Charlie Kirk's Racism & Antisemitism - In Context

In the small degree of backlash I received from last week's blog concerning the death of Charlie Kirk, the one common objection was that I hadn't put his words "in context." Though in that blog I provided links that expounded on the things he said, including videos, this wasn't enough context for Mr. Kirk's apologists - some of whom I'm convinced are not quite sure how context works. Nonetheless, I thought it only fair to address the context in which those objectors wished to frame his more questionable remarks.

1. The Civil Rights Act was "a huge mistake." For more on this, click here.

The counterpoint I was offered by apologists was that when Mr. Kirk said these, he wasn't saying minorities shouldn't have civil rights. What he was saying, rather, was that the legislation was being used as an anti-white weapon. Click here for even more context affirming this was his view. This trope has often been used by white supremacists over the years who saw minorities becoming successful and, being insecure, decided it must have been the result of a conspiratorial legislation to keep white people down.

2. The "is this black pilot qualified?" remark. For more context, click here.

This was not mentioned in my previous blog, but people who took exception somehow found it necessary to bring it up, citing it as an example of his words being taken out of context, so I'll address it here. In this case, however, adding more context does not help the claim that racism was not the intent. Mr. Kirk once said, alluding to DEI, that if he sees a black pilot he's immediately going to wonder if that pilot is qualified, or if they were only hired because of the color of their skin and the pressure to hire minorities. He elaborated on such thinking, by saying, "that's not who I am. That's not what I believe." Rather, he claimed that DEI "invites unwholesome thinking." 

Charlie Kirk was saying, with a straight face, that his racist thoughts were the fault of DEI. This is the equivalent of blaming laws against theft for your temptation to shoplift. Instead of seeing "a pilot," Charlie Kirk admitted he saw a black man whose credentials immediately concerned him, because of his skin color, and blamed this on DEI. If America has become a "race-obsessed" country, viewpoints like Charlie Kirk's are part of that problem.

3. The claim that Jews are using money to undermine American culture and propagate Marxist ideology. For more on his claim, click here.

The counterpoint I received was: "Charlie Kirk was pro-Israel."

This doesn't make one immune from antisemitism. Many Christians are staunch supporters of the modern day nation of Israel because of an eschatological theology that teaches the Holy Land must be in possession of Jews before Christ can return (I am not one of those Christians). This support for Israel's military and political actions comes not necessarily from a support for a historically oppressed people - and it's worth noting not all Israelis are Jews - but support for the doctrine mentioned (a doctrine, it should be noted, many Christians don't subscribe to).

Citing Mr. Kirk's support of the modern day nation state of Israel does not negate his conspiratorial remarks about Jews' alleged scheme to bring about a Marxist America. You can't be an advocate for a people group while simultaneously claiming they're conspiring against you.

Re: The Murder of Charlie Kirk

I first became aware of Charlie Kirk last year when a pro-life organization in my city announced he would be speaking at a private dinner. Having no idea who he was, I looked him up only to find a trove of controversial statements he's made, including the claim that the Civil Rights Act was "a huge mistake." 

It's worth noting the pro-life organization at which he spoke does a wealth of positive things for new and frightened mothers - and fathers, even - in rough places, making them truly pro-life and not simply anti-abortion. This made it all the more disappointing that they would welcome Charlie Kirk, who unrepentantly made such claims as implying Jews are using money to plot a Marxist cultural coup (click here for more context), or that deaths by gun violence are "worth it" for the sake of the 2nd Amendment (click here for more context). These are not pro-life beliefs, and it was a bad look for the organization to be associated with this person.

When I found out about Kirk's murder the day before yesterday, I felt a heavy heart for his family, and for the fact that sociopolitical violence has claimed another life. But that heavy heart soon lightened as I fell prey to making my typical morbid jokes (my dark sense of humor being a coping mechanism for...well, everything) and laughing at memes that made fun of Charlie Kirk's murder. My reasoning was, "I'm still sad for his family, and he was a bigot, so it's kind of okay for me to laugh." Which, of course, is wrong.

