A race well run

Charlie Kirk was a sports fan.

“You loved witnessing excellence,” his wife Erika said in an Instagram post. “It’s why you loved sports so much. You loved watching the best of the best perform at the level of greatness God intended for them.”

How fitting, then, that in the days and weeks after an assassin gunned him down before a live audience on a college campus in Utah one year ago, people across America poured into sports stadiums to honor Kirk.

That was most apparent at his memorial service at State Farm Stadium, home of the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals. Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined up before dawn’s early light, eager to pay respects to the man slain for daring to preach about faith, family, and freedom to hostile audiences on woke college campuses. And when that football stadium filled up to capacity, nearby Desert Diamond Arena, once home to a National Hockey League franchise, absorbed the overflow.

But Arizona—where the conservative political organization Kirk founded, Turning Point USA (TPUSA), is headquartered—wasn’t the only place where mourners packed stadiums to grieve together. In ṻber-liberal Eugene, Ore., people filed into Autzen Stadium—home of the Oregon Ducks, Kirk’s favorite college football team, which can accommodate up to 60,000 fans—to watch Kirk’s memorial on the giant screens at each end of the venue. In fact, the local tribute to Kirk had begun the day before. Mourners participated in a memorial walk before Oregon’s annual rivalry game against Oregon State, and during the second half of the Ducks’ 41-7 triumph, fans passed a 30-by-60-foot American flag used in the walk around the stadium. As I attended the game with my buddy Scott, I was blessed to witness it live.

Following the Ducks’ win the previous week over Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.—roughly 15 miles from another Chicago suburb, Kirk’s boyhood hometown of Prospect Heights—Oregon coach Dan Lanning gave an impassioned speech to reporters about lessons to be drawn from Kirk’s life. In particular, Lanning spoke of Kirk’s willingness to engage staunch opponents in intense but respectful dialogue—perhaps the defining aspect of Kirk’s Christian faith.

“I think the people in this world can learn a lot from our locker room,” Lanning said. “You walk in that locker room, you got guys of different races, guys of different backgrounds, different religions, and you got a team that loves each other. Tons of differences—where they come from, what they deal with, and ultimately you got a team that loves each other, and I think we’re missing some of that in our country.”

Other sports venues across the nation hosted tributes to Kirk on various dates as well: In baseball, the late 31-year-old patriot’s beloved Chicago Cubs held a moment of silence in his honor. So did the New York Yankees on the day of his murder. Multiple NFL and college football teams did likewise at their first home games following his death. And on Sept. 16—a Tuesday—100,000 fans gathered at the University of Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium, bowing their heads in unison as the Crimson Tide band played a soft rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

The tributes to Kirk continued more than two weeks after his death: When Penn State hosted its “white-out” football game against Oregon, at which the school encouraged all fans in attendance to wear white, the Nittany Lions let TPUSA hand out white T-shirts stating “Freedom”—a nod to the shirt Kirk wore when he was killed.

I briefly met Kirk in 2022 and listened to him speak at the annual fundraising dinner for the non-profit law firm I work for. During his speech, Kirk spoke of a coming cultural shift in which the woke left was losing its grip on power as the country collectively groaned under President Biden’s leadership (Proverbs 29:2). At the time, it warmed my heart to hear such an optimistic message from a well-spoken individual who was not only bold enough to stand openly for Christian values but refused to let even his most ardent detractors deter him from doing so.

What warms my heart even more, though, is that the tributes to Kirk indicate that the cultural shift he spoke of is coming to pass. It wasn’t that long ago that sports figures, teams, and leagues regularly bowed their knees to woke ideology. To some degree—especially in the Women’s National Basketball Association—it’s still happening. More and more, though, America seems to be answering the call of 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

It’s been one year since Kirk crossed his finish line to the cheers of throngs in heaven. He ran with endurance the race set before him (Hebrews 12:1) and has earned his crown (1 Corinthians 9:24). It’s only fitting that stadiums across America took part in his coronation.