Courage vs. Compromise: Charlie Kirk’s Challenge to Pastors

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Welcome everyone to Family Talk. It’s a ministry of the James Dobson Family Institute supported by listeners just like you. I’m Dr. James Dobson and I’m thrilled that you’ve joined us. Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh, and today we’re bringing you a powerful message from the late Charlie Kirk, a young leader who challenged an entire generation to stand boldly for faith. Now, Charlie was the founder and president of Turning Point USA, which grew to become the largest conservative youth activist organization in America, with a presence on over 3,000 campuses nationwide. But Charlie’s greatest passion wasn’t politics. It was calling the church back to courage when the world needed moral clarity the most, when families were looking for guidance during some of our nation’s darkest hours. Many churches were silent. In fact, in the message you’re about to hear, which was recorded right here in Colorado Springs, Charlie Kirk asked the hard questions many pastors were afraid to address. He challenged believers to stop cowering in silence and to start engaging the culture with biblical truth. Now, before we begin, I want to remind you that right now, your gift to Family Talk will be doubled through the Dr. James Dobson Memorial Matching Grant. Thanks to some incredibly generous friends of our ministry, every dollar you give will be matched until we reach the goal of $6 million on or before December 31st, 2025. To double your impact, visit drjamesdobson.org. And now, here’s Charlie Kirk with a message that will challenge you, convict you, and hopefully inspire you to action on today’s edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk.

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Thank you.

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Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. It’s always very intimidating to get the standing ovation before the speech, so it’s very hard to live up to that. Honored to be here. Dr. Dobson, thank you. I made a special effort to be here. I’ve been following you for years and you’ve made a huge impact on my life. My mom would always play Dr. Dobson’s radio program on Moody Radio in Chicago. And again, just made a huge impact on the way I thought about things and my socially conservative values and speaking out on the issues of life and family and marriage. when it really mattered most. So it’s an honor to be here, truly. Thank you. And thank you for your leadership over the many decades. It’s awesome. Thank you. There’s a lot of friends I want to point out tonight as well. And, you know, it’s really fitting where we’re talking about the American family here tonight. I got married a year and a half ago, and we have an eight-week-old at home. And the real hero is my wife that let me come tonight. But that should be a compliment to you, Dr. Dobson, because she said, you’re going to go do that speech because if there’s any person that really we want to honor and participate and fight alongside… It’s Dr. Dobson and this wonderful group in this organization. So I want to talk about a couple things tonight. I want to talk about the worst prediction I’ve ever made and what I learned about that and how I think this room can change the country within a year. I think this room, if every single person in this room made a very simple commitment and agreed upon kind of a plan of action, it’s not going to take a huge plan or a business plan, just a couple of courses of action, I think the country could take a very serious very significant turn for the better so the worst prediction I ever made so I do a podcast we’re blessed it’s one of the top podcasts out there at least once a week we’re talking about the gospel bringing people to the Lord specifically young people over 120 million people listened to our podcast last year that doesn’t count radio it doesn’t count all of that and so I was doing a podcast right as the Fauci virus started to spread across our country and I made a prediction I Now, mind you, I gave my life to the Lord in fifth grade at Christian Heritage Academy in the suburbs of Chicago. Most important decision I ever made in my life, a school founded by the great Wayne Grudem. Every year as I got older, my commitment to the Lord meant more and more. It grew in understanding and beauty, and I wanted to continue to spread the gospel. And I’m sure a lot of you could resonate with that, where you gave your life to the Lord. That was just the beginning of your journey to really understand what that means, what grace really is and how that impacts your life. And so I’ve always been a Christian. I’ve always spoken out about these things, more and more so in recent years. But I was never in the Christian world. I’d only spoke at a church or two before the pandemic. I knew a couple pastors here and there, but I had some assumptions about American Christianity. So here I am, I do this podcast, and you guys can look it up. It’s one of the great failures ever in American podcasting, okay? Where I say and I proclaim that the American church loves liberty. That they won’t put up with these lockdowns. That the American church won’t allow Easter or Pentecost to be stolen from them. That the American church won’t put up with some local mayor to come in and enforce mask mandates. And I do this long podcast because I thought the American church was ready for battle. And then