Thursday, September 11, 2025

Part I

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A Day That Will Shape a Generation: The Murder of Charlie Kirk

In every generation, there are historic moments that are never forgotten. And when you look at generation by generation in the United States, of course this goes back even to the Battle of Bunker Hill. You can go down the list. Then of course, at one point it was remember the Alamo, at another point it was remember Pearl Harbor. Then in the 1960s when I was a boy, it was multiple assassinations. First of John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States, and then Martin Luther King Jr. and then Robert F. Kennedy, the President’s brother, the very night he won the California Democratic primary.

Of course, when these things happen, the immediate question is, what does this mean? What kind of country are we? What does this say about who we are? How does this fit into our American identity? What does this say about American culture? And of course, today is September the 11th, reminding us that today, this very day is the 24th anniversary of the attacks by Al-Qaeda, the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC. More about that in just a moment. But the point I want to make now is that the generation of those living at the time, and in particular those who were young at the time, it is a searing memory they will never get over, certainly never forget, it becomes a formative experience. And then yesterday in Utah, another generational-shaping event. An event that raises basic questions about American culture and who we are.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk, conservative, activist, organizer, spokesman, debater. He was on an American college campus, in this case, the campus of Utah Valley University. And he was doing what he loved to do and what he did so well, he was debating with students, he was openly engaging with students. He was sitting under a tent that said, “Prove me wrong.” And he was the kind of convictional conservative who had an enormous gift and a lot of courage to go out before a very interesting crowd, a massive crowd of college students, and basically to take all comers. And as he often said, he wanted to give preference to those who disagreed with him. That’s a form of engagement that is all too rare in our society. And frankly, it’s a form of conservative confidence that was sadly lacking, especially when it came to young adults for a long time in the United States.

Charlie Kirk formed Turning Point USA. He co-founded it when he was 18 years old. And when he was assassinated yesterday, he was only 31 years old. He had a very short life, but he had a massive impact. But let’s remind ourselves of where we were yesterday when the news came that Charlie Kirk had been shot, and then all too suddenly the word came that he indeed had been murdered. And that’s the right word. A part of conservative conviction, a part of our biblical worldview is that we must call things what they are. And so when we’re looking at this savage attack, a shot by someone who is evidently able to use a weapon with a skill of a sniper from a distance estimated by law enforcement of something like 200 yards and perhaps more, you had one shot that became a fatal shot into the neck of Charlie Kirk, right in front of that huge crowd of college students, right on video.

And of course, it is just one of those moments. Almost immediately there was the recognition that this must assuredly be a fatal shot. And thus the shock began to set in the entire nation, and then the word came confirming his death. And then the reminder of the fact that this was a very young man with a young wife and two very young children. The wife now a widow, the children now fatherless.

Of course, this context is political. It’s a lot more than political, but it’s never less than political. And no one would’ve understood that better than Charlie Kirk. He waded into political waters. He did so as a convictional conservative. And there’s an interesting point to be made here because Charlie Kirk, as an 18-year-old, basically held already to most of the political principles that he held the day he was killed. In other words, there’s a continuity there. Now, there is discontinuity I’ll speak about in just a moment, and it’s a blessed discontinuity. But the continuity is there, and it’s one I recognize because it also marks my own life and my perception of myself. I began as a very young, conservative political activist working in political campaigns, including the campaign of Ronald Reagan in 1976. I understand what it is as a very young man to be filled with political convictions and political passions that are about more than politics, but not less than politics.

Charlie Kirk had an amazing intuition about politics. He also had an amazing organizational ability, and as I say, he was a convictional conservative. Now, he redefined conservative in some sense, part of it because of the fact he was so young and he brought a certain disequilibrium to the political equation as a matter of strategy. And of course, no one understood that better than Donald J. Trump, President of the United States then and now. And President Trump as a candidate in 2024 entrusted enormous responsibility to Charlie Kirk and to his army of young activists, even in terms of some of the grassroots work for which they were, in one sense, unprepared. He had confidence in them, and as we now know, they delivered.

Now, as I say, Charlie Kirk developed his core conservative convictions very early. But I just want to remind you that there are basically two and only two variants of conservatism. And this is something we’ll discuss in greater detail on another more appropriate day. But the two, and I would argue, only two real variants of conservative thought are a secular conservatism and a Christian conservatism, or I’ll say a theistic conservatism that would include those who understand that for instance, our rights are given to us by God. That the conservative principles come out of the existence of God and his revelation to us. It’s the secular conservatism that is the only real conservative alternative, and in one sense, you’re talking about conservative Christianity or Christian conservatism versus something like Nietzsche. It is the right or the conservatism of power.

