'Heresy by another name': Minister blasts Trump for stoking 'division' following Kirk murder

We speak to Bishop William J. Barber II about conservative Christian activist Charlie Kirk’s killing and the right-wing weaponization of his death. Barber says outrage over political violence should also extend beyond Kirk’s assassination, to what he refers to as the political violence of policy, including the hundreds around the world who die of poverty, war and disease every day. “You cannot claim that you believe in a God and a Christ of love and justice and mercy and grace and truth, and then you push policies that prey on the very persons, in the very communities, that the Scriptures, that the example of Jesus and the prophet, tells us we should not only pray for, but we should also be lifting up and helping up and protecting.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Prosecutors are expected to file charges today in the murder case of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot last week during a campus event at Utah Valley University. The alleged shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah, is currently in custody and may be facing the death penalty. He’ll be arraigned today.

Charlie Kirk was a well-known figure in the MAGA movement, a close ally of President Trump. Through his organization Turning Point USA, he’s credited with mobilizing young conservative voters, expanding Republican turnout in 2024. He also reached a wide audience with his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show. Kirk strongly identified as a Christian and didn’t believe in the separation of church and state. This is Kirk speaking in 2022.

CHARLIE KIRK: Of course, we should have church and state mixed together. Our Founding Fathers believed in that. We can go through the details of that. They established, literally, a church in Congress.

AMY GOODMAN: While the motives for the murder are not known at this time, President Trump and his allies are accusing the political left of fomenting violence. President Trump was questioned about this by a reporter at the White House yesterday.

NANCY CORDES: Given the killing of Melissa Hortman, the attack on Paul Pelosi, the attack on Gabby Giffords, the attack on the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, why make the case that violence is only on one side? It seems to be taking place across the spectrum.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I didn’t say it’s on one side, but I say the radical left causes tremendous violence, and they seem to do it in a bigger way. But the radical left really is — caused a lot of problems for this country. I really think they hate our country.

AMY GOODMAN: Last year, a unit of the Department of Justice published a major “study”on domestic terrorism. It found, quote, “Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists,” unquote. The DOJ removed the study after the Charlie Kirk killing.

For more, we’re joined by Bishop William Barber, president of Repairers of the Breach and founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School, also national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and leader of the Moral Mondays movement, co-author of the book White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, joining us from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Your response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Bishop Barber?

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: I pause for a minute, Amy, because of the last statement that you made, where you said that they removed the study where the facts did not line up with the narrative that the president, Stephen Miller and others were seeking to put out. And I just had to — I’ll come back to that, but I just had to stop for a moment. I want people to hear that, who are listening here.

You know, this past week, there was a brutal, on-camera assassination of brother Charlie Kirk, and we must all despise it, as one — I’ve known what it means to live with people who send you threats and want to see your demise. And because we’re human beings, we should despise violence against any other human being. We should despise that it left him dead, his wife broken, heartbroken, without a husband, his children without a father. And all of us should be bothered. All of us should denounce political violence and pray for the family and stand against this viciousness and violence, murder. We’ve had too much.

Just yesterday, we had a Moral Monday, on September 15th, remembering that after the March on Washington, 17 days afterwards, four girls were blown up in a church in Birmingham, what they called “Bombingham” at that time, with a white supremacist trying to stop the civil rights movement. And Dr. King said at that time — he raised the issue of not just who killed her, but what killed her. And so, we should all be — be deeply moved, deeply bothered.

But here’s the other side, Amy, and to the audience: If you didn’t get bothered by political death until the other day, this must be challenged, too. The prophets in the Bible, and even in the — Jesus in the New Testament, they talk about how our trouble in nations is rooted in political violence. So, if we — if you’re bothered by what happened last week, you can’t be quiet and not cry out against what happened to some politicians earlier this year in Minnesota. If you’re bothered by that kind — what happened last week, you have to cry out also against the 800 people who die every day from poverty and over 200-and-some thousand who die every year from policies that cause violence among the poor. You have to cry out against the hundreds of thousands that died needlessly, died needlessly during the height of COVID, and still die from the lack of healthcare — the lack of healthcare in a nation where politicians, in the middle of a pandemic, refused to ensure healthcare. And one study said over 350,000 people died not from COVID, but from the lack of healthcare.

