As my Southwest flight prepared to depart for Washington, D.C., my phone erupted, like so many millions of others, with news that Charlie Kirk had been shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. The last message I saw as the plane lifted off was from a friend and colleague who had served in the Marine Corps. He had seen enough combat trauma to know that Kirk was not going to make it. My heart immediately broke, and the automatic reflex was a plea to the Almighty to work a miracle and spare this young father’s life. By the time the plane landed, I learned that the Lord, in His perfect divine will, chose to take Kirk home.

Kirk was bold, clear-eyed, and courageously defended conservative principles. Much more, he was an unapologetic follower of Jesus who put his faith first and forward. He never missed an opportunity to talk to the lost about his Savior.

And it was for that reason that Kirk was martyred before the eyes of the world. Contra conventional wisdom, this was no political assassination, but rather the physical manifestation of spiritual warfare — revealing the demonic undercurrents driving the political left.

Many others have done yeoman’s work — including Kirk — highlighting the increasing violence of the left in the United States. According to a YouGov survey released the day Kirk was murdered, a chilling 26 percent of self-identified liberals under the age of 45 believe political violence is sometimes justified. The reason for this is not merely TikTok algorithms, the breakdown of the nuclear family, or the prolific infusion of Critical Theory into every aspect of our lives, though those are all certainly contributing elements. The primary reason is that left-wing dogma is not primarily a political ideology. It is a secular religion that seeks to erase God and is at war with the Gospel.

Two days after Kirk’s assassination, a former colleague shook his head in disbelief that the left would kill conservatives for simply having a different political perspective. While many conservatives indeed see it as an ideological dispute, leftists increasingly see it as their sacred duty — not unlike a jihadist — to snuff out those who refuse to worship at their pagan altar of Gaia (climate change), Moloch (abortion), or Ishtar (transgenderism).

This is a spiritual conflict and the casualties are mounting. It’s children being gunned down at mass in Minneapolis Catholic schools, teachers and children being martyred at Christian schools in Nashville, young Jewish couples being murdered outside museums in Washington, D.C., and prominent voices for Jesus being assassinated in Orem, Utah. The forces of darkness have been unleashed. And the complacency of the American church — as well as of a significant number of Christian leaders — has allowed these demonic old gods to effectively displace the one true God from the public square, often in a misguided bid to be “seeker-sensitive” at the expense of Gospel truth.

The result is Charlie Kirk.

A Political Operative Martyred

If this was to happen at all, shouldn’t the first prominent American in our lifetimes to be martyred for his Christian faith on American soil have been a pastor? A theologian? Someone — anyone — from the church proper?

And yet, it was this 31-year-old “political operative” — a profession easily derided by some holier-than-though seminarians and pastors — that laid down his life for Jesus in such a shocking and gruesome way. Kirk’s death, just as his life’s testimony, will bring tens of thousands and possibly millions to faith in Jesus in the years ahead. In fact, it is happening even now. Previously comfortable Christians and apolitical conservatives have reached out telling me how Kirk’s murder has profoundly impacted them, and they never even knew him.

A Useless Church

While reading 1 Peter in the New Testament, the answer to that question — why Kirk? — became obvious. The reason is because Kirk was a threat to the enemy — the real enemy. And the broader American church currently is not.

One of the most frequent complaints one will hear — regardless of denomination — is that the church is simply not preparing lay people for the madness and spiritual carnage they are dealing with daily. This could best be described as the “spirit of the age,” a phrase often used by the esteemed talk-show host Steve Deace. This “spirit of the age” is one that elevates identity and self-worship as the highest good. It aims to nullify the church into adopting modern pagan syncretism through distorted definitions of “social justice” and a guilt-laden emphasis on helping “marginalized people,” all while aiming to colonize church institutions in service to an evil ideology that explicitly seeks to eradicate God from our civilization.

It was roughly this time last year that I began to understand just how useless the broader American church is to thwart the “spirit of the age.” A family friend was dealing with a drag queen teacher at her son’s middle school who had attempted to groom her son and three other boys. When she went to her pastor for help, she was met with an all-too typical response: “That’s terrible. We’ll be praying for y’all.”

Prayer is powerful. Prayer is essential. Prayer is needed now more than ever. So too do we need God-fearing men and women to turn prayer into action.

When our friend came to my wife and me, we did what we knew how to do from years of political battles. We crafted the ironclad case. We set the strategic table. We kept our hearts focused on protecting the kids of our community. And when the moment arrived, we poured righteous accountability down on the local school board from every angle — using our national political connections — so that they had no choice but to push the pervert “teacher” out of the classroom.

When it was over, I was approached by one of my own church leaders. Was he overjoyed at our success? Pleased that members of the church stepped forward to protect children in the community? Maybe. But foremost, he was concerned. What were my wife and I planning to do with a parents’ organization and what might that mean for the church’s congregants and its reputation if people get pulled too strongly toward political engagement?

I distinctly recall thinking: “Unless he changes, this is someone who will be of little use to the faith walk of myself, my wife, or my children.”

Not ‘Political’ Issues

Indeed, why is it that life, marriage, and now the transgender madness is deemed “political?” These are the essential things of the church: the sanctity of life, the beauty of marriage, and the awe of being made in our Lord’s image.

These are now “political issues” because the American church has diluted its mission and abandoned the battlefield to the forces of darkness. Many of our pastors either willingly flee in the opposite direction or actively refuse to engage. Or worse still, some play footsy with identitarian ideologies and Marxist manifestations of “social justice” that ultimately make martyrs of good Christian men like Kirk.

Yes, Kirk is dead because a demon-possessed adherent of radical gender theory, an offshoot of Marxist critical theory, assassinated him for speaking the truth. Yet his martyrdom also makes the weakness of the American church obvious by comparison. This must change.

Lay people have been left to fend for themselves for far too long. We are now dying in this fight. It is long past time for the pastors and Christian leaders of this country to rejoin us on the increasingly spiritual battlefield called “politics.” The unity of the church demands no less. If they do not, the death of Kirk may well herald the beginning of a new and dark age: that of the American Christian martyr.