The Cross and the Confederate Flag: Black Christians Grapple with the Sanctification of Charlie Kirk

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In the hours after Charlie Kirk was killed, Pastor Jamal Bryant of Atlanta did what his faith commanded: he condemned the violence and mourned the loss of a human life. But in the days that followed, as he watched a significant portion of White evangelical America begin the process of sanctifying the right-wing influencer, that initial, clear-eyed grief curdled into a familiar, weary sense of dread. As conservatives and White Christians began to lionize Kirk—calling him a “martyr” and a “prophet,” and even comparing his assassination to that of Martin Luther King Jr.—Bryant and other Black Christian leaders found themselves grappling with a painful, soul-wrenching question: how do you mourn a man whose life’s work was so often dedicated to demeaning your own existence?

The spectacle of Kirk’s canonization has been a massive, nationally coordinated effort. At a memorial service in a football stadium, attended by tens of thousands, including the President, speaker after speaker framed Kirk’s death in starkly religious terms, as a seminal event in a “spiritual war” that would fuse conservative Christianity with the U.S. government. For many Black Christians, this effort to erase Kirk’s history of racially inflammatory rhetoric in favor of a sanitized, saintly portrait is not just a political disagreement; it is a profound spiritual betrayal. “I think that their allegiance to their political association trumps their connection to the cross,” Bryant said of the White church leaders praising Kirk.

For those who bore the brunt of Kirk’s rhetoric, the demand for unquestioning grace is a heavy one. This was a man who called the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 “a huge mistake.” He infamously commented, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified,” a statement that questioned the competence of every Black professional in the country. And the comparisons to Dr. King are particularly galling, given that Kirk himself once called the civil rights icon “awful.” When Pastor Bryant posted on social media that “how somebody dies doesn’t erase how they lived,” he was inundated with a torrent of “hate speech… derogatory calls and slurs,” he said, “all of these are spoken by people who claim to be Christian.”

This has left Black pastors across the theological and political spectrum “between a rock and a hard place,” as Pastor Stanley Talbert of Los Angeles described it. They are tasked with leading their congregations in condemning political violence while also acknowledging the deep pain that Kirk’s legacy inflicts. “Black Christians have empathy,” Talbert said. “The frustration is that other ethnic groups do not empathize with the Black experience and Black suffering.” It is a demand for a one-way empathy that is all too familiar.

Professor Esau McCaulley of Wheaton College, a founding pastor of a multiracial congregation, attempts to find a theological path through the pain. He frames Kirk’s death as a tragedy precisely because it robbed him of the chance to grow and change. “It’s sad if someone dies in the middle of their story and we never get to see how the rest of it changes,” McCaulley said, “because you never know what God could do in someone’s life.” It is a perspective rooted in a profound belief in the possibility of redemption, a belief that is being sorely tested.

But for some, the sanctification of Charlie Kirk is a breaking point, a moment that makes the theological gymnastics of grace impossible. The most searing indictment comes from Rev. Dwight McKissic, a conservative Black pastor in Texas who agrees with Kirk’s theology but not his racial politics. The willingness of White evangelicals to ignore Kirk’s racism, he says, is a mystery that reveals a devastating truth.

“It’s a mystery to Black people how evangelicals can hear all the quotes, no matter how they try to contextualize them, and they’re okay with that,” McKissic said. “That lets us know we’re worshiping and fellowshipping with people who view us exactly as Charlie Kirk views the Black airplane pilots.”

This is the heart of the crisis. The lionization of Charlie Kirk is not just creating a political rift; it is revealing a spiritual one that has existed for centuries. For McKissic, it is a moment of such profound alienation that he is now telling his congregation to prepare for the worst. “This Charlie Kirk thing has expedited things,” he said. “I told my people to get ready spiritually, financially. Get your house prepared… Get everything it takes, just in case a civil war does break out.” It is a terrifying conclusion, but one born from the painful realization that a large segment of the American church has chosen to sanctify a legacy of racial division, forcing their Black brothers and sisters to question whether they were ever truly part of the same flock at all.