Conservative activist Charlie Kirk finished writing his book, “Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life,” one month before he was fatally shot during a campus event at Utah Valley University in September.
On Tuesday when his yearlong project was released, the book sold out in every Barnes & Noble across Utah and is still sold out on Amazon.
Published by Donald Trump Jr.’s conservative publishing house, Kirk’s book asks the question, “Are we still bound to observe the Sabbath?” His answer draws from the Bible, his own quest to keep the Sabbath day holy, and centuries of Christian and Jewish theology.
In the book’s dedication to conservative Jewish writer Dennis Prager, Kirk wrote, “Your life’s work brought me to honoring the Sabbath. As a result, I wrote this book. Thank you, Dennis, for all you have done for humanity. God bless you.”
The book begins with a preview by his wife, Erika Kirk, written after her husband was killed.
“These pages are not theory for him, they are testimony. The words you hold in your hands were the convictions he lived that were written on his heart,” she wrote.
Then Charlie Kirk’s words begin: “I desire to bring all humanity back to God’s design to rest for an entire day. To cease working, to STOP, in the name of GOD.”
The book’s origins
In the spring of 2020, Charlie Kirk said he was becoming progressively more fatigued, tired and spiritually confused. By the summer of the next year, the then-28-year-old confided in David Engelhardt, a TPUSA board member and pastor of Kings’ Church in New York City, about his struggles.
“I told him I was hitting a wall, I had more obligations than time, and I was drinking eight cups of coffee a day just to stay afloat,” Kirk wrote. Engelhardt responded simply, “Are you honoring the Sabbath?”
Kirk explained that he didn’t have the time. “I am running three different companies and have three hundred people on payroll. I have to raise $50 million a year and do three hours of radio a day. I will honor God by working harder, not by resting for a day,” Kirk told Engelhardt.
But when he went back to his hotel room that night, Kirk looked for every single Bible verse that mentioned the Sabbath.
“The more I started to appreciate the Sabbath, the more I realized the great need to share its wondrous beauty with the world,” he wrote. “I hold this belief very clearly: If the Sabbath can change my life, it can change everyone’s life.”
God’s commandment to rest ‘is not arbitrary’
Across the book’s 13 chapters, Kirk argues the case for Christianity and keeping the Sabbath day holy. While attitudes about the Sabbath have loosened among Christians, Kirk said a return to full observance will help counter society’s ills.
To explain why, Kirk went back to the beginning. He asked, why did God rest on the seventh day of Creation, and why has he commanded us to do the same?
“This rest is due not to fatigue, but to fullness,” Kirk reasoned. “It is not the withdrawal of power, but the crowning of meaning. It is the divine punctuation mark at the end of the most magnificent sentence ever spoken. It is the declaration that the created world imbued with divine speech and radiant with order, is not merely functional but good — and that its goodness is worthy of joy.”
The Creator’s “commands are not arbitrary,” he wrote. “They are rooted in His goodness and designed for human flourishing. ... Obedience to God is not servility to a cosmic despot but alignment with the moral fabric of reality itself.”
For 6 days, God sanctifies work
To fully observe the Sabbath, you must fully commit yourself to the rest of the week, Kirk wrote.
“The lazy heart isn’t just inefficient — it’s disobedient,“ he said. “We are witnessing a crisis — not of jobs, but of purpose. What happens to a culture when men stop building, stop protecting, stop leading? When instead of planting gardens or shaping the world, they retreat into virtual realities and chemical sedation? The Bible doesn’t describe that as rest — it calls it sloth. And sloth isn’t just laziness. It’s a refusal to become what God made you to be.”
Kirk connected surging depression, anxiety and suicide rates with the declining belief in meaningful work.
“Work is not punishment; it is participation in divine order,” he wrote. “God is not idle, and those made in His image are not meant to be either. Labor is a way of mirroring the creativity and faithfulness of the Creator, and when we detach from it, we not only weaken ourselves materially, but unravel something essential in our souls.”
Though the book is largely philosophical, there are several moments where Kirk gets personal with his reader, and they are heart-wrenching to read after his death.
“I thank God every day for the work I’ve been given. I leap out of bed without caffeine, energized not by adrenaline, but by gratitude. I get to speak truth. I get to reach people. I get to labor in a cause that matters,” he wrote.
Kirk offers a word on self-esteem and pride
In a chapter discussing suicide rates and depression, Kirk referenced the 1960s’ self-esteem movement.
“The results? A stunning failure,” he wrote. Studies tracking self-reported self-esteem “showed that artificially inflating self-esteem did not produce better outcomes. Instead, it produced generations more fragile, more narcissistic, and less able to handle failure.”
He continued, “Teenagers, encouraged by the ideology of self-esteem to fixate on their own image, find themselves trapped in cycles of insecurity and despair. The cult of self-focus breeds not resilience, but fragility.”
Hollow and artificial self-esteem “short-circuit the necessary engine of growth: dissatisfaction.”
Without dissatisfaction, Kirk reasoned, “we lose the drive to improve. Conviction, repentance, ambition — all these require the recognition that we are lacking something. That we need to change. That we must reach higher. The self-esteem movement stole that vital hunger and replaced it with a stagnant, fragile pride.”
He added, “The person who worships themself finds that their god is cruel, demanding constant validation but offering no peace.”
Notable quotations
“Stop, in the Name of God” is beautifully written, and its ideas flow in and out of Kirk’s main message: Following God is not oppressive. It leads to freedom and joy.
Here are some poignant sections:
- “Why did God rest? Not because He was weary. ... God rested because the work was finished. His rest is the artist’s stillness after the final stroke of the masterpiece, not the laborer’s collapse from exhaustion. It is the repose of royalty surveying a realm, the contentment of a Father who sees that it is very good.”
- “Caffeine is not a performance enhancer — it’s a loan shark. It robs from tomorrow to pay for today."
- “Jesus slept in the storm. Elijah slept in despair. We are invited to sleep in peace. Not because everything is finished — but because God is enough."
- “This is the great irony: Never has the world had more technology to aid rest — memory foam mattresses, sleep apps, white-noise machines — yet never have we been more exhausted. We are surrounded by the machinery of rest, but we’ve lost the theology behind it. Sabbath is the answer."
‘Finally, I thank God for blessing me in ways I never imagined ...’
Kirk is the embodiment of the Sabbath. His 31 years of life were full. He founded Turning Point USA at 18, he fathered two children, he spoke to millions about freedom, and he lived what he preached about Christianity.
In the same way he described Sabbath observance in his book, Kirk has entered the seventh day of rest with God.
“To rest, in a divine sense, is to enjoy — to bless, to name, to hallow," Kirk wrote. The Sabbath “is not an intermission in history; it is the moment when history steps into the holy.”
The last words written in his book are, “Finally, I thank God for blessing me in ways I never imagined. Everything I do is pointed toward Heaven and expressing gratitude for the salvation given to me by His only Son, Jesus Christ.”