Charlie Kirk and the Kuyperian Spheres of Authority
Note: This is a transcript of my episode detailing Charlie Kirk’s influence in the three Kuyperian spheres of authority—the Family, the Church, and the Civil Sphere. You can watch the video here.
A Shocking Loss
My name is Joel Settecase, and I am still reeling from the events that took place on Wednesday. I don't know where you were, but I remember exactly what I was doing when I heard that our brother in Christ, Charlie Kirk, had passed away.
The Moment I Heard: A Personal Recollection
I was in Wheaton all day with my son when I first got the news that he had been shot. I found out through the Hammer and Anvil Society—our men's fellowship group on Circle, where Christian men come together for real accountability, education, and brotherhood.
It was Kevin Blessum—who's on the board for the Think Institute and also part of the Hammer and Anvil Society—who posted in the community that Charlie Kirk had been shot in the neck. I couldn’t believe it.
I asked for more information and immediately found some things online. The first video I saw was from far away. I remember sitting in the Wheaton library watching it. From what I had seen, it looked as though it wasn’t as bad as it truly was. But then, later on, I saw the up-close footage—and it really rocked me to my core.
I believe I was sitting on a bench at the Wheaton train station when I got the news that he had passed away. It was shocking. It was unbelievable. I’ve teared up many times since I got that news. My wife and I have been mourning together.
The Moment I Heard: A Personal Recollection
What’s interesting is, I did not know Charlie Kirk personally, but I was a big-time respecter of him. I’m sure you can relate, even if you didn’t know him personally. This was a man who had so many things going for him. On the one hand, there was his charisma.
The guy knew how to make friends—even with people who hated his positions. If you watched his interactions, you saw this grace and graciousness that allowed him to win over even his most diehard opponents.
Charlie knew he was right many times. Even if he wasn’t right, he had confidence in his convictions and could defend them. And honestly, there weren’t many times when he wasn’t right.
A Debate that Showed His Character
I recently watched a video of him debating someone about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. A young man had come forward to argue against Christian nationalism. Charlie was not a self-avowed Christian nationalist, but he was a Christian and a nationalist—though not part of the Christian nationalism movement as we understand it. Many people would say he was, and that’s fine.
In the course of the video, I started out on Charlie’s side. He said, “I’m a Christian and a nationalist.” The other man challenged him: “What are your arguments for nationalism?” Charlie began citing examples from the Old Testament. The other man responded, “That’s the Old Testament. We need examples from the New Testament because the New Covenant takes precedence.”
I agreed with that. The Old Covenant was a type and shadow of the New—that’s 100% true. And I found myself, for a moment, agreeing with the other guy.
But then Charlie immediately began giving principles from the New Testament: “Pray for your leaders… live a peaceable and quiet life…” He rose to the challenge and began supporting patriotism and nationalism from the New Testament.
And in my mind, I had already leaned into the idea that the New Testament takes precedence over the Old—not that the Old Testament is irrelevant or not authoritative, but that the New is our interpretive grid for the Old. So when Charlie brought in that New Testament argumentation, I found myself back on Charlie’s side again.
I say all this to point out: the man knew how to argue. He knew how to do it graciously. He knew how to make friends with his opponents. He knew how to communicate and defend his views incredibly well.
So to see the video of him at that rally—watching his life end before our eyes—was shocking. It was jarring. It was enraging. Saddening. Maddening.
I’ve been filled with righteous anger over the last 24 to 48 hours. And I’ll admit: it’s not often that my anger is righteous. But in this case, it is. What happened was jarring, evil, and wicked to the nth degree.
Why This Isn’t Just Another Emotional Rant
But I don’t want to share just an emotional rant. There’s enough of that going around. We don’t need more grown adults ranting emotionally. What I want to do is articulate some principles that Charlie Kirk believed in and draw out from them some next steps—specifically, what we as Christian men can do to carry on the legacy of Charlie Kirk.
Not because Charlie Kirk is our standard, but because Charlie and we follow the same standard. We follow the same North Star, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.And yes, I was using present tense intentionally. Charlie Kirk still follows Jesus Christ—he just does it from somewhere else. He does it from the heavens.
Although I didn’t know Charlie personally, I was a big supporter and believer in what he was doing with Turning Point USA. At first, I really wasn’t. As I said, the Think Institute is not a political organization. I’ve got strong political views. I lean to the right. I’m very conservative. I think the Republican Party is more in line with biblical principles. I’m not ashamed of that in any way, shape, or form. And I’m not making a political endorsement of any candidate or party.
But as a biblical worldview teacher, theologian, and Christian philosopher, I look at the platform of each political party and ask, “Which one is more in line with Scripture?” If you want to get really granular, the Constitution Party aligns even more deeply with a biblical worldview than the Republican Party. So, I’m not a diehard Republican.