Then, God reminded me - not audibly, but you know what I mean - of two other influential racists in American history: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. 

God moved me to think of these two men - who were so racist they tried to start their own country based on the principle of slave ownership being a divine right - and their reactions to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. When the President was shot, widespread outrage gripped the nation, North and South. Jefferson Davis denounced the assassination and felt "it could not be regarded otherwise than as a great misfortune for the South," knowing Lincoln's policy of reconciliation rather than hangings for treason made him the best friend a defeated Confederacy could have at the time.

Robert E. Lee's reaction was more emotional. A cohort who was with the General at the time the news came stated that Lee "covered his face and refused to listen to details of the murder." Lee used a word to describe the assassination that recently became a buzzword in American politics - "deplorable."

God invoked these images to make this point: here were two men so brazenly racist that they saw black people as inferior to whites, mourning - genuinely - for a man of compassion, one who believed in the principle that "all men are created equal." So, if these two could be so deeply grieved for a good man, what does it say about me when I can't show as much empathy as literal slaveowners?

I made excuses for my empty mourning. I was frustrated and disappointed at fellow Christians who were praising Charlie Kirk as a pillar of righteousness, when he espoused such terrible things against Jews, minorities, and victims of gun violence. That, somehow, made it less sinful for me to delight in memes that minimized the taking of a life. Charlie Kirk was, as we all are, made in the image of God. 

I must mourn for a life snuffed out, and that a life was used to promote hideous ideologies. I must mourn that someone was so filled with hopeless rage that they took it upon themselves to kill. I must mourn that Charlie Kirk's family has been deprived of their husband and father. I must mourn that so many of my fellow believers in Christ are lionizing a man who represented the values of Christ no more than the Ku Klux Klan. And I must mourn that our President, aware of Charlie Kirk's beliefs, nonetheless called him "the most eloquent truth-teller" in recent times.

I'll mourn for all of this, with genuine grief, and will eschew the memes and morbid jokes I've made concerning Charlie Kirk's murder. These words of Jesus have floated in my head since the day of Kirk's death: "by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

-Matthew 12:37

[Edit, 9-13-25: It occurs to me I should add a few words addressing the incredibly lopsided grief of conservatives, both in politics and private citizens, when it comes to victims of gun violence. Donald Trump did not order flags to be flown at half-staff after the murders of Democratic politician Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark in June - but did so for Charlie Kirk, whose qualification for such an honor was saying things Trump likes. Just two weeks before Kirk's death, a shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, which killed two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, was met by Republicans with a fraction of the grief and shock for Kirk, the usual "thoughts and prayers" cliche, which has now become little more than a meme. This lack of outrage is absolutely disgusting. And perhaps it's just as disgusting that I didn't go for my blog when these tragedies occurred.]

Photo courtesy WTSP

Hindsight & Hiroshima

If, by some phenomena from the mind of Serling or Wells, I was whisked away to 1945, placed in the United States presidency, and stripped of all my twenty-first century hindsight in a temporary time travel lobotomy of sorts, I can say with all honesty I probably would have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.

I don't mean to boast about my lack of omnipotence or exceeding holiness. But the fact is I don't have the delusion I'm so progressive that, put in Harry Truman's place, I'd have refused to unleash such hideous and unprecedented destruction on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With an obstinate enemy refusing to surrender, prolonging a war that had already cost millions of lives, with the possibility of more offensives and operations that would cost more, with a world economy suffering from the mass carnage, and with Stalin and the Soviets eyeing my every move, I'd have been ready and willing – and desperate enough – to drop the bombs if I thought doing so would end such a bloody war.

I'd have been right: Hirohito signed a surrender half a month after the atomic bombs made ashes and rubble of those two cities. I'd have been right, and I'd have been glad. But just as I have no delusion I'd have been a conscientious objector objector to atomic warfare, I don't have the notion that I'd have been in a mood for rejoicing; I know, or at least I hope I know, that it would have been a decision that made my guts churn, my heart turn upside down, and made sleep impossible for nights on end. I may not be as pure as those who maintain they'd have eschewed with disgust the atomic option, but I do believe I'd have been shaken to my core.

