The memory of Charlie Kirk rested on the campus of Utah Valley University on Thursday night.
It was distilled into a message better fit for a Sunday service — and foreign to the toxic political climate that has been pervasive since his shocking assassination a year ago.
Before his death at the age of 31, Kirk had become the most potent political force in conservative youth outreach in the nation. But election activism will not be his lasting legacy.
Not if the speakers, students and citizens in attendance at the UCCU Center have anything to say about it.
“It wasn’t politics — it had nothing to do with politics,” talk show personality Glenn Beck said from the stand.
For the 5,000 gathered in-person at the Turning Point USA “Freedom Built to Last” event, politics became almost an afterthought. There was no mention of Republican or Democrat.
The focus in Utah, on the anniversary of one of the most high profile political assassinations in half a century, less than a five-minute walk from where it happened, was undeniably faith.
This theme united remarks from Beck, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, Pastor Frank Turek, Turning Point USA Chief Field Officer Andrew Sypher and Chief of Staff Mikey McCoy.
Kirk’s allies agreed the influence that mattered most was how he inspired rededication to religion and relationships. They also acknowledged the turmoil engulfing the GOP in his absence.
Over the past year, Kirk’s impact has itself become the source of immense polarization. Depending on who you ask, he was a free-speech hero, a victim of an Israeli conspiracy or a MAGA extremist.
Adorning the stage throughout the program towered a newly unveiled larger-than-life-sized statue of Kirk, sitting cross-legged on a folding chair, mic in hand, ready to engage with anyone.
Outside the arena, clustered maybe a dozen protesters, holding signs labeling Kirk “hater,” “intolerant” and “bigot.” “We never wanted kirk here,” read one. “No Kirk on Campus,” read another.
As a debater, podcaster and campaigner Kirk was often seen as embodying partisanship in a social-media era.
The dominant feeling at Thursday’s event was that this was a misunderstanding of his true mission. The evidence, according to personal testimonies, was the imprint Kirk made on those he left behind.
Kirk’s religious influence
Huddled beside a water feature, rolling to the bottom of the amphitheater, Jordyn Lloyd, 22, wiped away a tear. She had stood in the same spot on Sept. 10, 2025, watching Kirk answer his final question.
But losing Kirk didn’t leave the Salt Lake City resident cynical or radicalized or angry. It did the opposite.
“It catapulted my spiritual journey,” Lloyd said. “I am a totally different person than who I was a year ago.”
Worldly things stopped mattering as much, she said. Her beliefs became something to search, study and stand up for. The call from Kirk that stuck with Lloyd wasn’t politics. It was “the gospel.”
Knowles, an active Catholic, arrived at the same conclusion. While he thinks Kirk was “the most important and effective political activist of our generation,” Knowles said politics will not be Kirk’s legacy.
It will be turning people, particularly young people, toward God. But the awakening Kirk’s death sparked in some was mirrored in others by what feels like a new level of rancor on the right, Knowles said.
It forever changed the political landscape — for the worse, according to Knowles, fragmenting President Donald Trump’s coalition while fueling dangerous rhetoric on the political left.
The assassination also exposed a growing trend among right-wing influencers who adopt grievance-based ideologies that somehow always turn into “a fight about the Jews,” Beck said, to loud applause.
“Suddenly people that many of us thought were friends ... arrived at a completely different conclusion. And it was someplace dark,” Beck said. “Good was being labeled evil, and then evil was being labeled good.”
The problem lies in collective identity, Beck said. The solution? Worshipping the God of individual salvation.
Doing this allows you to recognize the humanity in everyone, according to Beck. It also puts the emphasis on what you can do to improve, instead of on what groups you need to defeat.
Beck dedicated the second half of his 40-minute speech to handing out life advice to the young people in the audience. He urged them to clean up, date, get married and have kids.
“Go to church, pick up your cross and carry it, and no violence,” Beck said.
The best way to honor Kirk’s memory, Beck said, was not to come up with biting comebacks to political opponents. It was to demonstrate quiet kindness in the face of vitriol. Only that can change minds.
An obligation to remember
This summed up the final text Kirk, an Evangelical Christian, sent to Sypher, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sypher said in an emotional speech about Kirk’s last day.
Before boarding the plane from Phoenix, Arizona, to Orem, Utah, Kirk told Sypher, “I’m not here to pick a fight,” Sypher recalled, his voice cracking. “I am here to show them kindness.”
Despite Kirk’s provocative reputation — which included hardline stances on immigration, DEI and election fraud — Turning Point USA speakers said he left a mark defined by respectful dialogue.
TPUSA Utah field representative Caleb Chilcutt and UVU chapter chair Sage Lloyd shared how the murder they witnessed had compelled them to approach politics with both courage and compassion.
On Thursday, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared Sept. 10, 2026, “Charlie Kirk Day” because he said Kirk’s efforts to persuade others can help us choose “a politics worthy of our country.”
UVU is developing plans for a permanent memorial for Kirk with input from Turning Point USA, students and staff.
