This article was originally published on Los Angeles Times by an affiliate of the USC Center for Religion and Civic.
Following yet another shooting at a U.S. college campus, Thursday morning’s class on American religious history at USC called for a different focus. Rather than lecture my students on Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism who was killed by an angry mob, I asked students their thoughts on a newly emerging martyr filling online newsfeeds.
Charlie Kirk, the right-wing evangelical and political activist who led a youth movement he thought would help restore Christian morality in America, had just been killed the day before, shot at long range across a field at Utah Valley University by a gunman who was at that point still on the run. Almost everyone had something to say.