Harry Truman was the first U.S. President to meet Reverend Billy Graham. Of all the “celebrity evangelists,” so to speak, Billy Graham is widely respected as one who was sincere and genuine in his message, a man not motivated by personal gain or public persona. Yet even Harry Truman couldn't stand him. He found him to be a self-righteous, meddling, pious nuisance. Graham once asked him about his beliefs, to which Truman responded that he believed in the “Golden Rule,” and in the Beatitudes. Billy Graham responded, “That's not enough!” Truman was indignant.

As believer in the Christian doctrine, I know Billy Graham was right, as far as our doctrine concerning the salvation of one's eternal soul. But that's twenty-first century me who believes such. It's modern day me who “knows” that. If I were twentieth century Harry Truman, if I'd have just nuked two large cities, and was now burdened by a stalemate of a war in Korea, I'd have likely told Billy Graham – despite all my Christian convictions in the twenty-first century – to kindly stuff it. Or, more likely, to unkindly stuff it.

I don't doubt my ability to break Christian instruction any less than I doubt my willingness to destroy entire cities in 1945. I know, being the sinner I am, and without centuries of Biblical prophecy to aid the faith I have today, I'd have been among those who mocked Jesus when He was on the cross and slowly dying (and dying for me, no less). I know in my heart it would have taken the Day of Pentecost to change my mind.

It's no slight annoyance to hear those who are admittedly more pure and all-knowing than me – I'm truly jealous of their holiness – to muse about what they'd have done to end the war with Japan: a naval blockade, a small offensive here or there, or even negotiations. Imagine being so irresistibly holy that even World War II Japan would be compelled to sit with you at the negotiating table for a peaceful resolution.

We're kidding nobody. We'd have dropped the bombs. We may have even done worse given the chance to go back in time: we'd have segregated our restaurants and water fountains, refused women the vote, dismissed Joseph Lister and his theories about bacteria and handwashing. We might have even owned slaves.

I certainly hope if I'd been born in 1810 I'd have abhorred slavery. I hope I'd have had a pastor who taught the truth of Scripture and not twisted it for ugly white supremacist sermons. But I'm not without blemish; I wasn't born progressive with social justice in my chromosomes. Being raised in a racist environment that proclaimed owning Black men to be the right of the white man, I must face the possibility that I'd have been susceptible to the evils of the day.

Maybe I should keep all this in mind – Hiroshima, the South, the segregated water fountain – when I cringed at my ignorant grandfather for using the word “colored.” He wasn't born a modern day moral hero like you and me.

MLK Had a Dream - Not a Magic Spell

(EDIT, January 20, 2025: I hope this blog is re-read on the day we inaugurate a President who was literally endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, and who did nothing to disavow that endorsement.)

Each time an act of racial injustice or controversy erupts in America, a certain type of people will look at the chaos and fury of the protests and claim, "Dr. King would not approve. They should be more like Dr. King."

We often emptily invoke MLK's name in an effort to suggest racism isn't as big a deal as people think. We make him to be the great crusader who quashed racism, that the "I Have a Dream" speech was the magic spell that cured bigotry forever. We tell ourselves these things not out of reverence for Dr. King, but so we don't have to face the fact that racism and oppression are still very real and powerful monsters. We tell ourselves racism in modern America is an invention of the liberal media, or some other such boogeyman, designed to divide us. 

So, when protests turn violent, no matter who's at fault, we use a cliche we've invented that goes: "be like Martin Luther King!" 

Yet we have no idea what we mean by that. If it simply means, "be more peaceful and you'll cure racism," our ignorance is blatant as we forget that King, a peaceful activist himself, met his end in an act of racial violence - proving racism did not end at "Free at last, free at last..."

