THE NEW YORK TIMES: Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom might provide impetus for Christian revival

Eight years ago, religious conservatives made a bargain with Donald Trump, accepting the leadership of a flagrant immoralist as the price of protection against a then-ascendant-seeming secular progressivism.

The agonies involved in this political compromise fractured churches, divided pundits and seemed to introduce a further crisis into an American Christianity already dealing with scandal, disaffection and decline.

But today conservative Christians are eager to tell a different story, and Charlie Kirk’s memorial service Sunday — a gathering of political figures where politics was subordinated to preaching, culminating in Erika Kirk’s extraordinarily moving message of forgiveness for her husband’s killer — was a stage for a narrative of revival, recovery, conversion, Christian strength.

Trump was there, of course, and still very much his un-Christian self. (His off-script comments about his inability to feel anything but hatred for his own enemies were funny in the Trumpian way, but also plainly true.)

But the idea that the future belongs to a post-Christian right seemed not just absent but almost absurd, as the leaders of the Republican Party lined up for a memorial that doubled as an evangelical revival, complete with altar calls.

Religious history invites us to expect the unexpected, and there’s no reason to rule out a future where Kirk’s martyrdom provides the impetus for a genuine revival.

The story of the last five years, at least in my reading of the religious tea leaves, is one of secularisation arrested, and a culture reconsidering religion — but not yet becoming notably more religious. That’s an equilibrium that could be tipped by dramatic events or examples, and to the extent that Kirk is remembered and emulated primarily for his faith, maybe we’ve just seen a tipping point.

In this scenario, rather than being a harbinger of a paganized American future, Trump himself would be seen as a transitional figure, an agent of destabilisation who delivered the coup de grâce to the nostalgia-driven moralism of religious conservatism 1.0 while clearing the ground for religious conservatism 2.0, a more intentional and mission-driven and post-secular formation.

In which case the Christian right’s bargain with Trumpism would look less corrupting and more necessary, in the strange ways that Providence writes straight with crooked lines.

But any Christian envisioning such a revival should keep other scenarios in mind. The Kirk service was more religious than political, the posthumous portrait of the slain father and husband emphasising his faith over his political activism — but his memorial was still a fundamentally right-wing and Republican affair.

It was a statement of evangelical resilience and an indicator of enduring religious influence within the GOP (something that was by no means guaranteed a decade ago). But controlling a political coalition is not the same thing as converting a culture, and indeed the two can often be at odds.

At the very least they often seemed at odds in the years before Trump came along, when one of traditional Christianity’s difficulties was that it was seen as an overly ideological and factional persuasion by many Americans.

Trump in a strange way helped with this problem, because his cheerful heathenism created some distance between partisan conservatism and Christian faith (again, that odd providential touch).

But if the post-Trump Republican Party is immediately identified with Christian revivalism and vice versa, then the pre-Trump dynamic could easily reassert itself, and any Christian renewal could hit a ceiling outside the distinctive culture of the GOP.

Then there’s also the question of how much the ongoing requirements of the Trump deal are still influencing conservative Christianity for the worse. Andrew T Walker, a thoughtful evangelical writer, describes religious conservatism 2.0 as a mindset that seeks an “assertive common good Christianity” that aspires to “anchor society in the stability and order that flow from Christian ethics.”

And I agree that there are a lot of Christians who think of their faith’s public witness in this way — as a moral and spiritual answer to the dissolving influences of the 21st century

But there are also, very clearly, Trumpified versions of religious conservatism that cheerfully participate in our era’s very online cycles of scapegoating while back-burnering the key moral concerns of religious conservatism 1.0, from abortion to foreign aid to the public morals of our politicians.

And there is also very clearly a way in which Trump’s own enmity-driven style can’t just be quarantined in his person: All the people in his orbit and competing for his favour, the public Christians very much included, have to constantly prove that they, too, are tough enough and mean enough, willing to cross the line or play the bully or break the moral norm if that’s what it takes to stand by the boss or stick it to the libs.

This is where Erika Kirk’s grace was so essential and instructive — because the spirit of charity she manifested is both the most important thing that Trump’s second administration lacks and the most important thing that his would-be inheritors need to cultivate.

This holds true in the secular and political sphere, where a populist conservatism will never establish itself as a governing power in our society, as opposed to just a transient spirit of reaction, if it can’t reassure Americans outside its most devoted base that they are seen and respected and understood.

And it holds true especially in the religious realm, where there will be no lasting revival unless Christians are known not just for their strength or their belief but for their love.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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