OP ED: Kirk Was No Hero

By Bishop Bill McGill
Senior Pastor – Imani Baptist Temple

“The good man brings good things out of the good treasure of his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil treasure of his heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” -Luke 6:45

I’ve been patiently waiting for the dust to settle and the smoke to clear, since the senseless and tragic assassination of a man millions of people had come to revere. I’m well aware of the influence, or at times disdain, that I carry in the public square, so I try to make certain that my positions are fueled by thoughtfulness and care. Charlie Kirk was a voice that I had never heard, but the research I gathered post-mortem left me deeply disturbed. And let me say at the outset that this column is not about political First Amendment Rights, but about using your spiritual influence to denigrate other people’s human and social rights. If the above referenced words of Jesus are true, then it’s questionable whether Charlie Kirk was a member of the kingdom crew. In his own words, “George Floyd was a scumbag”, implying that up until his death he had done nothing for which to brag. In his own words, “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, I hope he’s qualified”, as if to imply that there are only rare cases, if any, where Black people could become aeronautically certified. In his own words, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights”, as if to imply that we should only view the victims of those incidents as nothing more than helpful statistics in our Creator’s sights. It is a dangerous philosophy, and all the more unsettling because he is being elevated as an icon of Christian theology. But then, when we have a convicted felon running the nations administration with the blind allegiance of so-called evangelical transformation, I suppose the definition of being born again is really a matter of personal interpretation. I know we keep lowering the bar, but an authentic believer does not use language that deepens our nation’s well-documented racial scar. An authentic representative of the Most High would not allow such divisive words to regularly fly. Once you undergo Biblical transition, your moral and social positions experience total revision. This man was simply using his platform to play to the crowd, instead of living by the tenets of the Christ to whom he allegedly vowed. But this is really no new phenomenon, where people hold false claims to being a part of the advanced spiritual echelon. They carry the name, only to learn later they were simply playing a game and ultimately were exposed for living in shame. So, let’s be honest, his legacy should not be one of spiritual believing but rather of sinister political achieving. He was a pawn in the Make America Great Again troop, who believe that People of Color have no reparations to recoup. He was a conductor on the Make America Great Again train, who want to rewrite history to suggest that slavery was just an over-exaggerated system of pain. That my ancestors were not regularly lynched, they just periodically saw some opportunity’s pinched. They say Black Wall Street in Tulsa was not intentionally burned to the ground, the city just unfortunately had a fire response system that was not sound. People keep successfully playing the race card, because walking in truth and authentic harmony is just simply too hard. I’m done, but I’ve been thinking lately of a real hero, that I had the privilege of getting personally to know. A man whose commitment to social action was always on cue, because in his own words, “I Am What I Do.” Ian Rolland had the courage of his convictions and spoke courageously about social conditions. You never had to wonder where he stood, he always spoke about the necessity to work for the common good. He knew silence was a form of compliance, so he took every opportunity to speak against bigotry with a sense of defiance. Unfortunately, he still has no peer in the corporate community, who is willing to go on the record about this ongoing battle for equality. He would not be happy that we are still fighting this fight with no end in sight, because total equality is not something this shrinking majority wants to see take flight.