The aftermath of the political assassination of conservative activist and political commentator Charlie Kirk has unleashed political whirlwinds in the United States of America.
Myriads of online left wing accounts on social media have celebrated, justified or expressed profound and disturbing indifference to the murder. Some segments of the right have begun to crack down on political speech in response (something I think Charlie Kirk would oppose, btw).
Within Adventism, the response to Kirk’s murder has been mixed. Many conservative stalwarts: John Bradshaw, Doug Batchelor, Mark Finley, and others have been forceful in their condemnation of the attack and have praised the positive aspects of Kirk’s life-including his embrace of the 7th day Sabbath. But within more left-wing or liberal corners of the Church, the response to Kirk’s murder has been markedly different.
Just in my own feed I have noticed friends who I grew up with in Adventist institutions condemning-but qualifying the murder of Kirk. And the qualifications I’ve seen within Adventism all stem from misconceptions in Kirk’s podcast that paint him as a racist. But none of these Adventists that I have seen take any time or effort to actually understand the context for one or two controversial statements.
This brings me to the 2+ hour stream I saw on the Conscience & Justice Council YouTube channel on Friday evening September 19. The Protest & Mourning: A Divided Truth. Panelists were Edward Woods III, Claudia Allen, Cryston Josiah, Timothy Golden, Olive Hemmings, and Nicholas Miller.
The thing which prompted this video was their concern over the reaction by conservative Adventist ministries to Charlie Kirk’s killing. From their perspective, this amounted to conservatives lionizing Kirk for racism, white supremacy, sexism, and hate. The suggestion was made, particularly forcefully from Claudia Allen, that conservative white Adventists support or lionizing of Kirk was evidence of their own/and the church’s racism and support for systemically racist institutions and policies.
Dr. Nicholas Miller attempted to offer some nuance to the conversation by insisting that there is a distinction to be made between support for actual white supremacy (the belief in the superiority of the white race) and ignorance laden support for statements or structures that implicitly have racism or white supremacy baked into them. He further went on to mention how despite the controversial statements about prominent black people, Kirk seemed to display genuine affection and care for actual black people and gay people and women in personal interactions on college campuses. In a conversation that was otherwise pretty negative and dare I say even dark, Dr. Miller’s contributions were appreciated.
But I would go further than Miller. Charlie Kirk was not a racist or white supremacist, at all, and in fact repeatedly and emphatically condemned white supremacy. There is a reason why Nick Fuentes’s Groypers would show up to Turning Point rallies to protest Kirk—because he didn’t allow them on the stage with him.
Kirk WAS a major critic of Critical Race Theory, race based affirmative action and DEI policies, and other forms of non meritocratic public policy. Kirk’s comments that were particularly controversial revolved around his statements about certain specific black women in politics (Kentaji Brown-Jackson, Sheila Jackson-Lee, and Michelle Obama) and his fears or concerns when he saw black pilots during the DEI preoccupation.
Now I may have worded my sentiments differently, but it should be made crystal clear that he said the former in response to those women claiming that they had benefited from affirmative action policies, and he was making the point that these types of policies elevate factors other than merit.
And as far as his latter comment on pilots his follow up from the Megyn Kelly Show is highly important. (Charlie Kirk Responds to Controversy Over His Comments About DEI …) Kirk says,
“...I want to just reiterate the essence of that clip that was missed by almost everybody. Jordan Peterson to his credit really picked up on it, which is what I was trying to be you know very vulnerable with the audience is that DEI invites unwholesome thinking. And I said I don’t and I was saying in the clip that’s not who I am that’s not what I believe but what it does is it makes us worse versions of ourselves Megyn. That’s the whole point of what I was saying. Is that I now look at everything through a hyper racialized diversity quota lens because of their massive insistence to try to hit these ridiculous racial hiring quotas.”
Liberal Adventists are not sharing this part of Kirk’s DEI monologues, but to any honest person this is important context to know exactly what Kirk was against. Kirk was against racially based policies.
Ibram X Kendi
The core problem dividing the church on race is the adoption by many liberal Adventists of the ideas of race grifter Ibram X Kendi, that it’s not enough to be non racist, but that one must be actively “anti-racist.”
Now that sounds great on first thought, “well duh of course we want to be anti racism!” But the problem is this is a rejection of Martin Luther King’s goal of a colorblind society as ideal. Kendi’s and his liberal Adventist copycats are advocating that in order to fight racism everyone must adopt a racial consciousness. Kendi even says that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” well I hope you can all see the problems with this worldview brothers and sisters. What Kendi and the race grifters are arguing for is a perpetual wheel of grievance and discrimination. Faithful Remnant believers must reject this logic.
I urge all faithful Seventh-Day Adventists to make sure they aren’t believing lies about brother Kirk.
And then I think the whole conversation became derailed by the fact that for at least one of the panelists, Claudia Allen—the hatred leveled against conservative Adventists who support or like Kirk is broader. Allen repeatedly brought up how conservative support for Kirk rests on sexism and misogyny as well, and her examples for this are Kirk’s firm anti abortion stance and his anti LGBTQ positions. Well brothers and sisters, I will let you draw your own conclusions on this. Was Kirk wrong to uphold the 6th and 7th commandments in the public square? I don’t think so.
Now I would love to have a balanced conversation at some point about where I, and I think most conservative Adventists, would part from Charlie Kirk’s messages. I don’t think he got the line of church and state separation exactly right, though not as radically wrong as some are claiming. And personally, Kirk was a bit more populist than I am. But right now I think it is more important to push back against lies and slander against our fellow Sabbath keeping brethren, and offer prayers and condolences to his family and friends.
For anyone interested, my friend Pastor Gio Marin and myself responded in depth, with receipts, to many of the misconceptions of Charlie Kirk on our Youtube show.
Maranatha!
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Joey Carrion lives in southwest Michigan and studies psychology at Andrews University. He enjoys outdoor activity and co-hosting the Gio and Joey show where political and social issues are taken apart from a uniquely Protestant perspective.