A former Navy SEAL said he and his family were motivated to go back to church following the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, marking the latest example of people embracing church and Christianity following the act of political violence that unfolded last month. 

Jack Carr appeared on the “Nothing Left Unsaid” podcast last week, where host Tim Green, a former NFL player who now suffers from ALS, asked Carr to discuss “where your faith has been the most tested and if it changed the way you love your family.” 

Carr responded to the question by stating, “We’re impacted by Charlie Kirk’s assassination the way a lot of people are.” He added that he and his family were “horrified” over Kirk's assassination, especially because his children witnessed the shooting at Utah Valley University online. 

“That has also caused a re-examination not just for a lot of people out there, but for us as a family,” he said. “We’ll be making some changes because of this, and it’s because we got too busy with life.”

Carr recalled how, when his middle child was born, his family “stopped going to church because it was just hard to take him there with his special needs.” But said his family will be “re-examining just how we’ve gotten too busy,” and will be going “back to church like we did in the past.”

“I think he’s going to have this huge impact on people,” Carr said, referring to Kirk’s legacy. He pointed to the importance of “faith and family” as “the broadest message” that Kirk sought to communicate. 

Carr isn't the first person to suggest that Kirk’s death will have a noticeable impact on American culture. J.P. DeGance, the founder and president of the evangelism-focused ministry Communio, provided anecdotal evidence about church attendance during the weeks following Kirk’s assassination in an interview with The Christian Post.

“[There has been] a lot of anecdotal feedback from churches in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois and Colorado, reporting that they’ve seen an increase [in attendance] over the last two Sundays,” he told CP. “There’s one church in Michigan that said a number of young adults who were raised in the church" but hadn't been there for years "showed back up.”

DeGance said Kirk’s premature death has led to “a level of introspection that causes people to ask, ‘What am I living for right now?’” He contended that Kirk’s murder has made people aware of the late activist’s beliefs as it relates to marriage, family and the Christian faith, and is leading them to re-evaluate their lives in light of the possibility of dying at a young age. 

Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, who has succeeded him as CEO of the advocacy group Turning Point USA, offered a similar analysis at her late husband’s memorial service a week earlier. Maintaining that her husband’s assassination has led to a “revival” in the U.S., she detailed how, after his death, “we saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade.”

“We saw people pray for the first time since they were children,” she added. “We saw people go to a church service for the first time in their entire lives.”