You have to cry out against any kind of political violence. You have to cry out against the violence perpetrated against the homeless, and accented by policies that say “lock them up” rather than build housing, or when a Fox News host says, “Just kill them. Just give them a lethal injection.” You have to cry out against threats of political violence in all of its forms. The president is saying, “I can stand in the middle of the Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and I wouldn’t lose any followers.” You have to stand against the violence we see happening in Gaza and the Congo and Yemen.

America has been facing a turning point in this society for some time. And the question is: When will America say that death is and violence is no longer an option? Not just that that happened, as terrible as it was. We have to have a real, real serious moral debate about political violence in this nation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Reverend Barber, I wanted to ask you — during the recent speech at a Senator Bernie Sanders rally in North Carolina, you called Christian nationalism, quote, “heresy by another name.” Could you — could you talk about that?

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Well, the reason I called it that, because of what the Scriptures say. If you go to the ancient Scripture Isaiah 58, that’s lifted up by Jews, Muslims and Christians, it says that the kind of religion, the kind of fasting that God requires is not just saying that everybody pray — I’m paraphrasing. It says the kind of religion that the Lord wants is to speak truth to the nation, to tell the nation its sin, to cry out against oppression, against paying people less than what they deserve, against those things that hurt and cause more homelessness. Throughout the Scriptures — there are more than 2,000 Scriptures. You go to the New Testament, says a nation will be judged by how you treat the least of these.

And what happens with so-called religious nationalism is that it attempts to lift the flag above the cross. It attempts to say — suggest that one political side or one political party or one political framework is, in fact, God’s way, when, in fact, the Scriptures are clear about that. And what heresy is is when you take something that is truth, and you try to twist it, when you try to twist faith to support political violence, when you try to twist faith to give you the right to denounce even those who are trying to live out the call of love and justice.

Are we not — and this is not the first time we’ve had a debate with a kind of religious nationalism. Religious nationalism was what undergirded the slave masters. They created a religion that said that slavery was all right. There was the kind of religious nationalism that was formed to come against Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he called for the New Deal. There was a religious nationalism that came against Dr. King and many others who were standing up for civil rights. We’ve always had this debate in this nation. And really, we need to have it even the more today, because, on the one hand, you cannot claim that you believe in a God and a Christ of love and justice and mercy and grace and truth, and then — and then you push policies that prey — P-R-E-Y — on the very persons, in the very communities, that the Scriptures, that the example of Jesus and the prophet, tells us we should not only pray for — P-R-A-Y for — but we should also be lifting up and helping up and protecting.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, Vice President JD Vance hosted The Charlie Kirk Show and interviewed Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff for policy at the White House. Vance asked Miller to elaborate on how the administration would be working to prevent what he called the, quote, “festering violence that you see on the far left,” in reference to the assassination of Kirk.

STEPHEN MILLER: We are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. So, let me explain a little what that means. So —

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: I’ve got 30 seconds, so be quick, Stephen.

STEPHEN MILLER: The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that’s designed to trigger, incite violence, and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence, it is a vast domestic terror movement. And with the God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Stephen Miller talking to JD Vance, who was hosting Charlie Kirk’s daily podcast because Kirk was assassinated. We just have 30 seconds, Bishop Barber, but as they talk about the left as “terrorists” and taking down the network “in Charlie’s name,” can you respond?

BISHOP WILLIAM BARBER II: Three things real quickly. First of all, when people of faith are Christian, we’re supposed to do things in Jesus’ name, not in somebody’s name, and that Jesus would not be talking what he’s talking about there.

Secondly, you just said at the beginning of the program that they had documentation of what’s really going on, factual evidence, and they removed it from the website because they don’t want to deal with the truth. And instead, they want to use a tragic, violent death, that all of us should be against and should be concerned about, and use that to stoke more division, possibly more violence, more ugliness. And that is wrong. It is undemocratic. It is unjust. And it does not line up with their oath to establish justice, to promote the common defense, to promote the general welfare and to ensure domestic tranquility and equal protection under the law.

What Stephen Miller should be working on is stop terrorizing immigrants, stop pushing policies of healthcare that are going to cause people to prematurely die, stop being against living wages, and stop trying to undermine equal protection under the law. That’s what we ought to be doing. And we ought to do that in the name of all that is holy and good and gracious, and we ought to do it in line with our deepest political — constitutional values and our deepest faith values.

AMY GOODMAN: Bishop William Barber, I want to thank you so much for being with us, president of Repairs of the Breach, national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign.