You can read Doug Wilson’s response to the shooting of Charlie Kirk here. Now, over the past few days, I’ve been thinking here about how we should respond to Kirk’s death. I’ve observed that there have been some (not all) on the left who have been quick to demonise him. They didn’t like what he stood for, they didn’t like how he stood for it and so some whilst giving the preliminary comments about how they don’t condone violence have given the impression that Kirk himself was to blame for Kirk’s death. Some of this type of stuff has been pretty detestable.
At the same time, there have been some who have wanted to make Kirk out to be a martyr/saint to their cause, particularly those who see him as a right wing political martyr. They liked what he said and how he said it. There are others who have taken a similar vein but have chosen to focus on the things Kirk said about the Gospel. It looks like evangelicals have found someone to knock CS Lewis off his perch as meme source of choice. However, the reality is that Kirk was not a martyr nor a saint (in the Catholic sense), though I believe, very much a saint in the proper sense. I consider him to have been, to the best of our knowledge a brother in Christ. However, it is slightly disingenuous to give the impression that the guy was a martyr for his faith and that he was basically an evangelist/apologist. We cannot white wash everything else away from who he was and just leave some pietistic quotes about Jesus giving eternal life whilst perhaps also acknowledging his stance on ethical issues such as abortion. Indeed, I don’t think he would have accepted that caricature.
We have to understand Kirk as being part of the culture war which is about more than evangelism and a few isolated moral issues. Rather it reflects an ideology that draws on theology, philosophy and politics to give something that blends libertarianism with a form of Christian Nationalism. With that in mind I was interested to know how people like Doug Wilson were responding and to be honest Wilson’s comments are disturbing.
Wilson says:
“But there is one thing that needs to be said now, while we are all still in shock. The shock will wear off in a few days, and I anticipate that it will be replaced by an ominous kind of anger, the kind of anger that is eerily quiet. I would urge everyone to not waste their anger. We need to turn a profit on it.”
He goes on to talk about who is taking the bait, that those on the political/cultural right should not get drawn in to taking the left’s bait but instead seize the opportunity to bait the left. And he goes on to finally to suggest that:
“This was a political murder and it is not out of line to treat it as though it were a political murder. This means that everyone on the left needs to answer for this politically. And stop living by lies.”
This is, by the way a disgraceful slur, a lie in and of itself. Do we argue that everyone on the political right is held responsible for the murder of Jo Cox or the shooting of a Democrat politician, nor the Capitol insurrection. That something is a political murder does not make everyone responsible. It is slander to suggest otherwise.
However, what really disturbed me was the calculating nature of it all. What kind of person considers the right response to a horrific evil murder and a deep tragedy to be working out how they can profit from grief? You see, the anger Wilson talks about is exactly that, shock and anger are part and parcel of grief. What it means is that Kirk simply becomes cannon fodder in the culture war, someone who simply served a useful purpose to others in life and in death.
This, brothers and sisters is no way to respond.
Faithroots 