Black church leaders reject Charlie Kirk martyrdom and point to his race rhetoric

Source: AP

Updated 1:10 PM EDT, September 24, 2025

How Charlie Kirk is being memorialized — with many conservatives and white Christians, particularly evangelicals, emphasizing his faith and labeling him a martyr — has sparked debate among Black clergy, who are trying to square a heroic view of the 31-year-old with insulting statements about people of color that were key to his political activism.

“How you die does not redeem how you lived,” the Rev. Howard-John Wesley, of Alexandria, Virginia, said in a sermon in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing that has amassed tens of thousands of views online. The reactions to Kirk’s death marked a notable split-screen moment in America’s racial divide, playing out at the same time on Sunday across the country.

From the pulpits of Black churches, pastors used their sermons to denounce what they called hateful rhetoric from Kirk that runs counter to the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Gospel. In a packed football stadium in Arizona, tens of thousands of people celebrated Kirk in a religious-themed memorial as a martyr and inspirational and principled conservative hero.

Kirk’s killing on a college campus in Utah captured in a graphic video that went viral, as well as the aftermath of his death have become the latest fault line in politics and race in America under President Donald Trump.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-death-black-pastors-reaction-sermons-222eb811b6681d29ccbb0547955ac42b