As Americans, we are living in extraordinary times. In my almost eight decades of living in this extraordinary republic called the United States of America, I have never witnessed or experienced anything even approximating the memorial service for Charlie Kirk in Phoenix last Sunday night. Reportedly, well over 100,000 people attended the service, and millions more participated through television.
And the service itself had more of the feel and intensity of a Billy Graham Crusade than a political event. And even though an unprecedented number of high government officials were there, including the U.S. President, Vice President, Secretary of State, and Secretary of War, their remarks were more religious and spiritual than political in tone and substance.
It is becoming increasingly clear that Charlie Kirk has had an amazing and electrifying impact on millions of the nation’s young people, especially Generation Z (1997-2012). I have had at least a dozen colleagues (most involved in some form of ministry) share with me how shocked they were by the emotional impact Charlie Kirk’s death had on their late teen and early twenty-something children. Most of them knew their children listened to him, but had no idea the impact he was having on their thought lives and spiritual lives.
I believe God was using Charlie Kirk as part of a Christian spiritual awakening on our nation’s college and high school campuses. I further believe that his assassination has strengthened and magnified his cause.
Furthermore, it is clear that an unashamed patriotism and love of America is part and parcel of what God has used Charlie Kirk and others to awaken on American campuses and beyond.
Perhaps the disconnect between “what is” (or has been for a generation) and “what is becoming” (now and in the immediate future) is that Americans (disproportionately young) have discovered, or rediscovered the pivotal role of Christianity in the nation’s heritage of who we have been as a country.
Perhaps no recent episode illustrates this more clearly than Senator Tim Kaine’s recent assertion during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. A nominee for Assistant Secretary of State stated that the U.S. was founded on the principle that “all men are created equal because our rights come from God our Creator, not from our laws, not from our governments.”
Unfortunately, Senator Kaine said that he found the nominee’s statement “extremely troubling,” arguing that “Claiming that all rights come from the Creator and not from laws or government leaves the door wide open for dictators to ignore the law and simply proclaim they are doing God’s will.”
To put it bluntly, Senator Kaine “puts the cart before the horse.” Basic human rights came first, and all human beings have them by right because they have been created in God’s image. Laws, Declarations, and Constitutions recognize and guarantee these rights; they do not confer them.
The genius of the American Revolution is that, being based on a Judeo-Christian worldview, the founders understood the necessity of divine origin for basic human rights. The Constitution and the legal and judicial systems are necessary to protect and guard each citizen’s rights, but they can only seek to guarantee, not grant those essential rights.
John Adams, one of the most important founding fathers and America’s second President (1797-1801), proclaimed:
“We have no government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by…morality and religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (“From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia,” 11 October, 1798)
Another President from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy, in his eloquent Inaugural address on January 20, 1961, declared:
“And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy, Jan. 20, 1961)
And the new President reminded his audience that day, “We dare not forget today, that we are the heirs of that first revolution.”
It must always be remembered that the Western world experienced another revolution less than a decade after the American Revolution. On July 14, 1789, mobs stormed the Bastille and the French Revolution began. Unlike the American Revolution, the French Revolution quickly descended into a Reign of Terror and produced the totalitarian Napoleonic Empire. The French Revolution declared, “liberty, equality, and fraternity” as the natural rights of man based on nothing more than philosophical assertion.
Such foundations soon proved inadequate. The belief that the natural rights of man needed a basis in a higher power enabled the American Revolution to produce and maintain a society with far more stable and exercised rights by the citizens of the American Republic.
One of the most important things that the movement spawned by Charlie Kirk has accomplished is making America’s young people much more aware of the divine origin of the Revolution that has produced their American heritage—and that it is precious, unique, and should be jealously preserved.
Senator Kaine and the many for whom he speaks need to understand that all the law can do (and it is important) is acknowledge and seek to protect those rights that each human being inherently possesses as a consequence of being a human being. Our inalienable rights as human beings exist prior to, and independently of, any governmental entity or legal system.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
