Hours after Charlie Kirk was killed in Utah, Pastor Jamal Bryant condemned the shooting of the right-wing activist on social media. Videos of the event shocked and horrified him, said Bryant, the leader of a large, predominantly Black church in suburban Atlanta.
But in the days that followed, Bryant said, he grew unnerved by conservatives and white Christians praising Kirk while ignoring some of his most controversial rhetoric, particularly on issues of race. Many conservative Christians — particularly white evangelicals — across the country have lionized Kirk, 31, saying he died while proselytizing for his Christianity-influenced conservative ideals. Some equated his killing to the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Tens of thousands of people at Kirk’s memorial at a football stadium in Arizona on Sunday listened for hours as speakers framed his death in stark religious terms, as part of a “spiritual war” that would grow conservative Christianity and align it more closely with the U.S. government. Speakers called Kirk a “martyr” and a “prophet.” His colleagues at Turning Point USA, a conservative youth movement, said the event, attended by President Donald Trump, satisfied Kirk’s dream to “bring the Holy Spirit into a Trump rally.”
Kirk’s death — and the embrace of his legacy by some conservative Christians — is forcing some Black Christians like Bryant to reconcile Kirk’s insulting comments about people of color, which many considered racist, with values of tolerance and empathy that are fundamental to their faith.
“I think that their allegiance to their political association trumps their connection to the cross,” Bryant said of church leaders who have praised Kirk. “This is really a critical moment for race relations in the nation, and what the church says and does or does not say is going to play an active role in that.”
After he posted on social media that someone can simultaneously believe that violence is wrong and that “how somebody dies doesn’t erase how they lived,” referring to Kirk, Bryant said he was inundated with vitriolic messages.
“The amount of hate speech that both my wife and I have received on social media, the number of derogatory calls and slurs and pejorative statements left at our church, speaks volumes,” Bryant said. “And all of these are spoken by people who claim to be Christian.”
In interviews over the past week, Black pastors said they were offended by Kirk’s takes on diversity, including describing the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 as “a huge mistake.” On an episode of his podcast, Kirk criticized United Airlines’ 2021 announcement that 50 percent of graduates from its flight training academy would be women or people of color, saying: “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
Later, Kirk said that his remarks were meant to illustrate that “DEI invites unwholesome thinking” and that he thought “anybody of any skin color can become a qualified pilot.”
Black church leaders have also balked at comparisons of Kirk’s death to the assassination of King, whom Kirk once called “awful.” They worry that efforts to lionize Kirk will deepen the rift between Black and white evangelicals and reverse a welcome trend toward integration in some congregations.
Some say they are trying to find ways to celebrate Kirk’s ability to spread a Christian message despite his sometimes racially divisive comments.
After Kirk’s death, Stanley Talbert, the senior minister at Normandie Church of Christ in Los Angeles, which has a predominantly Black congregation, said some members asked that the congregation pray for Kirk. In his sermon, he sought to condemn Kirk’s shooting while acknowledging that Black people were also victims of violence, noting that at least five historically Black colleges and universities received threats the week of his death.
It is a message, he said, that leaves him “between a rock and a hard place.”
“Black Christians have empathy,” Talbert said. “The frustration is that other ethnic groups do not empathize with the Black experience and Black suffering.”
Esau McCaulley, an associate professor of the New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois, said he is trying to strike a delicate balance when addressing Kirk’s death before the multiracial congregation at the church where he is founding pastor.
The activist’s words were likely to have been hurtful to many members, McCaulley said, but his death robbed Kirk of a chance to grow in his understanding that empathy is “a Christian superpower.”
“I believe that no matter who you are or what you’ve done, you have the potential to grow and change to be better. And for that reason, anyone’s death is a tragedy,” McCaulley said. “It’s sad if someone dies in the middle of their story and we never get to see how the rest of it changes, because you never know what God could do in someone’s life.”
The need to respond to Kirk’s death tests the church’s ability to bridge any lingering racial divisions, he said.
“National events don’t define what a congregation is,” McCaulley said. “It unveils where the congregation is.”
Among some conservative-leaning Black pastors, Kirk’s grisly public shooting and the mixed response to it, including among those critical of the activist’s inflammatory rhetoric, has also led to anguished reactions.
Three days after Kirk’s killing, B. Dwayne Hardin, the founder and senior pastor at the Embassy ATL church north of Atlanta, was barely into his Saturday sermon when he acknowledged that not all of his congregants might want to hear what he was about to say.
“You can turn a deaf ear to me right now because you think I am going in a certain direction,” Hardin said. “If it’s easier for you, you can make a departure. I’m good.”
Hardin, a Trump supporter who hosted a “Believers for Trump” event at his church last year, told the congregation that he was appalled by Kirk’s killing and also horrified by the actions of people who claim to be Christian but then rejoice in “the destruction of the people around us.”
“For you to celebrate … or have no sensitivity to the death of a whole man with a whole wife and children … What the H-E-double-hockey-sticks?”
In the audience, people clapped, and a woman shouted, “Yes!”
Hardin, who did not respond to a request for comment, suggested that many people did not fully understand who Kirk was — including how he had ministered around the world for his Christian faith.
“Who are we to wish evil upon somebody because you don’t fully understand who they were?” Hardin said.
Kirk’s faith became a much larger part of his message in recent years.
“I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important. The most important thing is my faith,” he said on a podcast in June. He also called for the end of the separation of church and state.
But not all Black conservatives say they are able to look past Kirk’s comments on race.
The Rev. Dwight McKissic, who leads a conservative Black church in Arlington, Texas, said he agrees with “every word” of what Kirk said about the Bible — but not his comments on race.
Religious leaders’ embrace of Kirk, despite his views on diversity, will likely exacerbate fissures between Black and white evangelicals, McKissic said.
McKissic loosened the ties between his church, Cornerstone Baptist Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention in recent years, he said, because of concerns that white evangelicals don’t care enough about healing racism.
“It’s a mystery to Black people how evangelicals can hear all the quotes, no matter how they try to contextualize them, and they’re okay with that,” he said. “That lets us know we’re worshiping and fellowshipping with people who view us exactly as Charlie Kirk views the Black airplane pilots.”
In the meantime, he is telling his congregants to prepare.
“This Charlie Kirk thing has expedited things. I told my people to get ready spiritually, financially. Get your house prepared,” he said. “Get everything it takes, just in case a civil war does break out.”
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