This article was first published on Christian Today here
Charlie Kirk’s assassination exposes the heart of darkness in these troubled times
This week I inadvertently watched two videos I wish I hadn’t. The first was the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska on public transport in Charlotte, North Carolina, by a mentally ill man with a criminal record – as other passengers sat impassively.
The second was of the shooting of Charlie Kirk as he spoke at a university in Utah. The image of him falling back with blood gushing from his neck is one that I fear will never be erased from my mind. I am still stunned, sickened and angry that a man who spent his life going round universities to have discussions with people he disagreed with was shot while he was doing just that. He was wearing a T-shirt with the word ‘freedom’ on it and encouraging people to prove him wrong.
I spent the whole day after the shooting in shock and tears. Why? The last time I wept at the death of a celebrity I had never met was with the assassination of John Lennon. Was it just the shock of the footage? Or was there something more? Perhaps it was because I could identify with a Christian evangelist/apologist who was also politically involved? Perhaps it was the fact that he died in the prime of his life – a 31-year-old man with two young children?
When I was a 31 year old with two young children I too was going round universities debating with those who disagreed with me. Like Charlie, I too recall getting threats, abuse and endless mockery. But there the similarity ends – I faced nothing like this. The seeds of modern intolerance were certainly sown in universities in my generation, but today those seeds are coming to fruition.
Kirk himself foresaw this. He argued that “assassination culture is spreading on the Left. Forty-eight percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justified to murder Elon Musk. Fifty-five percent said the same about Donald Trump. In California, activists are naming ballot measures after Luigi Mangione [the man accused of shooting dead UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson last year].
“The Left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response. This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”
This week the bomb went off.
One of the most perceptive comments was that from Konstantin Kisin, of Triggernometry fame, who wrote: “I hope I’m wrong. But tonight feels like some sort of invisible line has been crossed that we didn’t even know was there. The last time I felt like this was 9/11 when it was clear, without knowing the how and the what, that the world was about to change forever. Like the rules of the game had been permanently altered and there was simply no going back to the innocent, peaceful past.” He later added, “But to murder a young father simply for doing debates and mobilising young people to vote for a party that represents half of America? This is something else.”
At the time of writing we do not know who killed Charlie Kirk, nor why they did so, although numerous news outlets have reported rumours that the ammunition left behind by the killer had pro-trans and Antifa slogans written on it. If that turns out to be true, it would be ironic that Kirk was killed in the middle of answering a question about trans shootings. But even if the shooter was a right-wing extremist, or mentally ill, or an eco-terrorist, it would not be the primary issue. What is that issue?
As Kirk once stated, “You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.” In the same way you can tell a lot about a society by how it reacts when someone well-known dies. So, what have we learned about our society?
On the one hand there were the extremists, the mentally unbalanced and the just plain cruel. I stopped looking at my X feed for several hours because it was just too upsetting to see people celebrating this murder. One group of US students dancing and chanting ‘we got Charlie in the neck’ was just one example of this perverted thinking. Lest you think that this kind of thinking just applies to the super woke in the elite universities of America, think again. Today I spoke to a group of school pupils in Australia. Having been told by some online activists here that this was nothing to do with Australia because no one knows who Charlie Kirk is, I was astounded to discover not only that they knew, but that the assassination had been the subject of discussion in their classrooms. Even more astonishingly, they told me that all the pupils who spoke were celebrating Kirk’s death – apparently he deserved it. They even told me that one teacher told them that they were glad Kirk had been killed. What chance do the kids have? They are being groomed to hate – all in the name of love.
In the UK the Socialist Worker party shamelessly tweeted “Charlie KKKirks chickens come home to roost.” Meanwhile George Abaraonye, the incoming Oxford Union President, allegedly made horrifying comments about the killing in a WhatsApp group. Oxford University and the Oxford Union have publicly disavowed his alleged comments, while Abaraonye has himself since issued a statement saying that he “reacted impulsively” and that his comments “did not reflect my values”. Nonetheless they were particularly grotesque, given that Abaranonye debated Kirk at the Union earlier this year. The fact that he could stand face to face with Kirk and then apparently write so coldly of his death is a sad reflection of the state of one of our top universities.
