Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / They Tried Church Because of Charlie Kirk — What Will Keep Them? || SLP605

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They Tried Church Because of Charlie Kirk — What Will Keep Them? || SLP605 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:04
SPEAKER_02: If you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered?
0:08
SPEAKER_01: I want to be I want to be remembered for for courage for my faith.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: That that would be the most important thing.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Most important thing is my faith in my life.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: The death of Charlie Kirk is being framed in any number of different ways in the media and on social media, but he has told us the way he wants us to remember his life as one who is courageous for his faith.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: And I think we're seeing a response to hashtag RIP Charlie Kirk.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to go through some of that response because I think it is quite remarkable, and then I'll have some comments at the end.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: But the first comment that I want to draw attention to is Graham Linehan.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: He is uh the comedy writer that we uh highlighted just a couple of videos ago, who was arrested on the first of September for some tweets that he had written.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh here is somebody who, because of their free speech, um, experienced the power of the sword, uh, the sword in that biblical frame being uh the state and getting arrested for his tweets.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: And when he saw Charlie Kirk experiencing the sword because of his free speech, uh a much more direct sword of violence, Graham Linehan has been moved to write this.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Now I want to read C.S.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: Lewis and other Christian writers.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Hashtag R.I.P.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Charlie Kirk.
1:21
SPEAKER_01: Chesterton too, if one can wave the smell of his then fashionable and fashionable again, anti-Semitism, off the pages.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: And then people in the comments are giving him advice.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: The screw tape letters are a wonderful starting point, in my humble opinion.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the tip.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: Liking it already, says Graeme Lineahan, as he reads some other brilliant comedy from C.S.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: Lewis.
1:42
SPEAKER_01: The screw tape letters are just insanely good satire.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: Here is uh a TikToker called Tattooed Red Flags.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh language warning, we might bleep out the language just in case there are kids watching this podcast.
1:54
SPEAKER_03: Well, something profound is happening right now, and I can't stop crying over a man I've never met.
2:01
SPEAKER_03: I have never in my life been able to see so black and white, good and evil, like just just right in front of my face.
2:12
SPEAKER_03: And as painful as it is to see even people within arm's reach of me, people I know being on that side.
2:23
SPEAKER_03: I am so fing proud of myself for doing the work to get to where I am to know that I will never be as despicable as the people over there.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: This is quite a theme, actually, of people being awakened to evil, and I guess the imagery of somebody wearing a freedom t-shirt under a prove me wrong banner who is using only words as they go out, and then the force that is met in the other direction is a bullet to the throat.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: I think you see the difference between speech and violence, but you see the difference between good, and I'm I'm not saying that Charlie Kirk is a paragon of goodness in every single sense, but I am saying here as an image, as an icon, a mythology, a mythos in which words are going in this direction and a bullet is flying in that direction.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: And this woman says, Having seen that, I see there is good and evil, and if there's evil with a capital E, I'm willing to think that there is goodness with a capital G.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh here is somebody who might well show up in church this Sunday.
3:25
SPEAKER_03: Like you cannot help but be called to God when you see a man like Charlie Kirk assassinated in that fashion.
3:36
SPEAKER_03: Like I don't because I think at least I am struggling with how to redirect, how to channel the anger and the pain.