all of a sudden I looked around and I said, what’s going on? Why is it that the church is cowering in fear and listening and they’re quoting Romans 13? They don’t even know what it means. And like, well, we can’t, we have to submit to all leaders and authority. And I think to myself, wait a second, who’s in authority in America? Who’s the sovereign? Is it the mayor or the governor or a congressman? Or is it we, the people? And it’s that the mayor should be submitting to us and that we don’t submit to some sort of government authority. Why are we, what are we doing here exactly? And so… It was a very quick learning lesson for me. And so then I started to reach out to some amazing pastors. Some of you know them. Pastor Jack Hibbs had me speak at his church and Pastor Rob McCoy. And there was this remnant of some pastors that decided to open up their church in defiance to these awful unconstitutional orders. where, of course, strip clubs were called essential, marijuana clinics were called essential, liquor stores were called essential, abortion factories were called essential. But if you wanted to celebrate the Pentecost Sunday or Easter, they’re going to come after you with restraining orders, police, and you guys lived through all of that. And I just looked in awe at how ill-equipped the American church was for that moment. But there were some great pastors. I started to speak at churches across the country. Spoke at over 100 churches in the span of a year and a half, and I learned a lot about American Christianity, about where the church was and what was needed. Because I had a different perspective because here I am, a political guy who is a Christian, coming into the church with fresh eyes, kind of being like, what are you guys doing? You have no idea what you’re entertaining and the ideas that you guys are now letting in. And then, of course, not as if there wasn’t enough going on in the year 2020, Floydapalooza happened, right? Where we decided to burn our entire civilization around a complete lie from the enemy that somehow America is systemically racist. It’s the opposite. We’re the least racist nation ever to exist in the history of the world, period. And I started to see pastor after pastor after pastor all of a sudden take knees for atoning for their institutional racism? Or they’re saying, well, we need to use critical theory as a way to analyze theology. Or one church after the other saying that we’re going to go march in the streets with Black Lives Matter. And I said, what is going on? And in a year where the American church was needed more than ever, we have to be very honest as Christians, it was a failure. It was an abject failure. When the world was looking for moral guidance… When things were getting confusing and it was chaotic, was the church there to stand boldly? When I say the church, I know a lot of you say, well, my pastor is great, my pastor is great. Let’s be honest, the vast majority of churches did not pass the test, okay? Vast majority of churches stayed locked down. They submitted, I think, immorally to these government authorities. They did these things they shouldn’t have done. And so here I am, I say, man, there’s something that we gotta do that’s more. And there were some, obviously, some phenomenal churches that I think did the right thing. And what I learned throughout all of that, and I think some of you agreed, is that we saw in real time what Dr. Dobson has warned for decades, what many others warned, is that if the American church does not rise up and does not stand up, the country falls apart very quickly. And American Christianity has had it so good for 40 years, worrying about budgets and baptisms and buildings, worried about tithes and offerings and praise God for all that stuff. But I think it was a reckoning moment where he said, well, the civilization itself that we are inheritors from actually very well might crumble and fall apart if we do not take bold and courageous stance. I believe there’s three types of churches in America. And the first type of church is the courageous church. We need more pastors to be in the courageous category. Honestly, it’s less than 5% of all American pastors. Here’s a test, and Victor Marks knows this because Victor speaks at a lot of churches for us. Did your pastor celebrate Roe versus Wade being repealed? If not, find a new church. It’s that simple. Let’s start there. If they did not do a party, a celebration, how about this? Has your pastor spoke out about how there are other churches having drag queens in their church? You guys know this, right? Hundreds of American churches now have drag queens and transgender activities happening within the church. Is your pastor mentioning that, talking about that, or is it just complete and total silence? So the courageous church leans in to current events with always having Jesus at the center. You know, some of my critics, they say, Charlie, you want to make the church political. That is not true. Jesus should always be the center of everything we do. The most important thing is Jesus Christ. Always spreading the gospel. Getting people to believe in Jesus. The second most important thing is to make sure we can do the first thing. To make sure that pastors are not raided by the FBI for praying outside of pro-life centers. to make sure that churches are not shut down and deemed non-essential. If we don’t focus on the second thing at all, we say, well, you know, Charlie, I just preach the gospel here. How many times have