Charlie Kirk: Part 4: Was He a Great Christian Debater?

The question of debate is a difficult one to address these days, because our idea of reasonable debate has deteriorated so much in the last 10-15 years. I’m going to address this question in a couple of ways, one for the way I think debate should be, and one for how it has evolved. So, my way first, since it’s my post and I set the rules.

Back when I was in high school, we were taught the rules of debate in English class. There are a lot of ways to do it, of course, but essentially you take an issue (minimum wage, for example), one team takes the Pro side, and one team takes the Con side. You do your research, figure out the points you want to make, envision likely counterpoints of the other side, and so forth.

The actual debate is structured in rounds. Generally, one side will get to make a statement regarding one or two of their points. Let’s say the Pro team gets two minutes. During this time, the other team (Con) does not speak; they just listen and take notes. When that time is up, the Con gets a “rebuttal” time, usually about half of the statement time. In this case, one minute of rebuttal time. They use that time to address the points the Pro team made, but they don’t bring up other points. They are there to address the Pro points, that’s it.

Then, the Con team gets two minutes to make their statement. Again, the Pro team does not speak during this time. They just let the other team make their point. It’s generally considered rude to even react – shake your head, sigh, roll your eyes, etc. You just listen respectfully. Afterwards, the Pro team gets one minute for their rebuttal.

If you want, you can do as many rounds as you want, of greater or lesser length. You can also have rounds where you go Team 1 Statement, Team 2 Rebuttal, Team 1 Rebuttal, Team 2 Rebuttal, if you want to give Team 1 a chance to respond to Team 2’s rebuttal.

Now, I know there are specialized debating clubs and leagues, and they may have different rules and time lengths and so forth, but overall, this is what I think of when I think of “debate.” A structured presentation of arguments and counter arguments.

Debates or Not?

I do not believe this is what Charlie Kirk did. He did not debate people. I may be wrong, but I have a hard time finding more than a couple instances where he actually participated in a formal, moderated debate. (and feel free to send me one if you have a link, I’d be interested to see it.) There are a few out there, but not many.

Instead, he “argued” with people. This is his famous “Prove Me Wrong” set up, where he would have a table/microphone, and people could come up and talk to him, and it was generally a free-for-all of people yelling ideas around, and usually trying to talk over and louder than the other person. It lends itself more to having a good “zinger” for publishing on TikTok more than debate.

I do not think this is a good example of reasoned debate, and even worse, this is what people THINK is actual debate these days. Our presidential debates have deteriorated into verbal melees with no actual policy discussions; interactions on social media are just constant oneliners and trying to “trap” other people like a DA; our people think volume is the same as persuasion. (this is what led to Biden’s famous “just Shut Up, man” when Donald Trump wouldn’t stop talking during their debate.) And I think Charlie Kirk added to that problem.

To be clear, I have not seen too many instances where he flat out yells at people, is physically aggressive, or just absolutely loses control. There are a few that have gone around with him jumping out of a chair on stage, and maybe raises his voice a little, but I’ve never heard profanities, never called for violence against his opponent, or anything unhinged like that.

However, I also would argue he did not “reasonably” debate people.

And just a side note here: I think people get the wrong idea of Kirk, that he just dominated all these debates. That’s simply not true. What happens is his team or followers would share these “debate” videos (and this is true on both the Left and the Right), and they only post the videos of the debates or questions they answer effectively. (sometimes this is called clip farming)

So, for example, there’s a video of him debating students from Cambridge. His team shared parts of it on their sites, and that’s good, but you have to go to Cambridge’s own site to get the actual full video. I would encourage anyone to think he’s a master debater to check it out. I think you will find that he holds his own at best. Most people who view it come away pretty convinced he did quite poorly.

Additional Issues

I would also like a little note here regarding some “debate” issues that are widespread these days. For example, there’s a video where Charlie Kirk is being asked “how can you suggest Christianity should be dominant when it’s done so much harm: the Crusades, Inquisition, etc?” This is a really basic question that comes up all the time for anyone who’s ever interacted with early adults. Someone in Kirk’s position should have an answer ready to go for this one.

But he doesn’t, or at least he didn’t go to it. Instead he asked about her beliefs. She said Buddhism, and he went off on a tangent about Buddhism, trying to tell her what Buddhism “actually” teaches, and so forth. That is not “master debating.” It’s a logical fallacy, or in my opinion, several logical fallacies. It’s a “red herring” (an informal fallacy) where you change the subject to distract from a question you don’t want to answer. It’s also a type of ad hominem attack, in this case, whataboutism (what is your belief), again a distraction from what the question actually is.

