Charlie Kirk and the fifth great awakening

Political Islam is a powerful global force. Wahhabism, the Muslim Brotherhood and Shia theocracy are different yet successful strands of the same impulse to govern according to the will of Allah. 

Political Christianity, by contrast, has in recent decades, even centuries, taken a back seat when it comes to public affairs. With some exceptions, Christians have broadly interpreted Jesus’s message to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” as an injunction not to muddy the holy pursuit of justice with the worldly pursuit of power. 

At Charlie Kirk’s memorial yesterday, the world witnessed something different: not just a Christian politics but a political Christianity. Republican party campaigns have long had a strong evangelical dimension. But the Make America Great Again movement is producing something new: a spiritualized politics that is far less apologetic, much more strident and nationalist, and as syncretic as it is militant. 

It’s a multi-faith army for Jesus, unashamed of its contradictions and adamant in its defense of hybridized conservative values. (For more on this see our latest “Angels & Demons” edition of The Spectator World.) 

Kirk’s memorial, held in a vast and packed football stadium in Arizona, was a profoundly religious event, and an explicit attempt to proselytize. We saw the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence all lionize Charlie as a warrior for God. J.D. Vance, a Catholic, called him “a martyr” for the faith. Pete Hegseth, a Protestant veteran, quoted his own pastor saying “the devil overplayed his hand” in killing Kirk. He urged the audience: “arm yourself with truth, with prayer, with unapologetic boldness.” DNI director Tulsi Gabbard, a Hindu, added that the Trump movement should “take shelter in God, to draw strength and fearlessness from the Lord.” Stephen Miller, the Jewish White House Deputy Chief of Staff, talked in faintly pagan terms about how Kirk had been “immortalized” and said “we will prevail over the forces of wickedness.” 

Tucker Carlson, the Episcopalian media star, compared Kirk’s killing to the crucifixion of Christ. He said he could feel “the Holy Spirit humming like a tuning fork” throughout the stadium. Rob McCoy, Charlie’s co-chair at Turning Point USA, said that Kirk saw “politics as an on-ramp for Jesus’.” Andrew Kolvet, the producer of Charlie Kirk’s show and TPUSA’s comms director, said: “Charlie was a prophet… not the fortune-telling kind but the Biblical kind. He confronted evil and proclaimed the truth.”

Erika Kirk, the grieving window, delivered the most powerful Christian message of all. She forgave her husband’s murderer. “Charlie wanted to save young men just like him,” she said. “Lost, angry, deceived by the world. Pray for him. Pray for his soul. And pray that God breaks his shackles.”

The theme which the speakers had clearly agreed upon was “revival” – not revenge. President Trump called it “a great spiritual awakening.”

Since its founding, America has been convulsed by at least four “great awakenings,” which have bound American faith in God to the nation’s sense of manifest destiny. What we could be seeing now is a Fifth Great Awakening, but one that is more nakedly political, coming as it does from the White House down, and less explicitly Protestant, mixing as it does Catholic messages with the passionate convictions of other faiths. 

At the very end of the 19th century Pope Leo XIII warned against the “heresy of Americanism,” with its emphasis on individual liberty and embrace of the spirit of the age.  As chance would have it, there is now a new American Pope, also called Leo. How might he respond to this MAGA-spiritual revival? 

Pope Leo might note that a new religious fervor is beginning to envelop the right in Europe, too. In Britain, a Christian warrior ethos is taking hold on certain parts of the right. It is in some ways in reaction to political Islam in the United Kingdom. In others, it is inspired by the overt Christianity of the Trump movement. We saw crosses and crusader costumes at the “Unite the Kingdom” rally in London the weekend before last. The political Christian revival may have a strong American influence. But it could also be much bigger than just American politics.