What other evangelical figures criticized Charlie Kirk besides Russell Moore?
Executive summary
A number of evangelical and Christian leaders pushed back on efforts to frame Charlie Kirk as a Christian martyr or to lionize his politics, with critiques coming from commentators at Premier Christianity, Baptist News, Black clergy speaking to public radio, and civil-rights–focused faith voices; meanwhile other prominent evangelicals offered praise or martyr language, underscoring a sharp divide inside the religious right [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting shows the response was less a single chorus of condemnation than a contested conversation about theology, politics and public memory [4] [5].
1. Critics in print: Richard Reddie and Premier Christianity
Richard Reddie wrote a pointed piece in Premier Christianity arguing that Kirk’s public persona and policy positions were “incongruous with those of the saviour he followed,” and that many of Kirk’s statements had targeted minorities and the marginalized — a core reason Reddie resisted sanctifying Kirk’s death as a purely spiritual triumph [1]. That column typifies a strain of evangelical commentary that separates personal faith from public political posture and objects to consecrating partisan leaders with religious martyr language [1].
2. Denominational press and institutional critique: Baptist News
Baptist News published an analysis situating Kirk within the currents of Christian nationalism and argued his politics amplified a distortion of the gospel that seeks control of “seven cultural mountains,” a framing that the article said makes consecration of Kirk’s political project problematic rather than laudable [2]. The Baptist News piece framed its critique in institutional and theological terms, warning against conflating patriotic or political aims with Christian discipleship [2].
3. Black clergy’s public rejection of the martyr narrative
Multiple Black pastors — speaking to outlets such as WUNC — explicitly rejected the comparison between Kirk’s killing and historic Christian martyrdom, citing both Kirk’s past insulting remarks about people of color and the different historical contexts of civil-rights leaders versus a partisan political organizer [3]. Those pastors expressed sorrow for violence while insisting that labeling Kirk a martyr flattens important moral and historical distinctions and risks erasing harms tied to his rhetoric [3].
4. Advocacy voices warning about weaponizing religion
Civic and interfaith commentators cautioned that Kirk’s supporters were turning his death into religious symbolism in ways that could be abusive or exclusionary; for example, the Arab American Institute’s commentary and other civil-society writers warned against employing sacralizing language to shield political actors from legitimate critique [5]. Those critiques came less as pastoral rebukes and more as alarms about the public uses of religious language after a politically charged killing [5].
5. The other side: evangelicals who defended or sanctified Kirk
At the same time, several evangelical figures publicly framed Kirk’s death in explicitly religious terms: Pastor Greg Laurie spoke of Kirk’s faith and described his passing in heavenly terms, while other conservative religious leaders cast him as a martyr — a reaction that the Forward documented as part of a broader pattern in which some evangelical elites embraced a martyr narrative [4]. That countercurrent highlights how assessments of Kirk fell along political and theological lines, not simply on neutral pastoral grounds [4].
6. What the sources do—and don’t—show
The available reporting identifies named critics (Richard Reddie) and identifiable groups (Black pastors, Baptist News writers, civic commentators) who challenged martyr framing or criticized Kirk’s politics, but it does not provide a comprehensive list of every evangelical leader who publicly criticized him beyond those outlets [1] [2] [3] [5]. Some evangelical institutions and leaders praised Kirk, revealing a divided religious landscape in which the same death produced both denunciation and veneration [4]. Where the record in these sources is silent, it is not being asserted that no other evangelical figures criticized Kirk — only that the cited reporting documents these particular voices [1] [2] [3] [5] [4].