You can watch the whole Oxford Union debate here. Incidentally, it perfectly illustrates Kirk’s qualities as a debater – thoughtful, articulate, respectful and intelligent. He was not the neo-Nazi thug that some have portrayed him as. Sohrab Ahmari of UnHerd agrees: “Ben Burgis, a prominent socialist writer, recalled his debate with Kirk as one of the best he’d done in recent years, not least owing to that same earnestness and courtesy, and notwithstanding profound ideological differences. Many a university president these days extols ‘civil conversations’ across partisan barriers while narrowly circumscribing the range of acceptable views on campus. But Kirk meant it, and lived it.”
But it was not just the extremists. There were far too many mainstream commentators who while giving us the perfunctory ‘we are against political violence’ almost immediately moved into ‘he brought it on himself’.
In the US following the shooting, MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd placed the blame for the shooting on Kirk himself due to his rhetoric. He argued that hateful thoughts lead to hateful words and then to hateful actions. Dowd also suggested that Kirk’s shooting came from a “supporter shooting their gun off in celebration”. This was too much even for MSNBC, who fired him. My only question is: where was the ‘hate’ in Kirk’s words – never mind his thoughts and actions? Dowd on the other hand dripped with bitterness and bile.
In the UK Ash Sarkar, the self-proclaimed ‘luxury communist’ who for some reason the BBC think is worthy of being a moral guide on The Moral Maze programme, tweeted out “I think Charlie Kirk died by the code that he lived by”. Charlie’s code was Christianity. He was not killed by a Christian. Sarkar was trying to make a smart comment about Kirk’s support for the Second Amendment. But Kirk was not advocating for the freedom of people to go round shooting other people. It was a crass and hateful comment.
In Australia the media journalist Hannah Ferguson posted “Am I glad Charlie Kirk will no longer spread his extremist messaging? Yes….” She also went on to say that while she did not agree with the shooting, sometimes violence is necessary. It is this kind of language which ultimately leads to political killings. Label someone extremist. Label them Far Right. And then you justify killing them – if they are equivalent to Hitler. Which is why you get a professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, who wrote on Facebook in March 2023: “So here is what I think about free speech on campus. Although I do not advocate violating federal and state criminal codes, I think it is far more admirable to kill a racist, homophobic, or transphobic speaker than it is to shout them down.” It is the very antithesis of the approach that Kirk took. His whole position was to listen to people and to seek to persuade them. Not to shout them down or kill them. Kirk went into the lion’s den, and the lions killed him.
In the UK ITV had a man coming on saying that Charlie was the KKK and David Duke, and then moralising that Charlie Kirk never thought that being shot could happen to him. It was astonishing that this ignorant falsehood was left unchallenged. More examples of such ignorance can be found on the ABC in Australia, the BBC, CNN, the Guardian etc.
But there is an even more disturbing aspect of the reaction to this murder: the way that it demonstrates the deepening divisions within our society. The conspiracy theorists were out in force, like the ‘influencer’ Ian Carroll tweeting out to his 1.3 million followers that Charlie Kirk was killed by Israel.
Meanwhile the anti-Israel, pro-Palestine mob were quick in on the act, numerous engaging with ‘whataboutery’. As if saying ‘what about the dead in Gaza?’, justifies the murder of Charlie Kirk. One commentator said that the Palestinian issue is the only issue that matters. Such single-minded fanaticism only breeds death and destruction.
The divisions within the US were exemplified on the House floor. Rep. Lauren Boebert requested a moment of prayer for Charlie Kirk. Democrats were heard shouting “no!” Then, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna shouted back “y’all caused this!” The lack of dignity, respect and compassion was shocking. Little wonder that the Utah Governor, Spencer Cox, said “our nation is broken”.
Having said that, there were a few shafts of light: Former presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, uniting in condemnation of the killing without adding a ‘but’; California Governor Gavin Newsom and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, likewise, uniting in a left-wing condemnation. Good for them.
But the Church all too often sadly reflects the divisions of the culture, rather than the unity of Christ. I saw some Christians posting that Charlie Kirk was the very opposite of what Christ taught. I have a suspicion that they were basing their posts not on what they had heard from Kirk, but rather from what they had been told he had said from the media that they consume. Christians need to learn to think differently. If fact, as Kirk would have argued, we need to learn to think!
