Tucker Carlson Interview with Father Josiah Trenham: America After Charlie Kirk
Date: September 16, 2025
Format: Tucker Carlson Live
Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes
Context: Discussion following the death of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025
Overview
This interview represents a profound theological and cultural commentary on American spiritual decline, delivered through the lens of Orthodox Christian tradition in response to the violent death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Father Josiah Trenham provides both pastoral guidance on mourning and a sweeping diagnosis of America's spiritual crisis.
Key Themes and Quotes
The 40-Day Mourning Tradition
On Traditional Christian Mourning:
"We Christians have a 2,000-year old tradition on how to respond to death. And we take our time... usually for 40 days we mourn very very seriously. In the Orthodox tradition for instance when a bishop or a major leader of the church dies, he's not replaced until the 40 days is done."
The Danger of Immediate Reactions:
"Right now everything is so raw, everyone who knows and loves Charlie... this is a very dangerous time... for us to respect our Christian tradition... allows us to truly not make immediate reactions that would be that we would regret."
The Biblical Significance of 40 Days:
"The number 40 of course is humongous in the holy scriptures. It's absolutely humongous. And the 40 days of Christ, fasting, for instance, in the desert, 40 is a very important length of time."
The Spiritual Journey After Death
On Praying for the Departed:
"We don't think that a person when they die bing they've made the transition to the next life instantaneously... we actually pray for the souls of the departed... we use the image of the story of Lazarus and the rich man from the gospels where Lazarus is the poor beggar... an angelic escort comes and picks him up and takes him on the journey to the bosom of Abraham."
Death as Spiritual Teacher:
"We're also learning the lesson of sobriety. We're learning the lesson of death. We have to think about death and stare it in the face because one of the great reasons we are so undeveloped spiritually speaking as a nation is because we don't face death."
America's Spiritual Crisis
The Explosion of Violence:
"In this last period 10-15 years especially violence has just absolutely exploded... I have never seen anything like the violence that exists today in our towns. When I grew up in Pasadena, I as a young boy, I went walking to school. My mother let me stay out every night until the lights went on... she had no worries."
Violence as Divine Offense:
"When you attack another man, when you attack another man, you attack God. Because every human being... is made in the image of God. And so to attack a human is a direct divine offense. Violence is extremely serious."
The Root of Violence:
"I'm not surprised that we have this level of violence in a culture that murders unborn children at the rate that we do and have sustained it for the decades that we have... Really? Is any violence surprising?"
The Depth of National Apostasy
Worse Than Paganism:
"Don't call the secular nonsense that's going on in America pagan. That's an insult to the pagans. The pagans believed in the divine order. They believed in the gods... The pagans at least knew they were accountable to the divine order... to call America, which has no reference, most of our leaders make no reference to God at all... that's far far worse than paganism."
Institutional Capture:
"All of our institutions have been captured by strict secularism. Our law is godless. Our universities exclude God... Our country has gone down a very very serious deep hole."
The Need for Repentance:
"We have lost our faith in God... We have to repent. And we need someone, give us God, someone like a king David. Give us someone like my patron saint Josiah who was the last great king of Israel."
Signs of Spiritual Revival
Unprecedented Interest in Faith:
"I've never seen the radical interest in faith that we're seeing right now... I have maybe little more than a thousand active parishioners that are here regularly... maybe 20, 30, 40. A really great year would be 40 people. I have over 200 people in catechism right now. And this is happening all across the country."
COVID as Spiritual Awakening:
"One of the reasons that we have an incredible revival going on all over the United States right now is because of COVID... it caused us to face death. We had been hiding it."
The Three Types of Life
Beyond Biological Existence:
"If you study the scriptures, there's three types of life... There's biological life. In Greek, it's called bios... There's the life of the soul. Many Americans don't even know that that exists. That's called psyche... And then there's something that's most important which is eternal life. Aionios Zoe... This is the life of God's kingdom."
The Soul as Charioteer:
"Even the Greek pagans... knew that the body is like a chariot and the soul is like the charioteer. Leading the person in nobility... If you don't think you have psyche, if you think you're just a body and you don't have a soul, which by the way is the worldview of the major tech titans of our country."
Technology Cannot Save:
"Someone as noble as Elon Musk... said to the protesters in England when they were saying, 'What can we do? What's our future?' And he said... 'Technology and AI.' I promise you, Tucker, technology is not going to save us... If we are soulless and we have greater technology, then the soulless are going to use that greater technology to oppress us."
Charlie Kirk and Orthodox Interest
Kirk's Understanding of Orthodoxy:
"Charlie was very interested in that... he actually got very much into the mind of us Orthodox Christians and explained why so many people are converting to holy orthodoxy... He said people are becoming orthodox because they want something that is time-tested. They want something that's substantial. They want something that actually informs culture."
Christianity as Total Lifestyle:
"Orthodox Christian traditional Christianity in general. It is a lifestyle. It impacts everything because Christ is king and he's king over every aspect of our life and over civilization."
The Church as Source of Life
Historical Christian Centrality:
"You take a train through Europe. Every town you go through... has the best land given to the church. And the church is going to be the highest building because everyone knew if you don't enthrone worship at the center of your community, if you don't make the heavenly attachment to your earthly life, you're robbing yourself of significance."
The River of Life:
"The best thing that can happen in America is that people go to church, root themselves in the one holy catholic and apostolic church because the river of life comes from the altar out the doors of the church and vivifies society. And do we ever need to be vivified today?"
The Funeral Tradition: St. John of Damascus
Historical Context:
"In the Orthodox tradition the funeral service was written by one of the great theologians of the church his name is St. John of Damascus. He lived from 650 to 750... when it was taken over by Islam in the 7th century, the Muslims left the Christians in place for about 50 years because Muslims were Bedouin peasants. They didn't have cities... So they let the Christians do it for about a half a century."
The Reality of Death:
"He wrote this incredible funeral service... it's a deep reflection on the misery of death where John is looking into the grave and he is contemplating how horrible it is for a Christian person to die and to see his soul be removed from his body, which is what death is. It's the separation of the soul from the body... And he says it happens to the rich and to the poor exactly the same way."
Assessment and Significance
This interview represents Father Josiah Trenham's most comprehensive public diagnosis of American spiritual crisis, delivered in the context of mourning a prominent conservative figure. His analysis combines:
- Pastoral Wisdom: Traditional Orthodox mourning practices as antidote to reactive politics
- Cultural Diagnosis: America's descent below paganism into godless secularism
- Spiritual Revival: Documentation of unprecedented conversion rates amid crisis
- Theological Framework: The three types of life as foundation for understanding human purpose
- Historical Perspective: 1,300 years of Christian wisdom on death and mourning
The interview serves as both eulogy for Charlie Kirk and jeremiad for America, positioning Orthodox Christianity as the path forward from national apostasy toward spiritual renewal. Father Josiah's emphasis on the 40-day mourning period provides a model for processing tragedy through ancient Christian wisdom rather than immediate political reaction.
Key Contribution: This represents one of the most theologically sophisticated analyses of American cultural decline to appear on mainstream media, demonstrating how Orthodox Christian tradition can inform contemporary political and social commentary while maintaining focus on eternal rather than temporal concerns.