Proper 19C
September 14, 2025
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
The first time I ever heard of Charlie Kirk was earlier this summer, when our Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe announced that the Episcopal Church was severing its long history of working with the government to resettle refugees, rather than help resettle white South Africans who did not meet any of the legal criterion for refugee status.
Charlie Kirk’s response caught my attention.
“The Episcopal Church believes that Jesus doesn’t love white people,” he said.
That was news to me.
“Who is this guy and what else does he believe?” I wondered, so I did some research to find what he had to say on other issues.
Here’s what I found.
During the pandemic he proclaimed that social distancing in church was “a Democratic plot against Christianity.”
He was a proponent of replacement theory, the idea that Jews are trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants, an antisemetic and racist theory that motivated the killers of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and 10 Black shoppers at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.
He was a Christian nationalist who believed that should be no separation of church and state, and that America should be a Christian nation, with a version of Christianity that has little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.
He believed climate change was a hoax, that all immigration should be halted, and that acceptance of transgender men and women was “one of the most destructive social contagions in human history.”
He said that anyone who came forward to make bail for the man who broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco and beat her husband in the head with a hammer would be a national hero.
He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation in public places and banned job discrimination, a “huge mistake,’ and said Martin Luther King was “an awful person.”
He believed that Black women “do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously” without affirmative action, adding that those in positions of prominence and leadership, like Supreme Court justice Katanji Brown Jackson, had “stolen a white person’s spot.”
He was against DEI — Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – programs. “If I get on a plane and I see a Black pilot,” he said, “I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”
He started a watch list of college professors whose teachings he found objectionable, ie not ideologically pure enough, and encouraged students to add to it, and file complaints against their teachers.
He was a proponent of gun rights, saying, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of some gun deaths so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
And he had this to say about empathy. “I can’t stand the word empathy. I think empathy is a made up new-age term that does a lot of damage.”
In other words, I could find very little, if any, common ground with Charlie Kirk. I found most of his ideas repellant and his stances to be antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.
Charlie Kirk’s words and actions were dangerous and appalling.
And so is his murder.
It doesn’t matter what we think of Charlie Kirk’s beliefs, as repugnant as they were. As Christians we must denounce the violence that killed him, and grieve for his family. We must show empathy to this victim of gun violence.
Empathy is not a new-age made up term. It is what allows us to feel compassion, to put ourselves into the shoes of someone who is very different from us, to feel their grief and pain.
One of the most powerful liturgies in our prayer book is the renewal of our baptismal covenant. It outlines what it means to live a Christian life.
These are the last two questions we are asked when we renew that covenant:
Will you seek and serve Christ in all people, loving your neighbor as yourself? And will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
The answer to both of those questions is, “I will, with God’s help.”
We are not asked if we will respect the dignity of every human being with whom we agree. We are not asked to love the neighbors who live and work and think the same way we do.
We are commanded to seek and serve Christ, or the image of God, in ALL people, and to respect the dignity of EVERY human being.
That doesn’t mean we have to like them. It doesn’t mean we should never be critical of them, or hold back from telling the truth about who they are. It doesn’t mean we don’t engage in spirited debate or denounce words and actions that we see as evil.
But it does mean that we do not rejoice at their deaths. We do not revel in their pain. We do not wish evil or harm upon them.
These words of Jesus should guide us in times like these:
“I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
“If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”
And so on this day we denounce all political violence, no matter who the victims and perpetrators are.
We both acknowledge the truth of who Charlie Kirk was, and we grieve for his family.
And we pray:
Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Charlie. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light.
Amen.