I believe that Kirk was assassinated as much for being a Christian as for his politics. Greg Sheridan in his new book, How Christians Can Succeed Today talks about the death of Polycarp: “The crowds were baying for his blood, screaming that he was a ‘destroyer of the gods’”. There are those who will bay for the blood of Christians in today’s society. After all, we are the ones who dare to question their gods.
It disturbs me as someone who used to be regarded as a socialist, that I can be labelled Far Right just because I hold to Christ’s teachings on marriage, sex and children. For most of us the only persecution we may face will be loss of face, income and status. But increasingly, those of us who make the case for Christ in public may find that people who have been taught that it is ok, even necessary, to silence speech with physical violence come to pose an increasing threat.
If Charlie Kirk’s murder causes people to be quiet, the assailant will have won. But if we are motivated to be bolder, then we follow in Charlie’s footsteps – and, more importantly, in Christ’s.
These are troublesome and stormy times. Our confidence should be that of Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, who tweeted just before the murder of her husband: “Psalm 46:1 – God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” In Christ alone our hope is found. There are other verses that are salient for these times but I leave you with this one:
“They called out in a loud voice, ‘How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?'” (Revelation 6:10).
David Robertson is the former minister of St Peters Free Church in Dundee. He is currently the minister of Scots Kirk Presbyterian Church in Newcastle, New South Wales, and blogs at The Wee Flea.
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I am in shock. My words cannot express the grief I feel.. To read of people celebrating the fact of Charlie’s death, makes me weep. I also believe that shortly, all Christians will be a target for evil, no matter where we live. The introduction of Starmer’s new I.D will expose us even further. I can foresee the day coming when we will have to lock our Church doors during Worship. What happened to Charlie is only the beginning.
Charlie Kirk -Shocked by the depravity of a world in which we live. Senseless , senseless , senseless !
Gylen
A well-measured and thought-provoking response, David.
Brandon McGuire on his “Daily Dose of Wisdom” YouTube channel shows godly grief over the many horrible responses on X. I’m reminded of mass reactions to October 7, except that those were clearly orchestrated, whereas the current outbursts are spontaneous, albeit from highly indoctrinated morons. In a quotation I have not been able to source, he said: “Laughter at the expense of a wounded is the sound of a soul turning away from the light.”
Thank you for your relentless and reliable search for the truth. Christ IS truth. Thank you.
Look around the world. We are into “The End Times ” God will surely move very soon.
Yours is the most complete chronicling of the intolerance of the “tolerant” I have yet read. Thank you for your diligence .
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/11/oxford-union-president-george-abaraonye-charlie-kirk-murder/
And then there’s this.
Our world is truly sick.
“Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold”.
Matthew 24 vs 12
Excellent article. It is only the light that will show the lost the way out of the darkness. God will be glorified through this tragedy. We cannot see it yet.
To echo the response to an earlier murderous attack on free speech:
Je suis Charlie.
Nous sommes Charlie?
This misses out the statements of right wing or more accurately the nationalist and populist side and share of responsibility. Words matter wanting to have your opponents imprisoned or claiming that they should face a firing squad are equally un acceptable. A culture of political violence has been normal since the rise of our current politics. It is getting worse. It will only improve when both sides forswear the language of violence. Both sides are to blame but it’s up to the leaders to lead but as the current leader of the free world is a major architect of our current predicament it is hard to have hope.
Are you suggesting that Charlie’s murderer shouldn’t be imprisoned?
Or is your comment just an inappropriate response to an article about his murder?
I agree that free speech has limits and that incitement to murder should be challenged, but there’s a difference between the state prosecuting violent people and vigilantes hypocritically hunting down those who incite violence…
Thanks for the article David by the way. I’m reminded of Jesus’s words that the persecuted are blessed, because great is their reward in heaven.
Thank you David , for explaining it how it is.
Thank you for this David. 🙏💔
No one should condone this murder nor celebrate it. But your description of him is not one that I have observed. I think he was a self serving publicist with some abhorrent views. Unfortunately the irony however repugnant is that he believed some deaths were a necessary outcome to maintain the second amendment. His family may ponder those words for years to come. My heart goes out to them. Btw, How do you accidentally view these videos?
