At the memorial for Charlie Kirk on Sunday, some of the highest-ranking members of the federal government boldly proclaimed the gospel message of human sin and salvation through Christ. It was a powerful moment, and one of many in which Kirk’s death was used to share the same Christianity he constantly preached on college campuses.
The moment was a rebuke to the persistent idea of some Christians that citizenship in a heavenly kingdom means we should avoid using earthly political avenues to advance the truth. The term “Christian nationalism” has been abused so as to have little definitional meaning, but if watching the secretary of state and other national leaders proclaim the good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection is “Christian nationalism,” as some have painted the memorial service since Sunday, we could use more of it.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recounted to an audience of millions how man was created to enjoy life with God for eternity, but was separated from Him by sin and can only be redeemed through Christ.
“[S]in entered the world and separated us from our Creator, and so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us. And He suffered like men. And He died like a man. But on the third day, He rose unlike any mortal man.”
Rubio went on to note how Christ “didn’t rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh.” Although Jesus “rose to the heaven … He promised He would return.”
“And when He returns — because He took on that death, because he carried that cross — we were freed from the sin that separated us from Him. And when He returns, there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and we will all be together, and we are going to have a great reunion there again with Charlie and all the people we love.”
Vice President J.D. Vance indicated Kirk gave him the courage to speak about his own faith.
“I was telling somebody backstage that I always felt a little uncomfortable talking about my faith in public, as much as I loved the Lord and as much as it was an important part of my life. I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life. And that is an undeniable legacy of the great Charlie Kirk,” Vance said.
“That unshakable belief in the gospel led [Charlie] to see differences in opinion not as battlefields to conquer but as way stations in the pursuit of truth. He knew it was right to love others, your neighbor, your interlocutor, your enemy. But he also understood his duty to say what is right and what is wrong, to distinguish what is false from what is true,” Vance continued.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reminded Americans that the struggle in America was not merely a political one, but a spiritual one.
“[O]ver time, [Charlie] realized, like so many of us have, that this is not a political war. It’s not even a cultural war. It’s a spiritual war. Faith and family first. There is a God, and as Charlie would say, it is not us,” Hegseth said. “We’re sinners, saved only by grace, in need of the gospel. You see, we always did need less government, but what Charlie understood and infused into his movement is we also needed a lot more God.”
The bold message of Christianity was, of course, met with rebuke from the left and members of the media, with multiple outlets and individuals fearmongering that Kirk’s memorial signaled a rise in “Christian nationalism.”
“The US veers toward Christian nationalism,” a CNN headline read the day after Kirk’s memorial service.
Former CNN host Don Lemon suggested the leaders who quoted scripture were “demanding submission.”
“What we saw in that arena was not simply faith finding public expression. It was religious nationalism on full display,” Lemon said.
NPR cited Matthew Boedy (“an English professor at the University of North Georgia who studies Christian nationalism”) to fearmonger that calling Kirk a martyr can be “dangerous.”
“The reason that it’s dangerous is because we can see throughout the history of the church, using ‘martydrom’ often rallies people to go after their enemies and to commit crusades of different types,” Boedy told the outlet.
The phrase “Christian nationalism,” has been used as a smear against conservative Christians in recent years. As pastor and author Harold Ritsau wrote earlier this year, “it appears that the term … created by neo-Marxists is another attempt to terrify Christians out of sharing God’s perspective on moral issues in the public sphere. It attempts to dissuade Christians from fulfilling their vocational duties in the civil sphere.”
In fact, some Christians, as Ristau noted, have used “screeds against ‘Christian nationalism’ to avoid participating in the public sphere and to justify what amounts to antinomianism: the belief that, because Christians are saved by grace alone through Jesus Christ’s death on the cross, living a godly life in accord with divine and moral law, and shaped by biblical principles, is at best optional.”
What Americans saw on Sunday was not a demand for a theocracy or religious submission. It was a peaceful, public expression of Christian faith and biblical principles — the same faith and principles that have long shaped the American story. As the founders themselves saw it, America was designed to flourish under the guidance of a moral and religious people.
John Adams said, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
George Washington, in his farewell address, said, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
The founders themselves modeled the entire republic on Christianity — the notion that all men are created equal is an inherently Christian claim. America’s bedrock was laid because it rested on a Christian moral foundation.
That is why national leaders proclaiming the gospel in a moment of intense tragedy and turmoil this weekend was normal, healthy, and historically American. After years of a Biden administration that pushed radical godlessness in the form of DEI, transgenderism, and abortion on demand, America doesn’t need less Christian faith in public life — it needs more.