Riverside, California, September 18, 2025
Photo: YouTube screenshot
Fr. Josiah Trenham, rector of St. Andrew Orthodox Church (Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese in North America) in Riverside, California, appeared on the latest episode of Tucker Carlson Live titled “America After Charlie Kirk,” delivering a message about mourning, violence, and America’s spiritual crisis.
The episode, which also featured media personalities Megyn Kelly, Scott Adams, and Cenk Uygur, focused on the broader implications of Charlie Kirk’s recent murder and reports of increased church attendance in its aftermath.
The Orthodox Way of Mourning
To begin, Fr. Josiah emphasized the importance of proper mourning traditions, warning against hasty reactions during times of grief.
“We should be very careful to make any sort of conclusion from this during this very intense time of mourning,” he told Tucker. He explained the Orthodox tradition of observing 40 days of serious mourning, noting that “when a bishop or a major leader of the Church dies, he’s not replaced until the 40 days is done.”
During this period, he explained, Christians traditionally “do good in that person’s name” through charity and prayer for the departed soul, rejecting the Protestant notion of instantaneous transition to the afterlife.
America’s Violence Crisis
Fr. Josiah painted a stark picture of modern America’s descent into violence, drawing from both personal experience and Biblical precedent.
“I have never seen anything like the violence that exists today in our towns,” said Fr. Josiah, who was born in Los Angeles in 1967. He recounted how his own parish was disrupted by Muslim protesters during Sunday Liturgy, and referenced various terrorist attacks including the 2015 San Bernardino shooting.
Connecting contemporary violence to ancient Biblical patterns, he noted that in Genesis, God sent a worldwide flood because “the world had become full of violence.” He argued that violence against humans is particularly egregious because “every human being is made in the image of God.”
Unprecedented Spiritual Awakening
Despite the grim assessment, Fr. Josiah reported witnessing an extraordinary spiritual revival across America.
“I’ve been a priest for almost 33 years. I’ve never seen the radical interest in faith that we’re seeing right now,” he said. Using his own parish as an example, he revealed a dramatic increase in conversions: “A really great year would be 40 people [in catechism classes]. I have over 200 people in catechism, right now.”
This phenomenon, he suggested, began during COVID when Americans were forced to “face death” after years of sanitizing mortality.
The Path Forward: Repentance and Leadership
Fr. Josiah argued that America’s problems stem from abandoning its Christian foundations, describing the nation as captured by “strict secularism” and “atheism.”
“All of our institutions have been captured by strict secularism. Our law is godless. Our universities exclude God,” he declared, calling current conditions worse than paganism because “the pagans at least knew they were accountable to the divine order.”
The solution, according to Fr. Josiah, requires both national repentance and transformational leadership comparable to Biblical figures like King David or his namesake, King Josiah of Israel.
Charlie Kirk’s Orthodox Interest
Tucker and Fr. Josiah also spoke about how Charlie Kirk had shown significant interest in Orthodox Christianity, having interviewed Fr. John Strickland, a respected Orthodox priest and Russian scholar. Fr. Josiah praised Kirk’s understanding of why Americans are converting to Orthodoxy.
“He said people are becoming Orthodox because they want something that is time tested. They want something that’s substantial,” he noted, explaining that Orthodox Christianity “is a lifestyle” that “impacts everything because Christ is king.”
Fr. Josiah’s segment with Tucker begins at 1:26:40 in the vide below:
Follow OrthoChristian on Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, MeWe, and Gab!