we heard that? I just preach the gospel. That’s all we do. We just preach the gospel around here. Coward. That’s what that is. And that’s the second type of church is the cowardly. And if I’m talking too intense for you, sorry. I mean, you guys, you could bring it up with management. Okay. So the second type of church is the cowardly church. I love the cowards and you should too. Because cowards can be turned. Cowards deep down know that they’re doing something wrong. Here’s what they’ll say. They’ll say, well, it’s really not clear what the Bible says about these matters. That’s what I hear all the time. Okay, how about here’s three issues that every single pastor in America should step up and talk about immediately. God created man and woman. Period. There’s no other genders. There’s no gender fluidity. It’s garbage. Period. And by the way, I have very little compassion for these pastors. I’ll tell you why. I go do that at the University of Texas, Austin. Okay? I’m asking you to do that to your congregation. I’m not even asking you to do it hostile. I’m asking you to say God created man and woman and there is no such thing as gender fluidity. There is a thing of gender dysphoria of people that suffer from a mental condition. We should have compassion for those people. We’re not going to put up with the medical mutilation of our children. We’re not going to put up with children getting administered Lupron like what’s happening today. at Vanderbilt University Hospital or Boston Children’s Hospital. And I ask myself, I say, where is the church unifying in big numbers against the real-time medieval-style female genital mutilation equivalent that we see in the country? And what I hear from some pastors is, well, that’s not really our role. And isn’t that interesting? And I ask, well, then what is your role? And they say, well, our role is just to bring people to Jesus Christ. And I say, well, how’s your attendance been since COVID? Vast majority. Well, it’s down. You know why it’s down? Because your congregation doesn’t respect you. That’s why. Because they’re going to not just hear about the gospel, but the gospel is truth. In the beginning was the word and the word was God and the word was with God. The spoken truth is Jesus Christ. He didn’t just say true things. He was truth. And if you can’t just say a little bit of an inch of a thing to your congregation about biological reality, then you shouldn’t be pastoring a church. Okay, that’s the first. And the second thing is this. Life begins at conception. It’s not that hard. We don’t have to overthink it. And the kind of abortion debate right now in America is raging. And a lot of people are getting fired up about it. The church should be leading on it. The church should be leaning in and talking about this every single day. And I had one pastor that emailed me. He said, well, I’m going to lose congregants. Good. Good. You should try to bring your church down to a manageable size and then build it back up with people that actually love the truth. If someone’s going to leave because you’re talking about life beginning at conception, you’re not running a church. You’re running a TED Talk with a rock concert wearing skinny jeans trying to increase your tithes and offerings to sell more books for your fragile little ego. You’re not a pastor. All of us in this room can make a big impact with the cowards. Because the cowards need direct truth told gracefully. They could be brought into that courageous position. I’ve seen it. Barry McGuire could tell you. We’ve seen it with some pastors that were in the middle. Mike Ingram has seen it. Pastors that were, you know, I don’t know if I want to talk about, but courage begets courage. And this is not the reason to do it. But I have yet to find a church in America from Jack Hibbs to Steve Smotherman to Luke and Angel Barnett to Ken Graves to Gary Hamrick to pastors in every corner that has taken a stance on these issues. And I think the Lord is sending us a clear message today for anyone that will watch. Increase tithes, increase offerings, increase attendance. He is increasing the harvest for the upcoming battle of the churches that are leaning in. The churches that have backed away and gone wokey, all of a sudden they’re cutting back on staff. They’re closing doors. And so I think that’s a message. The final type of church is the complicit church. And these churches need to be rebuked. These are the churches with the gay flags outside of them. These are the churches that are doing the drag queen, whatever stuff in them. And I just want to make sure you all know this because we talked about it earlier, which is there are hundreds of churches across the country, Church of Christ in Tampa, Episcopalian churches and Lutheran churches, where they have people in full drag outfits doing children participation ceremonies in the church. And if you don’t know that, I encourage you to get more involved in really what’s happening in American Christianity right now. They’re teaching it in seminaries. They’re teaching it all across the country. Hundreds of churches. That’s not a minority. That’s growing very quickly. And so even that, though, we have lots of pastors saying that we need to embrace these sort of homosexual ideas and this transgender agenda. And then they’re the ones that flew the BLM flag during the entire deal. And these churches need to be rebuked. They need to be called out. They need to be corrected. And we need to challenge them repeatedly. Now, I’ve