Living in Hope

For the past few days, I have been struggling with formatting my thoughts around the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the immediate blame focused on Transgender and Black people for his death, and call to arms by the far right. I have struggled with the appropriate pastoral response to this type of violence while at the same time juxtaposing individuals’ statements with other statements by the same people when children are killed in school or Black boys and men are gunned down.

The comparison is daunting.

The silence is loud!

No time prior in my lifetime has the government celebrated a White Supremacist when they died. It wasn’t long ago when David Duke was rebuked and shunned by our government for his neo-Nazi ideologies…yet today, the leaders in the United States Government are calling a racist and White Supremacist a “good man” and a “Christian” when the very life Charlie Kirk led was anti-thetical to the teachings of Christ.

My fellow seminarian and friend, The Rev. Dr. Howard John Wesley, said it best on Sunday 9/14, when he stated:

“You do not become a hero in death when you were a weapon of the enemy in life.” 

Yet, somehow, people are celebrating a man who would wish me and people like me dead. This is not hyperbole. Mr. Kirk made statements that devalued women, Black people, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and so forth. Specifically, Mr. Kirk was not a man that embodied the teachings of Christ. His profession of being a White Christian Nationalist speaks to this as well.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State define White Christian Nationalism as:

 “The dangerous belief that America is – and must remain – a Christian nation founded for its white Christian inhabitants and that our laws and policies must reflect this. Christian Nationalists deny the separation of church and state promised by our Constitution, and they oppose equality for people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and the nonreligious.”

Those of us who remember the basics of American History understand that these beliefs go against the tenants to the founding of this nation. The Constitution states that there shall be no state religion. Even with our nation’s founding on stolen land and built by stolen hands, the general understanding was that people had the freedom to worship God or not worship or even believe in God as they saw fit and that the government had no say in it.

As United Methodist Christians we have deeply held beliefs that all means ALL. And all are welcome to God’s table. Our Board of Church and Society has shared the following:

We believe the state should not attempt to control the church, nor should the church seek to dominate the state… Separation of church and state means no organic union of the two, but it does permit interaction. (Book of Resolutions, #4100, Church Government Relations)

As followers of Christ, we can look to the scriptures to remind us of who and what we are called to be. Galatians 3:28 reminds us that “in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female” but that we are one in the family of Christ. In the Gospel of Matthew chapters 23-25 remind us of how we are to tend to and care for one another. At no time does Jesus discriminate against people but rather calls the church to accountability on the ways in which it treats members of society.

To be clear, White Christian Nationalism is an evil. Racism is sin. As followers of Jesus, we must work together to end racism and all forms of practices that keep us from connecting with one another and seeing the light of Christ in each other.

No person deserves to die the way that Charlie Kirk was killed. But dying a horrible death does not absolve him from the horrible acts that he performed in his life. In Chapter 3 of the book of James it states:

Think about this: A small flame can set a whole forest on fire. The tongue is a small flame of fire, a world of evil at work in us. It contaminates our entire lives. Because of it, the circle of life is set on fire. The tongue itself is set on fire by the flames of hell. (CEV).

So, dear siblings, let us care for one another in speech and in action. All of us are harmed by White Supremacy so let us all work together to end all forms of hate in our church, our communities, our state, and our world.

It begins with us.

Rev. Effie McAvoy is Lead Pastor at Shepherd of the Valley UMC, a Congregational Member of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches.