Many Conservatives View Charlie Kirk’s Death as a Galvanizing Force

The vice president escorted Charlie Kirk’s casket home on Air Force Two. Thousands of people across the country gathered at candlelight vigils. A Republican congresswoman called for him to be allowed to lie in honor in the Capitol.

The gestures signal not only how conservatives see Mr. Kirk as a martyr, but also their view that his assassination could be a watershed moment that will propel their cause and cement both conservative and conservative Christian values in American life for decades to come.

Mr. Kirk’s death has “unleashed the dragon,” Luke Barnett, a pastor, told the congregation on Wednesday at Dream City Church in Phoenix, where Mr. Kirk had hosted monthly “Freedom Night in America” events.

He addressed young people specifically. “It is time for you to rise up because of what has happened to Charlie Kirk today,” he said to cheers. “I can just envision, right now, 10,000 Charlie Kirks rising up in campuses right across America, proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ.”

It was a moment not just of mourning but of opportunity, he suggested: “Charlie is gone. Who’s going to fill his place?”

Less than a week after Mr. Kirk was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University, the anger and grief remain raw for many across the country, and it’s difficult to predict the long-term political impact of Mr. Kirk’s death amid a highly charged climate.

The movement he led may require more time to take shape without him. But many of Mr. Kirk’s allies have vowed to pick up his mantle and expand the reach of his beliefs.

“This is what happens when you make a martyr — you embolden everyone who believes like they do,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, a popular Christian conservative writer and podcaster who offered both an emotional eulogy of Mr. Kirk as a friend and a fierce condemnation of his critics on her podcast on Thursday.

“Charlie and the truth he represented will spread further and wider than they ever have before,” she said.

Amid widespread horror at the assassination, there are also now concerns that his death will be used to target Democratic organizations, liberal values and institutions already under siege.

“The whole country is holding its collective breath, wondering what might unfold,” said Will Creeley, the legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. As it has in the past, the nonpartisan organization has warned against the suppression of speech as a result of a vengeful online campaign against people who celebrated Mr. Kirk’s death online or were critical of his views.

“I don’t think that either party has a complete grip on what will happen next, and I sure as hell don’t,” Mr. Creeley added. “I just hope it’s peaceful.”

Other figures have been held up by conservatives as symbols of what they see as persecution or liberal policy failures. The family of Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran and Jan. 6 rioter who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer that day, was recently offered military funeral honors for her.

But Mr. Kirk’s assassination on a college campus, seen by many conservative Christians as an act of biblical evil, is poised to surpass all of that. For some conservatives, there is grim resolve that the death of the founder of a group called Turning Point USA could supercharge the generational rightward shift he had worked to fuel in life.

While Mr. Kirk championed several inflammatory positions on gender, gun control and race, among other issues, he spoke for many conservative evangelicals across the country and is credited with helping draw many young voters, particularly men, to support Mr. Trump. Some members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and lawmakers were among those who gathered on Sunday for a tribute at the Kennedy Center.

“I think he’s a true American martyr,” said Carson Carpenter, a recent Arizona State University graduate who met Mr. Kirk while serving as president of the school’s College Republicans. Speaking while traveling to a vigil in Prescott, Ariz., he added that Mr. Kirk’s influence “will live on for many generations to come, with the conservative movement but also everybody in the United States.”

There are already signs that the anger and resolve generated by the killing could lead to a more defined shift. Online, Mr. Kirk’s supporters and Turning Point staff have circulated anecdotes of newfound interest in Mr. Kirk’s beliefs or queries about how to approach going to church for the first time in years.

Turning Point has seen a surge in interest. In the span of 48 hours, a spokesman said, the organization received more than 32,000 inquiries about starting a new chapter. He added that the organization currently has about 3,500 chapters on high school and college campuses.

“We know our voices are important — Charlie Kirk isn’t allowed to speak anymore, but we still can,” said RaeAnna Morales, 20, the media director for Vanderbilt University’s College Republicans and one of the students interested in starting a chapter. She added, “This has to be the turning point.”

Using the website domain fightforcharlie.com, Turning Point USA announced a memorial event on Sept. 21 in Arizona. The group pledged that “we will move forward together, fighting harder, standing taller and refusing to surrender.” The organization has also begun to sell memorial shirts, featuring vows to “never surrender” or pairing a drawing of Mr. Kirk with the phrase “this is our turning point.”

Zac Segal, the president of the College Republicans chapter at Boston University, co-wrote a letter to the school asking for more support for conservatives on campus in the wake of the killing.

“This is our time to speak up, this is our time to create change,” he said in an interview. “And I think that’s what Charlie Kirk wanted.”

Some conservative officials and supporters of Mr. Kirk have gone so far as to compare his assassination to the deaths of Socrates or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even though Mr. Kirk called Dr. King a “bad guy” and declared the Civil Rights Act “a mistake.” (Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, has also rejected the comparisons with her father.)

Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia who has written about Mr. Kirk and his conservative trajectory, said that when he learned of Mr. Kirk’s death, he was shaken by the horrific act.

“I knew at that moment that our nation, we had crossed a line there,” he said.

Mr. Boedy, who was placed on the list that Mr. Kirk’s organization drew up of “professors that advance a radical agenda,” said political martyrdom could have a distinct effect, especially on those who disagreed with Mr. Kirk.

“To honor him by giving him such a religious title is one thing,” he said. “To suggest they’re going to live out his agenda and push — we’ll say, make — America into the Christian culture he wanted is perhaps an anti-democratic move.”

But that sense of mission is seismic to his followers, especially the young generation that he helped draw into the embrace of conservative evangelism. For some, he is the most significant loss of a public figure they can remember.

“There’s no space for apathetic Christianity anymore,” said Abigail DeJarnatt, the founder of Counteract USA, a Christian organization based in Arkansas. Since Mr. Kirk’s death, she said, she had received several messages or questions about how to get more involved both politically and evangelically.

“There’s no option for Christians to just sit on the sidelines anymore,” Ms. DeJarnatt, 24, added. “The sideline’s gone. The world needs Jesus, and it’s up to us to tell them about him.”

Ruth Graham and Chris Hippensteel contributed reporting.