
You can make them hate themselves by continually telling them they’re broken, sinful and worthless without God—but that’s okay because you didn’t hit them.
When you define violence only as physical harm, you can preach death from the pulpit and claim innocence because you didn’t hit anyone. It’s not “real” violence if there’s no bruise to tell the story.
What Erika Kirk meant was “we didn’t destroy property”—a direct attack on the Black community’s embodied protests against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and too many others to name. She used her husband’s eulogy, of all moments, to attack those she sees as political enemies and to rile up the far-right base.
It reminds me of something Gandalf the White said in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, after seeing Lord Denethor use his son Boromir’s death as a manipulative political tool: “All has turned to vain ambition! [She] would even use [her] grief as a cloak!”
To say that Kirk’s supporters responded without violence is blatantly false once you understand that violence is not the same as destruction. Everything we’ve seen from his supporters in the days since his assassination is violent. Grief does not excuse it.
All too conveniently, evangelical culture overlooks this teaching from Proverbs: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (18:21).
I am so tired of seeing the fruit of death come from a culture built on fear, bloodlust and white supremacy. The theology preached there is violent. The beliefs promoted there are violent.
Why are they so quick to forget that Jesus came to give us life, and life more abundant (John 10:10)?
I pray we see revival in the United States—but not the kind Erika Kirk described. I pray for a revival of compassion that seeks to understand people who are different. We need a revival of humility that doesn’t assume anyone different from us deserves to be treated as subhuman. My God, we need a revival of the love Jesus preached, and we need it desperately.
First John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” If your faith is built on fear and uses that fear to violently attack those you disagree with, your faith isn’t in Jesus. It’s not gospel—it’s the fruit of death.
I beg you, stop harvesting this fruit. If you can’t do that, then at least keep it to yourself and stop shoving it down our throats. We don’t want it.
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A bivocational pastor, writer and spiritual director based in Williamsburg, Virginia, she currently works as a Spiritual Director at Reclamation Theology. Cawthon-Freels is the author of Reclamation: A Queer Pastor’s Guide to Finding Spiritual Growth in the Passages Used to Harm Us (Nurturing Faith Books), and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
