Hours after thousands attended Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, hundreds gathered at a candlelight vigil in Hellertown on Sunday to honor the slain conservative activist.

“He was about us,” Keith Strunk, pastor of Saucon Community Church who led the vigil, said of Kirk. “He was about righteousness. He was about truth. He was about fairness, not for one person, not for one group of people, not for one color of people, but for all Americans.”

Standing on a riser, Strunk faced around 300 attendees at the borough’s Water Street Park, on a basketball court alight with candles and glowsticks. He and other speakers stood next to a cross with an American flag draped over it.

The event was organized on Facebook as a “peaceful evening of remembrance and reflection.”

“What I hope happens tonight is that people leave here with a renewed sense of purpose,” Strunk said before the vigil. The event lasted around an hour, with Strunk leading the crowd in prayer and reflection; later evolving into singing and chants.

Madeline Reid said during the vigil that amid the backlash Kirk received at college speaker events, where he was controversially known for leading debate-style talks with his organization Turning Point USA, Kirk “did it again and again, no matter the amount of hate and pushback he received.”

Warning that the United States was in a “spiritual war” and that “our nation has never been so divided,” Strunk asked the crowd to shout out Kirk’s core values as he praised his Christian and traditionalist beliefs. Strunk later led the crowd in a prolonged, loud chant of “Here I am!” before ending the vigil singing a Christian hymn with the audience.

Attendees gradually lit candles as the event progressed — almost everyone hoisted a lit candle by the end of the memorial.

Some the attendees sported Turning Point shirts and held American flags, though many guests notably wore a white T-shirt displaying the word “Freedom,” a nod to the shirt Kirk wore when he was shot.

There were no counter protesters at the event, though one person in a car driving by Water Street Park appeared to shout an expletive at the crowd. Multiple Hellertown police officers surrounded the perimeter of the basketball court, taking laps around and closing off the park’s parking lot during the vigil.

“There was a lot of back and forth, some people that weren’t happy that the the event was happening,” said police Chief Jim Baitinger. “But the fact of the matter is, it’s a constitutional right to the First Amendment, and we’re gonna just make sure everybody’s safe.”

Baitinger declined to comment on how many police officers were managing the vigil.

Kirk’s death has sparked nationwide debate — not all of it civil — over free speech. While some have held Kirk up as a hero of traditional, Christian values, others have criticized his messages as racist and anti-LGBTQ.

“I just hope that his voice is never died out, I hope that this isn’t just one of those phases — like over the next couple months it’s gonna be forgotten,” said Kristen, a resident of Slatington who declined to state her last name out of safety concerns. “I hope it just keeps continuing to grow and get better, because we need it.”

Cole Bower, a member of Saucon Community Church, saw “at least a dozen” members of his church’s congregation, as his pastor led the event.

“I think it shows a lot of hope and touch over unity and bringing our culture back, and bringing God back into our culture,” he said of the vigil.

“He went into the fire,” Maria Cicchino, a Williams Township resident, said of Kirk. “He went where the people hated him, and he tried to just talk and have a debate, and if we don’t talk, we’re never going to change things.”

Cicchino cited Kirk’s energy and enthusiasm as a community college dropout who founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and grew the organization to 800 college campuses nationwide, according to the organization’s website.

“I’m out here to be evangelistic and to hope to do some good in the world,” Strunk said of current free speech controversies. “And if people want to say something negative about that, if people want to hate that, that’s their prerogative. But again, there’s consequences for those things we say and do, and those consequences should never be violent.”

Andreas Pelekis is a freelance writer.

https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/22/hellertown-charlie-kirk-vigil/