Charlie Kirk: Understanding White Evangelicalism
By: Deji Yesufu
Throughout my brief years in pastoral work, my greatest on-the-job learning experience was teaching my children the catechism. For them, it is pure head knowledge. They rattle off the answers to all 145 questions, and it is just a beauty to hear them mouth those healthy orthodoxies. It does not make them Christians, but it plants a seed of God’s word in their hearts that will one day grow into grace and knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ. My children’s catechism, question 93, asks: “What is the sixth commandment?” The response they give to it is: “The sixth commandment is, thou shalt not kill”. The 94th question continue: “What does the sixth commandment teach us?” “To avoid angry passions,” is the appropriate reply by the children. That aspect of the catechism is called “The Ten Commandments,” and it has helped me to know the commandments off-hand, at least to some extent.
To kill a man is a grave thing indeed. Nobody can create a human being. The formation of the fetus in the womb of a woman is beyond sex between a man and a woman. It is the working of God’s grace that biology explains in a limited manner by showing that a sperm travels into the woman’s womb and fuses with an egg. In reality, it is beyond that. In Genesis 2, scripture tells us two things happened when man was formed: the man was made from the dust, but the man was not complete until God breathed the breath of life into him. Therefore, while Biology has succeeded in telling us how the flesh is formed, scripture tells us that God breathes into every fetus and that clump of cells becomes a human being the very moment the biological process of fertilization is complete. When a man is murdered (or even when a baby is aborted), a tragic end is brought not just to a physical form, but also to the breadth of life, which God alone put there, is suddenly snuffed out. So, a murderer is playing God. A murderer determines who lives and who dies. Besides this, the ground opens its mouth and receives the blood of the murdered. This is why it is biblical justice for the blood of the murderer to be shed for the one whom they killed. Crime increases in societies that treat murderers with kid gloves.
My concern in this essay is not so much about the killing of Charlie Kirk or what appropriate justice must be meted out to his killer. My concern here is to offer a response to a few people who may or may not have rightly criticized Charlie Kirk’s kind of ministry. I am not concerned with responding to the radical left, many of whom are rejoicing over the death of this man. I am rather concerned with a few people who think that white evangelicals of every form do not deserve our pity. I have heard the phrases “white supremacy” and “racism” used with reckless abandon since Kirk died. David Hundeyin, a brilliant independent Nigerian journalist, whose work in unearthing Nigeria’s president’s academic history has made him an international name in journalism, criticized those of us defending the death of Charlie Kirk. He said that we are ill-informed and we are the new Uncle Toms (not exactly his words, but clearly what he insinuated). There have been many criticisms of some of us who copy American-style evangelicalism and who say we simply parrot these people’s way of life without judging matters independently. We are told that we are practicing the white man’s religion, and we should begin to think for ourselves. I hope that my explanation of white evangelicals will help my readers understand the issues, and also help them realize that Charlie Kirk was a martyr in every sense of the word, and his death, like that of his Savior, will redeem America from its sorry state.
First, there is the white evangelicals’ sin.
While a lot of them may not admit it, many white evangelicals are aware of their sin – the historic sin of slavery their fathers perpetuated on the black population of Africa. Slavery is a very recent history in America, and it will take a complete idiot to deny it. Slavery was so bad that it occasioned a civil war in America, and as the war was coming to an end, it led to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, the man who led the northern parts of America against the South. It is true that the South of America was mostly Christian. In fact, many of them were professing Calvinists – the Christian tradition I espouse today. Evangelical pastors stood on their pulpits and used the Bible to explain away man’s inhumanity to man by making his fellow man crawl under his table. I am very sure that this sin grieved the God of heaven, and it led to the judgment of the civil war that left thousands of Christian men dead on the battlefields all around the United States of America. Many white evangelicals have defended this question of slavery by claiming that it was their fathers who committed the sin, not them. As I will show in the next point, this sin flows in the veins of the children also. Those who say white evangelicals should not be pitied because of the sin of slavery may be stretching the matter too far, though. Because none of us would wish to be judged by the sins of our own forefathers.
Second, there is the white evangelicals’ Achilles’ heel.
The white evangelicals’ Achilles’ heel is their love of money. It is called capitalism. It was love of money that made the slave trade continue for that long. Even after slavery had been abolished, the love of money, enshrined in unbridled capitalism, leads many white evangelicals to follow the trail that leads to money. Modern economic and political ideals have reached the position that neither full-blown capitalism nor unhealthy socialism is healthy for a country. Wise governments seek a healthy balance between the two political theories. It is important to allow for free market and healthy competition that will lead to productivity in society, with employers paying for the best minds to work for them, while at the same time accruing healthy financial gains for greater investments. The government should allow smart and able-bodied men to engage in free enterprise. On the flip side, though, the government must do everything to protect the weak. Marx and Engels have taught the world that the workers are the goose that lays the golden egg. While the entrepreneur must earn a profit, the worker must also be given a living wage. Government must also provide social security for the weak; pensions for retirees; care for the old; health for the sick; schools for children; support for the disabled and infirm, etc. Obafemi Awolowo taught that if African nations were to speed up the process of meeting the First World countries, they should make health care and education free at all levels in their countries. This is healthy socialism that must be balanced with healthy capitalism. The Archille’s heel of white evangelicals is that they pay very little emphasis on socialist theories – demonizing these as Communism – and they extol all the virtues of capitalism without paying attention to possible dangers around it. This is why many white evangelicals in America turn Christian ministry into a means of making money. It is a sin they must understand is ingrained within them, and God alone can bring them to repentance in this matter. It is what has given us the Word of Faith theology. And even Reformed Christianity in America is not immune from the stranglehold of money.
