Erika Kirk Archives

It’s been 134 days since an assassin’s bullet killed her husband, Charlie Kirk, but Erika Kirk has soldiered on, including speaking last night at Harvest Church in Los Angeles to kick off Turning Point USA’s “Make Heaven Crowded” tour.

Billed as “A gospel centered gathering calling people to repentance, faith, and bold obedience to Jesus,” the event is planned for 29 other cities this year throughout the United States. They’ll be at Awaken Church in San Diego on Thursday night.

In addition to TPUSA president Erika Kirk, Wednesday’s service featured Pastor Greg Laurie.

At the time of the slain TPUSA founder’s death, Pastor Laurie had stated, “The greatest tribute we can pay to Charlie is calling people to Christ and speaking unashamedly on cultural issues.”

That’s precisely what many within the TPUSA orbit have done, especially Erika Kirk. For doing so, she’s been vilified by some radical activists and even accused by unhinged conspiratorialists for being implicit in her husband’s murder. Others have judged her for jumping back into the work, even questioning how she’s been grieving.

Rather than engage the criticism or defend her actions, Mrs. Kirk has kept her focus on the work at hand. She told Fox News’ Shannon Bream, “If myself or Charlie spent every single second responding to every accusation, responding to every insult, every judgment, we’d get nothing done. We just wouldn’t. I’m not gonna ask God to remove those people from life. It just makes me stronger.”

Speaking on Wednesday night at Harvest Church, Erika picked up on that philosophy, sharing a perspective that is both refreshing and instructive for those of us who understand that the Lord commands us to be engaged in culture. She told those gathered:

I operate very clearly. Whatever decision is in front of me, it will go through a very strict lens. Is this going to bring me closer to Heaven or is it going to bring me further away from Heaven? If it is going to bring me further away from heaven, step aside Satan, I do not want to touch you with a 10-foot pole.

I do not want to be around anything that is going to take me further away from my home in Heaven. I don’t. That’s where my heart is.

She then delivered a statement that every Christian can personalize and take to heart:

And so as long as I remain obedient to God and abide in His Word, and I’m in the jet stream of His Will, the opinions of this world mean nothing to me. Nothing.

With the advent of social media and the explosion of citizen and activist journalists, there are more opinions than ever being pushed out — and often to decry or to diminish the socially conservative point of view. The drumbeat is persistent and consistent. It’s easy to be swept up in it, especially given the worldly trappings that often surround the popularly held opinions of the day.

But millions of followers don’t make a foolish opinion right. The acclaim or acceptance of others won’t soften or forgive sin. As King Solomon advised, “Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge” (Proverbs 14:7).

As the late Dr. Adrian Rogers observed, “It doesn’t matter if you please the whole world and don’t please Jesus. But if you please Jesus, it doesn’t matter whom you displease.”

Please continue praying for Erika Kirk and her family.

Young women shouldn’t rely on the government to put off getting married, Erika Kirk cautioned at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit this week.

DealBook’s Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed Kirk in lieu of her late husband, Charlie, who had been scheduled to appear. A gunman assassinated the conservative leader in September.

Sorkin asked Kirk her opinion on New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who won 75% of New York voters between 18 and 29 years old last month. Charlie, Sorkin noted, built significant popularity with the same demographic.

Kirk, a former Manhattanite, reflected on struggling to survive alone in the big city.

“I think there’s a tendency, especially when you live in a city like Manhattan, where you are so career driven, [to] look to the government as a form of replacement for certain relationships,” she mused.

“What I don’t want to have happen is young women in the city looking to the government as a solution to put off having a family or marriage because they’re relying on the government to support [them] instead of being united with a husband.”

Kirk’s comments compliment decades of research showing marriage benefits people more than almost any other social institution — including the government.

Married people experience better physical and mental health outcomes than their unmarried counterparts, due, in part, to the way marriage compounds wealth. Married couples tend to live in nicer housing, eat healthier food and have access to better healthcare — the same essentials Mamdani’s campaign promised to make less expensive.

But marriage confers more than mere economic benefit. Between 1975 and 2018, roughly one-third of married people reported feeling happy on the U.S. General Social Survey, compared to just 13% of cohabiting people and 2% of unmarried people.

The social support married people enjoy over single people could help explain the disparity in happiness between the two groups. A recent study of nearly 5,000 single adults in the U.S. and Japan concluded, “Married Americans reported the most family support, which helped boost their well-being.”

In contrast, the study found single Americans “often feel isolated and unsupported, particularly when it comes to emotional guidance and support.”

Kirk experienced the happiness differential herself. She had been all-in on pursuing a career when she met Charlie.

“Charlie essentially plucked me out of the New York City orbit and was like, ‘No, I have a healthier way of viewing things and looking at life,’” she told Sorkin. “And he was right.”

She continued:

I remember thinking, if I would have stayed on that path I was on, I would have lost out on some of the most beautiful moments of my life — children, having a husband and being able to create and build something so incredible.

Too few single women, particularly on the left, hear experiences like Kirk’s. Professor Brad Wilcox, a sociological expert on marriage and family, believes young liberal men and women do not benefit from the same pro-family messaging young conservatives do.

“Progressive messaging that devalues, denies and deconstructs the value of family life and celebrates solo living in recent years is leaving its mark on the hearts, minds and lives of young liberals,” Wilcox and research fellow Grant Bailey write in the Institute for Family Studies, citing troubling articles like “Married heterosexual motherhood in America … is a game no one wins” (The New York Times) and “Divorce led me to my happily ever after” (The Washington Post).

Popular and liberal media further portray family as uniquely burdensome for women.

“Being free of family encumbrances … is often held up as an important pathway to living a meaningful and happy life for women,” Wilcox and Bailey explain.

Lies like these steer single women — and men — away from one of their best statistical chances at happiness and fulfillment. The testimonies of women like Erika Kirk help correct the record and encourage family formation over dependence on the government.

All Christians should follow her example.

Additional Articles and Resources

Marriage and Parenting Are Now Partisan Issues, With Liberals Falling Behind

Research Shows Marriage Boosts Well Being

Are Men or Women More Likely to Be Married?

New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever

Why You Should Care About the Growing Positive Power of Marriage

Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being

New Research: Marriage Still Provides Major Happiness Premium

Cohabitation Still Harmful – Even as Stigma Disappears

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Women

Don’t Believe the Modern Myth. Marriage Remains Good for Men.