Thursday, September 11, 2025

SojoMail - A former right-wing leader on Charlie Kirk’s death

In this week’s SojoMail: A former conservative activist reflects on the sacredness of life in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death. Also, a conversation on why Christians should be leftists and a lament for the cuts to Medicaid.

A photo of Charlie Kirk in stands displayed in the Utah State Capitol building

I Rejected Charlie Kirk’s Politics. That’s Why I Grieve His Death

In this week’s SojoMail, Rob Schenck writes that he once led an aggressive conservative Christian movement—until he saw how their rhetoric led to violence:

I never had contact with Charlie Kirk, but I’m only one degree removed from him because many of my former colleagues knew him personally and supported his efforts. For over 30 years, I helped lead an aggressive protest-oriented anti-abortion movement. My fellow organizers and I intended our movement to be wholly nonviolent.

Still, over time, individuals started showing up at our demonstrations eager to pick fights with reproductive rights counterdemonstrators. Before long, they were throwing punches at their ideological opponents. Then, the shootings began.

During my time in leadership, four physicians were shot and killed by people from our ranks. It was only after those deadly episodes that some of my colleagues and I woke up to the fact that our increasingly harsh rhetoric contributed to dehumanizing reproductive rights advocates, leading others to believe they could inflict injury and death on them. From then on, I did what I could to reduce incendiary language, but the violence continued.

Before I abandoned the conservatism Kirk so effectively promoted, I shared many of the same platforms he exploited, from the massive student assemblies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., to the Christian Broadcasting Network’s popular television programming. Like Kirk, I was a young star in the Christian conservative universe, but a generation before him. More than a few people have told me, ‘Charlie Kirk makes me think of you when you were younger.’ Maybe that’s one reason I took his death so hard; I literally bent over in grief. But there are other reasons, too.

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