Now is definitely the time to call out the rank hypocrisy in Christian media and Big Eva over their responses to the death of Charlie Kirk. And there is no better place to start than Christianity Today, an outlet helmed by Russell Moore. Christianity Today was much of what Charlie Kirk stood against, being, perhaps, the most liberal Evangelical news outlet. Given the effort they put into boosting Kamala Harris among Evangelicals, it’s not surprising that they would be abysmal and sinister in their reporting on Charlie Kirk’s death at the hands of an assassin.
First, let’s contrast the headlines between Kirk’s death and that of their saint, George Floyd. Floyd, the career criminal, is painted as a model of gospel transformation. Charlie Kirk’s headline, “Died: Charlie Kirk, Activist Who Championed ‘MAGA Doctrine’“, is as though he died of cancer in his twilight years.
The article makes four references to Kirk having been murdered. Three of them are other people’s quotes calling it a political assassination.
The governor of Utah called Kirk’s death a political assassination. Some Christian leaders, including the former pastor of the Chicago-area megachurch that Kirk attended in high school, said the political activist should be seen as a martyr.
“So grieved /shocked for the world to lose our dear friend Charlie Kirk,” James MacDonald wrote on X. “He is a martyr, of the cause to take America back from the evil one. … Charlie exhausted himself for righteous causes and was unashamed of his saving faith in Jesus Christ.”
The senior pastor of the Phoenix-area megachurch that Kirk regularly attended as an adult added that Kirk was killed because of his biblical views of truth.
“What the enemy has tried to do today is silence the people of God, silence the men and women of God,” Luke Barnett explained in his Wednesday-night sermon. “Well, you just unleashed the dragon.”
After citing the Governor of Utah, Christianity Today acknowledges the treatment of Charlie Kirk as a martyr, but chose James MacDonald as the voice of this viewpoint. James MacDonald is a famously disgraced megachurch pastor with multiple arrests at this point. His being quoted is intentionally done to diminish the notion. The article concludes its nonchalant reporting with a biography of Kirk.
From there, Mike Cosper, their premier content creator, equivocated, “The absolutely disgusting behavior of people — right and left — after the murder of Charlie Kirk is probably the thing that will get me to sign of X forever.”
Mike Cosper wrote in his substack:
I’m writing this late on Wednesday night, unable to sleep, unable to shake the sense that something is amiss in our culture, and we are slipping into madness. Many of my right-leaning friends have bought the narrative that violence is a tool of the political left, ignoring the very real political violence that led to the death of two Minnesota lawmakers, or the assault on Paul Pelosi, or the violence of January 6th. Others on the Left, in a dodge of their own escalating rhetoric of “the end of democracy,” “genocide in Gaza,” and “Trump is Hitler,” have blamed guns, or the provocations of Right-wing rhetoric.
The Minnesota lawmakers were killed after they defected from party lines on a minor vote. The assault on Paul Pelosi was not politically motivated by rightwing views. And January 6 was a justified response carried out at the appropriate venue for a redress of grievances following the 2020 election. The only person killed was Ashley Babbitt, one of the patriots that day, at the hands of a diversity hire Capitol Police officer. To equate the left and the right for political violence is unequal weights and measures after the “2020 Summer of Love” and escalating Antifa agitation amidst ongoing mass deportations.
Mike Cosper is trotting out the “both sides are the problem narrative” in an attempt to protect liberalism from the long overdue recognition of its degradation to society. Cosper is, in effect, obfuscating the crimes of the agitators on his side for grasping at straws for equivocations.