Most of the “debates” I see from Kirk will fall into logical fallacy categories. This is exactly why we need to have actual moderated debates, with skilled hosts, to identify these types of things while they happen.

Again, check out the Cambridge video. Many of the comments under there will ask “why does it seem like he’s struggling so much?” And the answers are a) Because he’s at Cambridge instead of popping up on a random college somewhere, and b) those students are trained and practiced in debate, and they don’t fall for his tricks.

(I do want to clarify here, I don’t think he’s “tricking” people in the sense of being dishonest. I think he and his followers actually believe this is what good debate is. It’s more of an immature viewpoint than necessarily malicious. But it still concerns me)

The Way We Talk

To address the second part of the question, is Charlie Kirk a Christian debater, I’m going to address this more in the “Christian Martyr” post, but for now, I’m addressing the way in which he conducted his interactions; are these Christ-like or biblical?

And I want to draw a distinction here. I would often get videos with titles like “Charlie Kirk DESTROYS woke college student,” or “Charlie Kirk CALLS OUT LEFTIST GARBAGE” and so forth. I do not think these are Christian ways to interact or promote our viewpoints, but to be fair to Kirk, these are his followers sharing these videos, not Kirk himself. Maybe he was in favor of that type of thing, maybe not. But I don’t want to judge him based on what his followers do. I mean, I hope people don’t judge Jesus on what I do all the time, so I hope to extend the same courtesy to Kirk.

That said, our guideline for debate should be I Peter 3:15-16: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.”

I think people tend to focus on the first part – always have a reason. So they study, take notes, have a list of questions to ask, and so forth. But I find that often people from my church tradition seem to forget about the last part of these verses – this needs to be done with gentleness, respect, and in a way that gives people no room for slander.

Did Charlie Kirk do his work by these guidelines?

In my opinion, no. I will somewhat grant that he was gentle; as I said, I don’t see a lot of interactions of him yelling or physically attacking anyone and so forth. I think he was generally calm, generally in control, and generally heard people’s questions. So while I have reservations, I would say he was gentle.

But, that said, I’ve seen a lot of his interactions over the last couple of years (people tend to send them to me to make a point). I’ve seen several of his speeches, and watched him in interviews. I don’t remember ever being struck by his respectful tone. He seemed to love controversy, loved to agitate, and loved to say something “new” or “shocking.” Not terrible in and of itself, but would you call it respectful?

More concerning to me is his tendency to attack people personally or put them down for the enjoyment of his followers. There’s a clip going around where a young woman is asking him a question, and as she leaves, he yells out “Guys, don’t marry a woman like that.” I don’t know; doesn’t seem super respectful to me.

He also talks a lot about “them” and “they” uses terms like “illegals” to refer to other people, others who disagree with him but are still image bearers. I think it hurts the witness of the Church to talk about other people as “they/them” in a way that makes it sound like they are less than us, less human, less smart, less persons, and more just part of some monolithic group of “Leftists.”

I find that he spends a lot of his time interrupting and talking over the people he is “debating.” Sometimes they can barely get three words out before he corrects what they’re saying or throws in a little comment. Even one of his admirers said he would often have a condescending smirk while someone was talking, either to dismiss their view or because he was formulating a good sarcastic reply. Is that respectful? Is that seeing to someone’s heart? Or is it a way to win points with people who already agree with us?

Perhaps that strategy is effective for these confrontations, but the fact that so many Christians see that as “debate” or “defending” the gospel is one of the big concerns I have for the church today. We don’t even know what persuasively sharing the gospel is. We have chosen anger and insults over love and sacrifice.

We idolize people who have a “gotcha” moment, or “owns the libs.” But is that what we as Christian persuaders should be doing? Is “sharing the truth” worth being unkind? Mike Erre argues that sometimes we get so focused on the agenda of Jesus (as we define it), that we forget about the way of Jesus. (yeah, I know people will comment about “table flipping Jesus” here, but I would just point out that was in the “church”, not in the public sphere. He was correcting religious people, not “sinners” there. Big difference.)

I fear the Church is more focused on winning and sticking it to our perceived opponents than it is in showing sacrificial love. We want to “destroy” or “take down” or “fight” our opponents; how will we win them to Christ if we’ve already beaten them down? They will know we are Christians because “see how they love,” not “see how they win.” And I fear we’ve lost sight of that in our determination to win public shouting matches.

And I would argue Charlie Kirk is a big part of that.