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A clip of Reverend Howard-John Wesley’s sermon went viral this week after the Black pastor acknowledged the horror of Charlie Kirk’s assassination but refused to let grief turn into a hasty canonization of a man he calls a purveyor of division. Wesley told his congregation that “how you die does not redeem how you lived,” making clear he would not join the national chorus that is already turning Kirk into a martyr.
Let’s be absolutely clear: condemning violence is not the same as endorsing a revisionist eulogy meant to erase a man’s convictions and influence. Wesley’s sermon struck a nerve because it mixed legitimate moral outrage at political violence with an unmistakable political sermon, insisting that Kirk’s life disqualified him from public honor despite the brutality of his death.
Conservatives should not be surprised that the left’s spiritual leaders rush to lecture the nation while excusing or minimizing the real cultural rot that produced the moment. Across the country, friends and allies of Charlie Kirk — pastors, students, and grassroots activists — are insisting that his fight for free speech, faith, and a revival of American values deserves remembrance, not the moralizing erasure being served up by some pulpit elites.
What’s most galling is the double standard. Black pastors in Houston and elsewhere have rightly condemned the killing, but many simultaneously used their pulpits to attack Kirk’s politics and character rather than exhort a nation to unity and law and order. That kind of selective outrage is exactly why ordinary Americans distrust the moral high ground offered by so many cultural arbiters in churches and newsrooms today.
The media then amplifies those sermons as if they are balanced moral analysis, never mentioning how Kirk’s movement mobilized millions of young Americans to civic engagement and religious conviction. Instead of sober reflection, we get a narrative that turns a violent, criminal act into an excuse to delegitimize a man’s lifetime of conservative advocacy. The American people deserve truth, not theatrics.
If conservatives have one lesson to take from this ugly episode it’s that we must defend both the rule of law and the memory of those who stood for our values. We can and should condemn political violence while also refusing to let the left rewrite the record about who Charlie Kirk was and what he fought for. Churches, media, and civic institutions should be places of healing and honest appraisal, not partisan sermonizing.
So to every hardworking American watching this drama unfold: stand tall and speak plainly. Reject the moral preening that would cheapen a life into a talking point, demand accountability for violence, and keep building the institutions — families, churches, schools, and civic groups — that actually renew this country. Our republic is stronger when grief leads to resolve, not when it becomes a weapon for easy political virtue-signaling.
