(RNS) — As a historian of American Christianity, I’ve visited my fair share of megachurches over the years, and I have watched my share of Christian right political rallies. Watching the memorial service for Charlie Kirk showed the two kinds of events merging on a grand scale.
More than one speaker framed the country’s political polarization as a spiritual battle. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the crowd to “put on the armor of God” to fight the evil forces trying to destroy this country. President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller shouted angrily about the “army” that Democrats “have arisen in all of us.”
Activist Jack Posobiec talked about the spiritual battle to save Western civilization. Kirk disciple Benny Johnson urged the crowd to “wield the sword against evil.” All urged evangelical Christians to fight the culture war harder than ever.
But at other times, as the worship bands played, I felt as if I were being swept up in one of the weekly “prayer and praise” student events at the evangelical university where I teach. In a Billy Graham mode, Kirk’s pastor, Rob McCoy, invited attendees to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called viewers to surrender their lives to God.
This amalgamation of politics and evangelical culture was fitting for a figure like Kirk, a political organizer whose organization Turning Point USA delivered young people’s votes to Republican candidates and reputedly came increasingly under the sway of both Trump and Christianity.
For MAGA evangelicals, that is how it is supposed to be.
Pastor Rob McCoy speaks at a memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/John Locher)
But I had questions. What kind of movement were McCoy, Rubio, and Hegseth inviting the audience to join?
Were they asking people to embrace a God who invites men and women to become citizens in his kingdom of justice, peace, love, mercy, meekness and humility? Or were they inviting people to embrace a MAGA movement that seems to diametrically oppose all these things with nearly every Trump policy decision? The Beatitudes, or Posobiec?
Writing for World, a conservative evangelical magazine, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, had nothing but praise for the way the gospel was proclaimed at the memorial: “Right now, I am still stunned by the sheer weight of Christian testimony that came in that service yesterday. May God use it for the increase of the gospel and all to His glory,” he wrote.
On one level, Mohler is right. The gospel was proclaimed. In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul wrote that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry and others do so out of selfish ambition. “But what does it matter?” he adds. “The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this, I rejoice.”
If St. Paul is correct — and I believe he is — God can certainly use the announcement of this good news to change lives and hearts. Like Mohler, I pray that this is the case.
But the presentations of the gospel at Kirk’s funeral, as Mohler knows, didn’t take place in a vacuum. I hope Mohler might be troubled by the way the Christian message was preached amid the angry and venomous speech of Miller and Posobiec, the sea of red “Make America Great Again” hats and the chanting of “USA, USA, USA.” (It’s possible that Mohler, part of the National Conservative movement, endorses such gospel proclamations.)
Jack Posobiec holds up a rosary as he speaks at a memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/John Locher)
But in the winding way of the memorial service, one presentation of the gospel rang true. Erika Kirk’s willingness to forgive her husband’s killer brought back memories of Pope John Paul II’s 1981 meeting with his would-be assassin. I also remembered how the Amish offered forgiveness to the shooter who killed children in the 2006 Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, shooting, a story chronicled well by my Messiah University colleague David Weaver-Zercher and others in their book, “Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy.”
This is what the gospel is all about. Jesus reminded his followers in the Sermon on the Mount to love and pray for their enemies.
If Erika Kirk beautifully displayed the heart of Jesus Christ at the memorial service, Trump and his MAGA followers, who turned the event into a political rally fitting of the culture wars, undermined the gospel message, and he knew it. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them,” Trump said in his closing speech. “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie! I’m sorry, Erika.”
In Trump’s fusion of evangelical Christianity, nationalism and MAGA politics, the latter two win out over the gospel. At best unseemly and at the worst idolatrous, it has become a defining element of Donald Trump’s movement.
(John Fea teaches American history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and is a visiting fellow in history at the Lumen Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)