The Forgotten Murder of Alberta King

Bafflingly, few Americans realize that Alberta King - mother of Martin Luther King, Jr - was shot to death just six years after her son, as she sat her Atlanta church's organ, on June 30, 1974. She was 69 years old. Her killer was Marcus Chenault, a member of an extremist wing of the Black Hebrew Israelites. When I first learned of this event, I was stunned that I hadn't previously known it. Upon reading of this murder, I assumed that the heinous nature of the act, and its high-profile victim, would have seared it into American consciousness as much as the assassination of her son in 1968.

In the wake of the chaos that's erupted (that is, simply re-awoken from its troubled, fitful, one-eyed sleep) in the past two weeks after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, I think I've figured out why the murder of Alberta King is not a more widely known crime, unjustly relegated to an obscure footnote in the history of American race relations.

Every time a high-profile injustice is committed against a Black person, and the unsolved issue of racial oppression again rises in heated debate, violence, or social uprising, there are invariably a vocal number of Americans who dismiss racism as a dying issue. There are countless people who, whether too cowardly, too weak, or too deluded to face such a remaining struggle, have developed the revisionist notion that, with two events, racism in America was forever destroyed. Those two events being:
the Emancipation Proclamation, and the "I Have a Dream" speech.

Any further escalation of tensions or oppression is labeled by these kinds of thinkers as liberal agitation designed by some unseen blue-haired septum-pierced boogeyman out to divide the country. And to prove their point, these people will almost always quote from Martin Luther King's famous speech. They will cherry-pick their favorite lines or exalt the speech as if it were a magic spell Dr. King cast on the country that forever ended racism.

Despite the fact that King was later shot and killed - by a racist.

And it's in the recent inevitable rekindling of these revisions to history that I've realized why the murder of Alberta King is such an obscure event in the grand picture of racism in America.
It's the same reason so many white people often fail to mention her son's murder - simply put, it doesn't fit their narrative. That narrative being that Dr. King crushed all prejudice with his marches and his speeches, therefore there's no need to talk about it anymore, not again, never.

The addition of Alberta King's murder to her son's story is too awkward of a detail, too lengthy and dark of an afterword. The story of Martin Luther King works better, revisionists may reason, if it ends panning away from his lifeless body on that balcony in Memphis to an epitaph of hope, despite his murder. A story is strange when there are too many more events to absorb after the climax. The flow of the story is affected. Maybe the shooting of Alberta King dashes the hope otherwise found in the coda to the life story of her son. It's too painful. It rends the heart. It's a reminder we're too fragile to take, a thought we're too ashamed to consider: that a mother's death at the hands of racial madness would suggest the work for which her son died was left incomplete, despite how amazing his work truly was - a telling sign that even with all that the Civil Rights Movement accomplished, minorities are still blatantly oppressed in the United States.

We've left the murder of Alberta King as a footnote. We might even have the audacity to say, "but she was shot by another Black person, therefore it's not the same kind of racism." But her violent death, like the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, must be remembered as another bloody and horrific day in the history of American race relations. We must unearth this woman's death from the archives to which we've relegated it, and display it as it is - a glaring reminder that racial division and the bloodshed it causes is alive and well, breathing fire, no matter how many MLK quotes we handle with carelessness once every January, twice every February.

Why Christians Don't Have To Care What Joel Osteen Says

One of the great things about true Christian faith is that the doctrine we follow is governed by Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, and not...well, "some dude." The Bible, and everything in it, was written by divine inspiration. As for what is not in the Bible, God is not only the divine Author of the Scripture, but its divine Editor as well. And God being eternally good, and never contradictory or changing (James 1:17), those who believe in the sovereignty of Jesus and not the authority of people have no fear of following an immoral facet of this faith.