heard from a lot of people and they say, Charlie, you know, I don’t really appreciate at times the tone that you bring to this conversation. And, you know, I’m sorry, a kid’s private parts is getting chopped off in an operating room and you don’t like my tone? Sorry, pal, okay? I’ll improve that when kids aren’t getting medically mutilated every single day in hospital rooms. My tone is the problem? Anyway, so let me try to improve the tone, okay? Let me say this. which is, for doing this for 10 years, this woke ideology will destroy every ministry that you support. I cannot tell you how dangerous this virus is, and I do not mean COVID. I mean critical theory, which comes from the postmodern ideology that I believe is a concoction of Lucifer, Satan, and the enemy. I’m telling you right now, you go read One Dimensional Man. Go read Herbert Marcuse. If you don’t know who he is, I encourage you to go just do a little bit of study. We talk about our podcast all the time. There was a series of thinkers, I believe, satanically inspired philosophers in the 1960s that came from the Frankfurt School. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault. These people that came and their core argument is everything that we should call out and understand that it’s actually not political, it’s biblical. Their core argument is this. Everyone knows their own truth. That’s it. There is no truth. You can determine it for yourself. That is their entire political movement. And I think back to the scriptures where it says, you know, men did whatever was right in their own eyes. And woe to those who called good evil and evil good. It’s happening right now. And so for the pastors that are on the sideline, the question is, if there was not a more important time just to talk about, is there truth in the world? That’s really the conversation. Because when I go to university at UC Berkeley, as we were talking earlier, I set up an entire table and I talk for hours to these kids. Victor was there when we did it, actually. He’ll attest to it. I’ll talk to hours for these kids. And hear what they have to say. And you know what the common denominator is? Yeah, okay, they’re pro-abortion and pro-trans and marijuana and all that stuff. No, no, no, that’s all superficial. You know the core of it? They do not believe the two things we believe here tonight. That there is a God and you are not him. They reject both. They believe that there is not a God and if there were to be a God, it would be me. Because I’m the most important thing ever to exist. And as soon as you start talking about truth, their eyes get big and they’ve been trained very well, paid for by their parents, of course, when they got sent to college, to respond with this. Whose truth exactly? The white supremacist, colonial, heteronormative, misogynistic truth of the American culture? They know how to respond. And so you look at all these dynamics, it’s not political, this is spiritual, guys. Everything about this is spiritual. From the transgender debate to the abortion debate, it’s all getting back to the question of, is there truth? And we’re supposed to now rely on secularists to do this argument for us? That’s what the church has done. The church has outsourced the most important debate in a hundred years to secularists. And by the way, they’re doing their best. God bless them. You know how many times I have kids that come up to me and they say, Charlie, I’m not a Christian, but I don’t know why pastors aren’t fighting alongside me as I’m trying to fight for the idea that there might be truth out there. I say, good question, I don’t know. You understand that the people that are carrying the water of the most important debate, literally against Lucifer aims and ambitions, are usually not Christians. It’s not, I can tell you this, it’s not the Christians on campus. The Christian groups on campus, totally woke, off the reservation, right? And so there is this amazing call to action that I think all of a sudden we recognize and realize that we are not just in the spiritual battle, we’re in all these implications happening here. And it comes down to that question, which is, how do you know a line is crooked if you do not have a straight line to compare it to? You remove truth from a society. All you have is power and pleasure. That is it. And you want to know why we have the most depressed, suicidal, anxious, and psychiatric medicated generation in history? Because the church went to go try to be liked by the world instead of trying to spread truth to the world. I heard for years, you know, someone said to me, nice person. They said, well, Charlie, don’t you believe that we should try to get the world to like us first and then we’ll get them to like Jesus? And I said, how’s that working? No, seriously. We’ve tried that garbage for 30 years. The least religious, least married, most likely to commit suicide generation, and least likely to have a child. Least likely to go to church. And what have we done? We have watered down the gospel at every single turn. Well, you know, the kids don’t want to hear about Leviticus. We have to cop that out, as Andy Stanley would say from Georgia. The Christian faith is more than the 66 books of the Bible. It’s really just the testimony of Jesus of Nazareth. And I always ask the question is, well, if that’s true, then why did Jesus quote Deuteronomy so much? I guess we have to know kind of what Deuteronomy is to know what he’s saying. Like, oh no, we can’t say that. And it kind of