And an interesting aspect of all this is that when I met Charlie Kirk years ago, and we were backstage at a conservative conference at which both of us were speaking. At that time, Charlie Kirk, as a very young conservative, was really not a Christian conservative in terms of his identity. As a matter of fact, he saw Christian conservatives as something of a limiting force of that other conservatives would have to overcome. He didn’t identify with Christianity personally. And quite honestly, he spoke of, if not denying a conservative Christian influence in political conservatism, at least he wanted to limit it. And he saw that as a limiting factor in terms of conservative victory. And honestly, he wasn’t too impressed with a conservative Christian leader. I think that the Christian part was the drawback.

But the Charlie Kirk, who emerged in just a few years was a Charlie Kirk who openly identified with Christianity and personally identified with his own personal Christian faith. As a self-identified Christian he began to understand that Christianity is actually the truth claim that is the very basis of the American constitutional order. And he began to see Christian virtues, Christian convictions as central to any kind of viable conservatism. And then it was also demonstrated in his personal life by the fact that he married a beautiful wife, Erika, and together they had two young children. And I will tell you, and this is just deeply biblical, and you know it, nothing makes a man more mature, and this is right out of creation order in God’s plan and Genesis, than becoming a husband and a father. And thus, this expands the tragedy of what happened yesterday, but it also helps to explain the trajectory of Charlie Kirk’s life.

Now, I think there are a lot of people who would look at Charlie Kirk and say, well, he was a professional provocateur. And of course he was that, he enjoyed that. But he was more than a provocateur, he wasn’t a poser. That is to say he wasn’t conveniently conservative. He was pretty much conservative, come high water or low water, and when it was popular or unpopular. But he was a provocateur. And frankly, he played a different role than many of us would play. But it was a very effective role and it was particularly effective in reaching young people, high school and college students, young adults in particular. And he had a certain genius for reaching conservative young men. And I want to make very clear, that is a really important gift. And he deployed that. And you see this in the fact that in the immediate aftermath of the news of the shooting there on that university campus in Utah, you had a flood of young men who all of a sudden swarmed around the story. Charlie Kirk was something of a hero to them.

Certainly if not a hero, he was a crucial influencer when it came to their understanding of reality, politics and their personal responsibility. The role of a provocateur is sometimes an awkward one. And if you are a provocateur, you will have enemies. And of course I will argue that any man or woman of conviction will eventually have enemies. But it is simply one of those days that will now go down in American tragedy, that it was an assassin who took out Charlie Kirk yesterday with that one round of ammunition. And there’s so many questions. There’s so many questions about this. There is an absolute demand for justice that comes out of this, and that demand for justice is right and it’s righteous. But then as I argue in an article published this morning at World Opinions, the blood of Abel cries out as the Lord said to Cain, it cries out from the ground. And that is true whenever violence like this is brought against a human being made in God’s image. And of course there will be political controversy swirling around this and there will be investigations.

And yesterday it turns out that at least two men were arrested as potential suspects identified legally as persons of interest. But it is not at this point clear. There are more questions than there are answers when it comes to this assassination.

Part II

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Utah Governor Spencer Cox Was Right: Charlie Kirk was a Victim of Political Assassination

Utah Republican Governor Spencer Cox, in a statement made, and remember this happened in his state, in a statement made after the news came that Charlie Kirk was dead. He rather correctly and authoritatively said that the heinous act was a political assassination. And as we think about this in worldview terms, maybe we ought to look at that language for just a moment and ask ourselves, what’s the differentiation between a murder and an assassination? And these two words blend over in terms of what you might call their semantic meaning or range. But the word “murder” it implies intentionality. Assassination implies all of that intentionality but adds to it a public significance.

And an assassination is often defined as an act of murder that was intended to send a political message. And in that sense, I think the Utah Governor, Governor Cox, was absolutely right, and that’s why I use that word myself. It’s virtually inconceivable, given what we know and what frankly was caught on video, it’s virtually inconceivable that in that context, this act of murder was anything other than one intended to send a political message. And it was an assassination. And we often think of that term in terms of say, the assassination of kings and monarchs and emperors and presidents. But the fact is, it is, in the proper sense, understood as a brutal, horrifying murder, intended to be carried out in such a way that it carries a political message, and this one certainly does.