Because of that, I was skeptical of Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA project at first—without knowing much about it. But over the last several months and years, I’ve come around to his approach.
What that man accomplished organizationally—I'll be honest with you—I had to fight the desire to envy and covet it. Because the Think Institute serves Christian men, helping mobilize them toward their God-given mission in their families, churches, and in the public sphere. And what Charlie Kirk was able to do, being 10 years younger than me—I look at that and I go, “Lord, really? You couldn’t give me a little bit of that talent? A little bit of that organizational grit and dynamism?”
Of course, that desire is sinful. Envy is a sin. Covetousness is a sin. But I share it with you to convey the impact Charlie had on me—not just as an organizational leader, but as a minister. Which is really what he was.
I even went so far as to create a TPUSA GPT inside ChatGPT—to advise me on how to build up the Think Institute using best practices from Turning Point USA. That’s how much I admired the man’s work.
This death was very jarring to me.
Now, I want to talk about three spheres of society that were shaped by Charlie Kirk’s biblical worldview. And I want to show how we, as Christian men, can take next steps in each of these spheres.
Let’s talk about these three spheres that Charlie Kirk was influential in.
Now, these three spheres are not unique to Charlie Kirk. They're not unique to the Think Institute. They're not unique to Joel Settecase. These are actually coming straight out of the Bible—straight outta Scripture.
1. The Family Sphere: Building a Fortress Against Tyranny
“Get Married Young. Have Kids.”
Now, Charlie Kirk—we’ll start with family, 'cause that’s the closest to home, and that’s really the foundation of society.
We're gonna start with talking about the family sphere and how Charlie was such a big believer in it, and how he interacted with that and lived in light of his convictions in the family sphere. And then something practical that you and I can do in the family sphere, okay?
So I wanna play something for you. This is a video. Let's see if I can pull it up. Uh, you know what—here we go.
The Feminization of Men & the Failure of Modern Education
Before we can really dive into the family sphere, we've gotta talk about men. And there's a reason why Charlie took a lot of heat and a lot of persecution for his stance on the family sphere. And it's because of the rampant and widespread feminization of men and feminization of our society.
So let me just show you—there was an interaction that he had at the University of Oxford, at the Oxford Union recently.
This is Charlie Kirk at the Oxford Union. I just wanna share it with you, and then we're gonna dive into the family sphere. Read this.
“I said this in the previous Q&A, but I can again. Which is that a family used to be able to be supported on a single income of 35 weeks of labor a year. Now it takes upwards of 60 weeks of labor a year. However, given all the economic and social and all those factors, the largest of all of them is the cultural and the educational that has infantilized men and hyper-feminized them—in the messaging, in the outreach, and in the treatment.”
“I can give you specific examples.”
“In what way has the education system been infantilizing men?”
“Every possible way—from the hyper-medication of young men. In the core curriculum in America, we learn about ‘toxic masculinity.’ That is absolutely huge.”
Right off the bat, this shows the intelligence of Charlie Kirk. He’s ready to support his points with cultural and zeitgeist examples—examples from the cultural milieu, the cultural environment.
Notice he’s over there in Oxford. He’s in the UK, he’s in England. And what he’s saying applies just as much to England as it does here in the United States. The Anglosphere. The Western world. (Those are not exactly the same thing, but the Anglosphere is the countries where we speak English—Canada, New Zealand, Australia, America, other English-speaking countries.)
And the trend over there has been the same as the trend here. And he points to curriculum, and he points to medication. And those two are so linked. They're both linked to the other thing that he mentioned, which was education.
I don’t know about you, but when I was growing up in the public schools, I was rowdy. I was wild. I talked loudly. I talked often. I was in the gifted program—but I don’t even know if they still have those anymore. But I was also sort of seen as a behavioral problem.
Well, how are those two balanced out? It’s called: I was a young man. I was a boy. And the school system was not built for young men. It was built for those of us who can sit and be more docile and be more contemplative and quiet. In short, it was built for girls. It was not built for men.
This is well documented. I'm not gonna get into a whole discourse or screed right now on the American nor Western education system, but Charlie Kirk puts his finger right on the sore spot. And he reveals how, because our education is not designed for men—rather than redesign education, they've tried to redesign men.
But you can’t redesign men. We're created by God to be men. So what do they do? They change the curriculum to villainize manhood, and they medicate men who don't comply—males, boys who don't comply.
Why do you think we're seeing such an upsurge in transgenderism among boys, among this younger generation—Gen Z, Gen Alpha? Why is that?
It’s because for the last generation or more, we've been villainizing being a boy. Being a man.
So what are the options? The options are: become super hyper-radicalized—or give in and say, “Okay, fine. I'm not gonna be a boy anymore. I'll be a girl.”
Charlie Kirk is putting his finger right on that.
