What the Kirk Memorial Reveals About the Right

There is no doubt in my mind that Charlie Kirk would have loved the service in his honor that took over a football stadium this past Sunday. It was a mixture of memorial, tent revival, and Republican political convention. This may seem foreign, or even distasteful, to those from traditions that more firmly separate liturgical celebration from political agitation — viewers would have some whiplash going from Kirk’s widow Erika announcing her Christ-inspired forgiveness for her husband’s killer to Trump celebrating his tariff policy, but the brash celebration of life, the somewhat light-hearted conference of the people and the powerful, was squarely in America’s Evangelical and democratic traditions. The modern part is that the pastor asked those who gave their life to Jesus that day to scan a QR code so they could be met with follow-up from the local church.

The shock of Kirk’s assassination has caused his peers and colleagues to promise to double down on his mission. His friends and sometimes rivals for influence took turns hosting his podcast in the week between his death and this memorial. Partly because this became the political event of the year, and because it was not a scripted part of the political calendar, it was unusually revealing about the conservative movement in the Republican Party of today.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a senior writer at National Review Online.

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There is no doubt in my mind that Charlie Kirk would have loved the service in his honor that took over a football stadium this past Sunday. It was a mixture of memorial, tent revival, and Republican political convention. This may seem foreign, or even distasteful, to those from traditions that more firmly separate liturgical celebration from political agitation — viewers would have some whiplash going from Kirk’s widow Erika announcing her Christ-inspired forgiveness for her husband’s killer to Trump celebrating his tariff policy, but the brash celebration of life, the somewhat light-hearted conference of the people and the powerful, was squarely in America’s Evangelical and democratic traditions. The modern part is that the pastor asked those who gave their life to Jesus that day to scan a QR code so they could be met with follow-up from the local church.

The shock of Kirk’s assassination has caused his peers and colleagues to promise to double down on his mission. His friends and sometimes rivals for influence took turns hosting his podcast in the week between his death and this memorial. Partly because this became the political event of the year, and because it was not a scripted part of the political calendar, it was unusually revealing about the conservative movement in the Republican Party of today.