January 18th, 2026 | Ryan Tyler

Candace Owens: Wannabe Christ-Maker

She is trying to build a theology around her dead friend, with herself at the centre.

Candace Owens has gone off the rails. If you ask me, she was never really on the rails to begin with. When Alex Jones comes out to condemn someone's absolute nonsense, we need to start asking questions. However, we also need to entertain a classic, historical pattern that often repeats itself. It doesn't matter whether Owens is lying, or legitimately believes what she is saying about Charlie Kirk. This is classic myth-making unfolding in the same ways it has before, multiple times, throughout human history.

What we are seeing is an attempt to mythologize Charlie Kirk in real time. It appears to be an attempt to create some new theology with Candace Owens at the centre. If even a little bit of what she is saying somehow survives inside the zeitgeist for the next couple of decades, Charlie Kirk could eventually be accepted as a prophet, Messiah, or some kind of Christian saint. If everything she says gets accepted as truth by even a fraction of a fraction of the population, Charlie Kirk could have an entire religious cult built around him in a few generations. Probably not, but the possibility is there.

This is exactly how Christianity became a thing. It's exactly how Mormonism was born. In fact, this myth-making fits nearly every single modern religion that is currently practiced anywhere in the world. From Islam to Buddhism, nearly every religion was spawned by grandiose, mystical, and outright insane stories about an influential person who died and left behind a solid following. In every case, the myths and stories were invented by a person or group of people after their deaths.

Jesus appeared to Paul, Charlie appeared to Candace.

In both cases, they appeared with a message. However, it wasn't until a couple decades after the crucifixion that Jesus appeared to Paul—but, many of the Christ's followers described seeing him after his death, which became the basis for much of Paul's writings. None of this is unusual, and none of it is rare in human history.

Before we get into some of the deeper stuff, like how Owens is attempting to paint a similar picture of betrayal and execution by the state around Charlie Kirk, let's take a look at the real Jesus and how the myths in the canonical gospels came about.

The Real Jesus

Most scholars, even the devout atheists, believe Jesus existed. His real name was Yeshua and he was a faithful Jew born in Nazareth to a fairly normal family with siblings. He lived in a part of the Roman Empire (Galilee) that was fraught with instability, inequality, crime, and poverty. He was probably a carpenter or mason. In his adulthood, he used his charisma and oratory skills to preach to fellow Jews about the coming “apocalyspe” and a “kingdom of god” that would punish the rich, elevate the poor, and upend the entire world order.

Jesus was a classic Jewish apocalypse preacher who appealed to the working-class people of Galilee. He was likely well-spoken, smart, charismatic and highly educated in Jewish theology. He railed against the Jerusalem elites and the Judaic priesthood and regularly attacked them for their greed, elitism, and neglect. Naturally, this gained him a strong following in the region, namely among the poor.

As his following grew, Jesus became viewed as a threat by many of the region's elites. At one point, he trashed the Temple and caused a ruckus during a major Jewish celebration. Many of his followers began referring to Jesus as “the king of the Jews”. He himself likely relished the title and began referring to himself as such—which officially made him a criminal in the Roman Empire under its sedition laws. As a result, he was later executed alongside other criminals in a traditional Roman fashion.

That's it. That's who Jesus was and that's what happened.

As is often the case with widows, grieving loved ones, and faithful adherents, many of his followers began seeing him, hearing him, and visiting with him in their dreams. He told them things, revealed things to them, and basically continued his preachings postmortem. Again, this is a common experience that persists today, in which fans and loved ones find various ways to cope with an earth-shattering tragedy. Unfortunately, much of it is easily explained by modern psychology and, in fact, has been traced to specific parts of the human brain.

Jesus was a subversive badass for his time, but he wasn't anything more than that.

If you're religious or spiritual, you're probably mad and haven't even made it to this sentence. If you're still here, congratulations. You're not strapped to yet another made-up fairy tale, or you're at least open-minded enough to consider other ideas. Either way, thanks for sticking around. It gets even better.