Marriage as a Weapon of Spiritual Warfare
That sets the stage for what else Charlie Kirk said about being a man and being married. He viewed those two as being very integral to one another.
Let me read you a quote. This is coming from People.com. People did a posthumous breakdown of Charlie Kirk's life and influence. And here's what they say:
"Kirk had been vocal about his beliefs on marriage and children.
'You should get married as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. Period. Reject the siren song of modernity.'”
— He said this during a January 2023 speech.
More recently, he wrote on social media in May 2024 that:
“Getting married and having children was good and godly.”
And also “a simple act of defiance against the oligarchs.”
Man, I love that. And that is exactly right.
Getting married is a simple act of defiance against the oligarchs. The woke and globalist elites who want to dominate your life have a much harder time dominating you when you’ve got an integral web of family relationships.
Children. A wife. Mother. Father. Mother-in-law. Father-in-law. Siblings-in-law. Cousins.
When you have a family network, you are a lot harder to isolate. And if you're a lot harder to isolate, you're a lot harder to control.
In fact, Scripture even talks about how one who isolates himself seeks after his own desires and breaks out against all sound judgment.
Well, the family and the family unit—the nuclear family and the extended family relationship, that network, that web—keeps us from being isolated as men. Keeps us from going off the rails and becoming a slave to our own desires and our own passions.
Family: an incredibly beautiful thing. And Charlie Kirk understood that.
We have to be men. And we have to get married. We have to find a girl, ask her to marry us, and then commit to her for life—and only her—for life.
That's what I've done with my wife.
One of the hardest things about the assassination of Charlie Kirk for me has been thinking about his dear, precious young children.
Now, I can’t think about it too much right now—I’m gonna get emotional.
Yes, it is possible for me to get emotional. Ask my wife. Whenever I do, she makes fun of me. I have cried in front of her before, and she thinks I look hilarious when I’m crying. That’s just the dynamic of our marriage, okay? It’s wonderful. I love it.
But some of you guys out there know exactly what I’m talking about.
Charlie Kirk understood that.
The most tragic thing about the passing of Charlie Kirk, as far as I can tell, is his children are gonna grow up without a father.
That is so incredibly wicked—to take their father from them. And he was a good dad. From everything I could see, he was a good dad. He was a good man. A good family man. His kids loved him.
I even heard a report—I don’t know if this is true—that his family was there at the event where he was killed, and his daughter tried to run to him because she was so frightened by the gunshot.
So think about that.
But let’s look at this from another perspective, okay?
There’s no question that it’s sad. It’s horrifying. And we need to be praying for those kids. We need to be trusting in God’s sovereignty and God’s providence here—for those children.
But I wanna look at it from another angle.
Charlie Kirk was a man who believed in getting married young and having as many kids as possible.
A Father’s Legacy
Charlie Kirk was 31 years old—and he already had two kids. Do you know how rare that is in our society today?
He had a loving wife and two children who looked up to him. And from all accounts, from everything that I’ve seen, he was raising those kids right. They loved him. They looked up to him.
And Charlie Kirk now has a legacy.
Man—forget TPUSA. TPUSA is incredible. TPUK, incredible. Turning Point Faith. These different organizations that he launched—incredible legacy there.
But the deepest and most profound legacy that he left was his children.
Charlie Kirk’s literal flesh and blood are going to continue living on in this world because he took his own advice. This was a man who lived out that principle of putting family first—as a priority. You see that? You see that in his wife. You see that with his precious children.
2. The Church Sphere: Fighting for Truth in the House of God
The second sphere, which doesn't get as much attention when it comes to Charlie Kirk, is the church. The church is the second God-ordained sphere of influence in society. What do I mean when I say this? I mean that in Scripture there are three spheres of authority that God actually sets up governments for.
I know when you say “government,” most people think of the civil government—like the state, the local county, or the federal government. But the word “government” simply means an institution that is governing, that is ruling, that is exercising dominion, lordship, representing the people for the good of the people in a perfect world, according to the standards of God's law—God’s designed order for that sphere.
So family’s one of them. In the family, the mother and father are the rulers of that sphere.
The father is the head of the household and the head of the wife, and the father and mother—the parents—are in charge of the children, with the father taking the ultimate responsibility there for leadership.
Then, in the church, God has set up government for the church as well: biblically qualified elders who are running their own households well and who are qualified to lead the household of faith, the household of God.
Charlie Kirk was very influential for churches. And he had a lot of very strong and passionate desires to see the church take up the role of what it is supposed to be—as a voice crying in the wilderness, oftentimes, but as a forming institution in society, a formative institution in society.
I know that he said he wished that he could see churches more involved in the public square, fighting against wokeness. And you say, “Well, that’s so political. Churches shouldn’t be so political.”
