A Time for Turning: Remembering Charlie Kirk & Reclaiming America’s Foundations
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk—33-year-old husband, father, and vocal advocate for conservative Christian values—was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. His death has shocked the nation. Reactions have ranged from grief to outrage; leaders across the political spectrum have condemned the act as “political violence” and a threat to the fabric of our democratic life.
In the wake of this tragedy, many are asking: What does this moment demand of us? I believe it is a call—to repentance, to renewal, and to recommitment to what has always defined America at its best: faith, family, personal virtue, and the moral order that Christianity teaches.
Lessons in Loss
The fragility of public life Charlie’s work—leading young people, speaking boldly, defending Christian values—made him a target. His assassination reminds us that free speech, political engagement, and courage carry risk, especially in a time when anger and division run high. If we lose our civility, we lose our safety. But more deeply, loss of moral restraint costs us our soul.
Grief can be a catalyst Like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s death awakened a nation to the urgency of racial justice, perhaps this tragedy can ignite something similar—not merely for political ends, but spiritual ones. Maybe through Charlie’s death, we can see reproach, repent of the ways we have drifted, and rediscover common values.
The danger of drifting away Over recent decades, some strategies in politics and culture have encouraged dependence on government, redefined family, and sidestepped Christian moral constraints in favor of expedience. While gains have been made in racial unity and broader inclusivity, these gains can be hollow if not grounded in a transcendent moral source. Without a foundation in Christian truth, unity becomes fragile, and freedom becomes empty.
A Call to Renewal
What if instead of continuing on the path of reactive politics, we allow this moment to be the turning point?
Re-embrace the family as the primary place of formation—spiritual, moral, relational. The strength of a nation is built in homes where Christian discipleship, faithfulness, and sacrificial love are taught and modeled.
Return to Christian virtues: humility, service, love of neighbor—even those with whom we disagree. Without these, even the pursuit of justice, peace, or equality can become distorted.
Reject violence, rhetoric, and scapegoating. We must speak truth in love. We must refuse to demonize opponents. We must resist the temptation to let fear, hatred, or anger define our politics.
Strengthen community—local, church, neighborhood—as an alternative to reliance on distant government. Where government is necessary, its role should be limited, just, and rooted in preserving rather than overriding local life.
Pray: for Kirk’s family; for healing in this land; for those with power, that they might act with wisdom and restraint; for the church, that she might arise—not as an arm of any political movement, but as the body of Christ, salt and light.
A Hope Beyond Politics
Ultimately, my hope is not political revival, though political reform is necessary. My hope is spiritual revival. A turning back to the Lord. If we allow this moment to unsettle us, to humble us, to draw us nearer to God, then maybe Charlie Kirk’s death, tragic though it is, will bear fruit greater than we can now see.
Let us not leave it as a moment of sorrow, only. Let it be a moment of resolve.
Soli Deo Gloria