Myth-Making

The most important thing to know is that nothing Jesus prophesized during his life ever came true. About 70 years later, the Temple was destroyed, but not within the timeframe or context Jesus had predicted. The kingdom of god never came like it was supposed to and the ruling elites never got judged or punished. The rich stayed rich, the poor stayed poor, and the ruling class got more powerful. Worse yet, none of his followers (or Paul) ever described a virgin birth, miracles, walking on water, or feeding everyone with one fish. All of those myths were created decades later, long after the crucifixion and one full generation after Jesus died—by people that never knew Jesus and never met a single person that lived in the same place in space or time as Jesus.

This is important because it has happened throughout history and continues to happen today. Jesus wasn't necessarily a liar, but quite the contrary. He probably believed what he was saying and his intentions were noble, but he was a fallible human—just like the rest of us. Even more importantly, those who loved and cherished him were just as fallible. They suffered the same psychological trauma as people do today, and their brains invoked the very same coping mechanisms.

Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk were friends. That is well-known. They hung out, shared ideas, and perhaps even admired and loved each other in platonic ways. His death must have shaken her more than it shook the rest of us. It's not difficult to believe that he may have visited her in her dreams, or that she hallucinated his re-appearance in her life.

It's also not difficult to believe she is making it all up.

I'll go out on a limb and say that more than half of the alleged hundreds who spoke to, or saw, Jesus after his death were making it up. They were either embellishing a dream they had, or simply falling into the group-think trap of repeating what others said they saw. This is often done to be accepted, or to have something relatable to talk about. Over time, people start to believe it. People will also re-remember dreams and falsely attribute them to things they think actually happened. Further, most of the stories at the time were spread by word-of-mouth, making them even less grounded in reality by the time they cycled through several groups of people.

Many people will take Candace Owens seriously. Others who may have also had personal dreams about Charlie Kirk after his death will be more compelled to believe their dreams and encounters after someone with a higher profile admits to experiencing something similar. It's called social proof. Over time, it's not unreasonable to think these people will find each other, come together, and start concocting all sorts of other myths.

Many will say Charlie visited them, just to have a group to fit in with.

A lot of modern filters could inhibit the Jesusification of Charlie Kirk, like growing cultural atheism, science, the internet's contrarianism and mass ridicule—but those things could also be what propel it harder and faster into reality. We also can't forget the profound and powerful effects that such a public murder has on the collective psych. An entire generation witnessed a rare and traumatizing event.

The Myths

In the gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, Jesus begins to take on the characteristics of a deity. The problem is, these gospels were written decades after Jesus existed. In the writings of Paul and Mark, there still was no virgin birth or pre-existing entity that would later take the form of a human on Earth. That was all made up more than 50 years after Jesus was killed.

Matthew was written 50 to 60 years after Jesus. In that story, we are introduced to the virgin birth in Bethlehem and some more of the radical resurrection dramas. Luke was written around the same time, perhaps slightly later, introducing Jesus as saviour and performer of many miracles. One hundred years after Jesus, we get the gospel of John.

For most of these gospels, human intention is the reason for their existence. Bethlehem emerges as a way to confirm prophesy, without any real basis in reality. The virgin birth builds Jesus into a miracle-born son of god. The authors of these stories were purposely attempting to build a canon and a theological narrative. They were building a new Jesus that people needed to believe in, while trying to keep and strengthen many of the real Christ's ideals.

In some cases, people like Marcion tried to separate Jesus from Judaism all together, in order to build a fully independent religion and theology. Many of his ideas would manifest in even later gnostic gospels.

At some point, what people believe they saw and experienced evolves into deliberate and intentional myth-making. If the things Candace Owens is saying about Charlie Kirk stick, future believers will eventually start to build on her myths and strengthen the potential for insitutionalization. Of course, that's not only decades away from happening, it might not happen at all. However, the potential is there, with modern constraints.

So, for those who don't know what Candace Owens has said.