Not when you understand that wokeness and leftism is a spiritual worldview. It is a theological position. It is ultimately a Christian heresy. That’s really what it is. I won’t get into it all now. We’ve gotten into it on this channel, on this podcast before. But when you understand it that way, you understand that churches have a duty to combat wokeness, to combat leftism, to combat communism. These aren’t just economic and political theories—these are spiritual realities.
And I firmly believe that there are spiritual entities behind them. Meaning—I’ve done an episode with Paul Kengor, professor at Grove City College (actually one of my professors when I was an undergrad), about how Marxism was literally inspired by Satan. Literally inspired by Satan. And its offshoots are similarly demonically inspired.
So I don’t say these things lightly.
Charlie Kirk understood that. And he wanted to see churches fighting for truth, for goodness, for beauty, for light.
A Faith That Defined His Life—and His Death
And his faith was very deep and very personal to him. Several months ago, he was on a podcast called The Iced Coffee Hour. Maybe you’ve seen this clip.
A few months before he was assassinated, he went on The Iced Coffee Hour, and Jack Selby, the host, asked him this:
“If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered?”
And Charlie said, “If I die…”
And you can see the disbelief—like shock—like, “Well… are you saying I’m gonna die?” What a thing to say.
And how prescient that question actually turned out to be.
But then Selby responded:
“Everything just goes away. If you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered?”
Without skipping a beat, Charlie Kirk said:
“I want to be remembered for courage, for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith.”
Well, Charlie Kirk got his desire. He got his desire. He is now remembered for his faith. And that is the most important thing—because now Charlie Kirk’s faith has become sight.
He has now entered into the halls of King Jesus—our great High Priest, our Lord, our Savior, our Messiah, our King, our great Prophet—God in the flesh.
And Charlie Kirk’s work is now done.
3. The Civil Sphere: Politics as a Tool, Not a Master
But his legacy of pushing the church to be more active—not as a tool of politics, but rather seeing politics as a tool to push the kingdom of Jesus Christ out into the world, to push for the light of truth in the world—see, most people, when they think, “Oh, churches shouldn't be political,” they're viewing things exactly backwards.
They're saying the church—if the church gets political, the church will be a tool of politics to advance the cause of politicians. Our vision must be that politics is simply the outworking of biblical morality into the public sphere, into the civil sphere.
So the civil sphere is very important. The ecclesial sphere, the church sphere, is very important. But let's talk now about that third sphere: the public. This is the civil sphere—the sphere of what we typically call government.
This is perhaps what Charlie Kirk was most popularly known for, even though, if you actually listened to what he said, it wasn't what was most near and dear to his heart. That would be his faith, then his family, then politics. But TPUSA was a political advocacy organization, and one of the things that Charlie Kirk understood was that through advocacy, through get-out-the-vote measures—“agitating” is not the right word, that's what the left does—but organizing and assembling (maybe is a good biblical word) people together for conversation, and assembling like-minded people together behind a common cause, you can do great good for society.
Trump, TPUSA, and Strategic Influence
And the fact of the matter is, the 2024 election went Donald Trump's way largely because of Charlie Kirk. Largely because of Charlie Kirk. And we need to celebrate that fact—not because Donald Trump is our savior, but because Jesus Christ is. And because Donald Trump's worldview is more in line with Scripture. It's not one-to-one. He doesn’t know what the gospel is. Donald Trump doesn't understand salvation by grace alone through faith alone. I've heard him talk about it.
He needs salvation just as much as anybody else. And he's a sinner. He's a sinner. As far as I can tell, he is an unrepentant sinner. I sincerely hope that's not the case. I sincerely hope he's a born-again believer in Jesus Christ. And maybe you know better than me.
But the fact of the matter is, what Charlie Kirk saw in this moment, more clearly than so many people, is that to make great advancements for the kingdom of Jesus Christ in this nation, it is necessary to do so not just on a personal level or a family level—not even just working purely through ecclesial means—but also through the civil sphere.
And that's what he did. And that was an incredible legacy. What an incredible legacy to leave behind.
It's not as important as the church. It's not as important as the family. But it is important because God does care about righteousness in the public sphere.
King Jesus: Lord of All Spheres
Don’t forget: Jesus is not just a prophet and a priest—Jesus is a King. That’s a political title.
Do you know that Jesus is reigning on the throne of David from heaven right now? He is Lord over heaven and earth.
In Matthew 28:18–20, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. Therefore go…”
And get this—He says, “Make disciples of all nations.” But that’s not really quite what He says. He says, “Go and disciple the nations.”
How do you disciple the nations? Jesus tells us: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.”
Discipleship of the nations is the duty of Christians. And we have been discipled by the world, sadly, to think that politics is a dirty word.
We can apply biblical principles to the political sphere. And I think that’s what Charlie Kirk was trying to do.
I really do. I believe that.
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