‘Doesn’t give martyr’: A response to Jackie Hill Perry’s Charlie Kirk comments

Jackie Hill Perry is a Christian author whom BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey has admired and agreed with on many issues, but whose stance on racial justice became abundantly clear in 2020 and led to her blocking Stuckey on social media.

Now, in a recent episode on her “With the Perrys” podcast, Perry explained that she doesn’t believe Charlie Kirk is a martyr — and Stuckey couldn’t disagree more.

“They misunderstand. ‘Why don’t you think he’s a martyr?’ And it’s like, because I heard what he said. And so, it’s not that I don’t appreciate his stances on abortion, on sexuality, on marriage, but it’s also, I hear other things alongside that that don’t give martyr,” Perry said.

“I want to get to the bigger point here, which is really important, and that is about martyrdom. Was Charlie a martyr? She says that other things that he said ‘didn’t give martyr.’ And I take issue with how that is phrased because that’s such a flippant way to be talking about the assassination of a brother in Christ,” BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey comments.

“What does the Bible say that a martyr is?” she asks. “When we look at the etymology of martyrdom and that word, what does it actually mean? Is a martyr someone who only says things we agree with? Is a martyr someone who never says things that are offensive? Is a martyr someone that has to be perfect and totally sinless? Is that how we define martyr?”

“Because it seems to me from that conversation that that is how they are defining it. Charlie Kirk said things that they don’t agree with,” she adds.

However, the biblical definition of a martyr is much different from the one Perry was basing her rejection of Kirk on.

“A martyr is one who bears testimony to faith, one who willingly suffers death rather than surrender his or her religious faith, especially their Christian beliefs,” Stuckey reads.

“When we look into the Greek term ‘martys’ — so when we look at the etymology, the study of this word, ‘martys’ literally means witness. So a witness to the truth. And what does witness mean? It means someone who attests to a fact, to an event, from personal knowledge. So one who so testifies. Now what does testify mean? To affirm the truth of,” she continues.

“What is not the definition of a martyr is someone who always agrees with us. Someone who never offends us. Someone who is sinless. Only Jesus was sinless. Someone whose words meet our definition of gentle or loving or kind. It is also not someone who never talked about politics or who voted a certain way,” Stuckey explains.

“That’s not how we define martyrdom,” she adds.

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