3:57
SPEAKER_03: Because I feel we all feel violent, but the call to God makes us want to be better than that.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: Last I checked, there were 15,000 comments.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Here are just four of them.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: I picked up my Bible for the first time in years yesterday because of Charlie Kirk.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: Next person says, I prayed for the first time in over 23 years on September the 10th, 2025, for Charlie and his family.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Next one.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: I fell out of favor with organized religion years ago, and have now realized I let my relationship with the Lord fall as a result of that.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: My heart is pulling me back to him, and it is because of what happened to Charlie.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: His death felt so profound to me, and it took me a day or so to realize why.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: I was the same way.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: I was told to quiet my voice, and I did out of fear, but not anymore.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Charlie showed me that we need to stand strong in our beliefs and be loud, and that is exactly what I will do.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: Now, Tattoo Red Flags is not your typical MAGA kind of figure.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: She probably never joined Turning Points USA, but Charlie's death has been having that kind of effect on her.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: We move on.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Nice Boys in the Country on Instagram.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: I felt a strong pull back towards my Catholic faith for some time.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Now, surprisingly, Mick has felt it too, even though he's never been religious.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: Together we've chosen to lean into that call and find a local church to attend.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: This no longer feels political, it feels far deeper.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: We don't fully understand it, but maybe we don't need to.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: To anyone else feeling the same stirring, you are not alone.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: And uh no, uh, nice boys in the country is not alone.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: Hundreds and hundreds of comments, things like this.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm an atheist, but I'm going to church on Sunday.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why I've had this sudden urge.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: I just want to be around a community that's not divided and sing along to hymns like I used to in school assembly.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: Same.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm a gay chap.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: I started to pray a rosary a year ago as I felt the urge to come back and had this feeling I cannot describe rushed through me.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: It was like an ecstasy feeling.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: I truly believe that was the Holy Spirit and Jesus welcoming me back, and I'll never forget it.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: Many people have said to me that this return to faith, it's just a MAGA movement, it's just a political movement, it's just people on the right, and LGBT folk will not feel welcome in that rush towards church.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: Um I think the last two instances on social media put the lie to that.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: My husband said to me this morning, if the only way to save the country from losing its identity was to go to church every Sunday for an hour, I'd go.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: And if we went back to shutting the shops on a Sunday and only had pubs and restaurants open, I'd be up for that.
6:06
SPEAKER_01: He's never been that guy.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: But I think the last week has opened his eyes a bit.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: And here we see how politics and faith here are really entangled in this moment.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Charlie wanted faith to be the number one thing people remembered, but I think the framing of his death as less a martyr to more a political assassination speaks to a lot of his messaging.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: And he was very pro-Trump, pro-guns.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm neither of those things.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, we see how faith and politics are entwined in this moment.
6:32
SPEAKER_01: They were entwined in the life of Charlie Kirk.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: It's something that makes me deeply ambivalent about this moment.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, and yet this is the moment that we're in.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And let's just have a look at the sort of thought processes that are leading people to come to church.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll make some comments about that at the end.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: Very, very recently, I had had I have had the urge to read the Bible again and attend church.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm an atheist, but in my own way over the years, have always been fascinated with Jesus and his religion.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: I feel this strange pull to attend church with my children in the hope to show them.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: I felt this way for a while.
7:00
SPEAKER_01: I actually think it takes something like collective worship to take our country back.
7:03
SPEAKER_01: I explained to my friend that I wanted to start attending church again, and she told me that it was I felt something big and bad was coming, and I was looking for faith and hope to get through it.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I think she was on to something there.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: Same, I've been a practicing pagan for years, but have wanted to go to confession for a while.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: We've also felt this urge and will be returning to church, and just comment after comment that are exactly like this.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: This tweet has had 43,000 comments from Yalligator Gar.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: All right, Christians, help an ex-atheist and former Democrat out.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Can I just walk into church and sit down?
7:33
SPEAKER_01: What about Mass on Sunday?
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Is there anything I need to do in advance?
7:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to start a denominational argument, but where do I go?
7:38
SPEAKER_01: My family needs to go to church.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: He followed up with a bit more of his story.
7:42
SPEAKER_01: He said, I bought my first Bible two years ago, still haven't read the whole thing.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: I've watched some online sermons on Sunday mornings for a while.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: It's time for me to go.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: He is so many people right now.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So many people.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: And I love the interactions underneath his tweet.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea if this is sarcastic or not.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: I just started following you, but I genuinely want to know this.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: I've never really thought about going to church until two days ago, and I don't know if I'm allowed in or dot dot dot.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: And Gator Gard just says, Yeah, I'm being serious.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: Apparently we're good, man.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: You just walk in and sit down.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: And he says, Wild.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: I feel like you should RSVP at least.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Which is just fascinating.
8:17
SPEAKER_01: This is how people think.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: And of course it is.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: Like if you invited me to a Kingdom Hall as a Jehovah's Witness to show up for their worship service, I would not know what to do.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I would feel profoundly awkward about stepping into that situation.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: Or in evangelism training, I often say, why don't you go into a betting shop and lay on a bet?
8:34
SPEAKER_01: And as awkward as you feel, not knowing how to fill out the slip, right?
8:38
SPEAKER_01: And not knowing how to lay on a bet at Ladbrook's or wherever, that's how non-Christians feel coming into church.