Third, there is the gospel message that the white evangelical knows very well.
The advantage of living in America is that you have access to wealth like no other country in the world. Americans are super wealthy. The implication is that all their institutions are well funded – including their churches. Pastors are paid so well that they can afford to sit down and study. The result of extended study of books and history is that white evangelicals in America are the leading source of sound biblical knowledge in the world today. Their piety may not be as profound as their knowledge, but they have contributed to biblical knowledge in our world today like no other country has. In the past, it used to be England and the Netherlands. But America has today overtaken the two countries combined. There are hundreds of theological institutions all around America today that are ready to provide free tuition to students all around the world. American churches are the biggest sponsors of missions all around the world. Along with this money also comes a wealth of knowledge like no other. Many of us who are learning theology have benefited from American-run institutions and sponsorship, and for this, we are grateful. It is one reason many of us shy away from criticizing American religious institutions, because if truth must be told, it is the person who pays the piper that dictates the tune. This might be the reason why many black men defend white evangelicals.
Fourth, there must be a proper distilling of this gospel message for an African context.
If Africans learn well from the Americans, and we have eyes to see what the Holy Spirit is writing within scripture, we should be able to use the vast knowledge the Americans have given to us, and bring them to solve African problems. What I disagree with many Nigerians who are evangelicals like me is that I refuse to bring America to Nigeria. At seminary, I was taught contextualization. I was told that the gospel message is the same everywhere, but the context in which it would be disseminated would differ from country to country. How you will preach the same gospel that the Americans are preaching, while preserving the Nigerian context, is something only the Spirit of Jesus can teach. What many Nigerians do is just to imitate the Americans or their British teachers. But this might not be practical in an African context. So, the minister thinks through problems, prays about them, and then God gives him wisdom to solve those problems. For example, I understand that the people of Ilesha, my hometown in Osun State, rejected Christianity because the missionaries who came to preach to them insisted that polygamous men could not be accepted in the church. My forefathers simply turned to Islam because it permitted polygamy. On the other hand, the right answer to that matter was that a polygamous man can be accepted in church, but he would be required not to add to his wives, and he would not be able to hold any office in church. There are hundreds of other examples. The main thrust here is simple: gospel knowledge is not British or American knowledge. It is biblical knowledge that gives the man of God the initiative to solve day-to-day problems. The black African must be able to rise above the narrow mindset of his white evangelical counterpart.
Fifth, there is a Savior who saves all men in spite of their sin.
The biggest lesson of the gospel is that all men are sinners. What those who criticize Charlie Kirk and other white evangelicals fail to see is that they also are sinners. The history of slavery in Africa is worse than anything ever recorded in American slave history books. In fact, the white men succeeded at enslaving other black men because the blacks were already enslaving themselves, and the whites only offered better financial rewards. The kind of sin in the hearts and minds of black men is not any worse than the sin in the hearts of white men. We are all sinners, and the gospel teaches that Jesus Christ came to save us from our sins. It is a glorious day when the Holy Spirit helps you and me to look beyond the sin of others and to recognize sin within our own hearts. When men realize that they have sinned, the debates end, and there is humble contrition. There is usually forgiveness that follows, and a healthy erasing of wrongs done in the past. The social justice people lost me when they claimed that the white evangelical must bear the sins that his fathers committed. If the black African does not bear the sin of his own fathers, why should we demand the same standard from other people? Christ is able to save men to the uttermost, and the Christian message is neither a British nor an American message. It is wisdom from above; it is God’s means of saving men from sin and then reconciling all men together beyond skin coloration.
Conclusion
As I sat down to write this essay, it was reported in the news that the killer of Charlie Kirk has been found. The murderer is 22-year-old Tyler Robinson. He is a radical left young man whose father handed him over to law enforcement. I hope the state of Utah brings the fullest wrath of the law against him. The biblical counsel is that when a man kills another man, justice demands that he also must be killed. It is all these silly leftists who have encouraged the abolishing of the death sentence. When people understand that when they commit a crime, they can go off the hook, they continue in it. This idea is not a white evangelical one; this is what scripture teaches. And this is where I part ways with white evangelicals: it is possible for many leading white evangelicals to teach doctrines that will preserve their sins in society. It is, however, our duty to point out their errors to them. Now, the fact that they do these things does not mean that biblical wisdom is wrong. The truth of the Bible far exceeds all the wisdom that white evangelicals can know or teach. When you know God and can be taught by the Holy Spirit, you have something that many white evangelicals cannot have.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANTY. He can be reached at [email protected]
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