Where Are the Pastors Now? The Silence After the Murder of Iryna Zarutska

On August 22, 2025, in Charlotte, North Carolina, a young mother and Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska was brutally stabbed to death on the city’s light rail. She had fled war in search of safety. Instead, she met a violent end at the hands of Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless felon with a long criminal record.

The killing was caught on camera. The facts are not in dispute. And yet, the national outrage machine is quiet. The same voices that turned George Floyd into a symbol for justice are nowhere to be found when an innocent white woman, a Christian refugee, is slaughtered in public.

The Deafening Silence

When George Floyd died in 2020, pastors across America raced to their pulpits. They preached about systemic racism. They led marches. They demanded repentance from the culture. But here, with Iryna? Crickets. No marches. No headlines. No lament.

Why? Because her story doesn’t fit the narrative. She was white. She was female. She was killed by a Black man. And in today’s culture, that equation does not compute for the progressive left or for the pulpits that take their cues from politics instead of Scripture.

Iryna Zarutska’s murder is not an isolated tragedy. Over the past year, countless innocent Americans—young and old—have had their lives cut short by individuals who slipped through the cracks. Laken Riley, a nursing student in Georgia, was slain by an undocumented immigrant. Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old in Houston, was murdered by alleged gang members who had been released into the U.S. Larisha Thompson, a devoted mother in South Carolina, was shot in a random robbery attempt carried out by undocumented immigrants—including children. And in Maryland, 19-year-old Dacara Thompson was found dead after entering a car with a previously arrested migrant. These are not stereotypes—they are documented tragedies that received brief headlines and no sustained moral outcry. If our pulpits are selective in the victims they highlight, then they betray the universal call to compassion and justice.

Hypocrisy in the Pulpit

Let me be plain: this is hypocrisy. You cannot demand justice with bullhorns in one case, then shrug your shoulders in another simply because the racial optics are different. The Bible does not give us permission to play favorites. Proverbs 31:8-9 commands us to “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves… defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Iryna was poor, needy, and voiceless in her final moments. She deserves the same compassion, the same advocacy, and the same righteous anger that pastors poured out five years ago for Floyd. Anything less is cowardice.

The Cost of Silence

By refusing to speak with consistency, pastors and leaders are teaching their flocks that truth is negotiable. They are discipling Christians to fear the world’s applause more than God’s judgment. James 4:4 is clear: “Friendship with the world is enmity with God.”

If pastors will not preach truth when it costs them cultural approval, then they are not shepherds—they are hirelings. And Christ warned us what happens when hirelings abandon the flock: the wolves come.

A Call to Courage

I am a Christian. I am a conservative. I am a husband and a father. And I am angry. Not just because of Iryna’s death, but because of the silence that followed it. Pastors, this is your wake-up call. You cannot thunder from the pulpit about “justice” only when CNN agrees with you. Either you proclaim God’s standard in season and out of season—or you prove that your gospel is just politics in disguise.

Repent. Speak the truth. Honor Iryna’s life. Defend the innocent consistently, not selectively. For justice is not a brand. It is a command of God.

Until then, America will continue to bleed, while too many of her pulpits remain silent.