8:44
SPEAKER_01: But they're doing it and they're willing to do it because of this moment.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: Other tweets with huge engagement and so many thousands of comments underneath saying I feel the same way.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Um Maddie Roon says, not gonna lie, with everything going on, I'm feeling the pool to go to church and give my life to Jesus.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: Nick Collins says, I'm gonna go to church on Sunday, the first time since I'm like 10 and I'm 35.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: Hans Gruber the Great says, I think I'm going to church this weekend.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: It's been about 30 years since I've been.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: I think I'm gonna try being a former agnostic.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: I hope something speaks to me.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: Wish me luck.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: And I did wish him luck.
9:14
SPEAKER_01: And he did go to church, but he got the time wrong and he felt out of place.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: And he's gonna try a different church next Sunday.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: And I just said to him, that's brilliant.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: You've broken the habit of not going to church.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: Not going to church can be a real habit.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews 10 actually says that.
9:26
SPEAKER_01: But breaking the habit of not going to church is a fantastic thing to do.
9:29
SPEAKER_01: And he wants to join the ranks of former agnostics.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've done a video before on lapsed atheism.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: Lapsed atheism is a thing.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Not going to church has been a habit that has been forming people in a kind of atheism that has gotten old and tired, and people need to deconstruct that religious outlook.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: They need to deconvert from not going to church and calling themselves atheists and agnostics, and Hans Gruber is on that train.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: So many comments under Erica Kirk's uh livestream in which she paid tribute to her husband.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: That's a brutal watch, but tens of thousands of comments underneath saying things like this.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: And again, it is a mixed moment right now.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: So many turning points, USA chapters being started, and so many people going to church, and it's politics and religion, and it's all happening at once.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: I feel ambivalent about that.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps you feel ambivalent about that, but that's the moment that we are in.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Here's a TikToker who is right in that space of there's the political and there's the religious happening all at once.
10:25
SPEAKER_01: What do you make of it?
10:26
SPEAKER_04: I've never ever opened a Bible before.
10:29
SPEAKER_04: In fact, I know nothing about Christianity or Jesus.
10:35
SPEAKER_04: Um, but yesterday after witnessing the assassination of Charlie Kirk on the internet, and it just being so normal to people, like watching this man get shot in the neck, and everybody being so desensitized and just going on with life like it was normal.
11:00
SPEAKER_04: I something was calling me to my husband's Bible.
11:05
SPEAKER_04: My my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my husband, you know, they have been trying to bring me to Christianity, you know, since I met them.
11:19
SPEAKER_04: They're not like overbearing, they don't force it on me, but like, you know, they talk about it.
11:25
SPEAKER_04: And um, they respect that, like, I don't know how I feel.
11:30
SPEAKER_04: So for the very first time yesterday, I grabbed the Bible.
11:34
SPEAKER_04: I don't know what I'm looking for in the Bible.
11:36
SPEAKER_04: I don't know why I felt like I needed to grab the Bible.
11:39
SPEAKER_04: But I grabbed my husband's Bible, and the page that I opened up to was the verse uh John 832.
11:52
SPEAKER_04: And it said, Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
11:58
SPEAKER_04: And I feel like that changed me so much because up until yesterday I I leaned both ways politically.
12:12
SPEAKER_04: Um I am pro-life, but I also believe women should have autonomy over their bodies.
12:19
SPEAKER_04: I don't care if someone is gay, but I don't want sexuality pushed on my children in school.
12:26
SPEAKER_04: I believe in the Second Amendment, but like it also makes me sad that bad guys have guns too.
12:33
SPEAKER_04: I've never voted before, but after yesterday, I know where I stand.
12:40
SPEAKER_04: I will never cast a blue vote.
12:45
SPEAKER_04: I am convinced that the Democratic Party is ran by the devil himself.
12:53
SPEAKER_04: And I know I'll get hate for saying this, and I don't care.
12:57
SPEAKER_04: But I feel like Charlie's death, Charlie Kirk's death, woke me up spiritually.
13:05
SPEAKER_04: And now I can't unsee the truth.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And talk about religious and political.
13:11
SPEAKER_01: Here's MAGA Scotty saying, I was born and raised Catholic, but to be frank with you, religion was always one of those going through the motions things I did while growing up.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: With that being said, I have a confession to make, I've never felt closer to God than I'm feeling right now.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Charlie Kirk's death is having an impact on me in more ways than I can even explain.
