Charlie Kirk's funeral was a marathon of Christian Nationalism

A capacity crowd filled Glendale’s State Farm Stadium on Sunday, with thousands of people shut out of the 63,000-seat venue and directed to overflow seating at the nearby Desert Diamond Arena. Then, in both venues, they sat through a more than five-hour marathon of unapologetic Christian nationalism in honor of Charlie Kirk, the Arizona-based right-wing activist who was murdered on Sept. 10 at a college event in Utah.

Christian nationalism is both a political and religious ideology that seeks to dilute the separation of church and state in order to more closely align American values and governance with an extremely conservative interpretation of the Bible. That blurring of lines was on full display Sunday, with Kirk’s widow forgiving her husband’s assassin and President Donald Trump denouncing “radical left lunatics” as the cause of most of the political violence in the country.

Perhaps not since the Reagan administration has the nation seen its highest government officials embracing evangelical Christianity to such a degree. The president, cabinet members and far-right luminaries spoke at the memorial, calling the 31-year-old Kirk a “martyr” and likening him to Jesus Christ, St. Paul and St. Steven, the first Christian martyr according to the Bible.

“I have talked more about Jesus Christ in the past two weeks than I have my entire time in public life,” Vice President J.D. Vance told the audience. “And that is an undeniable legacy of the great Charlie Kirk.”

It was an overtly religious theme driven home again and again by the speakers, who included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson, White House political advisor Stephen Miller, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and even Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who is reportedly Hindu.

“Only Christ is king, our Lord and Savior, our sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus,” Hegseth said. “Fear God and fear no man. That was Charlie Kirk.”


Organized by Turning Point USA, the ultra-conservative youth movement Kirk founded in his parents’ Illinois basement at 18 before turning it into a Phoenix-based political power, the event had the feel of a megachurch service with occasional carnival touches. Sparklers spewed onstage. Christian hymns serenaded the crowd between speakers as Biblical quotes and images of Kirk flashed on an immense video screen above. Outside, Trump and Kirk merch was hawked at several stands.

Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, the group’s political wing, told the audience that it had been Kirk’s dream to fill out a stadium with a Turning Point event to bring “the holy spirit to a Trump rally.” Bowyer flashed a photo of a full stadium that he said Kirk had once texted him. “Charlie, I’m happy to report that we’re standing in your vision,” Bowyer said.

The memorial often took a dark, almost Manichean turn. Miller divided the world into two opposing camps — those who stand for “what is good, what is virtuous” and “the forces of wickedness and evil.” Miller, who has spearheaded Trump’s intentionally cruel mass deportation agenda, left no doubt on which side he saw himself and the assembled.

“The light will defeat the dark,” Miller said. “We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened.”

Far right online personality Benny Johnson, whose YouTube channel features illustrations of Jesus and Kirk shaking hands in heaven, offered a fiery address. He claimed God had saved Trump from assassination last year so as to fulfill the words of the apostle Paul, whom he said preached of “Godly leadership,” such as Trump’s. (Trump, it should be said, is a multi-time divorcee, serial adulterer and adjudicated abuser of women who has historically had trouble quoting any passage from the Bible.)

“May we pray that our rulers here rightfully instituted and given power by our God wield the sword for the terror of evil men in our nation,” Johnson said. “In Charlie's memory.”

Trump endorses hate, Kirk’s widow preaches forgiveness

Trump, who was the last to speak, seemed more than willing to fulfill that wish. Trump said he did not agree with Kirk’s widow, Erika, who moments before had preached the forgiveness of one’s enemies.

“I hate my opponents, and don’t want the best for them,” Trump said, a rare utterance that should sail through any fact-checking.

Trump called Kirk a “martyr to American freedom” who had created a political “juggernaut” in Turning Point USA, which he credited with helping him get elected in 2016 and 2024. Trump also repeated his oft-suggested false claim that he had actually won the 2020 election against Joe Biden. “They cheated like dogs, but we got ‘em back,” he said.

Kirk was “killed by a radicalized cold-blooded monster,” Trump said, but he was now “kneeling at the throne of God.” He said that the Department of Justice — whose leader, Attorney General Pam Bondi, he had just put on blast on social media — was now investigating ”networks of radical left maniacs who fund, organize, fuel and perpetrate political violence.” Trump also asserted that political violence “comes largely from the left,” though this talking point has been thoroughly debunked, most recently by the libertarian Cato Institute.

Trump praised America’s “tradition of reason and open debate,” which he said Kirk embodied by holding rallies on college campuses where he challenged all comers to debate him. Kirk was participating in just such an event, at Utah Valley University, when he was murdered.

At the same time, Trump mocked “commentators who this week are screaming fascism over a canceled late-night TV show where the anchor had no talent, had no ratings,” a clear reference to comedian Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show was recently suspended indefinitely by ABC over a rather benign joke about how Trump and others in the MAGA movement had reacted to Kirk’s demise. The suspension came after Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, threatened retaliation against the network if something wasn’t done.

