In the final years of his life, Charlie Kirk was writing a book on a topic he believed modern culture needs to reclaim: the sacred gift of rest and observing the Sabbath.
Published posthumously on Dec. 9, Stop, In the Name of God is a call to slow down, reconnect with the Lord, and restore what matters most, according to Kirk’s widow, Erika. In an essay for The Free Press, Erika urges readers to take her late husband’s message seriously.
Erika explained that Kirk began observing the Sabbath in 2021 by taking breaks from his phone on the weekend. Though he first started with just an hour offline, he eventually began leaving his phone off from Friday evening to mid-morning Saturday, stretching the time longer and longer until he would not turn it on again until Sunday morning. She said that during that time, he and their family would practice intentionally resting through activities like sleeping, praying, hiking, journaling, and being in nature.
Erika argued that Kirk’s observance of the Sabbath saved him from burnout and helped him realize that taking time to routinely rest would help save America.
“When you’re constantly combative and fighting, you have no time to treat other people like human beings. Charlie genuinely felt that if the world had a weekly day of rest, just one, it would be the ultimate game changer,” she wrote.
The Free Press included an excerpt of Kirk’s book in which he rejected common hesitations or excuses raised when people consider establishing a set time to rest. To people who say that resting makes them feel guilty, he asked them to question themselves, “What am I really worshipping?”
“No idol condemns rest like the idol of productivity. This is the golden calf of the modern age. We bow to output, chase metrics, and sacrifice our joy on the altar of efficiency,” he wrote. “But our identity must be anchored in something far greater than toil. Work is good — it reflects God’s creative nature. But rest is holy — it reflects His sufficiency. The same God who calls us to labor for six days also commands us to rest for one. That’s not weakness; that’s worship.”
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