But, there are sects of those who claim Christ in a twisted way, but are led by mere men - dudes prone to bias, agendas, and corruption. For example, the presidents, "prophets," and leaders of the Mormon church held for about one hundred fifty years the gross doctrine that black people were all cursed, descendants of Cain. In Mormon Doctrine, Bruce R. McConkie wrote, "Those who were less valiant in pre-existence and who thereby had certain spiritual restrictions imposed on them during mortality are known to us as the negroes. Such spirits are sent to earth through the lineage of Cain, the mark put upon him for his rebellion against God, and his murder of Abel being a black skin."
Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, wrote, "Had I anything to do with the negro, I would confine them by strict law to their own species, and put them on a national equalization." 
One of Smith's predecessors, Brigham Young, echoed these racist sentiments: "Cain slew his brother. Cain might have been killed, and that would put a termination to that line of human beings. This was not to be, and the Lord put a mark upon him, which was the flat nose and black skin...the Abolitionists cannot help it, nor in the least alter that decree...If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be."
However in 1978, as the tide was thankfully strongly turning concerning America's racism, then-president of the Latter-Day Saints, Spencer W. Kimball, announced that God had apparently changed His mind concerning black people, and that they were no longer cursed.

The point of this is not to bring up the history of racist doctrine in the Mormon church, but rather to make the point that this faith's doctrines were concocted and changed throughout the years by mere men. And these mere men, whatever they stated, true or false, was "gospel" for the Mormons.

Faith in Christ's authority and sovereignty - and His alone - does not carry this conundrum.

For example, when Fred Phelps, former leader of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, would say hideous things like "God hates f*gs," this did not reflect the belief of all, or even most, Christians, and certainly did not reflect or affect God's words in Scripture. Fred Phelps was just some dude, whose ravings reflected only himself and the wanderers who followed his warped view. Jesus remained Lord, while Phelps remained only a bitter, raving man who led others astray.
Likewise, if another controversial figure in Christianity, such as a Joel Osteen or others of his ilk (certainly not to compare Joel Osteen to Fred Phelps), whose teachings on the so-called "prosperity gospel" have been rejected by many Christians who find no basis for it in - again - God's word, say something questionable, it does not reflect the truth of God, nor are Osteen's sayings precedents for all believers to follow.

A few years ago when Haiti was plagued with natural disasters, Pat Robertson, of 700 Club fame, attributed the tragedies to some "pact with Satan" that Haiti had made long ago. There have also been many who blame tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and the like, on moral decline in America and the rest of the world. But we know this notion to be refuted by the Bible, as God said after the Great Flood, "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21).
Again, Christians were not obliged to heed Robertson's ill-informed statement because God's truth trumps the words of men, even if those men profess to be God's spokespeople.

One of the only "televangelists" (though he's served in many more capacities for the church of God than just televangelism) I enjoy listening to is Dr. Charles Stanley...out of the, like, four televangelists I've ever listened to. Lately however, I discovered that he and I have differing views on the timeline of the Great Tribulation and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (keep in mind however that I still require much more study and prayer on this matter, as we all do - I could be butt-over-tea-kettle wrong in my view; Spirit and prayer will tell). So, because I find Dr. Stanley to be a well-spoken, gentle, and passionate man of God, does that mean I should abandon my views, or even ignore what the Holy Spirit lays on my heart concerning those issues? Absolutely not.
I don't have the nerve to say "Charles Stanley is wrong, and I'm right," as I'm not even a cup-bearer in God's Kingdom, but merely a jester (but given entrance to the Kingdom by the grace of God nonetheless).
But, I do know that if the Holy Spirit convicts me in my future studies and prayer on the End Times, and affirms that what I've learned from Scripture concerning those things is true, even if they don't line up with Dr. Stanley's views, then I must abide by the Spirit, and not Dr. Stanley.

Therefore, seek not the wisdom of Charles Stanley, Billy Graham, Ravi Zacharias, or Beth Moore. If these servants of God said something wonderful, and in accord with His gorgeous Gospel, then praise the Holy Spirit who gave it to them. We must seek answers in prayer and the holy Scripture; if God's servants preach a sermon, write a discourse, or make a remark that jibes with the Word, praise the Lord and not the servant. We should encourage the man or woman of God in their proclaiming of the Gospel, but we must always acknowledge first and foremost Christ - for, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-3, 14).

Those rooted in Jesus Christ may be condemned and criticized by an unfeeling, unbelieving world, but they have a much easier yoke to carry than those who follow the ever-changing, ever-dreadful words of men.

"Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever." -Hebrews 13:8