On her podcast, Candace Owens has become increasingly more unhinged in her claims about Charlie Kirk and things he allegedly told her. It all started with a story about being visited by Charlie in a dream, where he explained an elaborate betrayal and conspiracy to have him killed. Weeks later, it would evolve into stories about Charlie possessing special powers, being a time traveller, and being tagged and adopted into a special CIA program during his childhood.

At first, it all started with conspiracy theories about the deep state or Israel being responsible for his murder. Owens even alleged to have proof that Kirk was assassinated, betrayed, and set up. She even claimed that French assassins had been hired to kill her. From there, it got progressively more radical and over the top. So radical and crazy that even Alex Jones had to call her out publicly.

Somehow, after all of this, Candace Owens and her audience appear to be growing.

One would assume her growing audience is made up of people fascinated by a trainwreck, but comments on her X profile and various channels show about as much acceptance as criticism. One user even claimed to “pray to Charlie” every night.

Some of them pray to Charlie Kirk. Not for him, but to him. Do you see where this has the potential to go? It's not impossible to believe Owens is doing this all on purpose, or attempting to make herself the centre of some new and weird theology built around Charlie Kirk.

Overall, these stories add to a growing mystique and collective need to believe in forces and things bigger than us. It's an age-old story that follows a very typical pattern. From the Heaven's Gate to David Koresh, Jim Jones, Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard, these things aren't new or unusual. They keep happening and they will probably continue to happen. The claims by Candace Owens are either lies, genuine beliefs, or purposeful manipulation—but they are feeding the same narrative that appears to be emerging among the fringes.

Like Jesus, Charlie Kirk was charismatic and smart. He developed a following that began growing across generations, and many even viewed him as a threat. He started a movement that challenged the status quo, criticized the establishment, and made people think. Many of his followers were already of the religious, mystical mindset—making them more likely to believe their own dreams and visions. In the end, both men were publicly murdered in the open for everyone to witness, leaving their followers traumatized, angry, heartbroken and willing to believe in their ascent to a higher realm.

It's all too familiar.

Candace Owens has gone as far as claiming that Kirk was betrayed by a close friend and that his assassination was orchestrated by higher forces. This has a striking resemblance to Judas and Jesus, while invoking ideas that Kirk was sacrificed in a public setting, or that his entire existence served a purpose that was written by “god”. Combined with Kirk being a time traveller who prophesized his own death, and who caused street lights to flicker in his presence, this entire story has the potential to evolve into something beyond itself.

Other Examples

To this day, the Branch Davidian movement started by David Koresh is alive and well. Despite being fractured into various factions, most of the Davidians in existence all treat the Mount Carmel site at Waco as sacred and Koresh as a divine incarnation. Again, this mirrors the divided and often chaotic history of early Christianity. Sacred sites, a figurehead who was publicly sacrificed, the same ideological fractures with struggles for leadership and relevance, mixed with the “fringe” label that was applied to early Protestants, Lutherans, and even Gnostics.

Just as the Judaic priesthood rejected Jesus, the Adventists rejected Koresh.

Of course, Charlie Kirk never abused children, nor did he claim to be a prophet, Messiah, or relative of ancient biblical figures. These are just examples of how modern movements mirror the growth of what are considered mainstream religions today. What Owens is saying about Charlie Kirk mirrors the kind of embellished and fabricated story-telling that surrounded Joseph Smith, Jesus, Mohammad, and Koresh following their deaths.

Joseph Smith encountered some weird angels in a forest that gave him golden plates with rules and prophesies. Many of his followers signed affidavits confirming they were witnesses to most of it. Smith was eventually assassinated and he appeared to his followers, namely Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff, after his death. From there, despite criticism and heavy skepticism, Mormonism flourished into one of America's most powerful religions.

On a long enough timeline, movements become cults and cults can go mainstream.

If even a tiny bit of the nonsense coming out of Candace Owens sticks, it could reach critical mass at some point in the future. Even if it doesn't, a long enough timeline could enable any fringe cults that emerge from this to evolve into something that could, one day, become something bigger. At the moment, an unhealthy number of people appear to be falling for her Christ-making efforts.