As top Republicans and tens of thousands bid farewell to Charlie Kirk in a five-hour-plus memorial service in Phoenix, Arizona, a more modest group assembled in Provo, Utah. They watched the service on two big screens flanked by American flags in the Utah Valley Convention Center.
They were just a few miles down the road from where the conservative activist was assassinated Sept. 10.
“The amount of violence in the past couple years is just beyond crazy to me,” said 22-year-old David Moore of Elk Ridge, his eyes wet with tears. “It seems different from anything in the past.”
Moore and the others watching Kirk’s memorial were guests of the Utah Republican Party. Most sat toward the front, while families, couples and few individuals spread out across the 1,000-seat room.
This moment is a turning point, Moore said. After years of inactivity, he returned to church last Sunday. It was Kirk’s message that inspired him.
“He wants to be remembered for his courage and faith, and that, that just hit hard. I want to — I was a child of God, and I want to be a warrior for him.”
The mood inside Phoenix’s State Farm Stadium was described as a church service, and the memorial began like an evangelical tent revival. Kirk’s own pastor, Rob McCoy, opened with an invitation for people to receive Jesus into their hearts.
More than 460 miles to the north of the football stadium, a few people in the Utah audience stood to answer the call.
Speakers in Arizona highlighted Kirk’s profound faith and his strong belief that young conservatives need to get married, build families and pass on their values to keep building their movement. They also repeatedly told conservative activists, sometimes in confrontational tones, that the best way to honor Kirk was doubling down on his mission to move American politics further to the right.
A QR code on the screen pointed to a message on a Turning Point USA website with the headline “America Needs A Strong Church” and a call to “unite the Church … and eliminate wokeism.”
Despite the evangelical Christian overtones — a Trump rally with the Holy Spirit as Turning Point CEO Tyler Bowyer described it — the message resonated with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Provo convention center room.
One Latter-day Saint, Utah Valley University student Jessica Elliott, said she liked what she heard.
“I feel like a lot of times that in politics, we're afraid to talk about God and scripture, and I'm actually really glad that a lot of the people that have been speaking and the leaders have started to bring more of that into their speeches,” she said.
The tone of Kirk’s memorial is part of the moment of tragedy, said fellow UVU student Kaylee McPherson. It was different from other Christian events, “in that you can tell everyone who is talking is angry in some form or in some way, they are all upset.”
What matters, she said, is what happens next.
“Instead of spreading hate, we should use our anger and just let it fuel love around the world.”
Another attendee in the room, Independent American Party of Utah chair Carlton Bowen, wished “more people of the LDS faith would be willing to stand up, you know, to wield the sword of truth and justice and defense of virtue and innocence and what is good.”
Words should be the weapon, he said, but people should not “cower and be afraid to speak what we believe or what we know is true when other people disagree.”
Still, Latter-day Saint Bruno Gerber of Riverton was concerned with some of the biblical comparisons to Charlie Kirk woven throughout the service.
“They’re turning him into a prophet, which he’s not,” he said. “They compared him to Moses, which he’s not.”
The Christian message of the day’s celebration of Kirk’s life still spoke to him.
“Charlie Kirk’s, I think, sole message was to bring people back to God,” Gerber said.
The chair of the Utah Republican Party, Robert Axson, recognized that much of the language might be different from what he’s accustomed to as a Latter-day Saint.
“But the thing that I love most about a relationship with Jesus Christ is, it's personal, right?” Axson said. “It still is just a reminder to look to Jesus. What we do with that is really up to us.”
Ultimately, Axson said, religion and politics are both vital. Politics is how we live better together, but it’s not the purpose of life.
“The purpose of life is better expressed on that spiritual faith side,” he said.
Axson called on all people, regardless of faith, to find the motivation to be better people.
“That's where we're going to figure out some meaningful things that will build community, that will build positivity … so that hopefully, prayerfully, we don't have to see tragedies like this, and we can avoid this type of heartache.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