Carr’s involvement has been widely panned across the political aisle — and even by staunch conservatives, like Ted Cruz — for being a possible First Amendment violation.

The President also announced that he would be posthumously awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Kirk during a ceremony at the White House. He also hinted at a major announcement coming Monday about the supposed reason for the rise in autism among children. He then called Erika Kirk on stage, kissed her head and cheek and embraced her.

Trump’s remarks offered a stark contrast to Erika Kirk’s speech, which she gave just before the president’s. She briefly described viewing her husband’s corpse, even though she had been advised not to because of the extent of his injuries. She stressed Kirk’s faith and commitment to “revive the American family,” saying he wanted to reach “the lost boys of the West.”

Erika, a former beauty queen who was recently named Kirk’s successor as CEO of Turning Point USA, tearfully reminded listeners of Jesus on the cross asking God to forgive his crucifiers. She declared that she forgave the man who took her husband’s life.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

The comparison to Jesus was a popular one. (Outside the stadium, some attendees sported banners and shirts featuring Kirk and the Son of God as ostensible equals.) Earlier, both Kennedy and Carlson likened Kirk’s killing to Jesus’ crucifixion. In a comment that some listeners may have taken as an anti-Jewish dogwhistle, Carlson said Kirk’s death reminded him of a scene from 2000 years ago “with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us,” and one of them suggesting, “Why don’t we kill him?”

RFK, Jr., made an even more direct comparison between Kirk and the man from Galilee. “Christ died at 33 years old, but he changed the trajectory of history, said Kennedy, who is Catholic. “Charlie died at 31 years old because he had surrendered (to God). He also now has changed the trajectory of history.”

Lots of people, few partisan clashes

The memorial drew a mass of humanity, perhaps as many as 100,000 people. Yet, despite rumors that the event would meet with violent protests from leftists, Phoenix New Times saw little that would have even hinted at the country’s deep partisan divide.

The small, blocked-off “free speech zone” across the street from the stadium’s main gate was mostly populated by members of the extremist Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for demonstrating at large events with signs reading “God hates fags” and “God hates America.”

Margie Phelps, the daughter of church founder Rev. Fred Phelps, told New Times that her small group had traveled from the church’s base in Topeka, Kansas, to protest Kirk’s funeral. She says everyone in her church has a job and pays their own way, flying cheaply and living frugally, though they do sometimes engage in non-protest activities. The night before, she said, she had gone to see comedian Nate Bargatze in Kansas City.

Though she professed to like Kirk and some of his views, she nonetheless felt the memorial was a mockery of the Christian religion — a sentiment that, at least on the surface, some more liberal Christians might agree with.

“He said some good things,” said Phelps. “But what he mainly did was preach the false religion, a false Christ, offered false hope.” She was also critical of those who lined up for blocks to get in because they were “coming in to worship this man, Charlie Kirk.”

One demonstrator who was not with the Westboro group was Deborah Scott, a Native American woman from Mesa. She said she hadn’t known anything about Kirk until after his killing. Holding an upside-down American flag decorated with an Israeli Star of David and blood red handprints, she added that she wasn’t really protesting the memorial per se, but had come out because it offered “the biggest audience of supremacists,” whose message she wanted to counter.

“I want to bring the message of truth about how inequality creates evil-ness,” she said. “In order for us to ascend to a higher state of consciousness, we need to have a quality in our hearts.”


Some of the attendees had arrived hours before the gates opened — as early as 4 a.m., according to some — waiting on lawn chairs that they promptly abandoned once those gates opened, along with empty water bottles and crumpled snack packs. This seemed to shock later arrivals, with one man in MAGA gear exclaiming that the garbage-strewn street “looked just like Los Angeles.”

Standing next to the gate was a man in a bicycling outfit who said his name was Shep, identifying himself as a surgeon from Scottsdale. He was waiting to meet up with his wife, both of whom had come to “honor somebody who was trying to do a lot of good in the world.” He said he was a regular reader of New Times. He did not find any of Kirk’s pronouncements to be controversial.

“I thought his ideas were pretty straightforward,” Shep said. “Probably the most controversial person on your side, Van Jones, came on CNN just last night to say how kind Charlie was to him and offered him a very reasoned and educated debate, which Van apparently was going to accept.”

Van Jones, it might be noted, would be considered milquetoast by many on the so-called left. And some of Kirk’s particularly inflammatory ideas included the opinion that “transgenderism is a social contagion,” that there needs to be “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming care doctor,” and that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was an “anti-white weapon.” But to be fair, Shep had to leave before New Times could bring up such examples.

Alyssa Marie, a young woman in the long snaking line to get into the stadium, was wearing a Turning Point t-shirt that read, “Big Gov Sucks.” She said she had driven up from Tucson and was an influencer on Instagram, where she regularly posted about Kirk. She marveled at the turnout, saying she believed Kirk’s death would make his message resonate with even more people than before.

“I think that Charlie's voice is going to be heard all around the country because of this, and they wanted to silence him,” she said, without specifying who “they” are. “And I think that it just made his voice louder.”