If you were surprised Wednesday to hear Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, claim at a congressional hearing, “If Charlie Kirk lived in biblical times, he’d have been the 13th disciple,” then you haven’t been paying attention. Since the Turning Point USA founder was shot dead Wednesday, Sept. 10, there’s been a segment of Christians categorizing him as a Christian martyr.
For example, Kirk had only been dead a few hours when the Rev. Rich Bitterman, who pastors Cedar Ridge Baptist Church in Galena, Missouri, posted an 1,100-word sermon to X called “The Cross Still Offends.”
In a piece that’s been viewed almost a half-million times on X and who knows how many times elsewhere, Bitterman characterized Kirk not as a political activist, only as “a Christian apologist.” He placed him not only in the company of Stephen, an early church leader stoned for his beliefs, but also in the company of Jesus himself.
The Word became flesh and they nailed Him to a tree. So of course they came for Charlie.
The rev. rich bitterman
“The Word became flesh and they nailed Him to a tree,” Bitterman wrote. “So of course they came for Charlie.”
That’s a non sequitur of biblical proportions. But with that “of course,” Bitterman suggests that there’s just no other way to interpret Kirk’s awful killing.
Stephen’s execution, Bitterman wrote, was the “only time in all of Scripture we see Jesus standing at the right hand of God, rising to receive one of His own.” But after Kirk was shot dead at Utah Valley State, Bitterman wrote, “I like to believe He stood again.”
It was after Bitterman’s post describing Kirk as Christ-like, and after other white clergy, such as Pastor Luke Barnett, of Dream City Church in Phoenix, describing him as an exemplar of biblical truth-telling that some prominent Black pastors got up Sunday to demand an end to their white counterparts’ veneration campaign.
According to his own words, Kirk believed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was a mistake, and he called one of the bill’s most prominent advocates, Martin Luther King Jr., an “awful” person. He helped push the so-called “great replacement theory” that suggests white people are facing an existential threat. On top of that, he disparaged Black people’s intelligence and capabilities and said that “in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” Those positions neither explain nor justify his assassination and may not have been considered (or even known) by his killer, but such comments do explain why Black clergy and Black Christians more broadly would object to his being likened to a saint or a prophet.
And object to the government of the United States giving him the honor due a statesman.
“Charlie Kirk did not deserve to be assassinated,” the Rev. Howard-John Wesley, pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, preached Sunday. “But I’m overwhelmed seeing the flags of the United States of America at half-staff calling this nation to honor and venerate a man who was an unapologetic racist and spent all of his life sowing seeds of division and hate into this land.”
Despite professing the same faith, Black and white Protestant Christians in the United States often have near opposite worldviews.
The Rev. Jamal Bryant, who pastors New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, accused “America and the media” of “trying to remix a life of racism and white supremacy that went forth unchecked.” Bryant called out multiple things Kirk had done: disparage Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, blast the Civil Rights Act and declare King as underserving of our nation’s honor.
It’s not clear to which church Kirk belonged or if he belonged to one. He was known to attend Dream City, the Pentecostal congregation Barnett leads. He was quoted in a 2021 interview in Crisis Magazine as saying, “I go to Catholic Mass every once in a while. I don’t take the Eucharist … but I’m open-minded, but I’m not there yet.”
Despite professing the same faith, Black and white Protestant Christians in the United States often have near opposite worldviews. Yes, such Black Christians are typically Democrats and their white counterparts are typically Republicans, but it’s bigger than that. The Public Religion Research Institute reported in 2020 that 57% of white evangelical Protestants believed America had changed for the worse since the 1950s, whereas 57% of Black Protestants — no doubt because the civil rights movement started then — thought things had improved.
So how to remember Kirk’s legacy — even while universally condemning his killing — isn’t the first time Black and white Christians have found their views at odds. From how seriously we should take the pandemic, to whether the Confederate flag is racist, from whether discrimination against white people is a thing to how prevalent police brutality is, Black and white Christians’ worldviews have generally clashed. Related to that last point, if you’d listened to what was said at the Christian funeral for Alton Sterling — a Black man shot dead by Baton Rouge police in July 2016 — and listened to what was said at the Christian funerals for three police (two white and one Black) who died days later in a retaliatory ambush, you may have walked away with the same feeling I had: that the Black and white Christians didn’t sound like they had the same God. At Sterling’s funeral, mourners were reminded of a Gospel that sets oppressed people free, while those at the funerals of the white officers were told that obeying authority figures is a hallmark of holiness. (The funeral for the Black officer was the only one that celebrated the police and acknowledged racism, as the deceased himself had days before he was killed. He said when he wasn’t in his police uniform, he was perceived as a threat.) Clearly, it’s not supposed to be this way. There’s not a Black Bible and a white one — at least not anymore. And, yet, this is the way it’s always been. Frederick Douglass condemned an American church that had “men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members.” And in 2014, Sojourners magazine founder Jim Wallis, one of the few white clergy to protest in Ferguson, Mo., after a police officer there killed teenager Michael Brown, said, “We say we’re Christians, but, you know, white Christians, we act more like white people than Christians.” Wallis’ framing may help explain why so many white Christians seem to think the world should look past Kirk’s often racist rhetoric and praise him as courageous. But as Wesley preached Sunday, “I can abhor the violence that took your life, but I don’t have to celebrate how you chose to live.” Indeed. Kirk should not have been killed. On that, all Christians ought to agree. But to argue that he should be praised is to suggest that racism and the Christian faith are compatible. And who really wants to be on the record arguing that? In a piece that’s been viewed almost a half-million times on X and who knows how many times elsewhere, Bitterman characterized Kirk not as a political activist, only as “a Christian apologist.” He placed him not only in the company of Stephen, an early church leader stoned for his beliefs, but also in the company of Jesus himself.
Jarvis DeBerry is an opinion editor for MS NOW Daily. He was previously editor-in-chief at the Louisiana Illuminator and a columnist and deputy opinion editor at The Times-Picayune. 
