The Charlie Kirk Show - My Opening Remarks from the TPUSA Faith Pastor’s Summit
Aired: 2023-05-30
Duration: 20:41


=== Opening Remarks for TPUSA (08:34) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, happy Tuesday.
[00:00:01]  My opening remarks of the TPUSA faith event.
[00:00:03]  I think you'll really enjoy it.
[00:00:04]  Email us your thoughts.
[00:00:05]  As always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:08]  Text this episode to your friends and get involved with Turning Point USA and come to our young women's leadership summit at tpusa.com slash YWLS.
[00:00:20]  That's tpusa.com slash ywls.
[00:00:25]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:26]  Here we go.
[00:00:27]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:28]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.
[00:00:31]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:00:34]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:00:37]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:00:38]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:00:39]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
[00:00:48]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:00:56]  That's why we are here.
[00:00:59]  Brought to you by the Loan Experts I Trust, Andrew and Todd at Sierra Pacific Mortgage at andrewandTodd.com.
[00:01:09]  I am told this is the largest gathering of its kind ever, which is amazing.
[00:01:15]  So largest pastor summit.
[00:01:16]  And I asked the question, I mean, there might be a larger pastor summit than this, but this many pastors in one room from so many different denominations, and you're still all playing so nicely together, that's pretty amazing.
[00:01:28]  So I agree with Rob with what was said earlier.
[00:01:33]  There's a lot of denominational diversity, and I think that's beautiful and wonderful.
[00:01:38]  We believe Jesus is the center of it all.
[00:01:41]  We believe in the inerrancy of scripture, and we want to spread Jesus to as many people as possible.
[00:01:47]  It's the most important thing that we're going to talk about these next couple of days.
[00:01:51]  The second most important thing is to make sure we can do that first thing.
[00:01:54]  To make sure that the church is never labeled non-essential again.
[00:01:57]  To make sure that strip clubs and marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores don't remain open when the church is closed.
[00:02:05]  I want to thank you for taking the most valuable thing, time, to be here.
[00:02:09]  I hope that these two days we have planned blesses you.
[00:02:12]  It's going to be a lot of programming, a lot of speakers.
[00:02:15]  These speakers will challenge you.
[00:02:16]  They'll inform you.
[00:02:18]  Hopefully you'll see the buffet line of options that we have for you here at TPUSA Faith.
[00:02:23]  But let me take a step back and kind of tell you the story about why we're doing this and why we're here.
[00:02:27]  So I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy in the suburbs of Chicago.
[00:02:32]  Some people are from Illinois.
[00:02:33]  I'm also a refugee and a great place to be from.
[00:02:38]  I'll say one thing about Illinois.
[00:02:40]  We have term limits in Illinois, a little different than most states.
[00:02:43]  One term in office, one term in jail for our politicians.
[00:02:48]  That's it.
[00:02:48]  I'm done.
[00:02:49]  That's my Illinois commentary.
[00:02:51]  Most important decision I made in my life was in fifth grade to make Jesus Christ the chairman of the board of my life.
[00:02:58]  And every year it's meant more and more to me.
[00:02:59]  But I was told from a young age, and many of you might have heard this, some of you might actually teach this.
[00:03:04]  And if you teach this, I'm so glad you're here because we're going to lovingly challenge you these next couple days.
[00:03:08]  I was told that politics and faith are incompatible, that you do not bring that stuff into the church.
[00:03:14]  It's dirty.
[00:03:14]  It's unclean.
[00:03:15]  I was taught that from a young age.
[00:03:17]  You could do the politics thing, but keep it away from the bride of Christ.
[00:03:20]  I said, okay.
[00:03:21]  So I started Turning Point USA.
[00:03:22]  I was very careful not to commingle those things.
[00:03:26]  And I just assumed for quite some time that the church was doing its work and was talking about the issues that matter with moral clarity.
[00:03:33]  And you can look it up.
[00:03:34]  I made the worst prediction in the history of American podcasting in March of 2020.