Now, as conservatives, one of the things we need to think about is the fact that there is a moral message in the midst of all of this that comes with a political dimension. I think it’s also really important that we recognize that the vast majority of those who would identify as liberals would not support this in any way, would have nothing to do with any such violent act. But it is also true that all of us are responsible for our rhetoric, and all of us are responsible for the range of what we present as tolerable. And this is where the political Left in the United States right now is in a pretty vulnerable spot when you think of this moral responsibility. And then we think of the two assassination attempts against the life of who was then former President Donald Trump, and now again, President Donald Trump. And we understand the stakes are very, very high.

We also understand that a sane society, a reasonable society, a just and righteous society rightly demands that the murderer be caught, that the crime be resolved, and that justice be attained, at least in terms of the maximum achievement of justice that is given to humanity. And thus, this is absolutely righteous. I want you to note something. It is a testimony to the fact that we are moral beings made in God’s image that as last night came to an end, millions and millions and millions of people wanted to know who did it. What were the circumstances, and what’s going to happen now in the name of justice.

In that earlier phase of conservatism, when we were backstage at that conference, Charlie Kirk was committed to a form of pretty steadfast libertarianism. That is a form of what’s often identified as conservatism that identifies conservatism basically in terms of the elimination of restraints on personal liberty. And it is often very secular. Now, as I say, Charlie Kirk didn’t stay there, and I say that with great appreciation, he didn’t stay there. He moved from that to an affirmation of Christianity and of his own personal Christianity. He was a controversial man. He meant to be a controversial man. But right now it is just really important, and I think as you look across the media environment, you look across public statements, it is very interesting to note that even those who would’ve spoken against Charlie Kirk and Charlie Kirk’s convictions, I think it’s important to notice how many are now being very careful about what they say.

One who was not respectful, and I think this is something we also need to note, was Matthew Dowd, commentator at MSNBC. Within hours of his comments, which I’m not even going to repeat, MSNBC came out with a statement which they kind of reluctantly released publicly saying that Dowd’s comments were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. I do think it’s noteworthy that late last night, the Washington Post Editorial Board, so again, this isn’t just an opinion writer, this is the editorial board released a statement decrying political violence, and in particular the assassination of Charlie Kirk asking some basic questions, acknowledging that Charlie Kirk was a controversialist. He intended to be a controversialist. They make very clear that he should have assumed safety on an American college campus for the free exchange of ideas.

But the paper went on to do something that was perhaps a little unexpected. It went after a prominent Democrat for a very disgraceful statement that was the editorial board’s characterization of the statement made by Illinois Governor J.B Pritzker. In their editorial statement, they said that Governor Pritzker, “Decried the violence but couldn’t help himself from taking a dig at President Trump.” I’m not going to cite his statement, but I will say the Washington Post came back and described it as, “A disgracefully ill-timed comment.” It is important that there are at least some in the media who will call out disgracefully ill-timed comments. And so we are going to have some very interesting cultural conversations in this country over the course of the next several days.

We also must first of all be in prayer for Erica Kirk and those two precious children. This is an issue of culture-shaping significance. It is news of headline importance. But for a young widow and her precious children, it is the weight of the world, and we need to pray for the Lord to bless them and protect them and guard their hearts in every single way and make provision for them that is beyond our human understanding. We need to hope and pray they will be surrounded by Christian brothers and sisters who will minister to them in the gospel of Jesus Christ and continue to minister to this young widow and her children through what will be assuredly not only difficult days, but challenging years.

Again, I want to go back to the unusual skill that Charlie Kirk had in mobilizing young people, high school students, college students, young adults, and in particular young men. And that’s a particular gift. And I am thankful that he helped so many young men to understand what is at stake, to recover and to learn and gain and embrace conservative principles, and to understand increasingly how to put them into action in the culture. And I want to go back to the fact that every generation, it seems, is touched by and marked by significant tragedies that become shared experiences. And for all of us in terms of the Americans now living, understanding what this means for our entire culture and what it raises as questions about the health of that culture. For a lot of young adults, and in particular for an army of young men, it also means they’re going to grow up a bit faster. And that is just also a part of the weight of what happened yesterday.

