The late Charlie Kirk wasn't the kind of Christian that many people in the UK - possibly many Christians across the world - would recognise. New Testament ideas and teachings - things like humility, compassion and forgiveness - didn't seem to loom very large in his personal philosophy and behaviour. These appear to have been shaped more by the Old Testament with its rigid prohibitions, denunciations, smitings and certainties.
In this way he was fairly typical of Conservative Christian views in the US. Biblically fundamentalist rather than in any real sense 'Christian', with more in common with the Israeli right than other Christians outside the US.
Kirk's great inspiration was the 'shock jock' Rush Limbaugh, and it showed. Limbaugh's stock in trade was using his position of power and influence as a prime-time radio host to be outrageously provocative. To say things that were inflammatory, insulting and deliberately designed to shock, usually at the expense of the relatively weak: women, ethnic minority groups, homosexuals.
Punching down on steroids, it was also a way of normalising - desensitising the mainstream - to relatively niche views that many would see as abhorrent. And this was build on a foundation of lies and dishonesty. Many of Limbaugh's views, positions, statements and contentions were demonstrably untrue or gross enough exaggerations for there to be little difference.
He normalised lying as performance art, rolling the turf for others like Kirk.
Limbaugh as a confident, articulate, fluent, quick thinking, experienced radio host was only too happy to use his superior position to intimidate and ridicule the far less capable people prepared to try their luck with him on the air through the sincerity of their beliefs. There was no respectful debate, it was all ridicule and belittlement in the cause of an extreme - and selective - version of hard-right religious fundamentalism.
Blessed with a similar skill-set, Kirk followed a similar path, except using face-to-face debate on college campuses instead of radio. He was quite literally 'down with the kids', influencing young minds en masse with a toxic mix of intolerance, racism, homophobia and misogyny with a sugar coating of motherhood and apple pie.
He was clearly a charismatic individual with an attractiveness which drew in young people, and a tech-savviness that enabled him to make the most of modern communications and social media.
There was, perhaps the beginnings of a personality cult. I'm vaguely reminded of Chris Brain and his evangelical Nine O'clock Service in the 1980s. This connected with young people in a similar way albeit on a far more geographically constrained basis. I would not be surprised if issues relating to the abuse of power didn't emerge about Charlie Kirk as they have for Chris Brain.
The final analysis is whether Kirk left the world a better place than he found it, or at least has a Hippocratic legacy in having done no harm:
In fuelling division and polarisation, normalising lies and hate mongering, punching down against the vulnerable, providing support to a would-be tin-pot dictator like Trump, the balance is not in his favour.
He was not doing Jesus' work in any way, shape or form. I think he might have been working for the other guy.
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