After another shooting on a university campus in the United States, the class of the American religious history on Thursday morning at USC asked for a different approach. Instead of giving my students a conference to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism who was killed by an angry mafia, I asked the students their thoughts about a recently emerging martyr who fills the news online.
Charlie Kirk, the evangelical and political activist of the right who directed a youth movement that thought he would help restore Christian morality in the United States, had just been killed the previous day, shot in the long term in a field at the University of Utah Valley by an armed man who was still at that time in the race. Almost everyone had something to say.
A student talked about a family member who was on the site in Utah, where the shooting occurred. Another listened to Kirk when he visited the last spring. Another had followed the Turning Point USA Crusade of Kirk for years. Everyone said that their social networks had “fly” with videos of the shooting and deranged stripping of both the left and the right.
Most students were upset and confused. They wanted time to reflect on the ramifications of Kirk's death and understand how fast the dangerous rhetoric and meaningless violence can be spread. No one was ready to make the same jump of faith that many conservatives already had: they were not willing to label Kirk, a Christian martyr. Most wouldn't even know what an evangelical martyr of the 21st century would be like.
American evangelicals share several basic convictions: the need to be born again, the Bible is the authorized word of God, the call to spread the Gospel and the understanding that salvation is only possible through the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.
After World War II, a small group of Christian fundamentalists in the United States, including South Baptist Minister Billy Graham, felt the need to commit to the broader culture. They formed a new version of their faith that dialogue of strangers and provided material help such as a means to share the love of God, through organizations such as Samaritan's bag and world vision. They were finally called evangelicals.
They understood that Jesus was the model for human behavior. Unlike the God of the Hebrew Bible, whom the evangelicals saw as a hard, vindictive and legalistic, their God was kind, loving and indulgent. Christianity had dogma and doctrine, but also had the sermon in the mountain, which required to take refuge of homeless people, feed hungry, serve the sick and take care of the stranger.
The evangelicals, in other words, had empathy.
Charlie Kirk showed very little. “I can't endure the word empathy, actually,” he said in 2022. “I think empathy is a term of new age invented that does a lot of damage.” When asked about firearms deaths in 2023, he replied: “It is worth having a cost of, unfortunately, some deaths for weapons every year, so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other rights given by God.”
In other cases, he belittled black women, working women and Martin Luther King Jr. helped create an observation list of the teacher to “expose” those with whom he did not agree. The Jewish people directed “not only universities,” he said, but non -profit organizations, films, Hollywood, “everything.” About LGBTQ+problems? He felt that Old Testament's mandate to kill homosexuals was “God's perfect law when it comes to sexual issues.” And last month, he declared that the United States had welcomed enough Indian immigrants: “We are full. We finally put our own people first.”
Kirk was not always so forceful when he spoke on the university campuses. He liked young people, presented them and recruited them to their cause. He was celebrated as the rare right that was willing to participate in the debate, but was he? He listened without listening, often reformulating arguments to adapt to his opinion or changing the topics completely. He asked the students to “prove to be wrong,” but showed no will to really change their perspective. I just wanted to train.
This resistance to empathy and the lack of will to listen to different ideas is the reason why so many religious and political right -wing leaders now call Kirk as a martyr. They share their convictions, as well as their belief that right -wing policy and right -wing represent the future of the United States. They believe in a nation where white Christian men establish the rules and the rest of us continue. They are sure that Jesus would support the rights of weapons, racism and misogyny.
My students may or may not agree with Kirk's message, but they all felt that their murder was tragic. Kirk left a wife, two children and a community of nearby friends. Several pointed out that the waves of shootings throughout the country is equally tragic, and that few people are publishing or lamenting the two high school students in a critical condition that were also fired on Wednesday. They said that they are overlooked, they are the dozens of men, women and children who have been victims of armed violence during the short lives of the students.
Like my students, I cry the tragic death of so many Americans cut by meaningless shootings. Some have died in churches, synagogues, mosques and gurdwaras, martyrs for their religious beliefs. Even others, especially children and adolescents, have become martyrs in the struggle for the safer schools and the most strict weapons laws.
Does Charlie Kirk deserve to live among her ranks? I suppose that depends on what it means to be an evangelical Christian. Once I thought I knew the answer. I'm not sure.
Diane Winston He is a professor at the School of Communication and Journalism of the USC Annenberg.