13:26
SPEAKER_01: It is having so much of an impact on me that the last two nights before drifting off to sleep with my wife by my side, I said to her, Will you pray with me?
13:32
SPEAKER_01: As she grabs my hands, I begin, Our Father who art in heaven.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: After saying Amen, I tell my wife I love you so much, and she did the same.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: Beautiful sleep came quickly.
13:40
SPEAKER_01: Something is happening inside of me.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: I can't even begin to explain it.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: Seeing Charlie Kirk's conviction to the word of God or watching his videos showing up in my feed is changing me in a way that I never thought was possible.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: As I'm about to push the post on this, tears are streaming down my face.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: I feel alive again, I feel God again.
13:54
SPEAKER_01: I know that I will never be the same from this point forward.
13:57
SPEAKER_01: I welcome the change inside of me.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: Here's someone from the UK.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: A random couple turned up to church tonight.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: They were so shocked by Charlie's murder that they binged his videos to find out more about him.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Amazed by Charlie's love for his family and God, they became Christians and headed to the nearest church.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: Christina Button says she bought this Charlie Kirk t-shirt in honor of him, and she was never really a Charlie Kirk guy.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: But she's starting to think about faith in different ways.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And here are the comments underneath.
14:21
SPEAKER_01: I'm honestly thinking about sitting in on a church service tomorrow just for solidarity's sake.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Christina says I was thinking about going to one for the first time too, just to be around other people.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Here's a TikToker saying something similar.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So Charlie Kirk died three days ago, and since then I have seen a lot of content from him that I've never seen before, and a lot of it is him talking about his faith.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen his content before, but only him debating the college kids.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I've never seen anything else.
14:47
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even really know he's religious like that.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: And brother, ever since he passed away three days ago, every time I see a video of him talking about his faith, I bro, straight water works.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Like I can't, it's almost hard to control.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: And I've had a lot of people talk to me about God personally.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: I've seen a lot of people talk about God online, and I've also been following this whole Charlie Kirk situation where I've seen everything that's happening, I've seen a lot of his other content, and none of it makes me emotional.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Except when he passed away, that was really sad, but nothing else.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: For some reason, whenever he's been talking about God, I am just trying to not lose control.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: So it's just got me feeling really weird, and I've had a few people telling me like maybe it's God trying to reach out to you, which sounds crazy to me because I've never believed in God ever.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I've always been like that doesn't exist, it's not real, but it doesn't make sense.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: It's like, why would I get so I'm not an emotional dude at all.
15:46
SPEAKER_00: So for me to get like uncontrollably emotional about this thing that I don't even believe in, it's like, well, why is that happening?
15:52
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't even make any sense to me at all.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: So I got a Bible, I got this this little thing right here.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's the correct version.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: I've heard that there's a lot of different versions of it.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've heard people say that this is better than the other.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: And I've also heard that it's hard to translate it sometimes.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: So your boy's gonna be on Chat GPT trying to figure it out and go through it.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: But I guess this marks day one of me trying to read the Bible and see what it's about.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: He's a TikToker who went to church for the first time.
16:25
SPEAKER_02: I gotta tell you, first time going to church, it was actually not bad.
16:31
SPEAKER_02: Like, I I just wish I could have fully like embraced it because like I'm really tired, as I had previously mentioned.
16:38
SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that was being talked about the most was um obedience.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: So obedience to the Lord, um, and aligning your ways with his.
16:49
SPEAKER_02: And that's something I've been struggling with lately, and I feel like I needed that reminder today.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: So I'm very glad that I showed up today.
16:55
SPEAKER_01: And here's Diesel Gamer uh sitting in front of a church.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: I've never even stepped foot in in front of a church a week ago.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: I'd never even considered going into it.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: So he goes in, and then afterwards he says, I am overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and inquiries about how today went.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: He says it was a great service with Sunday school, and then the sermon, the title was, and he goes into it.
17:12
SPEAKER_01: He's had a brilliant experience in church.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: This is so many people right now.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: So, what should we make of this?
17:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the contexts for all of what is happening is the great dechurching that has been happening in America since the year 2000.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Forty million Americans have stopped going to church.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: They've gotten into the habit of not going to church.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Half of them say they will return one day.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: And the top three reasons why people have left church are casual reasons for dechurching.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: It's not the casualty reasons for dechurching.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: It's not the hashtag empty the pews, it's not hashtag exvangelical.