[00:03:39]  The worst.
[00:03:40]  There's never been a prediction so bad, so awful, so inaccurate, where I made a big proclamation.
[00:03:45]  I looked right to the camera.
[00:03:46]  I said, listen, I give my life to the Lord in fifth grade.
[00:03:49]  And I've been, you know, to church.
[00:03:51]  And I'll tell you, the church is never going to lock down.
[00:03:54]  The church is not going to listen to these government mandates and orders.
[00:03:57]  The church loves liberty.
[00:03:59]  I said, trust me, podcast audience, that there's going to be a mass response where the church won't close down for Easter or Pentecost.
[00:04:06]  The church understands tyranny and will push back against it.
[00:04:10]  Just watch and tune in next week.
[00:04:15]  And I kept waiting.
[00:04:16]  I said, where's the response?
[00:04:17]  And, you know, there's some of you in this room who deserve a tremendous amount of credit.
[00:04:22]  And Pastor Rob McCoy and Jack Hibbs and so many people.
[00:04:26]  And I want to make sure that you know that we notice you, but you were in the minority, and you know you're in the minority.
[00:04:31]  The vast majority of churches coward in fear to a tyrannical agenda from state, local, and federal governments based on a lie to keep us masked, to keep our kids at home, socially isolated.
[00:04:43]  We saw depression rates go up, suicide rates go up, alcoholism, drug addiction, Easter and Pentecost taken from us.
[00:04:49]  As it says in the scriptures, do not forsake the gathering of believers.
[00:04:52]  The church was coward in fear.
[00:04:53]  I said, What is going on?
[00:04:55]  And I was confused because I thought the church believed certain things widely.
[00:04:59]  Of course, some of you did the right thing and you remained open and you fought the local and county governments.
[00:05:03]  And I was starting to receive emails from people that people said, Well, Charlie, my pastor said Romans 13, and we're not allowed to open because we have to submit to the local governor.
[00:05:12]  And again, here I am.
[00:05:13]  I'm super confused because I'm a political guy, right?
[00:05:16]  Hosting a show.
[00:05:17]  And when you study this stuff for many couple years in a decade, and you fight these people on campuses, you start to see patterns of language and behavior.
[00:05:26]  And he said, no, this is not about public health.
[00:05:28]  This is not about science.
[00:05:30]  This is about totalitarian control.
[00:05:32]  This is about isolating people to make them unfamiliar with one another to try to make the Pulitzer, the Leviathan, the fourth branch of government, more powerful, of course, in an election year.
[00:05:43]  And for saying those things, you get labeled all sorts of different names and awful stuff.
[00:05:47]  And so that was frustrating.
[00:05:49]  Started to travel to some of your churches and learned that there was a remnant, that there were pastors that were fighting back.
[00:05:57]  And it started to spread, and people started to open.
[00:06:00]  But then, then I realized, okay, we have a serious problem, okay?
[00:06:05]  Because it was bad enough that it was lockdowns, that people would just, they'd be giving these sermons to empty congregations on live streams.
[00:06:13]  And I would be told, hey, Charlie, live streams exactly the same thing as having people in church.
[00:06:17]  And our response would always be, you know, giving a sermon on a YouTube channel is like watching a fireplace on YouTube.
[00:06:24]  You get all the effects, but there's no warmth.
[00:06:28]  So speaking to an empty congregation, I had to hear pastors that because they saw a five-minute Facebook video or Instagram video, they became subject matter experts on race in America.
[00:06:43]  I had to all of a sudden see a video after video of hearing that America is systemically racist and BLM is the most important organization ever.
[00:06:51]  And while there's looting and arson and we see all of the things that tie us together start to fall apart, I start to see pastors that have told us not to be political for years become extraordinarily political on every issue that they have no idea what they're talking about.
[00:07:08]  These are the same people that get mad at us because we talk about life.
[00:07:13]  We talk about marriage.
[00:07:15]  But then they had the audacity to say things that they have no idea what they're talking about.
