(RNS) — Charlie Kirk, an evangelical Christian activist and social media personality who rallied young Americans to Donald Trump’s MAGA cause, died Wednesday (Sept. 10) after being shot while addressing a crowd at a Utah university.

The founder of Turning Point USA and Turning Point Faith and host of the streaming “Charlie Kirk Show,” Kirk was shot while speaking in a courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem, a city of 96,000 adjacent to Provo. He was 31.

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” President Trump announced on Truth Social, his social media platform. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie.”

The White House later said Trump had ordered that the U.S. flag fly at half-staff through Sunday in Kirk’s honor.

A native of Arlington Heights, Illinois, near Chicago, Kirk co-founded Turning Point USA as an 18-year-old in 2012 with a tea party conservative, William Montgomery, who died in 2020. The nonprofit sought to educate students about “the importance of fiscal responsibility, free markets and capitalism.”

With the help of Montgomery, a retired businessman who encouraged Kirk to get involved in politics after hearing him speak at a high school event, the organization grew into a conservative powerhouse. Within three years it had 800 chapters on college and high school campuses around the country.

“There are young conservatives out there, and there have been for decades. But I just feel they haven’t been plugged in correctly,” Kirk told The Atlantic in 2015, as the organization was gaining national attention. They haven’t been cultivated, they haven’t been properly equipped or trained.”

Trump’s election as president in 2016 cemented Kirk as a major power in conservative circles, and his influence continued to grow after Trump’s 2020 defeat through his 2024 comeback.

Claire Bettag, 22, a recent graduate of St. Mary’s Notre Dame, a Catholic college in Notre Dame, Indiana, told RNS that she founded a TPUSA chapter there after meeting Kirk in 2016 during the Trump presidential campaign. “I’m in a state of disbelief,” she said. “I just can’t believe that such a profound conservative activist and representative for the conservative movement has been taken from us just like that.”

Bettag, who attended several TPUSA conferences and came to view Kirk as a mentor, added, “Everything that he believed was driven by his faith and his relationship with Christ.” She said Kirk taught her to “remain strong” in her beliefs, “no matter what they do to try to silence you.”

In 2019, Kirk teamed up with Jerry Falwell Jr., then the president of Liberty University, to start the Falkirk Center, a think tank based at Liberty, to defend Judeo-Christian beliefs. Kirk left in 2021 after Falwell became mired in scandal. The center has since been renamed the Standing for Freedom Center.

Kirk was scheduled to speak at Liberty next month for fall convocation. Students there told RNS that campus was “rocked” by the news of his death. They are planning a prayer vigil on campus Wednesday evening.

“Gen Z is on fire for Christ, and it’s on fire for truth,” said Payton Stutzman, a junior at Liberty University who last year served as the TPUSA chapter’s president. “They want truth, and Charlie was giving it to them. He was revealing the truth to them not only politically, but spiritually.”

Last year, Liberty’s TPUSA chapter ballooned to over 600 students and became the largest in the U.S., according to Stutzman. He said Kirk’s assassination would only make the movement he inspired stronger. “Not only was he a political activist, he was an evangelist,” said Stutzman. “He used political advocacy as evangelism. And that’s what we’re trying to do here. We’re trying to replicate that.”

Though Kirk often expressed concern about the way that social media affects people’s minds — at one point, he said TikTok was designed to make young Americans stupid — he was a constant presence on social channels, championing conservative positions. His videos showing him debating the validity of his political or spiritual beliefs regularly drew millions of viewers.

Kirk became a proponent of the claim that America was founded as a Christian nation and needed to return to its spiritual roots. “One of the reasons we’re living through a constitutional crisis is that we no longer have a Christian nation, but we have a Christian form of government, and they’re incompatible,” Kirk said in a clip he posted to X in 2024. “You cannot have liberty if you do not have a Christian population.”

In recent years, Kirk started Turning Point Faith to rally pastors and other Christian leaders to Trump’s cause and began speaking openly about his faith, especially during monthly Freedom Night in America rallies at the church he attended, Dream City Church in Phoenix.

The Rev. Rob McCoy, who helped Kirk in organizing Turning Point Faith, told Religion News Service that he met the young activist during a conservative radio convention. The two hit it off and became friends.

“My church was the very first church he was invited to speak at,” McCoy told RNS during a June 2023 interview. “He didn’t think any church would want him.”

He said Kirk would engage with folks who disagreed with him during speaking events. “But that’s what I love about Charlie. Whenever he speaks, at a university, he has the folks that are in disagreement — they get to go to the front line,” he told RNS.

But Kirk showed a deep intolerance to other points of view, and other people. In a profile of Kirk earlier this year, RNS reported that Kirk “has questioned the qualifications of Black pilots, called the police brutality victim George Floyd a ‘scumbag’ and said a Bible verse about stoning gay people to death is ‘God’s perfect law.’”

Kirk was quick to politicize the Muslim faith of New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani after he won the city’s Democratic primary contest: “It’s not Islamophobia to notice that Muslims want to import values into the West that seek to destabalize our civilization. It’s cultural suicide to stay silent,” Kirk wrote in a June 25 X post.

But his primary concern was always the effect of liberal thought on American culture and faith. In 2022, Kirk spoke at a breakfast for politically conservative pastors during the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California. There, he warned that liberal political causes such as Black Lives Matter were invading churches. “Our beautiful faith is under attack from within,” he said.

Kirk, who grew up Presbyterian, urged Baptist leaders in the room to set aside their theological differences to focus on saving the country from liberals.

“If we don’t recognize that we all have to agree on liberty and the gospel, we’re all going to be sharing our theological disputes in prison,” he said.

Kirk used his platform to talk about his spiritual beliefs as well as his political positions. In a video posted earlier this year, he spoke about adopting what he called a “Jewish Sabbath every week,” after a pastor told him he needed to rest more. “Every Friday night I take a Jewish Sabbath — turn off my phone. Friday night to Saturday night,” he said. “The world cannot reach me, and I get nothing from the world.”

He added: “I’m not saying that that’s something you have to do. I’m saying it will make your life better. It was important enough that God put it as one of the 10 Commandments.”

News of Kirk’s death prompted calls for prayers for his family as well as outrage condemning political violence. “There is no place in our country for this kind of violence. It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones,” wrote former President Joe Biden, on X.

Karen Swallow Prior, author and RNS columnist, posted a photo of herself with Kirk at an anti-abortion rally, noting that the two disagreed but also found common cause. “I marched with Charlie Kirk for life, probably one of the few things we agreed on,” she wrote. “But being pro-life means being pro-life for *everyone* because all human lives are inherently valuable.”

Clint Pressley, pastor of Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told RNS his church would be praying for Kirk and the country this evening during Wednesday night events. Pressley said he hoped other churches do the same. “You don’t have to be a conservative Christian to see that this is tragic,” he said.

“We’ll be praying for them and just praying that our country doesn’t just fracture and fall apart,” he said.

While pastor Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, responded to the news of Kirk’s death by dubbing him “a martyr,” other evangelical leaders looked to offer more ordinary Christian comfort. Robert Jeffress, who hosted Kirk at First Baptist Church in Dallas, where Jeffress is senior pastor, called the shooting a “cold-blooded murder” and said violence is never the answer.

Jeffress said: “We were not close friends, but I admired his stand for truth on many issues. His calling is different from a pastor’s calling, but I believe he was a follower of Jesus Christ and I believe we have the assurance that we’ll see him in heaven one day. And until that time, we ought to be praying for his wife, Erika, and their two small children.”

Jack Jenkins and Kathryn Post contributed to this report.