The '60s were seismic. The bloodshed started when President Kennedy was murdered by a communist in 1963. Soon thereafter, Malcolm X was murdered by Nation of Islam operatives; a George Wallace campaign volunteer shot and killed Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.; and President Kennedy’s little brother Bobby was killed by a Palestinian radical, all in less than five years. In between assassinations, rioters set more than 100 cities on fire, while dead and wounded Americans were carted out of the jungles of Vietnam on stretchers.
Children of the ‘60s saw this in real time on the evening news. We had three channels on our television set, so there wasn’t anything else to watch. Kids in other cities were luckier; they also had an educational channel and maybe a UHF station showing reruns of Felix the Cat and Clutch Cargo. Day after day, year after year, violence was piped into our living rooms.
Against this backdrop, something began to percolate into American culture. A new form of spiritual revival arose, one born of disillusionment with the prevailing counterculture and despair over riots, war and murder. It started in California and they called it the Jesus Revolution.
Those sentiments were best described by singer Don McLean, who closed his No. 1 hit American Pie singing, “And the three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast.” A growing number of hippies discovered that drugs and pagan lifestyles were not providing what they yearned for: meaning. Aided by a cadre of evangelical Christians, millions of young people found that meaning and by 1971, the Jesus Revolution made the cover of Time Magazine.
Today’s chaos is tame compared with the ‘60s in terms of the sheer volume of violence. But the means of learning about events has radically changed. Instead of getting the news from Walter Cronkite, many now get it on smartphones from leftists who rejoice in the cruelties of the day on social media. Today’s violence may be less than the ‘60s but it’s amplified online by orders of magnitude.
The cultural parallels between then and now are clear, and September 10 was the tipping point. A young father and husband who was bright and polite was murdered in front of thousands of people. It shocked the nation, even those who didn’t know Charlie Kirk or what he did. On Sunday, mourning turned into a religious celebration of a man whose embrace of Christianity was the embodiment of meaning.
Americans are exhausted by the daily doses of violence, the unrelenting barrage of slander by leftist politicians, and attacks on law enforcement. This is nihilism and people want an alternative. They are finding it in the mission of Charlie Kirk. Even before Sunday’s memorial service, social media was awash with testimonials from people announcing renewed church attendance and giving their lives over to Jesus Christ.
Some 200,000 people participated in the Arizona memorial and as many as 100 million watched on TV and online. The service was replete with readings from scripture and the Gospel message, modern worship music and sacred hymns, and Christian symbolism invoking martyrdom, revival and salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. But Charlie Kirk’s memorial went beyond mere symbolism. Many people in the crowd at State Farm Stadium answered an altar call and professed a new commitment to Jesus. Charlie’s widow Erika forgave the man who assassinated her husband, a core teaching of Jesus who told us to forgive those who trespass against us. No one under the age of 50 has ever seen anything like this in America.
Prior to Sunday’s memorial, some 37,000 requests had been received from people wanting to start their own Turning Point USA chapter, and tens of thousands more asked how they could find and join an existing chapter. Those numbers are certain to rise in the weeks and months ahead.
Yes, Charlie Kirk was a political figure. But he did something bigger than any politician dared. His message and his work gave meaning and purpose to disaffected young people yearning for something more fulfilling than what our culture is offering. That new meaning, coupled with a zeal for action, made the difference in the 2024 elections. All because Charlie infused everything he did with biblical Christianity.
This is how Christian revival begins. From the First Great Awakening of colonial America to the charismatic Jesus Revolution of the 1960s and ‘70s, people are finding meaning in the Word of God. This return to our Judeo-Christian traditions will certainly be characterized by leftists as a threat to democracy but they ignore what John Adams wrote about the American founding. "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
A 21st century Jesus Movement is underway and it might be America’s salvation. Prove me wrong.