By David K. Trimble

In a horrific spectacle earlier this week, Charlie Kirk, Founder and President of Turning Point USA, was assassinated while doing what he had done so many times throughout his young life – publicly engaging with college students in a battle of ideas. I pray for the kind of comfort only God can provide for Kirk’s wife, his young daughter and son, and his family and friends as they grieve. 

We do not yet have details about the killer’s motive. But we can observe, with absolute revulsion, that instead of contending with and rebutting Kirk’s ideas, the assailant decided to silence him permanently from a coward’s perch hundreds of yards away. 

Unfortunately, this terrifying incident cannot be viewed in isolation, especially when just yesterday marked the 24th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. 

Looking just to this year, in April an arsonist used incendiary devices to attack the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as he and his family were asleep inside. Thankfully in that case, they were safely evacuated. In mid-June, two Minnesota state legislators and their spouses were shot in their homes, leaving House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband dead. In late August, in an act of anti-Catholic hatred, an individual opened fire on Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during a Mass attended by students, parents, and teachers associated with the parish school, among other parishioners. The shooting left 2 children dead and 18 people wounded, most of whom were also children. And it was only last summer that there were two assassination attempts on President Trump, one in July and the other in September. Other recent examples are too numerous to recount here. 

Wednesday’s event on the campus of Utah Valley University warrants consideration on multiple levels. There is the intrinsic evil of the act itself. There is the unspeakable tragedy of Kirk’s death, resulting in the loss of a husband, father, friend, congregant, and highly influential public figure. Widening the lens, there is the growing sense that our society is becoming increasingly unmoored from basic truths about our common human dignity and shared fundamental freedoms. Emerging from this deterioration of our social bond is a dangerous tendency among far too many to mark political and ideological opponents as treasonous enemies to be crushed rather than recognize them as civic neighbors to be convinced. Foundational commitments to freedom of religion, expression, and association – bundled together by our founders in the First Amendment – provide a critical roadmap for people with conflicting views to live peaceably with one another. But these essential freedoms have come under severe threat in these first decades of the 21st century. 

Even in matters of ultimate importance, the American promise of ordered liberty calls upon us to convince rather than to coerce or condemn one another. Bad ideas are to be met not with violence but with the forthright proclamation (and embodiment) of better ideas. In fact, resorting to coercion and violence to resolve political, ideological, or religious disputes is itself an assault on the American promise and a violation of the deeper truths of equal human dignity and freedom upon which that promise is built.

May Kirk’s killer, and any who may have aided him, be brought swiftly to justice. May God spare our country from further ideologically motivated violence during this tumultuous time. And may all of us recommit ourselves to the anchors of our civilization, those fundamental freedoms which find at their core an unwavering commitment to human dignity given by God equally to all.

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David K. Trimble is President of the Religious Freedom Institute.