It’s been not even three weeks yet since Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah. It’s been an eternity in news cycles, though. Once the mega-(maga)-political-rally-memorial-service was held, the focus has moved on to other political news. And, sadly, several other shootings.

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death I saw a big split in reactions between the evangelical world I grew up in and the more liberal world I now inhabit. And while my personal goal is for people to not have to defend things I say with “well, if you look at it in context, what he said was actually ok”, with a little distance and time to think about it I understand a little better, I think, why and how this split exists.

I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk closely. But as I have watched some of his videos in the past few weeks, one primary thought strikes me: that Kirk was the perfect distillation of the evangelical Christian apologist that the Evangelical system has been trying to produce since at least as far back as the 1980s. Watch his videos and you’ll see a familiar persuasive approach, aggressively encouraging “debate”, but in a format designed not to carefully engage debate partners in thoughtful discourse, but to quickly score points, make his opponents look foolish, and have a punchy sound bite that can go on social media.

He was by no means the first

I’m reminded of being shown hours of Ken Ham “creation science” videos at church when I was in middle school and high school. In similar style, Ham, a man with only a Bachelors’ degree in applied science, blithely disregards and ignores reams of actual scientific study, packaging his “proofs” of a young earth in sound bites that don’t hold up to extended scrutiny. He doesn’t intend them to! Instead, he brings his silver bullet question for any dispute about origins: “were you there?” It’s a silly, rhetorical question. Of course his debate partner wasn’t present at the origin of the universe. Neither was Ham. But then Ham follows up with the comeback designed to win points not with his scientific debate partner, but with the evangelicals in the audience: “well, I know someone who was there and who wrote down what happened in a book”.

Boom. Debate me, bro. Prove me wrong.

Intentionally pushing aside centuries of scientific study and Biblical scholarship, Ham achieves his goal (locking in his evangelical Christian audience and getting them to buy his books and visit the Ark Encounter) while making a case that looks frightfully flimsy to anyone who isn’t already bought into his religious and philosophical presuppositions. Ham famously debated Bill Nye back in 2014 and used those exact tactics. It wasn’t pretty. Or persuasive to anyone who didn’t already agree with him.

Ken Ham is but one example of this evangelical approach. Josh McDowell kicked off a long authoring career with his bestseller Evidence That Demands a Verdict, piecing together fragmentary “evidence” in ways that serious scholars found troubling but that were gobbled up by Evangelicals and fundamentalists who wanted some self-justification that their fundamentalist Christian beliefs weren’t stupid, no matter what the scholars said.

McDowell extended his audience down to the youth back when I was in high school. His book Don’t Check Your Brains At The Door addressed 42 questions in a slim 200 pages to help assure evangelical Christian youth that their high school teachers and college professors were dreadfully off base if they disagreed with Christian beliefs. Careful study and thoughtful, careful engagement? Who needs it? 3-4 paperback pages of talking points will provide the armor to defend against any professor’s “facts” and “science”.

The purpose of a system is what it does

So in one sense I don’t want to blame Charlie Kirk much for turning out in the style he did. He’s the product of a system that’s been encouraging this approach for generations now. I grew up in it, too. I saw the appeal. I can only imagine the rush of being really good at it, of having the tools to package it for social media, to gain a huge following so quickly. I can only wish that he would’ve had more years and the opportunity to learn the value of slower, loving, thoughtful engagement. Of discussions packaged not for social media likes but for actual learning and growth and intellectual honesty. To find a gospel engagement more meaningful than “boom, roasted! hey, turn to Jesus”. Because there is a more excellent way.