What Charlie Kirk’s death exposed about Evangelical political silence

By Brandon Showalter, Opinion writer and social commentator

(Republished from The Christian Post – christianpost.com)

The assassination of Charlie Kirk one year ago (Sept. 10) brought to the fore a long-simmering debate among Evangelicals about how Christians engage with politics — one that isn’t going away anytime soon.

Here’s the crux of it.

Many sincere, theologically orthodox Evangelicals have grown enormously frustrated in recent years with a certain swath of religious elites who argue from their perches that the Gospel is neither left nor right but transcends politics. To be sure, there’s some vitally important truth in that assertion. But the frustration stems from the unmistakable ideological asymmetry in major culture-shaping institutions, which have been dominated for decades by the progressive Left.

Many socio-political and theological layers could be explored here, but suffice it to say: the perception has been that elite leaders effectively counsel churches to rise above the fray, exhibit charity and winsomeness above all, and recognize the complexity of political systems. In practice, though, this has often looked like avoiding politically incorrect truths that social conservatives emphasize, to appeal to and ingratiate themselves with a largely secular tastemaker class that resolutely opposes those values. This approach is sometimes called “third wayism.”

Proponents insist that this “third” (neither left nor right) way is a healthier, more distinctly Christian approach to engage matters of public concern. Critics say that in practice, third wayism punches hard at Right-wing sins while staying relatively muted on — or even coddling — Left-wing sins, while technically claiming to oppose both. Elsewhere, it sometimes manifests as a more truncated approach: we don’t need to fight social injustices; we just need to believe and proclaim the Gospel.

Whatever you thought of his methods, a largely self-taught Kirk — with no university degrees — dove headlong into college campuses and unapologetically challenged the spirit of the age on issue after issue, from an unapologetically conservative posture, often citing his faith in Jesus. His life challenged the cultural engagement paradigms elites had promoted, and his death served as a rebuke of sorts, forcing many to reconsider them.

There is some real tension here, and I’ll offer my honest take.

Church services should not be overtly political rallies for any side or party. The concern about overly politicizing the Gospel with rank partisanship is legitimate, and many people are right to be cautious about it, particularly given the thorny social dynamics that exist in every church. Mixing politics with ministry can distort a congregation’s mission and even become idolatrous. Genuine repentance is needed where that’s happened — and in some contexts, it absolutely has. Pastors and elders also carry enormously hard, pressure-filled jobs, and far be it from me to demand they weigh in on every headline or teach on every touchy issue week after week. None of this is easy to navigate.

But here’s the rub: I believe Charlie Kirk’s witness forced many to reckon with this idea theologically — particularly given how brutally he was killed.

Many otherwise faithful churches have failed to grapple with the reality of radical evil, mistaking silence on politics for piety. As one friend of mine put it, it’s the “we don’t do politics, we do Jesus” approach: teach the Scripture, worship the Lord, serve the needy — but stay mostly quiet on public matters and trust God to sort it out. It might look holy. In effect, it’s “Qué Será, Será” with religious drapery.

This posture, although it varies from place to place, has spread through Evangelicalism in recent years, partly as an overcorrection — leaders have watched clumsy religious politicking play out and want no part of it, which is understandable.

I won’t pretend everything comes down to gender ideology. But I know the issue well enough to say plainly: it’s an assault on reality that is an affront to the Gospel, and it happens to sit at the bleeding edge of so much of today’s social chaos. It also happens to be germane to the reckoning surrounding Kirk’s death, including the moment he was murdered.

Over the years, it has gutted me to hear from parishioners whose children are caught up in gender confusion, ideological indoctrination, and institutionalized medical harm, only to watch church leaders mostly wring their hands or freeze. Some are simply caught off guard — a disorientation I understand and remember from my own past, the first time I saw how deeply our culture had been ideologically captured. Families were, and still are, being fractured by it, while churches, with few exceptions, seemed haplessly asleep at the wheel.

Many religious elites, by and large, refused to address the subject with the unequivocal clarity it deserved — either because they considered it beneath them, or because they were quietly going along with it. To many observers, some leaders seemed more concerned with staying in the good graces of the secular ruling class, hiding behind “nuance” and “winsomeness” that reads, to anyone paying attention, as moral cowardice. People suffering through the nightmarish horror that transgenderism unleashes can spot that evasiveness instantly.

When a child’s life and future are on the line so dramatically — puberty blockers combined with cross-sex hormones cause permanent sterility, for instance — people start asking why their leaders can’t be bold, especially about this. Didn’t Jesus have plenty to say about harming children? These families need help, not theological hedging.

Personally, I’d rather sit across from clear-eyed atheists (I know and respect many) who are willing to be outspoken and truthful than one more religious “thought leader” dodging hard questions with carefully chosen words.

One more thing, as the one-year anniversary of Kirk’s assassination approaches: I’ve spoken with several people — men especially, some of whom disagreed with Kirk on various issues and some of the voices he platformed — whose posture toward public engagement has shifted markedly since his murder.

Seared in their memories is the bleakness of a 31-year-old man shot in the neck, keeling over in his chair, dying on camera. They also watched in horror, in the days that followed, people gleefully celebrating his death online and at work, some later dressing up as a murdered Kirk for Halloween. Their costume was a white “Freedom” T-shirt like the one he was wearing when shot, spattered with fake blood. Then came the details about the man accused of killing him: steeped in online resentment, reportedly with a trans-identified partner connected to the “furry” world. This man is alleged to have killed Kirk when Kirk was answering a question about trans-related violence.

It’s uncanny how many of those people with whom I’ve spoken since that day have said some version of: I’m done. Done! I’m done pretending that polite, ‘winsome’ silence — or endlessly caveated nuance — is the pinnacle of Christian virtue. I’m going to say what’s true, boldly, whatever it costs.

Having spent years in the diabolical trenches of gender ideology, the details about the question Kirk was answering when he was shot and about the assassin and his partner hit me especially hard. Anyone who’s dealt with trans activists knows the threats of violence aren’t hypothetical.

I’m reminded, too, of a scene in the 2006 motion picture “Amazing Grace,” where fellow Evangelicals press William Wilberforce to keep fighting the British slave trade through politics, after he confesses feeling torn between being an advocate in government and doing the work of God.

“We humbly suggest that you can do both,” one of them tells him.

Mixing politics and faith can go badly wrong, and I don’t want that for America. And it has gone wrong in certain chapters of our history. But in some notable ways, Kirk boldly, and in my view rightly, challenged both the religious elite attitudes and the “we don’t do politics, we do Jesus” posture that has shaped so many corners of the Church. His challenge has coincided with countless children and teenagers being irreversibly harmed in one of the worst medical scandals in history, while far too many congregations mistook their own relative silence for righteousness.

Can you imagine telling Wilberforce and the other abolitionists that a largely hands-off, “winsome” approach toward the slavers was the holier path? I genuinely can’t.

Maranatha.