[00:07:19]  Many of whom I think do actually regret it and they've tried to backpedal.
[00:07:23]  And I hope they do repent because that is what is necessary for some of the sermons that they delivered in that summer.
[00:07:33]  And I could name names.
[00:07:34]  I promised I wouldn't do it at this event, right?
[00:07:36]  But you know who I'm talking about, right?
[00:07:39]  And it was bad.
[00:07:40]  And so, look, doing it for at that point, nine years, going to campuses, debating professors, reading the literature, understanding who Herbert Marcuse is, and Jacques Derrida, Michelle Foucault, and Antonio Gramscian Cultural Marxism and reading intro to critical race theory.
[00:07:55]  I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, American church broadly.
[00:07:58]  You have no idea what you are introducing into your seminaries, into your pews, into your.
[00:08:05]  You are about to bring in a Luciferian, unclean spirit under the guise of diversity.
[00:08:11]  And that's where I said, okay, the Rubicon is crossed.
[00:08:14]  It's one thing you guys are cowering in fear.
[00:08:16]  It's another thing that you guys are now making me the enemy because I'm a white Christian male who believes that we shouldn't judge people based on the color of their skin.
[00:08:26]  I said, no, no, the Rubicon is crossed.
[00:08:28]  So then I started to travel the country, see that there's pastors speaking out against this.
[00:08:31]  And, you know, we saw what happened in that summer of 2020.

=== The Rubicon is Crossed (11:17) ===

[00:08:35]  And we saw, you know, Black Lives Matter Global Network come out and they say that we want to destroy the Western prescribed nuclear family.
[00:08:41]  That's not a conspiracy theory.
[00:08:42]  It's on their website.
[00:08:42]  They took it down once that that's what pastors were promoting.
[00:08:46]  And I said, what is going on here?
[00:08:47]  And we've seen that it's accelerated in certain communities and certain areas.
[00:08:51]  And what I found is many pastors had a lot of willingness and a lot of spirit.
[00:08:55]  They had a lot of energy to want to fight back against it.
[00:08:58]  But I heard a couple pieces of feedback.
[00:08:59]  Charlie, I'm the only pastor in America that's fighting against this.
[00:09:02]  I was like, well, I know that's not true.
[00:09:04]  Okay.
[00:09:04]  I was just with, you know, Pastor Juergen in San Diego or Steve Smotherman in Albuquerque, right?
[00:09:10]  I know you're not the only one.
[00:09:12]  I said, but do you know any others?
[00:09:13]  No.
[00:09:13]  I said, okay, so we have to create community of the courageous.
[00:09:16]  I said, that's a need.
[00:09:18]  And then they said, Charlie, I just don't have time to study it.
[00:09:20]  Where do I get the resources?
[00:09:21]  And I said, ah, okay, that's something else we could help you with.
[00:09:24]  Because we know this stuff pretty well after doing it 10 years.
[00:09:26]  We know the arguments.
[00:09:27]  We know the literature.
[00:09:29]  We have the speaker network.
[00:09:30]  I said, okay.
[00:09:31]  So we launched.
[00:09:31]  I had no plans ever to do anything in the churches, right?
[00:09:34]  At all.
[00:09:34]  And I mean that.
[00:09:36]  This was born completely out of necessity and out of a love for the church.
[00:09:42]  I would be happy just to do the college campus stuff, guys.
[00:09:44]  There's plenty of work there.
[00:09:46]  Trust me, okay?
[00:09:47]  We're doing great work there, by the way.
[00:09:49]  Okay, praise God.
[00:09:49]  Our movement is growing like you couldn't believe on the campuses.
[00:09:56]  I'm happy to do that.
[00:09:57]  But I looked to my left and my right, and there are some organizations, and I just said, you know what?
[00:10:01]  As being an organizing guy, as being someone who doesn't sit still well, I'm not a good spectator.
[00:10:07]  I said, we have to do what we have to do.
[00:10:08]  So somebody asked me, they said, Charlie, what does success look like for TPSA Faith?