Part III

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An Anniversary of Another American Tragedy: Today Marks the 24th Anniversary of Those Heinous 9/11 Attacks

But shifting from yesterday to today, no small irony in the fact that today is the 24th anniversary of the savage Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States that took place September 11th, 2001. We need to remember that the death toll on that day, and this also means persons who died subsequently because of those attacks, was almost 3000 people. 2,977 people. Four large airliners filled not only with passengers, but also with fuel were hijacked in a very sophisticated and sinister plot to fly those airliners into office towers with murderous effect. And of course, it was intended to humble, indeed to humiliate the United States of America and to pierce any sense of American invulnerability when it came to the American heartland.

The attacks were directed at centers of American power, financial powers in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, and also political power in Washington DC. And that included the Pentagon, and it is believed also by intention, the White House and of course two of the airliners were flown into those Twin Towers, and within two hours of the impact, both of them had fallen. Images seared in the American conscience, and then of course one also hit the Pentagon where over a hundred persons were killed and many others were injured. But of course, when it came to that fourth airliner, some of those passengers had received word somehow of what had happened in New York and Washington, and so they decided to take action. Some brave men rushed the cockpit, it did mean that that attack was terminated, but it also meant that the plane crashed leading to the deaths of all aboard. It crashed in rural Pennsylvania.

You know, America was awakened at that moment, September 11th, 2001. And Al Qaeda’s intention to pierce a national sense of invulnerability, well, they did accomplish that. But what they didn’t accomplish was the weakening of American will and American determination. And if anything, our national character was strengthened in that process, but it was horrifyingly strengthened by that horrifying death toll, and by the images once seen, you simply can’t forget. Now, of course, next year, 2026, September 11 marks the 25th anniversary of those terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda, and that will no doubt be the catalyst for some sustained reflection upon the meaning of those events.

Part IV

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These Attacks in the U.S. Put Moral Relativism to Death: Woe to the Society That Lacks the Conviction to Call Out Evil For What It Is

I want to come back and look at the two big issues we had to talk about today. Two tragedies, two forms of human evil demonstrated. A massive scale, September 11th, 2001. Just one individual, one ammunition round from one person, it is believed, that led to such murderous effect in the political assassination there in the state of Utah. In 2001 it was very interesting that the secular society seemed to lack a vocabulary adequate to deal with the moral nature of those attacks. And that is because in the sustained secular development and also in a mood of what in academia was then described as postmodernism, basically there was a forfeiture of moral responsibility and the ability to say something was categorically, objectively, absolutely right and wrong. Good and evil were treated as social constructs. They were matters of social construction and opinion. There’s no objective validity to those judgments.

That was the very essence of the moral relativism that became so popular at the time. But you know, moral relativism died in the following of the World Trade Centers. Moral relativism died in the crash into the Pentagon. Moral relativism died with the crash of that airplane there in rural Pennsylvania. And moral relativism died yesterday there on that university campus in Utah. And that is because no one can look at those events and say, those are interesting events. No one can look at that and say they are merely historic events. You have to look at those events at planned murder and say, that is evil. And woe to the society that lacks the moral ability and the conviction to look at something and say, that is evil. That can’t be tolerated. Justice cries out for satisfaction.

And it is good for us to remember that as moral creatures, we are so because we are created in God’s image. He made us moral creatures and he gave us even in our hearts a hunger for righteousness and a hunger for justice and a knowledge that there are, as has been argued for a very long time among Christians, things we cannot not know. You can’t look at the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11th, 2001 and not know you’re looking at moral evil. You’re looking at human responsibility. You are looking at the darkness of the human heart given over to sin. You can’t look at the images of what took place yesterday in Utah, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. You can’t think of his grieving widow and his fatherless children. You can’t look at the current level of political discourse and look at this situation and say, this is all just a matter of social construction. No, we’re talking about good and evil. We’re talking about right and wrong, and it’s really important that as Christians, we think through these things, Christianly.

We also need to recognize that this hunger for justice, this hunger for righteousness is itself right. It needs to be rightly directed. And that means that we cannot be satisfied until this horrible crime is fully investigated, and when responsibility is assigned, fully prosecuted, that too is a part of who we are as Americans, and it’s even more fundamentally a part of who we are as human beings made in God’s image. It is also true, as affirmed by the Christian biblical worldview, that there is no full satisfaction of justice, no full achievement of justice in this life. That will await the judgment that will come by God and God alone on that day of judgment in which no one shall escape. But it is also true that we are given the earthly responsibility in our own times to seek justice to the maximum justice achievable.

That’s a high aim, and we’ll be tracking all of this with you. It’s a part of our responsibility to make certain that crimes like this do not simply vanish from the headlines. There must be justice. We know it, and it’s a part of our civilizational responsibility to achieve it.