Christian Nationalists, Old Testament Magick, and the X-Men
By: F. Daniel Kent
Written with apologies to Chris Claremont and John Byrne. Marvel Comics can live with the disappointment.
It hit me like a bolt from Ororo’s lightning!
“Senator Robert Kelly! That’s it! It’s the X-Men!”
I’m sure my husband sleeping in the next room must have heard me. Realizing what I’d just done, I sunk back deep into the pile of pillows and blankets that had been holding me up and listened for movement. Luckily, none came. My Honeybear still dozed away.
It was late Thursday, September 11, 2025 and I couldn’t sleep. I was recovering from a bizarro infection and had been following the Charlie Kirk shooting from the periphery of my consciousness between bouts of chills and overwhelming sweat while waiting for the fever to break. I had not yet watched the speech from his wife Erika, who went directly home after the shooting while Vice President JD Vance and his wife took Air Force Two and retrieved Kirk’s body.
For the record, Charlie Kirk was American #18,533 killed by gunfire in the US in 2025. There were three other victims of shooting just over the mountains in Colorado the same day. The flags are flying at half-mast for Kirk, but not for any of the over 18,000 before him nor were they shown such deference by the White House. In addition, Kirk will lie in state at the Capitol and is being afforded a military burial despite having never served in the military.
Again, these are just facts, make of them what you will.
Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, something else was driving me bonkers! It took a little bit of a search, but I finally found a fully uncut, unedited version of Erika Kirk’s speech from TurningPoint USA that started before she got to the lectern. I had to watch it a few times before my “Eureka in the bathtub” moment.
I kept thinking, “I know this plot, but where from?”
While she was giving her chilling performance, I kept getting distracted because it was all just too much like something out of a comic book and I was watching the villain of the piece making their big speech as the timeline resets around them.
When I finally forced my fever-addled, hyperactive brain to focus on what she was actually saying – My. Blood. Ran. Cold.
Those were not tears of grief. Those were tears of joy. She was ecstatic. This was not a eulogy. It was a ritual. This woman was drawing Magick.
Now, I get it if this conversation makes you uncomfortable because we are not supposed to talk ill of the dead or whatever considerate, empathic nature you may foster and I applaud that. But you may want to stop here if that’s you.
Spoiler alert: I am not that person. As a married, out Queer man and HIV survivor who also identifies as a Witch, Kirk would have said I deserved the bullet and likely would have rejoiced aloud at the news. I don’t suffer Fascists willingly.
Up until about a year ago, I never really knew who Kirk was. I was familiar with meme featuring him in his early days sitting at a folding table on some College Quad with a handwritten poster that says “Prove Me Wrong” but I had no awareness of who he was outside of reading a couple of stray comments about the guy being a fundamentalist nutbag.
It wasn’t until I started listening to the young, openly gay debater, Dean Withers, that I got the full picture. Withers and Kirk went head-to-head on a Jubilee debate on YouTube and Withers left Kirk slack jawed. Kirk was clearly not prepared for Withers but said kind things about him afterwards and indicated he would be open to debating him again, only to openly ignore Withers and his followers’ ever-growing calls for Round 2. At the time of the shooting, the chants at Kirk events were starting to become overwhelming.
When Kirk was shot, Withers was livestreaming to 250, 000 people and broke down in sobbing tears for several minutes during the cast upon learning the news of Kirk’s assassination. Again, I doubt Kirk would have returned the favor.
Back to Erika, don’t make a mistake. She was exultant and inwardly rejoicing but I do not doubt she was grieving heavily. By that point, she was probably deeply, deeply broken. What young wife wouldn’t be when she just watched their husband die horribly in front of her, her child and the whole of the world? She and Charlie are both just about 5 or so years younger than my much younger sister and her husband. I shudder to think of her and my 4-year-old niece having to experience anything similar. So, of course she was grieving.
But I promise you she wasn’t sad in that moment. She was rejoicing.
Watch. It. Again. I’ll wait.
You must watch a full, unedited version that starts from before she walks to the lectern.
What I saw bugged me so much I ended up watching it at least ten times. It wasn’t until about the 6th or 7th that the electrical edification hit me.
The alternate timeline we were experiencing reflected (metaphorically) that of Senator Robert Kelly. For those who have never read the classic Uncanny X-Men issues #141–142 (1981) entitled “Days of Future Past”, Senator Robert Kelly is a Presidential Candidate running on a platform of requiring registration of anyone born Mutant with the US government. Kelly is assassinated by Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants causing a wave of anti-mutant hysteria which results in all super-powered persons being rounded up into concentration camps or killed. An adult Kate Pryde is sent back in time telepathically by Rachel Grey to switch minds with her then pre-teen mind so she could warn the X-men in time to stop the assassination.
Shenanigans ensue. It was a foundational story for the X-Men following the recent 2nd death of Jean Grey (as Phoenix this time) and would go on to inform a movie of the same name. The story would be mined for ideas and badly aped in other stories over the next 40 plus years of X-Men history all the way up to today.
Meanwhile, returning to the present, I watched Erika Kirk working herself up into a furor. The way she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled and whispered, “Jesus, fill this room,” before she went straight into it, with a cold pace. Then she would drop from the cold and defiant back into that creepy whisper to repeat, “Charlie loved. his. work.” giving each word its own full beat.
There was old magic in that room. She was doing a summoning. I won’t say it was Jesus who was with her. But something sure was because she wove a powerful spell that night.
Don’t look at me like that.
What else is prayer but an entreaty to a higher being than oneself to achieve a desired result or goal? It’s Christian Magick, and they wouldn’t call it that. But that’s what it was. She was calling on Jesus, but she seemed to be invoking “Jehovah, God of Vengeance” from Psalm 94, the wrathful defender of the fatherless and the widow (verse 6).
Don’t think so? Watch it again. Listen to her words, listen to how she says them. How they build and drop and build and drop again. Watch how she fiddles with that keychain or bracelet or whatever it is while she talks. She may not even be aware she’s doing it, though I doubt that. The performance we all saw was well rehearsed and all the elements were staged perfectly. A ton of thought and intent were definitely put into this.
She stood there in all her Christian Nationalist villain glory, decked out in all white on black (a bit on the nose, there) and spoke her master plan not two minutes into the speech, “And, now and for all eternity he will sit by his Savior’s side wearing the glorious crown of a Martyr.”
There was something almost diabolic underneath her tone as she would return again and again to that whispered breathy tone before stepping the very next beat into that strident monotone repeatedly as the plot unfolded.
“Charlie always said that if he ever ran for office…that his top priority would be to revive the American family. That was his priority.”
I could hear the distant footsteps of giant, purple, mutant hunting robots approaching in my soul as she built her chant to a crescendo.
“You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world. You have no idea. You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry.”
The dog whistles went on and I could now feel my own patrons rising to my defense, encircling me with protection as she said,
“So to all of the young people who felt inspired by my husband’s faith in hard work, all of you already know what Charlie would want you to do.
You know. You know.”
She wasn’t defiant. She was determined as she laid out dog whistle after dog whistle after dog whistle, controlling hearts and minds like some White Trash White Queen and suddenly, as I was watching her close for what seemed the millionth time, I think I knew more now than ever before what it felt like to be a mutant with giant fucking purple robots on his ass waiting for Kate to get the fuck back from the future.
While we wait for the timeline to reassert itself, y’all Hold Fast and Resist! May The Bright Lady bless and keep you all.
F. Daniel Kent is a freelance writer, opinion columnist, comic book lover and Witch living with his husband and thousands of action figures in Middle Tennessee, USA