[00:10:12]  I would love to be so successful we could work ourselves into retirement.
[00:10:15]  Every church wakes up bold and courageous and wokeism gets kicked out.
[00:10:19]  Say, thank you guys very much.
[00:10:20]  I'm going back to the campus thing.
[00:10:22]  The American church is on fire.
[00:10:24]  But do you know that 95% of the American church was silent and did not even say a prayer of thanks or gratitude after the reversal of Roe versus Wade?
[00:10:35]  You know, I had someone come up to me and they said, Charlie, when is God going to do a move of intervention in our nation?
[00:10:41]  I said, well, Roe versus Wade is pretty miraculous, right?
[00:10:44]  The reversal of Roe versus Wade.
[00:10:45]  For years I was told it's never going to happen.
[00:10:47]  Don't even waste your prayers on it.
[00:10:48]  Don't whisper it.
[00:10:49]  Don't think about it.
[00:10:50]  Don't talk about it.
[00:10:50]  Don't organize it.
[00:10:51]  That is law.
[00:10:52]  It's untouchable.
[00:10:53]  It is the third rail.
[00:10:55]  And then in a very uncharacteristic way, you know, God just works in amazing ways.
[00:11:00]  Someone that we were supposed to hate, who lived the very color for life, came down to golden escalator, put three people on the Supreme Court, and Roe versus Wade gets repealed.
[00:11:09]  Now.
[00:11:11]  So then you just have to imagine, right?
[00:11:16]  That's a miracle.
[00:11:18]  And so God does a miracle, and 95% of his church says, meh.
[00:11:27]  95% of churches across the country did not say thank you, Lord, for your intervention.
[00:11:34]  Something to pray about.
[00:11:35]  Think about.
[00:11:37]  So we're here to change that.
[00:11:42]  I love what I'm seeing, though.
[00:11:44]  I'm seeing more and more pastors be interested.
[00:11:45]  There are people here that you are more than welcome that have written some very critical things about us, about me, questioning my faith and our walk.
[00:11:53]  I'm glad you're here.
[00:11:54]  I hope you learned something.
[00:11:56]  And I hope that you'll see that our agenda is pretty clear.
[00:12:00]  I love Jesus, love liberty, love America, and you can love all three of those things.
[00:12:10]  And in Psalm 97, 10, if you love God, you must hate evil.
[00:12:18]  And, boy, you're seeing it everywhere, right?
[00:12:21]  Target, got Satanist close.
[00:12:23]  No exaggeration.
[00:12:24]  You got the trans stuff.
[00:12:26]  Right here in this city, oh my goodness, so sad.
[00:12:28]  Trans terrorist goes and kills six Christians in an act of a terror hate crime.
[00:12:32]  Majority of Christian pastors did not mention that from their pulpits and even mention it.
[00:12:37]  But they did mention Floyd.
[00:12:38]  They did mention Floyd.
[00:12:40]  So I want to read something, just a part of something which I find to be interesting.
[00:12:44]  Rolling Stone, which I didn't realize was still a thing.
[00:12:47]  They wrote this article.
[00:12:50]  Charlie Kirk's turning point.
[00:12:52]  First of all, it's not my turning point, okay?
[00:12:53]  It's the Lord's turning point.
[00:12:54]  This is not my turning point, okay?
[00:12:56]  They say Charlie Kirk's turning point pivots to Christian nationalism.
[00:13:00]  A description that I've never used on myself.
[00:13:03]  They're trying to smear and slander all of you, okay?
[00:13:05]  Now, I am both a Christian and a nationalist, but most importantly, I'm a Christian, okay?
[00:13:09]  And that's the most important thing in my life.
[00:13:11]  And so they write all this stuff.
[00:13:13]  This is just, it's nonsense.
[00:13:15]  I could go through it over and over again.
[00:13:16]  But I want to read one part of this, which is they really lost control as they wrote this article.
[00:13:23]  The focus on fundamentalism, okay, when they say fundamentalism, that just means believing in the Bible, just so we're clear.
