Opinion

The memorial service for Charlie Kirk in Glendale was billed as a chance to remember a man, yet what unfolded on stage was the consecration of a myth far larger than the individual being mourned. Speaker after speaker — Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr. — seized the pulpit not to reflect on Kirk’s life, but to preach the gospel of a peculiar figure now central to American politics: “American Jesus.” This was not the carpenter who called for humility, nor the teacher who proclaimed blessings for the poor and mercy for the persecuted. This was a nationalist mascot draped in red, white and blue, drafted into service as a partisan general whose job is not to redeem souls but to rally voters.

The language throughout the service made the shift clear. Instead of compassion, the audience was offered combat. Biblical references were stripped of nuance and recast as slogans for mobilisation: “armour of God,” “spiritual war,” “good versus evil.” The message was blunt and consistent — America is under siege, and God stands only with those willing to fight the battle. This was less theology than campaign strategy, an attempt to reframe Christianity as a permission slip for political aggression. The Beatitudes never made the programme; instead, faith was repackaged as a call to arms.

What was striking was the complete absence of Christianity’s hardest imperatives. There was no talk of welcoming the stranger, forgiving without condition, or sacrificing power for the sake of others. Poverty, inequality, and stewardship of creation — subjects that once stood at the centre of Christian ethics — were entirely absent and have been in American Conservative Christianity for decades, if not longer. Instead, Jesus was repurposed into a figure who blesses border walls, sanctifies resentment, and teaches that enemies are to be despised rather than loved. By the time the service was over, the faith on display bore almost no resemblance to the one that has been practiced for two millennia. It was not Christianity so much as a nationalist mythology borrowing Christian symbols.

The contrast between Erika Kirk’s words and Donald Trump’s response captured the entire charade. In the midst of grief, Kirk’s widow quoted Jesus’s plea from the cross — “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” — and extended that radical forgiveness to the man accused of killing her husband. It was a rare and dissonant moment of actual Christianity, difficult and uncomfortable but recognisably rooted in grace. Then Trump took the microphone and discarded it in one sentence. “Charlie did not hate his opponents, and that’s where I disagreed with him. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.” The crowd roared with approval, not for forgiveness but for hatred, revealing what the new creed truly demands.

What emerged in Glendale was not faith but branding, not Christianity but its nationalist imitation. “American Jesus” does not call followers to love enemies, because enemies are too valuable a commodity for mobilisation. He does not preach humility, because humility does not win elections. He does not call for caring for the poor, because compassion is inconvenient to power. Instead, he is a figurehead for grievance, a political weapon wrapped in scripture, a god of loyalty who demands applause rather than repentance. This is why Kirk’s death mattered less to the speakers than the story they could tell with it — the story of a nation at war, a faith hijacked, and a movement determined to rewrite God in its own image.

The danger of American Jesus is not simply hypocrisy, but replacement. When Christianity is fused so tightly with nationalism that disagreement becomes heresy, the space for genuine faith collapses. Believers who still cling to the "radical" teachings of love, mercy and forgiveness are pushed to the margins, dismissed as weak or disloyal. What remains is a hollow creed that weaponises religion against fellow citizens and turns politics into a substitute for salvation. At Charlie Kirk’s memorial, the man himself faded quickly into the background. The real figure on stage was the invention of a movement desperate for a god who hates what they hate and blesses what they already believe. The Jesus paraded in Glendale had Christ’s name, but none of his message — only the slogans of an administration drunk on power.

The Ascension of American Jesus

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