The Trumpist Republican elite called Charlie Kirk’s memorial service a milestone, held not in the intimacy of family circles but before 63,000 fervent followers in the Glendale football stadium in Arizona, an event in the form of a worship service where Trump himself delivered the sermon.
The language of the Gospel was turned into a political instrument; Christianity was reduced to a political ideology. It was not God using these people, but they using God. Critics say Charlie Kirk did the same in his lifetime, which made the memorial fitting to his legacy.
The event became a ritual ceremony of union between the far-right and the evangelical movement, where Kirk’s life and death were compared to that of Jesus Christ. The political activist was proclaimed as a preacher of the Gospel. In doing so, the Gospel was identified with a party’s political ideology.
The Trumpist rally was a spectacular ceremony of falsifying Christianity and the Gospel, staged in the format of a typical neo-Protestant service. Yet the word was not preached by Christian pastors but by far-right politicians.
The political sermons were preceded by the standard liturgy of Pentecostal charismatic services. The most popular praise bands performed (contemporary worship), the congregation swayed with raised hands and closed eyes, waiting in rapture for the falsified gospel.
The highlight of the service was the U.S. President’s speech – reminiscent of Emperor Constantine – in which he declared: “I hate my opponents.” This is the perfect opposite of what Jesus Christ taught (“love your enemies”), and for that reason alone it can rightly be called antichristian.
Jesus said: do good to those who hate you, pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you. Trump’s antichristian declaration was: “I do not want the best for them.”
Just minutes earlier, the same worshipers had been praising God with uplifted hands; now they applauded and cheered Trump’s words with enthusiasm, oblivious to the fact that his message was diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus, a worldly, satanic creed.
This moment perfectly illustrated the total symbiosis of Christianity and far-right politics, celebrated loudly even in Hungarian evangelical circles, where Kirk’s funeral was hailed as the greatest evangelization of all time.
White nationalism, the identification of nation and political ideology with Christianity, is prophetic in the worst sense: a preview of the day when Christian masses will worship Satan, joyfully electing the Antichrist, the dictator of the world.
Politicians speaking at the service claimed that Jesus opposed those in power, spoke truth against them, and was therefore executed. By this recurring parallel, Charlie Kirk was said to have spoken truth about “the left” and was therefore murdered.
It must be stated: what Kirk preached was not the Gospel but far-right ideology, widely recognized during his lifetime as hate speech. Jesus preached the opposite, the Kingdom of God as opposed to this world.
Jesus was not a political activist. He always rejected attempts to draw him into politics. Even concerning Caesar, he gave evasive answers. His mission was not of this world. He was not a political influencer aiding the election of Herod.
Jesus never used faith in God for political ends. He did not subordinate it to any ideology and never justified campaigns of exclusion or hatred. He would not have been a loud spokesman for Donald Trump’s campaign.
What is now proclaimed as Kirk’s “gospel” – which Trump’s Republican Party has declared essential to its own identity – was described in a New York Times article on September 11, just one day after his death (before such statements became forbidden).
The Times characterized Kirk’s main teachings as those that heavily shaped the far-right youth movement on key political issues. In plain language: he poisoned young minds with hate speech.
According to the Times’ list, Kirk was openly and harshly racist. He denounced the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
By doing so, he opposed legal equality and voting rights for Black Americans, the end of segregation in workplaces, schools, buses, and restaurants. He called these rights “anti-white.” He referred to Martin Luther King Jr. as a “horrible man.”
Jesus did not preach this. Yet this has become a core tenet of the Republican Party’s new gospel, shared with evangelical Christianity: white supremacy, which Trump’s party now pledges to “complete.”
Kirk was not only racist but also antisemitic in the most classical sense, spreading traditional tropes about “replacement” supposedly funded by Jews—claims that Jews want to replace white Americans with non-whites.
This ideology inspired the gunman who killed 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018. Kirk’s teachings were not far from classic Nazi tenets. He claimed Jews control everything, universities, the press, nonprofits, movies, Hollywood. Europeans know this voice all too well.
Kirk’s antisemitism faltered in light of Netanyahu’s Gaza war, supported by Trump. This showed that the American far-right does not support Judaism or Israel as such, but Netanyahu’s “illiberalism.”
Kirk was also a staunch advocate of gun rights. In one of his controversial statements, he said the deaths caused by firearms were worth it to preserve the right to bear arms, deaths that include many small children. He himself became such a victim.
He loudly opposed the separation of church and state. He argued the state should enforce church norms, imposing them on those outside the church. Yet Christianity teaches that in God’s kingdom, transformation begins inwardly, not by coercion.
One of Kirk’s central messages was opposition to LGBTQ rights, which he insisted aligned with Christianity’s values. But the Gospel of Jesus is not about stigmatizing and excluding people.
For this reason, Kirk was seen as a defender of the faith by those who twist Scripture, falsify salvation, and substitute persecution of sexual minorities for the essence of Christianity.
In the end, Kirk became a victim of the very hate propaganda he spread. His killer, from a Republican family, felt personally attacked and humiliated by Kirk’s vitriol against his romantic partner, a transgender woman, and others like her.
He should not have been killed. There is no acceptable justification for murder. But Jesus was not executed for such reasons either. His Gospel was never a call for stigmatization or deprivation of rights. Quite the opposite.
Kirk tried to disguise hate speech as legitimate opinion, presenting intolerance against social groups as if it were a valid viewpoint.
Similarly, he claimed to defend free speech, by which he meant normalizing far-right narratives once considered taboo or politically incorrect. Trump underscored this when he called Kirk a “martyr of freedom” and fired those who disagreed.
These were people who, even while expressing sympathy, dared to state that Kirk had not preached truth but far-right hate propaganda. For this, one does not need to be killed. But identifying this ideology with America and Christianity is, to put it mildly, an error.
The posthumously constructed myths of politics and religion were exposed, myths used for intimidation and persecution. Condemning the murder sincerely does not mean accepting Kirk’s ideology uncritically. Christianity must be kept separate from MAGA ideology.
Kirk courted youth by repackaging extreme ideology into an apparently palatable form, creating the illusion that it expressed goodness and love. For him, the sheepskin mattered; for Trump, not at all.
Kirk regularly invited opponents to debates, presenting himself as a champion of dialogue and truth. But these were not equal debates. He confronted unprepared individuals before his own supporters, on tilted ground, humiliating them rather than refuting them.
His wife now continues this strategy. For many, her dramatic public “forgiveness” of her husband’s killer rang hollow, especially when staged at an event that Trump and others used to threaten and incite against their political opponents.
The memorial thus became both a beautification of Kirk’s ideology and a threatening rally, a declaration that his death would be avenged, his legacy carried forward as the norm, and his opponents shown no mercy.
Trump attributed the murder – contrary to all evidence – to his political opponents and to the democratic ideology that respects human dignity and human rights. He framed this ideology as the enemy of America and Christianity to be destroyed.
Trump went further than mere antichristian pose: Jesus commanded good deeds even toward persecutors, but Trump professed hatred even for those who neither persecuted him nor Kirk, those who had done nothing against them.
The total fusion of politics and religion, church and state, is now complete. We know its historical precedents and prophetic implications. The tragic murder of a young man is one of its sad consequences, not the first, and not the last.