17:45
SPEAKER_01: The number one reason why people have stopped going to church is they just moved and they never got back into the habit of going to church again, which means there are tens of millions of Americans who are intending on going back to church someday.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: And according to the research that Ryan Burge and Michael Graham and others have done, about eight million Americans would return to church this Sunday if they were but asked.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: They just need some prompt to go back to church.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Eight million Americans.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: And part of what we're seeing is, well, this is the moment for so many of them to go back to church.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Now, having said that, Ryan Burge, who is also the source of the statistics that say that eight million Americans would come back to church this Sunday if they were but asked, he said this on Twitter.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Since modern polling began in the 1950s, there has not been a single event that has led to a significant durable increase in church attendance rates.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: Every example, like 9-11, may have led to a short-term increase, but all that faded back to baseline within a few months.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: So if we are relying on the event of Charlie Kirk's death to get people back to church, uh we might be relying on the wrong thing.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, invitation through friends and loved ones, that would lead to a much more durable bounce back to church attendance.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: And you might think, well, this is the wrong reason to go back to church, or it's the wrong reason to go to church in the first place.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: A vanishingly small proportion of newcomers to my church come to church because they say, I just want to worship the living God.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: Some of them are dragged there by their girlfriend.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Some of them their lives have fallen apart and they don't know where else to turn.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Some of them they feel like their culture is falling apart and they don't know where else to turn.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: A small number might come feeling incredibly guilty and they must find a s a sense of forgiveness, and we might think that that is the reason to go to church.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: But that too is a self-centered reason.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate reason to go to church is to worship the living God.
19:36
SPEAKER_01: And almost nobody shows up to church to do that.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: We all have mixed motives and we need to be converted out of even our reasons for converting.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: So maybe this isn't the right prompt in order to go to church.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a very understandable reason.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: I think God will and is using it.
19:52
SPEAKER_01: I had somebody on Twitter say to me, this is just a craze like the Diana craze when she died.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: We all sort of lost our minds a little bit.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Isn't this just a social craze just like other social crazes?
20:03
SPEAKER_01: And I said, look, if that social craze just led to lots and lots and lots of people going to church, then I would be retweeting that all day, every day.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Everybody has mixed motives in going to church.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: The real issue is how do we meet people where they are and bring them to a better reason for going to church?
20:18
SPEAKER_01: I've heard of many people going to church and then like leaving angered because the name of Charlie Kirk was not mentioned.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And that is profoundly unfortunate, don't you think?
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Um such people might not have noticed if the name of Jesus Christ was not mentioned on a Sunday, but they really noticed that the name of Charlie Kirk is not mentioned and they storm out.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: I think that's profoundly unfortunate, and I don't think the church's response in that moment is to cater for that kind of person that's going to storm out if you don't mention Charlie Kirk.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: People will come to church not for the reason of worshiping Jesus Christ, and that's okay, because that's everybody, but church still is about worshiping Jesus Christ.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: And what those Charlie Kirk fans need, even if they don't realize it, is to hear his name rather than Charlie's, and I'm sure Charlie Kirk would agree with that.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Some people have been profoundly uncomfortable with my framing in the last video of Charlie Kirk and the Jesus story, because I think the Jesus story stands behind the Charlie Kirk moment and frames the way in which we are seeing it.
21:22
SPEAKER_01: After 20 centuries of Christianization, and because of the preaching of Charlie himself, how can we not frame things in terms of somebody wearing a freedom t-shirt under a prove me wrong banner, using speech and words and being met by violence, cut down, and now there seems to be an awakening in the aftermath.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: How can we not see the resonance of the Jesus story?
21:45
SPEAKER_01: I think it's blindingly obvious that we are responding to the story in that kind of way, which does not mean Kirk equals Christ.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: It means in the storied way that we navigate the worlds, then this story is resonating with.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: That story.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And Charlie is playing the part of a Christ figure.
