For millions of conservative Christians, Charlie Kirk was the ultimate disciple. He symbolized the hope of the new Christian right, breaking down the borders between right-wing politics and evangelical faith to transform the next generation of America.
Now, he is considered a martyr.
As shock over Mr. Kirk’s assassination on Wednesday spread, the meaning for many of his followers was immediate and nearly universal. Evangelical pastors, activists and young conservatives felt his death personally, because of his influence on their lives and because they saw him dying while fulfilling a greater purpose.
“Charlie died for what he believed in, he died for something greater than just himself,” said Jackson Lahmeyer, a pastor in Oklahoma who founded the Pastors for Trump network. “We hope and we pray that Charlie’s death is not one in vain.”
The shooter’s motive could have been political, religious or something else, Mr. Lahmeyer said, but regardless, Mr. Kirk was a martyr.
“I don’t think there was anyone in Christian conservative circles who was not impacted by Charlie Kirk,” he said. Mr. Lahmeyer described Mr. Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, as a friend, and said Mr. Kirk had provided his introduction to the Trump family, years before the pastor was a player in national politics.
For many, the assassination represented an attack on the values of millions of conservative Christians, even beyond how they felt targeted in the assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., last summer.
Intercessors for America, a Christian group with ties to the Trump administration, emailed supporters on Wednesday night with a suggested prayer in response to Mr. Kirk’s death. The subject line referred to “Charlie Kirk, a modern day MLK.”
Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group, shut down his office upon hearing the news of his friend’s death.
“I’m racking my brain trying to think of another political figure that had a similar impact and following who was assassinated, and the only person I can think of is Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mr. Schilling said.
He participated in a 10-day fellowship at the Claremont Institute with Mr. Kirk in 2021 and came away convinced that Mr. Kirk was the future America needed. “I said, ‘Dude, when you are 35, I want to help you get elected president,’” Mr. Schilling remembered as he tried to absorb the news. “He just shirked it off. But I meant it. I saw. This kid is not hype, he is real.”
President Trump announced Mr. Kirk’s death on Wednesday afternoon and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in his honor.
On Monday, in a speech at the Museum of the Bible, Mr. Trump emphasized what he characterized as a rise in violence against “beautiful Americans of faith” and places of worship, including the recent shooting of schoolchildren at a Catholic church in Minnesota.
Vice President JD Vance joined a chorus sharing a post Mr. Kirk wrote on X last month, where he said simply, “It’s all about Jesus.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth referred to a parable of Jesus on X, posting, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Paula White-Cain, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal pastor who leads the White House Faith Office, called Mr. Kirk “a true co-laborer in the fight for faith, freedom, the future of our nation, truth and righteousness.”
“As Scripture declares, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’ (2 Timothy 4:7). That is the legacy Charlie leaves behind,” she posted on X.
Mr. Kirk was a model particularly for young conservative men, encouraging them to marry, have children and boldly express their values.
“Charlie Kirk was a patriot who loved God, his family and his country above all else,” said Nick Solheim, chief executive officer of American Moment, a conservative group. “He inspired us and countless others in the conservative movement. Charlie was a once-in-a-generation trailblazer who will never be replaced.”
Mr. Kirk began his career as a secular provocateur. He said little about the role of religion in American politics in his early years as an activist.
That started to change during the Covid pandemic, he told The New York Times this year. He was disappointed in church leaders who failed to speak up against lockdowns, he said, and began reading and asking larger questions about the idea of shared morality.
Mr. Kirk emerged from the pandemic, and from Mr. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, ready to evangelize for more than political causes and candidates. In 2021, he founded TPUSA Faith to influence pastors and other Christians to “counter falsehoods and illuminate the inextricable link between faith and God-given liberty.” He hosted monthly events at a large evangelical megachurch in Arizona and spoke regularly in personal terms about his own faith.
Jeff Schwarzentraub invited Mr. Kirk to speak to his congregation at BRAVE Church in Denver that fall, during the second year of the pandemic. Two or three thousand people showed up eager to hear what Mr. Kirk had to say, he recalled, his voice choking up as he scrolled back to look at the photos in his phone.
Mr. Kirk was “a catalyst and encourager to the Christian community” and to America, Mr. Schwarzentraub said, adding that he was praying “those voices will get stronger and stronger and stronger.”
“I think what the enemy intended for evil, the Lord will use for good,” Mr. Schwarzentraub said of Mr. Kirk’s death. “We will see what the Lord does through it.”
To many conservative Christians, his death was a sign that the spiritual battle they had been fighting was far from over.
“Jesus told us this would happen,” said Shane Winnings, who heads Promise Keepers, an evangelical men’s organization that has leaned into partisan politics under his leadership. “There’s a real spiritual war going on.”
Mr. Kirk spoke at a Promise Keepers event in Oklahoma last year and invited Mr. Winnings to speak at several of his own gatherings.
Within hours of Mr. Kirk’s death, Mr. Winnings and other conservative Christian leaders were speaking of the event as a demarcation in the nation’s history, one that would lead only to the strengthening of the religious movement Mr. Kirk embodied.
“When Jesus was killed and then rose from the dead and visited the disciples and he ascended, they moved forward and they spawned the early church,” Mr. Winnings said. “I am more filled with determination than ever to continue the mission that I’m on.”
Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and values.
Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times.
The post Kirk’s Christian Supporters Mourn Him as a Martyr Like M.L.K. appeared first on New York Times.
