Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk is urging Christians to reject what she calls a “counterfeit” Christianity, warning that the online world offers a shallow substitute for real faith — one that produces what she called “the fruit of chaos” instead of “the fruit of truth and order.”

Kirk spoke Friday at the Liberty University Convocation in Lynchburg, Virginia, according to The Christian Post. It was her first visit to her alma mater since the assassination of her husband, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, in September 2025. Kirk graduated from Liberty in 2019.

Reflecting on conversations she and her husband had about “what it means to live a biblical life,” Kirk told the students that claiming the Christian name and obeying Christ are two different things. A person can attend church every Sunday, memorize Scripture, and carry “child of God” in a social media bio, she said, and still be wrong about the life they are living.

The hardest deceptions to spot, she said, are not the ones that are obviously evil. “It gets harder when something looks right when it’s wrong, or when something feels righteous but it’s actually destructive,” she said. Over the past year, she added, she has watched people act cruelly and dishonestly while invoking God, Scripture, truth, spiritual warfare, and even divine revelation.

Kirk said the reality she has had to face is that two people can both call themselves Christians, both seeking truth and following God, and yet produce “completely different fruit” — one the fruit of chaos, the other the fruit of truth and order. Those producing the fruit of chaos often believe they are fighting evil or defending the truth in God’s name, she said, and she likened them to the Pharisees of the New Testament, who believed themselves righteous while Jesus reserved some of His strongest words for them.

“The enemy is very good at counterfeits,” Kirk warned. “The most dangerous counterfeit may be the one that feels so righteous, it convinces you that you are doing God’s work while slowly pulling you away from Him.”

She also warned about what she called “counterfeit community” online, where people can spend hours every day fighting for a cause without ever leaving their homes, surrounded by voices that inflame them. That kind of chaos “can feel a lot like purpose,” she said, but it distracts believers from what she called God’s true assignment for them.

Real faithfulness, she told the students, is often unglamorous: putting the phone down, building real relationships, keeping one’s word when it is easier not to, and serving in a local church. “Serving at your church probably won’t go viral,” she said. “But God sees all.”

Kirk closed by urging students to seek wisdom through God’s Word, real community, and discipleship — “not algorithms, not X” — and to test everything by its fruit. She also thanked the crowd for the prayers that have sustained her family since her husband’s death, saying they have been “so sustaining for us.”