But what have you observed? Of course its easy to accuse anyone engaged in a public ministry of being a ‘self serving publicist’ and to talk about abhorrent views. But you don’t say what they are – except for misrepresenting the one. Let me ask you to think and use this thought experiment. I’m sure you would agree that the Covid vaccine sometimes has side effects, which for some people can be fatal. However let us suppose that you argue that overall the covid vaccines save more lives than they take. Would that make you callous? Would that justify people rejoicing if you died from a covid vaccine? I didn’t actually agree with Charlie on the 2nd amendment. Thats a legitimate disagreement – but for you to imply that he got what was coming to him – or that it happened because of the 2nd amendment – is a sick and perverse form of illogicality.
How do you accidentally view videos? Don’t you know? Someone sends you a link to a video which you think is a news report and instead you see a brutal shooting. If you can’t work out how that happens it’s little wonder that you don’t understand Charlies 2nd amendment arguement!
Wow, rather telling last paragraph, and rather petulant I might add, ‘a little wonder I didn’t understand his second amendment argument’? I understood it I didn’t misrepresent either.
And no, if I am sent anything and it’s not entirely clear what that link is to, I don’t open it. If you can’t work that out ………..
Oh, additionally he said many repugnant things, all too many and nuance to list, but to make that my general statement is correct, I don’t need to offer details, it’s an opinion. I implied nothing from his death and for you to say that I implied he had what was coming to him, is frankly a disgrace, I even condoned the act, yet another assumption on your part, but the irony of his statement is not lost on me.
Your Covid analogy is not a good one, but you know that, or I hope you do. If not I’ll explain, the vaccine’s first aim is to save people – that is not the first aim of guns.
Whats intriguing is that you seem quite happy to declare that on the one hand ‘he said many repugnant things’, yet on the other that is ‘an opinion’. WIth all due respect – its the facts that matter not your opinion. I’m sure he may have said some repugnant things – he certainly said some things I disagree with – but all I ask is for you to give us an example, in context, of the many repugnant things he said.
The Covid analogy is a logical argument. Let me walk you through it. If you recognise that a particular policy may cost lives, you are not being callous if you suggest that nonetheless that policy is worth following – because ultimately it saves lives. To give you another example – If we slowed the speed limit down to 5mph we would save thousands of lives. Does that mean that if I think reducing the speed limit to that amount is a bad thing therefore I am responsible if I get killed in a car crash!
It’s a little simplistic to reduce your argument to the vaccines aim was to save lives and guns are to take lives. Perhaps there are other motives in developing a covid vaccine – money, seeking to reassure a panicked population etc. And guns also save lives. I lived on a farm with guns….they were used both to hunt and to protect.
Pastor Dave, I too was on X and clicked on a live newsfeed that just said shooting on Utah campus. I was horrified to witness Charlie being shot. I burst into tears and have been weeping and praying ever since. It has affected me in same vein as 9/11, so filled with sorrow. I am a life long conservative and believer in Christ for over 50 years . I am not MAGA, however it was Charlie’s bold professions of faith , his generous attitude and his courage to engage in civil debate , especially with the youth was why I followed him. Here in California our campuses are not friendly for a conservative voice and I was hopeful he was making in roads. He was prodding them think and gave conservative kids a voice.
I am sad about his death yet I know he is with the Lord and that is a marvelous thing that can not be taken away.
There’s a great lack of compassion in our world that’s already accompanied by so very much anger or rage. I myself have been angrier over the last few years — perhaps in large part in relation to the Internet ‘angry algorithm’ sending me the stories, etcetera, it has (unfortunately correctly) calculated will successfully agitate me into keeping the (I believe, overall societally-/socially-damaging) process going thus maximizing the number of clicks/scrolls I’ll provide it to sell to product advertisers.
Nevertheless, we all, at least as individuals, can resist flawed yet normalized human/societal nature thus behavior; and if enough people do this and perform truly humane acts, positive change on a large(r) scale may result.
Perhaps somewhat relevant to this are the words of American sociologist Stanley Milgram (1933-1984), of Obedience Experiments fame/infamy: “It may be that we are puppets — puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception [and] awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.”
Still, the human race may so desperately need a unifying existential/fate-determining common cause, that an Earth-impacting asteroid threat or, better yet, a vicious extraterrestrial attack likely is what we have to collectively brutally endure together in order to survive the longer term from ourselves.