[00:13:32]  Represents a clear and present danger to democracy.
[00:13:36]  That's what they call us here today.
[00:13:38]  That you are a, first of all, we're a republic, not a democracy.
[00:13:41]  Let's just make sure we're clear.
[00:13:42]  Okay?
[00:13:47]  They can write all these articles.
[00:13:48]  This doesn't phase me.
[00:13:49]  We've been through this for a decade.
[00:13:50]  And that's the other thing that I kind of learned, right?
[00:13:53]  Is that some people in the church world, they freak out when the New York Times contacts us.
[00:13:57]  They have like a hotline, right, with us.
[00:14:00]  It's kind of like, okay, get in line.
[00:14:02]  You're like the fourth reporter to call us.
[00:14:03]  I mean, the Washington Post, New York Times, Reuters, AP, we've dealt with this for a decade because, you know, some Christian churches, they're like, oh my goodness, what happens here?
[00:14:10]  I think that some of the last decade of what we've been through, a turning point, has been getting us ready to really not care that the media is going to try to attack the work that we're doing here, to be perfectly honest.
[00:14:19]  It's just indifference really is the solution there.
[00:14:22]  And look, I want to reiterate something here, which is, I think, our short-term mission that I think we can all agree on.
[00:14:29]  We believe in biblical inerrancy.
[00:14:31]  We believe in the word of God.
[00:14:33]  I cannot emphasize enough the threat that wokeism poses to American Christianity.
[00:14:39]  And I will prove it to you.
[00:14:41]  At the core of wokeism, at the core, is to believe, is to do exactly what happened in Genesis 3.
[00:14:48]  Did God really say that?
[00:14:51]  It's Genesis 3 right now, everybody.
[00:14:53]  Are you sure God said that?
[00:14:57]  The wokeys are going right after biblical inerrancy.
[00:15:00]  It is subjectivism at its core.
[00:15:03]  So when you introduce these ideas, really what it is is, oh, maybe we don't need Deuteronomy or Leviticus.
[00:15:09]  By the way, some pastors are outwardly preaching this stuff, right?
[00:15:12]  Some pastors are tweeting out that we don't need the Old Testament, right?
[00:15:15]  Maybe that's not really what Jesus meant or what Jesus said.
[00:15:20]  That is deconstructionism.
[00:15:24]  And so then how do we beat the woke?
[00:15:27]  How do we push back against them?
[00:15:28]  Well, this is a huge threat to them.
[00:15:30]  And this is why the Rolling Stone people write, I don't know, like, look how big this is, 3,000 words.
[00:15:35]  It's just nauseating.
[00:15:37]  Because they know something.
[00:15:39]  They know that even if just 10% more churches speak out, the whole game changes.
[00:15:46]  Everything changes.
[00:15:48]  The whole ballgame.
[00:15:50]  They see it.
[00:15:51]  They want a passive church.
[00:15:52]  They want an obedient church.
[00:15:54]  You're going to hear from the great Eric Metaxas later.
[00:15:57]  And by the way, Eric's book, Letter to the American Church, one of the most important things published in the last couple years.
[00:16:03]  I mean that.
[00:16:05]  And he'll tell you, it's not that there were no churches in Nazi Germany.
[00:16:08]  It's just that they just kind of like, nah, just do the gospel.
[00:16:12]  Just Romans 13.
[00:16:14]  That was the number one most quoted verse.
[00:16:17]  A church that is willing to call good good and evil evil is a threat to secular totalitarianism.
[00:16:27]  And another thing that people say is, well, Charlie, you know, isn't it about winning the lost?
[00:16:33]  Absolutely.
[00:16:35]  If we don't get this right, though, and if we continue theological disputes and don't focus on liberty, then we're going to be having those theological disputes from prison.
[00:16:47]  The totalitarianism they're trying to implement in America, they must go through the true church first.
[00:16:55]  And so these next couple days is pretty amazing.
[00:16:58]  You look around, 1,100 registrants.