22:03
SPEAKER_01: In this regard, it's very similar to the role that George Floyd played in 2020.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: The air we breathe, which charts 20 centuries of Christianization, is my attempt to, in the words of the back cover, take you on a journey from Genesis to George Floyd, charting the course of the Christian Revolution and showing how it has shaped our world.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: At the moment, I'm being critiqued by people on the left for saying Charlie Kirk is functioning as a Christ figure.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: When I wrote the book, I was drawing flack from people on the right who thought it was inappropriate to call George Floyd a Christ figure.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: But here's what I wrote back then.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Of all the events that might have lit the fuse in 2020, why did Floyd's death affect us so profoundly?
22:44
SPEAKER_01: In a sense, this whole book is an answer to that question.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: Floyd's death gripped us because our moral universe has been birthed out of similar pains.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: It was an echo of what happened on a hill outside Jerusalem two millennia before.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: An unarmed victim of oppression, an uncaring authority, a public and humiliating death, and a world that came to see the virtue of the victim and the tyranny of the oppressor.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Even Floyd's cry, I can't breathe, could have been placed on Christ's own lips.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: And people are like, you can't call George Floyd a Christ figure.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: He's a convicted armed robber.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: How is he like Jesus?
23:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, of course he's so much like Jesus in the story, in the framing, in the mythos.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: Of course, of course, of course.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Of course, George Floyd plays the Christ figure role in that story, and of course Charlie Kirk plays the Christ figure in this drama.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: Floyd and Kirk are very different from one another, and they're very different from Jesus.
23:34
SPEAKER_01: But they resonate with the Christ story, as I go on to say.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: The tech entrepreneur and author Antonio Garcia Martinez has said, the Western mind is like a tuning fork, calibrated to one frequency.
23:47
SPEAKER_01: The Christ story.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Hit it with the right Christ figure, and it'll just hum deafeningly in resonance.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Now that is for better and for worse, and there's a lot of better and there's a lot of worse about this.
23:58
SPEAKER_01: And turning either figure into an untouchable icon is not going to help things at all, but there is a narrative that we are responding to, and many people are responding to it by going to church, by finding a resurrection out of the death.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: The word is silenced, the word is spoken again.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: Truth is buried, truth rises.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: There's a cross and a resurrection moment.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Now, what do we want to find risen up on the other side of this?
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Um, if it was a mere political movement, I am out.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: But if Charlie Kirk was speaking truthfully when he said that his legacy above all else would be to lead people to Christ, then I, for one, want to figure out how we can do that.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: And here's one way that Speak Life is trying to contribute to this moment uh we had on our Discord server.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: Somebody just left this message.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: Hi, completed the course last night.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: I've dabbled in many different faiths and churches and have not yet found where I feel like I belong.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: Yesterday's horrendous murder left me absolutely devastated.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: After watching the news, I went on to Facebook and came across your site.
24:58
SPEAKER_01: I felt this was a sign, so I clicked on it and completed the course.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: I felt uplifted and full of hope.
25:03
SPEAKER_01: Again, Glenn Scrivener, please advise on where I should start with Bible study, please.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the course.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: I found it really useful and enlightening.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And I got back to her with all sorts of Bible study advice, and here's how you can find a church and what can we do to help.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: And this is the sort of person we need to be ready to speak life to, to offer Christ to.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And they might share your politics right now, or they might not.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: They might demand that you say the name of Charlie Kirk in your worship service, or they might not.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: They might think they need traditional values to anchor them.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: Or they might really want to find out about Jesus.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: Either way, we offer them the same thing.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: And Charlie Kirk would agree, I think, that what we need to offer them is not the name of Charlie Kirk and not simply traditional values.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: We need to offer them Jesus Christ.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: And if you want to check out 321 for yourself, why don't you do what this person has done?
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Go to 321cour.com.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: She looks like she binged it in a couple of hours.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: You can binge it in a couple of hours, you can do it over eight sessions, you can do it in person in churches.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: There's a find a church feature in which you can find people to do this course with.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: Tens of thousands of people are doing it online and finding faith.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: There are others who are doing it in person.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: You can find a course on the app and discover a church near you that is running it.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Over 700 churches have been running courses, and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people have come to Christ through this course.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: If you are a Christian, do the course and pass it on to your friends if you're not a Christian.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you check out this course?
26:25
SPEAKER_01: This is a moment for finding some deep foundations in your life.
26:29
SPEAKER_01: The foundation is not Charlie Kirk.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Charlie Kirk knew what the foundation was.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Jesus Christ.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: Let's be looking to him in this moment.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: God bless.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Bye bye.