We all would unite for the first time ever and defend against, attack and eventually defeat the humanicidal multi-tentacled ETs, the latter needing to be an even greater nemesis than our own formidably divisive politics and perceptions of differences, both real and perceived — especially those involving race, religion and nationality.
During this much-needed human alliance, we’d be forced to work closely side-by-side together and experience thus witness just how humanly similar we are in the ways that really count. (The movies Independence Day and, especially, Enemy Mine come to my mind.)
Then again, I’ve been told that one or more human parties might actually attempt to forge an alliance with the ETs to better their own chances for survival, thus indicating that our deficient human condition may be even worse than I had originally thought.
Yet, maybe a half-century later when all traces of the nightmarish ET invasion are gone, we’ll inevitably revert to those same politics to which we humans seem so collectively hopelessly prone — including the politics of scale. And, yet once again, we slide downwards.
… Meantime, the political assassination of Charlie Kirk may be the tipping point into some other major violence, most likely retaliatory.
I had not come across Mr Kirk before his death so I had to do a bit of research before posting this. Aside from the human element I am at a loss to understand the credit your eulogy gives him. Mr Kirk is fortunate that he has grown up during a time where an uncritical media allows the repetition of misinformation and unchallenged verbage. For example I was disappointed to see Mr Kirk repeat the untruth about South African farmers unchallenged. I was also shocked to see on one of the links you recommended Mr Kirk advertising the buying of gold.
On a spiritual level – I find Mr Kirk rather vacuous and superficial. I would like to have seen him debate his theological beliefs with the likes of Revs Macleod (Free Church College) or Macdonald (Raasay). I think they would have rapidly exposed how fragile the core beliefs of Mr Kirk were.
Pastor,
What did you think of Four Corners last night with regard to the Exclusive Brethren?
God bless.
Totally depressing. Having grown up in the Brethren I was appalled to see how at least one branch of them have turned into a cult….
Thanks Pastor. Yes agreed. I went to school with a girl who was part of the group. No television, cinema, etc. Had to wear a head covering when older, etc. She seemed happy to be part of it though but she obviously wouldn’t have known any better.
She’d be middle-aged now like me. I just hope, if nothing else, she has gained saving faith in Christ from being brought up in that environment in spite of the cultic teachings and also if she ever does flee them I hope any Christian faith she has developed is not lost.
Pastor, prominent television nutritionist Rosemary Stanton grew up in the sect. She has spoken about her upbringing several times. Here is one such interview that might be of interest to you:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.9news.com.au/article/87d5aef7-db86-4803-a99e-4575a793ad70
🙁 🙁 🙁
Some of the teachings revealed on that Four Corners show were beyond bizarre such as “never trusting a man with a beard”. I guess that rules both you and I out, Pastor! Seriously how can they extrapolate that from Scripture? Assuming the cult is all about money and power for the leaders though what is the reason for a seemingly arbitrary rule like that? It doesn’t even seem to have any coherent internal logic to it., other than instilling blind obedience to random statements like the end of Orwell’s 1984 where you must believe 1+1=3 if the Party says so. 🙁
I will be praying for all the kids who have grown up in that cult- and especially for my school friend – tonight. It is all I can do for them.
Back on topic: Did you see this article from the ABC the other day? This was published after the US authorities had already stated the assassin held left-wing views and had a trans partner but you won’t find any of that here. They are trying desperately to deny left-wing ideology had anything to do with it:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-14/tyler-robinson-awaits-formal-charges-over-charlie-kirk-murder/105771364
Dear Iain, can you elaborate as to which of Charlie’s core beliefs were fragile? I have heard and seen him many times and can attest that his “core beliefs” were solid, Biblical and life giving. He had a profound yet simple faith and spoke to literally millions, what have you done with your so called sound theology and core beliefs? I don’t know you, so am sorry if I am speaking out of turn. I thank God with all my heart that Charlie was not immersed in “free church theology” and many of the doctrines of men that has so rendered much of the church powerless and having a form of religion but denying its power. Charlie was a modern day martyr and it will be interesting to see how his death may well spark a renewal in the US and oh how we need it here in the UK. We need a revival of the Holy Spirit and a renewed Fear of the Lord as well as a return to the Word of God. What we certainly don’t need is anymore church theology that can be so easy dismantled by the plain Word of God. I will take Charlie’s legacy, teaching and fruit over “free church theology” any day of the week and twice on a Sunday!