The Danger of Using Religious Language in Political Debates
Al-Ittihad, UAE, September 28
On September 10, conservative Republican activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while delivering a lecture on a college campus in Utah, and the reactions to his death exposed the raw and dangerous divisions within American society. Even many critics of Kirk’s hardline positions on race and gender expressed basic respect for his life despite their profound disagreements, only to be harassed and intimidated online by his most extreme supporters.
Yet what is even more troubling is the almost reverential language many of those supporters have adopted, praising him in overtly religious—specifically Christian—terms. One conservative Catholic cardinal went so far as to call Kirk an “evangelist” and an “apostle,” likening him to Saint Paul. Others have accused his critics of “defamation of religion” or even “sacrilege,” as if questioning Kirk were tantamount to blaspheming God.
My deepest concern is not merely that I reject Kirk’s views—though I categorically do. I repudiate his statements about the supposed inferiority or unreliability of Black people, Muslims, and Jews, his calls for women to submit to men, and much else besides. What alarms me most is the dangerous misuse of religious language by those who idolize him. Terms like “blasphemy” and “sacrilege” have precise theological meanings, referring to acts that insult God or desecrate the sacred.
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Kirk was not a religious figure, and simply sprinkling his rhetoric with biblical references did not make his politics a divine message. In everyday life, we routinely use—and abuse—religious language for emotional effect, exclaiming “Oh my God” when we stub a toe or blurting out “Jesus Christ” in shock or frustration. These phrases are not confessions of faith; they are cultural expressions of anger, surprise, or excitement. Political movements exploit this same emotional power when they wrap their agendas in sacred language, as Christian nationalists—and their Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist counterparts—so often do.
By portraying opponents as “infidels,” they pretend their ideology reflects God’s will when it is merely their own convictions masquerading as divine truth. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is growing more serious. In the 1960s, Americans clashed bitterly over war and civil rights, and religious leaders stood on every side. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led peaceful civil rights protests rooted in faith, while white Southern preachers invoked God’s punishment of the “sons of Ham” to defend segregation. Cardinal Francis Spellman traveled to Vietnam to bless American soldiers fighting “godless communism,” while Jesuit priest Daniel Berrigan led anti-war protests that resulted in repeated arrests, including for burning draft files.
Yet during that era, the media did not label segregationists or civil rights activists, hawks or doves, as “Christian leaders,” nor did Americans feel compelled to debate which side represented “true Christianity.” We judged them by their actions—whether they fought for or against civil rights, for or against the war—rather than by their religious vocabulary. We seemed to understand, even if only implicitly, that invoking God to justify political behavior does not make that behavior religious, nor does it define the faith it claims to represent.
James Zogby (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)
