Charlie Kirk and the Christian Difference

It apparently never occurred to Abaraonye that his reaction to Kirk’s death betrayed something far more disturbing than mere insensitivity.

This Post is written by Clement Harrold for Catholic Unscripted. Clement has a Master’s degree in theology from the University of Notre Dame, where his studies focused on the history of Christianity. Prior to that, he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where he majored in theology, philosophy, and classics, with a minor in German. He is a longtime contributor to the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and works as a freelance writer. His writings have appeared in First Things, Church Life Journal, Crisis Magazine, Our Sunday Visitor, Washington Examiner, and elsewhere. He currently resides in Wiltshire, a beautiful county in south-west England known for its ham, cheese, and ancient stone monuments.

Clement Harrold

For myself and other members of Gen Z growing up in modern Britain, the narrative we constantly received from the culture around us was that science has replaced religion, and that we owe absolutely nothing to Christianity. If anything, we were told, Christianity’s superstitious doctrines and repressive morals have had a net negative impact on human history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this critique was most forcibly leveled against the oldest and largest branch of Christianity. When Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry joined forces in a 2009 debate in London to defend the proposition that “The Catholic Church is NOT a force for good in the world,” they won the final audience vote by a landslide.

That was 16 years ago. Since then, a discernible cultural shift has taken place across the Anglosphere. While the materialist-hedonist creed espoused by Hitchens and Fry remains ascendant, change is in the air. Growing numbers of young people, particularly young men, are increasingly disillusioned with what our astoundingly shallow culture has to offer them. Influential commentators like Joe Rogan, Konstantin Kisin, Dave Rubin, and Andrew Huberman are far more willing to entertain religious belief than they were in the past. Public figures like Russell Brand, Tom Holland, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali talk openly about their newfound appreciation for Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins now calls himself a cultural Christian.

Recent tragic events raise fresh questions about the enduring power and relevance of Christian faith. When Charlie Kirk, a 31 year-old father of two, was murdered on camera last week for the crime of talking to people, the reactions were diverse: shock, grief, anger, and, alarmingly, jubilation. Anyone who spends time online will know that the latter emotion was far more mainstream than one should think. To pick just one prominent example, George Abaraonye, the president-elect of the Oxford Union, is reported as having greeted the news of Kirk’s shooting with glee. “Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s f***ing go,” he wrote in a WhatsApp group chat. “Charlie Kirk got shot loool,” he added on Instagram.

In fairness to Abaraonye, he later apologized. Yet his apology was revealing: “My words were no less insensitive than [Kirk’s] - arguably less so,” argued the 20-year-old Philosophy, Politics and Economics student. “The difference is that I had the humility to recognise when I strayed from my core values, and I addressed it immediately upon reflection.” For Abaraonye, it seems, his singular error was one of insensitivity; and he had no qualms about using his “apology” to remind the world that he remains both more sensitive and more humble than the late Charlie Kirk.

It is a worrying commentary on the moral climate at Oxford that it apparently never occurred to Abaraonye that his reaction to Kirk’s death betrayed something far more disturbing than mere insensitivity. For most decent people, the idea of exulting in the shooting of any political figure, no matter how much we despise their viewpoints, is repulsive. It surely reveals something deeply flawed in a man’s moral character, and perhaps in the society he inhabits, when his unfiltered reaction to a tragedy is to rejoice in it.

Even many of the more measured responses to Kirk’s assasination demonstrated an appalling lack of intellectual charity. While speaking on The Rest is Politics, the second most listened to podcast in the UK, the left-wing commentator Alastair Campbell began (commendably) with a condemnation of political violence and a note of admiration for Kirk’s commitment to free debate. Yet when Campbell turned to what he termed Kirk’s “horrific” viewpoints, he had no problem with parroting the patently mendacious claim that Charlie Kirk favoured stoning gay people to death based on a literal reading of the Bible. Despite this slanderous claim having been thoroughly debunked, the episode has not been taken down. What exactly does it say about our public discourse when a man as intelligent and well-informed as Alastair Campbell is perfectly content to lazily caricature a deceased political opponent in the most unsympathetic of lights?

Of course, the left does not have a monopoly on reprehensible reactions to political tragedies. When the head of the Democrat caucus in the Minnesota House of Representatives was assassinated alongside her husband earlier this year, the response from conservative media outlets was shamefully muted. And following the news of Kirk’s murder last week, Turning Point UK posted on social media a statement directly opposed to the Christian values of the man they mourned: “They murdered our boss. Our mentor. Our inspiration. Our friend. We will not forgive. We will not forget.”

These various examples—which could be multiplied endlessly—are symptoms of a wider cultural sickness affecting both the left and the right. It is a sickness embedded in a fractured society which no longer possesses a coherent moral vision, and which can no longer articulate why its citizens should care about old Christian ideals like love of enemies, the inherent dignity of every human being, and the primacy of sacrificial love. As this sickness grows, it reveals in ever starker terms the truth that when we lose sight of God’s law and the radical love which He has revealed to us through His Son, the moral fabric of our society falls apart. In its place, we are left with a crude, self-centered, nihilistic materialism which never inspired anyone to do anything, and which renders our polity ever more fragmented and incapable of civil discourse.

Against this destructive cultural trend, Christians must proclaim the Gospel message with greater conviction than ever before. As we heard in the Mass readings the day after Charlie Kirk’s murder, “But I say to you, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). In the spiritual war which wages all around us, we must recognize that evil can never be conquered by evil; in the final analysis, it is Love alone which overcomes the world. This is the Good News our culture desperately needs to hear.

As a devout Christian, Charlie Kirk believed these Gospel truths with all his heart. While addressing the American people in a televised press conference, Utah Governor Spencer Cox shared how Kirk’s own words had kept him from succumbing to excessive anger: ‘Charlie said, ‘When people stop talking, that’s when you get violence.’ He said, ‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive. Welcome without judgment, love without condition, forgive without limit.’ He said, ‘Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much.’”

For English Catholics, Kirk’s wise sentiments are reminiscent of St. Edmund Campion’s famous “Brag” which he addressed to Queen Elizabeth I’s Privy Council in the event of his capture. Campion assured the members of the Privy Council that they could always rely on the heartfelt prayers of the very seminarians whom they hoped to arrest, torture, and kill upon their arrival in England: “Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven, or to die upon your pikes.”

The witness of Campion and Kirk should inspire us to take seriously Our Lord’s injunction to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. If we wish to follow Jesus, then we must pray for the repentance and salvation of the young man who murdered Kirk, and for all those who celebrated his crimes. We must pray for the grace to forgive all those who slander, malign, and oppress us. And we must pray for that same spirit of radical, Christlike charity which allowed the first Christians to overcome the systemic evils of the pagan world, and gave birth to a civilization of love.

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to visit the archeological site of Pompeii for the first time. Walking around that remarkable place, I found myself reflecting on the moral revolution which Christianity brought. As I ventured into the old amphitheatre where the crowds used to watch human beings kill one another for entertainment, and the local brothel where Roman males had their way with female sex slaves, I was reminded that we do owe something to Christianity. We owe it something indispensable; and without the light of the Gospel to guide us, our culture’s descent into chaos will continue unabated.

For our faltering civilization, the ruins of Pompeii are a poignant reminder that the Catholic Church is not merely a force for good, but the very greatest force for good the world has ever known. Now more than ever, the increasingly unmoored societies of the old Christian West need the rigour and clarity of the Church’s moral teaching. But more than that, our societies need believers who live out those teachings: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). It is one thing to preach charity and love of enemies; it is quite another to live it.