At Charlie Kirk’s Memorial, Worship Took a Backseat to Trump

You may have heard that, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Erika Kirk said that she forgave her husband’s assassin.

You may have also heard that only a few minutes later, President Donald Trump said that while Charlie Kirk “did not hate his opponents—he wanted the best for them,” he was different: “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them!” This moment got a lot of attention, understandably so, but another moment stuck out to me even more. And even though we’re more than a week removed from the memorial service, I think it’s still worth exploring today.

Popular worship artist Cody Carnes was on stage with a band of other famous artists from the evangelical worship industry. The band was leading “The Blessing,” which Carnes co-wrote with his wife, Kari Jobe Carnes, along with Chris Brown and Steven Furtick from Elevation Worship. Carnes said that this was one of Kirk’s favorite songs and wielded a giant Bible from which he intended to read portions of John 1. But instead, this happened:

There was some cheering as Carnes appeared on screen to introduce what would be the band’s last song. Perhaps thinking he was being cheered and hoping to, as any good worship leader would, turn the audience’s attention to Jesus, Carnes smiled and said, “There is hope in Jesus today, amen?” I did not hear an “amen,” or any other discernible response, really. That is, until about 7 seconds later, when members of the audience began chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Why, you ask? Thanks to the giant video screen, they noticed Trump was in the arena. And Trump noticed them.

And, to perhaps sacrilegiously quote from another popular song from the evangelical tradition, when he walks into the room, everything changes.

If Carnes was confused, it did not last long: His wife, who was also on stage, tapped him on the shoulder and appeared to mouth, “There’s Trump up there.” (Carnes, for his part, kept smiling.)

The video screens went to a shot of the president, who pumped his fist numerous times—and, for nearly a minute, those “U-S-A” chants continued. It was only after the chants subsided that Carnes was able to read from his giant Bible.

There may have been hope in Jesus at the memorial that day. But it had to wait until Trump received the glory that he was due.

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The Carneses were not alone in leading worship at the service—popular worship leaders Tiffany Hudson, Brandon Lake, and Phil Wickham were also there and on stage for over an hour. Chris Tomlin, popular for songs like “How Great Is Our God,” also eventually joined them.

As their set was nearing a close, pianist and music director Donavan Smith and cellist and violinist Antonio and Allison Martin played an extended instrumental. During this instrumental, audience members spontaneously held up signs: one set of signs read, “This is our turning point,” another read, “Here I am Lord, send me,” quoting Isaiah 6:8, and had an artistic rendering of Charlie Kirk. Hudson called it her “Fav moment!!!!” Lake called it “the most holy moment—I have goosebumps—that I have ever experienced in worship.”

READ MORE: I Rejected Charlie Kirk's Politics. That's Why I Grieve His Death.

Carnes and his friends weren’t the only worship band at the memorial service. There was an opening act who played their own set of well-known worship songs and even an older hymn. They did a quite fine job of meeting the moment and encouraging grieving attendees to look to Jesus.

I’ve been a worship leader and church musician for many years and, on the day of Kirk’s memorial, my world featured a quite different set of songs—“Con Mis Manos y Mi Vida,” “Alabaré a Mi Señor,” “No Hay Dios Tan Grande Como Tu,” and “Tu Fidelidad” that morning; “You Are The Living Word” and “How Much We Can Bear.” You’ve probably heard these songs if you’re familiar with the modern Spanish-language worship tradition and the modern Black gospel choir tradition.

But I watched the whole memorial service because I knew the things that happened there would impact how I operate elsewhere. What happens in white evangelicalism impacts all the church spaces I frequent, even if indirectly. And it probably affects the churches you attend, too, even if you can’t tell Chris Tomlin from Michael W. Smith.

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to find out who the members of the non-famous worship band at the memorial service were. I’ve searched church websites, YouTube comments, and Instagram tags, all to no avail. And as a journalist, I’m sure I could find the answer if I did more digging and asked the right people. But I’ve done a lot of looking. As of today, I have no idea what those people’s names are.

And maybe that’s the point.

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I don’t know if Cody Carnes was embarrassed by the fact that the Jesus he was trying to point to was upstaged, if only temporarily, by the president whose slogan was on the red hats of many the worshippers in the audience. I would’ve been. But even if he weren’t, as I watched Carnes and his counterparts, I couldn’t help but think you guys didn’t have to be there.

