Charlie Kirk, right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, wants to make America Christian again
Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, once advocated the separation of church and state. Now he embraces Christian nationalism and is campaigning for Donald Trump.
Six years ago, Charlie Kirk, a right-wing provocateur who founded the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, strongly criticized the evangelical political movement he now helps lead.
Kirk, known then primarily for his work mobilizing college-age Republicans, described Jesus as welcoming and tolerant and denounced Christians’ “sanctimonious approach” to homosexuality and other issues. He argued politics should be advanced through a “secular worldview” and slammed attempts by the evangelical right, beginning in the 1970s, to “impose” their version of morality “through government policy.”
“We do have a separation of church and state,” Kirk told the conservative commentator Dave Rubin in 2018, “and we should support that.”
Kirk, now 30, has since reversed his position. It’s a transformation that, according to political and religious scholars, embodies and reinforces a growing embrace of Christian nationalist thinking within the Republican Party in the era of Donald Trump.
“There is no separation of church and state,” Kirk said on his podcast in 2022. “It’s a fabrication. It’s a fiction. It’s not in the Constitution. It’s made up by secular humanists.”
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