My Grandfather used to tell a joke about a young woman sitting with her little boy at the funeral of her husband. The pastor began his sermon by pointing out what a faithful husband, loving parent and fine Christian the deceased husband had been for all his life. As he praised her late husband’s kindness, generosity and faithfulness, the woman turned to her son and whispered, “Honey, slip up there to the front of the church and take a peek into the casket. I just want to be sure it’s really your dad in there. I think we might be at the wrong funeral.”

There is an old Latin adage, De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Roughly translated, it means “about the dead nothing but good is said.” I concur generally with that sentiment. I have presided over more than a few funerals for people whose lives have been-let’s just say complicated. Though a funeral sermon is not a eulogy, it should be a word of grace for those who grieve. The good news is not good news if it does not intersect with the pain of those who loved the departed, in spite of whatever faults and injuries they may have inflicted. So I tend to lift up whatever positive aspects of a life that I can and speak to the power of God to redeem even lives that have gone off the rails. It does no good to dredge up the wrongs of one who is dead and no longer able to answer or make amends for the past.

The memorial service of Charlie Kirk, however, was more than a funeral. It was a televised canonization of Charlie Kirk as a martyr for and champion of conservative values and free speech. Because Kirk was a public figure, because his memorial service was a public event and because the truth matters, we need to set the record straight. First, Charlie Kirk was not a victim of “the radical left,” whatever the hell that means. He was the victim of an angry, maladjusted young man in a culture that celebrates the ease with which anyone can obtain military grade weapons. To date, he has not been connected with any political, religious or ideologically defined group. As I have made clear elsewhere, Kirk’s death was a tragic event-as are the thousands of other needless gun deaths that are hardly thought newsworthy these days. But that does not make him a martyr any more than anyone else shot to death for no good reason.

Second, while we should fully support Charlie Kirk’s right of free speech, we need to condemn in no uncertain terms the irresponsible and malicious use he made of it. Kirk mocked, ridiculed and threatened LGBTQ+ folk with slurs. He claimed that it was the right of the American people to live free of such “freaks” and even suggested, citing a biblical reference from the book of Leviticus, that gay men should be stoned to death. He held Martin Luther King, Jr. in contempt and argued that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake. Moreover, he said on several occasions that Black people were lacking in intelligence and competency. I have documented these and other remarks in my article of September 15, 2025.  If we didn’t know better, the parade of speakers portraying Kirk as a model of civility, open minded dialogue and respect for opposing views might convince us that he was indeed the mythical hero they are trying to make him. But we do know better. Those of us not entirely detached from reality remember all too well his toxic comments and recognize the memorial service as a masterful work of gaslighting.

That brings me to the third observation. I don’t know when the last time was that I saw such a great ocean of white skin under one roof. True, there were some well chosen exceptions on display, Dr. Ben Carson being one. I am sure if you turned over enough rocks in that stadium you might find a few in the audience as well, though why any person of color would want to honor the life of one who thought and spoke of them as unintelligent, incompetent and successful only through the evil mechanics of “DEI” is beyond me. Nobody used the “N” word that night, but it is hardly unknown within Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA. For example, in 2022, after three Black college football players were killed, Meg Miller, then president of Turning Point’s chapter at the University of Missouri, joked in a social media message, “If they would have killed 4 more n-ggers we would have had the whole week off.” In 2017 Turning Point’s national field director, Crystal Canton, sent a text message to her colleague stating: ‘I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like f— them all … I hate blacks. End of story.'” So let us stop pretending that “race has nothing to do with it.” Racial hate is a dominant gene in Turning Point USA’s DNA.  

Finally, and most importantly, I am sorry the name of Jesus had to be dragged into this carnival of fanatic hatred. References to Jesus punctuated the proceedings from beginning to end. The most absurd came from the lips of HHS Secretary Robert F, Kennedy Jr. who compared Kirk to Jesus. Tucker Carlson took the stage to give Jesus a decidedly antisemitic spin-not inconsistent with Kirk’s own slurs against Jews but at odds with New Testament witness. The Jesus extoled on the stage hated liberals, LGBTQ+ folk, migrants and every other perceived enemy of that crazed MAGA audience. The one and only Christ like word spoken that night came from the lips of Kirk’s widow, Erika who declared that she had forgiven her husband’s killer.  Strikingly discordant to this small island of grace was the speech of Stephen Miller shrieking that “leftists,” “are nothing.” More perplexing still was Donald Trump’s full throated defense of his hatred for the “radical left” that drew nary a protest from all these Jesus loving folks. I don’t know who this Jesus was who the crowd gathered in the State Farm Stadium kept invoking that day, but he clearly was not the one we meet in the gospels.

We can all agree, I hope, that the murder of Charlie Kirk was an inexcusable act. We should all feel sympathy and compassion for his family and loved ones. Had Kirk’s organization and his supporters been content to leave it there, I would as well. But I will not remain silent, and I hope others will not remain silent as the Republican party elevates to sainthood an apostle of racist, misogynist and homophobic hate. I will not remain silent, and I hope my church will not remain silent as the name of Jesus is dragged through the cesspool of Turning Point’s repulsive caricature of our faith. In this age of book banning, alternative facts, baseless conspiracy theories about everything from dog eating migrants to Tylenol, the truth matters more than ever.