[00:17:00]  It's never happened before, from my knowledge.
[00:17:02]  Now, there are pastor summits that are bigger, but they're usually not really talking about the meaty cultural issues of the day, right?
[00:17:10]  I don't know.
[00:17:11]  I see some of the, I get some feedback.
[00:17:13]  I say, what'd you learn?
[00:17:14]  They say, well, I learned how to better collect tithes and offerings.
[00:17:20]  Great.
[00:17:21]  I mean, I don't know.
[00:17:23]  Maybe there are other ones that I'm not aware of.
[00:17:24]  I don't think so.
[00:17:25]  No, you're going to be equipped to spot this seed of darkness, how to teach your congregation about it, how to have a positive vision for what it means to be a biblical citizen and the greatest nation ever to exist in the history of the world.
[00:17:40]  Have to have an optimistic message of how to educate your congregation about what's happening in the news cycle every single day.
[00:17:48]  Because if you're not educating your congregation about what's happening in the news, then they're going to go somewhere else.
[00:17:53]  That's what I'm always so perplexed.
[00:17:54]  Some pastors say, well, you know, it's not my job to tell them how to interpret what's happening in the world around them.
[00:18:01]  It's like, so you'd rather have Dylan Mulvaney do that to your 14-year-old kid?
[00:18:07]  Your silence is you delegating the authority to a secular communicator or influencer.
[00:18:19]  And then finally, I hope this is a launching off point.
[00:18:22]  I hope this is a good starting point for you because we have an amazing amount of follow-up items for you.
[00:18:27]  From biblical citizenship classes to guest speakers to becoming part of our TPSA faith network.
[00:18:32]  And you're going to be a little surprised because we're not going to ask anything of you except for you to be courageous.
[00:18:38]  That's the ask.
[00:18:41]  We just want you to leave with more boldness and courage and understanding.
[00:18:45]  What does success look like?
[00:18:46]  That you go back to your communities and you go back to your churches and you just raise the level of expectation for yourself and for your engagement and for your messages and for the people around you.
[00:18:57]  And so it is, thank you.
[00:19:02]  It's a tremendous blessing and honor and privilege.
[00:19:04]  And thank you for those of you that have kept this event in prayer.
[00:19:06]  Thank you for those of you that have supported it financially and have allowed this to happen.
[00:19:11]  And look, somebody asked me the other day, they said, Charlie, are you optimistic or pessimistic?
[00:19:16]  I said, well, I'm ultimately optimistic because Jesus is on his throne, right?
[00:19:19]  So I said, but it's about what we're going to do.
[00:19:22]  And I want you to look at it as obedience to the Lord, obedience to the divine these next couple of days.
[00:19:28]  And so I'm honored to be in this crucial time with you, fighting for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
[00:19:35]  We've had an amazing lineup tonight, and we have some fun changes.
[00:19:38]  We're going to have a panel discussion here with Pastor Rob McCoy and Sean Ellingson.
[00:19:42]  And then, as a surprise, we have Michael Knowles, who many of you know, where we're going to talk about transgenderism in particular and lean into that.
[00:19:48]  And then we have Dr. Hutz Herzberg, who runs Turning Point Academy.

=== Fighting for the Good (00:48) ===

[00:19:52]  Then, if you're willing to sit through it, we have Eric Metaxas, but I totally understand.
[00:19:57]  If you heard it all before, and I'm kidding, Eric is lovely and wonderful.
[00:20:03]  I'm thankful.
[00:20:05]  This has grown beyond my wildest imagination.
[00:20:07]  I said at the very beginning when we launched Jeep USA Faith: if we're doing something somebody else is doing, if we're doing duplicative work, we're happy to step aside.
[00:20:15]  And it turns out that there's a lot more demand, hunger, and appetite for this than we ever could have imagined.
[00:20:21]  God bless you guys, and we'll continue on with.
[00:20:23]  Thank you.
[00:20:27]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:20:28]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:20:32]  Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
[00:20:37]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk.com.