This isn’t the first time that the Carneses have been chided for their proximity to Trump. In 2019, a few months before they wrote “The Blessing,” they joined other worship artists and pastors in the Oval Office to, they said, pray for the president. Reflecting on that day a year later, Cody Carnes told RELEVANT, “My experience has been that there’s a lot of things about [Trump] that I don’t like, and there’s a lot of things that he’s doing for the country that are really good.” He continued, “Man, I don’t care whose administration it is. If that invitation comes across our table, that we get to go into that house and lift up the name of Jesus and invite the presence of God into that house? … It was just to honor God in the way that we were getting invited to and we were just doing our best to do that.”

Their presence at the White House in 2019, they say, wasn’t meant to express their political affiliation—they just wanted to “lift up the name of Jesus.”

Lake, for his part, says the same about his presence at Kirk’s memorial, explaining, “This wasn’t a political stunt. This was not saying I’m siding with anyone, other than, we were going to go minister to a widow who’d just lost her husband, who was a man of faith, and we wanted to honor their family. And I thought it was so amazing that she was like, ‘I want worship to set the tone. I want worship to lead the way as we celebrate his life.’”

I don’t disbelieve them. I believe they wanted to honor the Kirk family. I believe they wanted to “lift up the name of Jesus.” But here’s the thing: Jesus’ name could’ve been proclaimed through song at the memorial service with or without famous worship artists. At that very same event, people had already sung songs about Jesus just fine without them. If “revival” broke out as they say it did—Lake and others are happily reporting that many people have announced their decision to follow Jesus at and after the memorial service—it is important to note that God did not need the presence of celebrity worship artists to make it happen. And it is important to note that God does not only respond to the worship attached to songs from the white evangelical worship tradition.

Instead, an audience that appears to have been more multiracial than you might think got treated to a free concert of music from the white evangelical tradition, performed by some of the best white worship artists. And what those artists did, ultimately, even if unwittingly, was provide cultural legitimacy to, and warmup for, an event in which Jesus’ name was certainly uttered a lot—even Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented his understanding of the gospel there!—but this Jesus was ultimately subservient to Trump’s America.

What immediately followed an invitation to follow Jesus offered by Kirk’s pastor was, notably, not a song about Jesus performed by the famous worship band; it was the national anthem. Forgiveness might’ve been proclaimed, but it didn’t have the last word: The service ended with “America the Beautiful”—Trump and Erika Kirk eventually sing along.

The famous worship artists may indeed have come simply because they were invited. But some invitations are little more than indictments.

It does seem that their presence at this service gave them the sort of bump that artists receive when they perform at the Super Bowl. On the day before the funeral, the only Brandon Lake solo song on Apple’s top 100 US Chart was “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” his song with Jelly Roll. The day after the funeral, Brandon Lake’s song “Gratitude” (the song that preceded the moment with the signs) was #2—overall. Chris Tomlin’s “Holy Forever” (the song that officially began the service) reached #1. Those songs still remain in the top 20 as of this writing. Most of the churches I play at these days don’t sing those songs. Many do, however, sing another song that also cracked the top 5: “The Blessing.” And some of those churches may never sing that song again. And it didn’t have to be this way. Because the Carneses and their famous worship counterparts didn’t have to be there. 

We, like the Carneses and their counterparts, can make choices, too. There is a diverse range of theologically useful, God-honoring, corporately singable, beautiful music available for our consumption and for our production. Those songs may not come with the production, resources, or recognition that “The Blessing” might. But they will do just as well—if not better—in pointing us to who Jesus is.

Jesus doesn’t need celebrities to cause people to worship, no matter how talented they are. We don’t need to “bring God back” to America as Trump declared during the service—the same Bible that Carnes was reading from tells us that God is already here, present at the White House, with the Kirk family, with every person ICE has detained, and in every house that has a trans kid. And Jesus doesn’t need to wait for any president to receive glory.

After all, if Jesus has to wait for Trump, what kind of Lord is he?

There may have been hope in Jesus at the memorial that day. But it had to wait until Trump received the glory that he was due.