White Christian Nationalism Has Its Martyr. Now What? – Good Faith Media

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by Rebecca M. David Hensley | Sep 23, 2025 | Opinion
First, let’s be clear: Charlie Kirk was not a man of God. Even so, he was undeniably a child of God.

As such, Christian ethics compel me to hold fast to the belief that murder is a violation of any Christian ethical or moral code that adheres to the teachings of Christ. Charlie Kirk should not have been murdered. Politically motivated assassinations must be condemned for the sake of all of society, regardless of who is pulling the trigger or who is the target of such violence.

And my Christian ethics also compel me to point out that national authorities or Christian clergy should not venerate Charlie Kirk as a Christian martyr. Because even though he was a child of God, Charlie Kirk was not a man of God. 
The apostle Paul wrote: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (First Corinthians 13:11-12).
Kirk’s brand of Christianity was a reflection in a mirror that seeks to make God into the image of White, cisgender, heterosexual, politically conservative men, rather than re-molding all of humanity more fully into the image of God in which we are created. Kirk was never able to grow out of this childish understanding in this life because his brand of Christianity was not what Christ taught: be humble, seek peace, exhibit gentleness and kindness, love your neighbor as yourself, abandon the riches of this world for the kin-dom of God.  
Kirk can only be called a “man of God” or a “man of faith” in the context of White Christian Nationalism, where the only god is the one staring back at its adherents in the mirror. And if you find yourself mourning and venerating him as such, you might be a White Christian Nationalist too. 
Kirk repeatedly and publicly engaged in hateful racial and transphobic rhetoric. He was undeniably antisemitic and misogynistic. He mocked the concept of empathy.

He purposely incited division with his public displays of manufactured superiority over college students, which, in reality, were nothing more than his inability (or unwillingness) to comprehend nuance or engage in thoughtful—even if challenging—dialogue with people of differing opinions.

Kirk ran a website dedicated to getting professors fired if they didn’t espouse his White Christian Nationalist agenda. This often resulted in their harassment, including death threats.

Even the last words that came out of his mouth were thinly veiled racist and transphobic dog whistles. And, in line with other tenets of this “faith,” he was a strong proponent of the White Christian Nationalist interpretation of Second Amendment rights, proclaiming that “some gun deaths every single year” is a “prudent deal” to “have the Second Amendment to protect our God-given rights.” 
But I do not wish to focus on Charlie Kirk. I want to focus on America’s reaction to Kirk’s murder.
There is the difference I have seen in the white Christian response versus the Black and Queer Christian response to Kirk’s death. There is the complete overshadowing of yet another school shooting that happened at almost the exact same time Kirk was shot.
Several HBCUs were placed on lockdown due to credible threats the very next day—a story also obscured in the media. Additionally, teachers and other private citizens have been fired or threatened with termination for posting unfavorable comments about Kirk on their personal social media pages.
And then there was ABC, capitulating to pressure from the Federal Communications Commission to suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s show—ordering him to apologize to Kirk’s family, and even requiring him to make a personal donation to the family and to Turning Point USA—because he dared to make a joke about the MAGA response to Kirk’s death.
This is about national orders for flags at half-staff, and national calls to mourning, and NFL stadiums full of thousands of people being told to honor him—and none of that happening for our nation’s children who are sent into a battle zone every single day they walk through the doors of their public schools.

The school shooting in Evergreen, Colorado, on the same day as Kirk’s assassination was in the school district where I live. Although I do not know any students at that particular high school, I know children, teachers and families within the district. When it happens that close to home, it hits harder.

And yet, White Christian Nationalists like Charlie Kirk espouse an ideology that says Second Amendment rights are of greater value than those children’s lives, and all those homes and communities that are torn apart with each additional shooting we add to the ever-growing list. The two young victims of the Evergreen shooting are still hospitalized, one in critical and one in serious condition. Where are the national calls to prayer for them? 
We are currently witnessing an amplification of the death-dealing mix of late-stage capitalism and fascism wrapped in the crisp white linens of the vision of a “Christian” nation. As sociologists Philip S. Gorski and Samual L. Perry write in their primer on the subject, The Flag + The Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, that vision of a “truly Christian nation…would celebrate and privilege the sacred history, liberty, and rightful rule of white conservatives, tolerating ‘others’ at best; enslaving, expelling, or exterminating them at worst.”

We are witnessing that vision’s attempt at a complete takeover of this nation right before our very eyes. And none of it has anything to do with the good news of Jesus Christ—that the love of God is so vast and so deep that there is nothing any of us can do to permanently separate ourselves from it.

So while I will not venerate one who built a public career entirely on sewing division and hate, I do believe he has now been met with the unimaginable love of God. And I imagine it is quite a shock to him how radically inclusive that love is.

Standing in that truth, I hope he comes to understand the religion he followed—and encouraged so many others to follow—has no place in God’s kin-dom. And I pray that such truth will be known on Earth, as it is in heaven. 
Dr. Rebecca M. David Hensley holds a PhD in religious studies, with an emphasis in theological and social ethics. She is a member of the adjunct faculty for Iliff School of Theology and an ordained Deacon in the United Methodist Church.
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