Religious Americans are divided over Charlie Kirk. But they all agree on this. Liam Adams, Trevor Hughes, Phillip M.
- - Religious Americans are divided over Charlie Kirk. But they all agree on this.
Liam Adams, Trevor Hughes, Phillip M. Bailey and Deena Yellin, Nashville TennesseanSeptember 16, 2025 at 6:05 AM
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NASHVILLE ‒ Leigh-Allyn Baker rallied her fellow parishioners at Conduit Church in Franklin, Tennessee, 20 miles south of the capital, not to let Charlie Kirk's death be in vain.
In a video that Conduit played during a Sept. 14 service, Baker encouraged the audience to speak more boldly and publicly for their conservative values than ever before.
"I know there's an ember of courage in all of you. And I want you to let Charlie's legacy fan that flame," Baker, an actress and speaker with Turning Point USA, the advocacy group Kirk founded, said in the video. "And I for one am not backing down. I am charged; I am so charged. Here I am God, send me."
Baker is usually at Conduit on Sundays, but this weekend was at church with Kirk's longtime collaborator, pastor Rob McCoy, said Conduit pastor Darren Tyler during the Sept. 14 service. McCoy, pastor emeritus at Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks, California, is set to speak at Conduit next week.
Kirk's Sept. 10 murder 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's video with whoops, shouts and tears, signaling a shared grief. Among those congregants, one person wore a hat that said: read "Pray hard, lift heavy, stay deadly."
But Christian's angry over Kirk's death, cannot be violent or retaliatory, Tyler said in his sermon.
"Some of you are angry, some of you want revenge. The Bible speaks very clearly, 'vengeance is mine,' says the Lord," Tyler said. "If you're thinking about it, I'm rebuking you right now, we do not make Jesus King by force."
Supporters visit a memorial for Charlie Kirk at the Turning Point Headquarters in Phoenix on Sept. 11, 2025.
Tyler's 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 last week's fatal 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," Nathan Empsall, an Episcopal priest in New Haven, Connecticut, said in a Sept. 12 post on Substack.
Empsall's 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.
"Yes, I have long wanted Kirk's voice to diminish ‒ but by disgrace or conversion, never by violence. Jesus loves Charlie Kirk because he loves us all," Empsall said. "He weeps for both Kirk's assassination and for Kirk's legacy of hatred and harm."
The American flag flies at half-staff at Dream City Church in Phoenix on the orders of President Donald Trump after conservative leader Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at a campus event at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025.
Kirk's own faith journey is partly why his death stirred conversations among religious groups.
In 2019, Kirk co-founded an evangelical think tank out of Liberty University, originally named the Falkirk Center combining Kirk's 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's assassination, said in a Sept. 14 service that his shooting was a reminder for pastors to further the mission of TPUSA Faith.
"These kids are looking for somebody to lead them," McCoy said in a sermon, according to a recording. "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 … Come on, we've got work to do. Roll up your sleeves."
Related: 'Unleashed the dragon': Phoenix's Dream City Church holds service after Charlie Kirk death
Florida Atlantic University students gathered for a Charlie Kirk candlelight vigil and prayers at the student union on the campus in Boca Raton, Fla., on September 11, 2025. Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, was shot and killed at an event at Utah Valley University a day earlier.Kirk's legacy resonant among white evangelicals, but pushback from Black faith leaders
McCoy and Kirk's more ardent Christian nationalist view of religion and politics isn't popular across the entire religious right, though Kirk's death has been more widely resonant.
"Christians are rightly grateful for Charlie Kirk's public witness to Christ and for his courageous defense of the dignity of the unborn and a host of other moral issues," leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the nation's largest Protestant denomination, said in a Sept. 13 statement. "We rightly appreciate the profound impact Charlie Kirk has had on our young people, inspiring them to live with bold conviction and take righteous action."
The statement called for justice for the assassin but added "…we pray for an end to political violence in any form. We condemn any retaliatory violence."
Charlie Kirk answers a question from an audience member during a Turning Point USA event at the Arizona State University Katzin Concert Hall in Tempe, Arizona, on Sept. 27, 2023.
Other Baptist pastors viewed the SBC statement as problematic, calling it a wholesale endorsement of Kirk's polarizing politics.
"The gap between Black and White evangelicals surrounding this issue is widening," Texas pastor Dwight McKissic said in a Sept. 13 social media post. "THE 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."
Before McKissic's historically Black congregation left the SBC, he was an active voice when the Nashville-based SBC debated issues of race ‒ he pushed the convention to denounce the Confederate battle flag and the alt-right, as examples.
Further illustrating this gap between Black pastors and evangelical white ones, 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 "unapologetic racist" whose followers had "selective outrage" because they failed to roundly criticize the assassination of Melissa Hortman, the Minnesota House speaker who was slain earlier this year.
"There is nowhere in the Bible where we are taught to honor evil and how you die does not redeem how you lived," John-Wesley said. "You don't 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't have to celebrate how you chose to live."
Non-evangelical voices respond
Other faith communities' are responding to Kirk's death, often reflecting the emotionally charged nature of the past week's events.
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. "The man was deeply religious. He loved Jesus and spoke about religion all the time," said Goldberg. Goldberg 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 Sept. 10 statement and 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."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: What faith communities said about Kirk after assassination
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