I have some of the concerns expressed but here is ARP minister Andy Webb's take after watching a lot of the service (from a public Facebook post), who is not some loose evangelical.
Last night, after the evening service, I came home and watched most of the five-hour memorial service for Charlie Kirk. I say “most” because I fast-forwarded through several of the CCM medleys and the final parts of some of the speeches. What impressed and encouraged me was not that Charlie Kirk’s memorial drew some of the most important political leaders in the country, including virtually the entire White House Cabinet and the President. It was the emphasis that most of the speakers placed on the importance not of having the same conservative political beliefs as Charlie Kirk, but of having the same saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that Charlie Kirk had. This represents a huge change in American politics, and I want to try to explain why.
Throughout my lifetime, I have gotten very used to presidents and politicians making mealy-mouthed statements about religion. It was always the empty, non-sectarian, non-controversial civil religion that assumed that most Americans were “good people” and that, of course, they would go to heaven when they died. That God would bless America was assumed or even demanded, rather than humbly requested. Jesus—especially Jesus as the Son of God and Savior of Sinners—was almost never discussed, and the Father was always the transcendent, amorphous God of Protestant liberalism. The memorial wasn’t like that at all. For the first time in my life, I heard cabinet members and celebrities talking about the Jesus of Scripture, of the need for personal faith and national revival. Again and again, men and women said that the most important thing about Charlie Kirk was not his influence on American politics, but his deep and genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his growing influence on the spreading of that faith to the next generation. Admittedly, there were a few political speakers who did not have that faith and consequently did not understand it or praise it, but their comments were discordant rather than in keeping with the spirit of the memorial. To my mind, the worst speech in that regard was delivered by Stephen Miller. His speech was political, vitriolic, and at times revenge-focused—which was a theme both Charlie and Erika Kirk would have rejected, and did reject. In fact, in her own speech, Erika forgave the man who shot her husband, saying,
“My husband, Charlie. He wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life. That young man. That young man. On the cross our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did in his. What Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
I will admit I was also a little disappointed in the President’s speech, which started well but then devolved into rambling about crowd size and tariffs and the economy, none of which belonged at a memorial service. Perhaps, though, the most important point (although I don’t think he’d realize it) was when the President said that Charlie loved his opponents, and then admitted he didn’t understand that, saying,
“Shortly before Charlie arrived on campus the day he was assassinated, a staff member texted him that there were many critics and students who were opposed to his views and rather strenuously in the crowd, and that actually made him feel good because he wanted to convince them. He understood. He really did. He understood what was right, and he was right about that. … Charlie wrote back to the staff member saying, I'm not here to fight them. I want to know them and love them, and I want to reach them and try and lead them into a great way of life in our country. In that private moment, on his dying day, we find everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was. He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose. He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry. I am sorry, Erika. But now Erika can talk to me and the whole group and maybe they can convince me that that's not right. But I can't stand my opponent. Charlie's angry. Look at that. He's angry at me that he wasn't interested in demonizing anyone. He was interested in persuading everyone to the ideas and principles he believed were good, right and true.”
Given the kind of pastors that the President sat under, like Norman “Power of Positive Thinking” Vincent Peale and Paula “Word of Faith” White, who emphasized religion as a conduit to get the things that the natural man wants, that doesn’t surprise me. But what did surprise me were the amazingly Gospel-centered remarks made by speakers like J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio, whose speeches I would recommend to you. Vice President Vance in particular noted,
“You know I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public as much as I loved the Lord and as much as it was an important part of my life. I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life. And that is an undeniable legacy of the great Charlie Kirk. … He knew deep down the truth of scripture and from that confidence everything else flowed. That unshakable belief in the gospel led him to see differences in opinion not as battlefields to conquer but as way stations in the pursuit of truth. He knew it was right to love others, your neighbor, your interlocutor, your enemy. But he also understood his duty to say what is right and what is wrong, to distinguish what is false from what is true.”
Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, actually ended his own remarks with the following Gospel presentation:
“And I would say that taking the liberty, but I'm confident he would agree, one of the things he wants us to take away from this, from all of this, is the following. His deep belief that we were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God, who loved us and created us for the purpose of living with Him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our Creator. And so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us. And He suffered like men. And He died like a man. But on the third day He rose unlike any mortal man. And to prove any doubters wrong, he ate with his disciples so they could see and they touched his wounds. He didn't rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh. And then he rose to the heaven, but he promised he would return, and He will. And when He returns, because He took on that death, because He carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from Him. And when He returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love. Thank you and God bless you.”
My sincere hope is that, as the Vice President remarked, this is indeed the beginning of a sweeping revival in the USA. I hope that as a nation we would stop expecting salvation, peace, harmony, and restoration to be achieved by political movements or “isms” created by fallible and sinful men. If Charlie Kirk’s assassination is the catalyst for that revival, it will be yet another example of the truth summed up by Joseph in his declaration to his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen. 50:20)
