Director's Newsletter
October 2025
It has now been a month since the death of Charlie Kirk and as I mentioned in the last Facebook post, I wanted to take some time to reflect about this tragic event before sharing my thoughts more substantially.
It is clear that Charlie was a man of deep Christian faith, who was devoted to the relentless pursuit of the truth through both faith and reason working together. This type of approach is more typically found in the Catholic tradition and not so much among American Protestant evangelicals. In the Catholic intellectual tradition faith and reason are understood not simply as being complementary but deeply related in their very nature. This relationship has not been understood well amongst Catholics historically, and this situation prompted John Paul II to write a profound reflection on faith and reason in the encyclical Fides et ratio. He believed that one of the foundational causes of the crisis of Western Civilisation we are experiencing, was the separation between faith and reason that started developing from the late Medieval period.
Charlie’s approach was an antidote to this kind of separation. His faith in Jesus Christ was a reasoned faith, and his reasoning about temporal matters such as politics was always informed by his faith. His integration between the two was not perfectly expressed but he was on the right track.
As Pope John Paul II said of faith and reason in Fides et ratio, ‘each without the other is impoverished and enfeebled’. Noting that ‘deprived of what Revelation offers, reason has taken side-tracks which expose it to the danger of losing sight of its final goal. Deprived of reason, faith has stressed feeling and experience, and so run the risk of no longer being a universal proposition.’ (Fides et ratio no 48) If we are to halt this decline in western civilisation there is an urgent need to work to restore the proper understanding of this relationship in our culture.
What also impressed me about Charlie was his commitment to continued learning and pursuit of knowledge. He was always seeking to improve his understanding of the Christian faith and the reasons for the cultural, social and political decline we have been experiencing. He was not committed to holding a particular ideological position but followed the truth wherever it led him. This is why he was so willing to engage with anyone who disagreed with him, he was not concerned about potentially being confronted by stronger arguments.
He was so committed to the pursuit of truth and sharing the truth that he was willing to face hostile audiences, even when there was a threat of violence or death, because he was convicted that this was what Christ had asked of us.
Ultimately, he died for this cause of witnessing to the truth, both the truth of Jesus Christ, as the only way to salvation and the objective truth of reality. He consistently defended the position that there is a fixed truth to the biological differences between male and female. That humanity was created by God in his image and likeness, as male or female, in a fixed and unalterable way. And it seems to have been the proclamation of this fundamental Christian teaching in particular that ended up costing him his life.
This is of course not to say that Charlie was right on everything he said, he was sinful and imperfect as we all are. But what is truly laudable in the way he lived his life was his commitment to the truth and following it wherever it led him. And that he sought to proclaim and share the truth, as he understood it, with others unto his very last breath.
In a sinful and broken world, ruled by passion and fear, proclaiming the truth has always been a dangerous thing. And this will continue to be the case until Christ comes again.
While the assassination of Charlie is tragic on a number of levels, there is another great tragedy taking place currently in the world involving the persecution of Christians, in Nigeria, which has received very little media attention. The full extent of this tragedy is only now becoming more fully know in the West. The International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, Intersociety, reports that across the first 220 days of 2025, 7,087 Christians were killed, an average of 32 each day, and some 7,899 were abducted for being Christian. These killings and abductions have reportedly been committed by 22 different jihadist groups. This is a simply astonishing number that demands urgent attention and action from world leaders. More generally Christian persecution worldwide has been increasing in recent years. Yet the main stream media has not given much attention to this issue.
Please join with me in trying to draw attention to the full scope of this continuing tragedy in Nigeria and in particular in encouraging the Albanese Government to urgently offer assistance to end this senseless violence against our Christian brothers and sisters.
Alexander Sidhu
Director of the Christopher Dawson Centre for Cultural Studies