goes back to this core, and I believe this, and Barry and I have talked about this a lot, is bad theology leads to bad politics. And this is where the woke thing comes in. And Christians have no idea, most Christians, what’s going on. At the core of woke is an entire rigorous academic philosophy called deconstructionism. If you’ve never heard of deconstructionism, you have got to put on the full armor of God and get into the arena, folks, because you are not in the arena. Deconstructionism, there are libraries dedicated to it. You know what it is? Training young people to pick apart anything that you think is true. They train them on it. There are entire volumes of training manuals to get young people to believe, oh, you believe the nuclear family is good? Let’s try to deconstruct that. And it gets down to the elemental thing where you have an entire generation questioning their very existence. When I ask an average college audience, do you think that there is goodness, truth, and beauty in the world? They say, it’s nothing but your opinion. Now, they actually don’t even believe that if you actually have a chance to have a conversation with them. But what an amazing trick of the enemy, isn’t it? And this is the same sort of spiritual game the enemy does over and over again. So here’s how I see it playing out. This is phase one. Get the church totally confused, divided, complicit, complacent. And then a true authoritarian, tyrannical dictator can come in. And it would make the 20th century look like child’s play. And so, you know, we go through all these different sorts of dynamics and the call to action, and we could, you know, keep on talking about this, is really we need to challenge a lot of these cowardly churches and especially the complicit ones to be courageous again. And I get asked all the time, they say, Charlie, why is it that this generation is so liberal or so, you know, atheistic or so secular? And yes, of course, it’s the colleges, it’s all these sorts of things, but I think back to You know, Billy Graham. And Billy Graham called socialism Satan’s religion. Did you know that? That he called socialism Satan’s religion multiple times? When’s the last time I heard an American pastor say that? Not recently. And you think about it, it’s totally true. It is Satan’s religion. It’s a core belief that the state is God and that we must deconstruct it from within. And I have to say, one of the reasons why I love Dr. Dobson’s work and all of this, I got to say is… We think back to the Ten Commandments. The only one of the Ten Commandments that involves your country and a promise is honor your mother and father. It’s the only one of the Ten Commandments that says, honor your mother and father so they may live long in the land of which you are in. And we have raised an entire generation to not just dishonor their parents, but to curse their parents.

SPEAKER 01 : 23:02

Charlie Kirk certainly didn’t mince words, did he? His challenge to the American church to stand courageously for biblical truth in every area of life cuts right to the heart of what it means to truly follow Christ. You’re listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk and a powerful presentation from the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, a presentation that was delivered at one of our gathering events here in Colorado Springs, Now, if you missed any part of today’s message, or if you’d like to share it with your pastor or a friend, simply go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. That’s drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Well, as we close out today’s broadcast, I want to remind you about a time-limited opportunity that’s taking place right now. Recently, a group of dear friends established a historic matching opportunity for our ministry. We called it the Dr. James Dobson Memorial Matching Grant. This remarkable gift provides matching funds of up to $6 million now through December 31st, 2025. So your gift today will be doubled. A $100 gift becomes $200. A $1,000 gift becomes $2,000. Placing practical biblical wisdom into the hands and homes of countless families for years to come as a result of this matching grant. Whatever amount God leads you to give will have twice the impact in advancing the causes Dr. Dobson championed throughout his life. Strong marriages, protection of parental rights, defense of religious freedom, advocacy for the sanctity of life, and most importantly… spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, to make your tax-deductible gift and have it doubled, visit drjamesdobson.org. If you prefer to make your contribution over the phone, that number is 877-732-6825. That’s 877-732-6825. Or if you prefer, you can send your tax-deductible donation through the U.S. Postal Service. You can write to drjamesdobsonsfamilytalk.com P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80949. Well, I’m Roger Marsh. So grateful that you’ve joined us today on behalf of all of us here at the JDFI. Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to join us again next time right here as we continue hearing the words of wisdom from the late Charlie Kirk, answering the question why young people matter. It’s a powerful conversation. Dr. James Dobson recorded with Charlie Kirk. right after he shared the presentation that you heard on today’s edition of Family Talk. That’s coming up next time right here. You won’t want to miss it on the next edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.