Culture, Faith and Politics with Pat Kahnke

Whitney Lynn went viral for preaching to a captive airplane full of passengers — then claiming she was persecuted for it. But she's not some random street preacher. She's a MAGA "evangelist". In this clip from Tuesday's live stream with Ken Napzok, I walk through her own words — on camera, in her own post — and then break down why calling a bad flight "persecution" isn't just embarrassing, it's theologically hollow. This is what happens when evangelical Trump support curdles into a full-blown persecution complex: it cheapens the Gospel and it cheapens real suffering.

Republican senators keep telling us they have "concerns" about Trump's picks — and then confirming them anyway. Todd Blanche, Trump's own former personal lawyer, is now on track to become Attorney General of the United States. In this video, I break down why senators like Bill Cassidy know exactly what they're doing when they cave, what Blanche's history — including his role in controversial legal settlements — reveals about his fitness for the job, and why "institutional integrity" keeps losing to political self-preservation and future lobbying paydays. This isn't just a Beltway story. It's a case study in what happens when the people meant to check power decide loyalty to Trump is worth more than the oath they took.

Maggie Haberman is one of the most connected reporters to Trump and his world and just released a new book with Jonathan Swan about the first year of Trump's second term. Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson discuss issues raised during Haberman's recent appearance on the Ezra Klein podcast. We will ask, "Can the white Evangelicals who said Trump was chosen by God STILL justify that belief, given the fruit?"

Tim Whitaker (founder of The New Evangelicals, now host of Tim Whitaker Speaks and co-host of the Tim and April Show with April Ajoy) joined me and Ken Napzok for the most fun we've had on this channel in a long time — a full-blown Satanic Panic trivia showdown. If you grew up in an evangelical home in the 80s or 90s, this is the nostalgia (and reckoning) you didn't know you needed. 

Todd Blanche's confirmation shows all Republicans are corrupt now. RFK Jr strikes again. And why are Evangelicals preaching on planes? Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics, LIVE!

Jeanine Pirro prosecuted an innocent man — an Olympic athlete — for felony vandalism. Not because the evidence supported it. Because it served Donald Trump's narrative. Federal prosecutors eventually dropped the charges. And then Trump publicly humiliated her anyway. Isaiah 5 called this 2,700 years ago — those who "call evil good and good evil." Pirro's story is the illustration. The systemic problem is the sermon. This is what happens when loyalty to a man replaces fidelity to truth. It always ends this way. It will always end this way.

John Hagee calls it prophecy. The White House Faith Office treats it as orthodoxy. We call it weaponized eschatology — and it is doing real damage to the gospel, to American evangelicalism, and to real human beings on the ground. In this conversation with Tihomir Kukolja, former Executive Director of the Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, we examine Christian Zionism from the ground up. Two things are not up for debate here: antisemitism is wrong, and Israel has a right to exist and defend herself. What IS up for debate is whether any modern nation-state — including the United States and Israel — earns a pass on justice because John Hagee drew it into a dispensational timeline.

In the midst of such an ugly timeline, here are a few rays of hope in American politics: Raphael Warnock's faith-informed brand of politics, James Talarico's clear contrast with Ken Paxton in Texas, Jon Ossoff's unmatched communication as he fights for reelection in Georgia, and Pete Buttigieg taking his case straight to Fox News. Pat Kahnke is joined by Adam Swenson to talk about the hopeful messages that are actually resonating with the American people — and why each of these matters right now.

Pat and Ken discuss all of this, and more, on this week's episode of Culture, Faith, and Politics, LIVE!

Senator Jon Ossoff's speech at Berean Christian Church uses the biblical story of King Ahab, Jezebel, Naboth's vineyard, and the prophet Micaiah to confront corruption, political power, and the danger of surrounding a ruler with people willing to lie for him. I examine why Ossoff's argument about the rule of law, false prophets, voting rights, and reckless war carries such theological weight. The episode considers how Scripture can challenge authoritarianism rather than excuse it—and why the story of Ahab remains a warning about corruption, political sycophants, leaders who silence dissent, and the abuse of religious authority.

Can you be a Christian and reject the Rapture? In this second episode of our Rapture series, I explain what I personally believe about Jesus, the resurrection, the return of Christ, and the detailed end-times systems often called Rapture theology. We will also consider how dispensational theology and Christian nationalism have been used to support MAGA politics, why certainty can be politically powerful, and how teachers such as John Hagee have connected prophetic theology to contemporary political movements.

The Pentagon first reported that 18 American service members had been killed in the Iran war. One day later, the official casualty count dropped to 14—after four soldiers killed in Jordan and Iraq were removed from the public list. This episode examines what happened to Lt. Tyler James Feehan, Pvt. Isabella Gonzales, Sgt. Angel Rampersad, and Sgt. Michael Emmanuel Swinton, and asks why the Trump administration and the Department of Defense changed the public accounting of American war dead. It also places the controversy in the larger history of Donald Trump's comments and conduct involving military service members, including Trump's “suckers and losers” remarks about fallen soldiers.

Senator Jon Ossoff confronted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with the facts he did not want to answer. During a Senate hearing, Ossoff questioned Hegseth about the cost and results of the Iran conflict—and about Hegseth's earlier claims that Iran's military had been “destroyed,” rendered “combat ineffective,” and defeated in a “historic and overwhelming victory.” But when Ossoff asked Hegseth to answer those claims with a simple yes or no, Hegseth deflected. In this episode, I examine Ossoff's questioning, Hegseth's shifting explanations, and the danger of cheerleading an irresponsible war

Doug Pagitt - a longtime pastor in the Twin Cities and the founder of Vote Common Good - joins Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson to talk about the impact the Trump years are having on young people. We also hope to have a wide ranging discussion on the Emergent church, Doug's vision for Christians to engage in politics for the common good, and maybe even round it out with some guitar talk.

ICE agents have shot and killed two men during immigration enforcement encounters—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine. This video examines the conflicting accounts, witness statements, and unanswered questions surrounding both ICE shootings. Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda depends on thousands of ICE agents carrying out increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement operations. But what happens when the people being targeted are not “the worst of the worst”—and when the agents involved are not wearing body cameras? For Christians, this is also a test of whether our stated beliefs about human dignity, justice, and the image of God can survive contact with political power.

Trump restarts the war, can't use Qatar Force One, and embarrasses himself at the World Cup: Pat and Ken discuss all of this, and more, on Culture, Faith, and Politics LIVE!

Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson examine three expressions of the same “theology of strength”: Trump's speech attacking election integrity, Pete Hegseth's mandatory testosterone testing for soldiers over 30, and Doug Wilson's theology of masculine domination. We'll fact-check Trump's claims about election security, Chris Krebs and CISA, the SAVE Act, the SAVE America Act, and mail-in voting. Then we'll connect Hegseth's obsession with military masculinity and lethality to Doug Wilson's Christian nationalist vision of war, hierarchy, and male authority. What happens when power, aggression, and domination are mistaken for Christian virtue?

For 1,800 years, no Christian had ever heard of the Rapture. So how did a 19th-century idea become the engine driving MAGA's end-times politics — and why does it matter for the wars being fought right now? In this episode, Pat Kahnke and Ken Napzok trace the real history of the Rapture: where it actually came from, the man who invented it, and how a doctrine that started as private comfort got turned into a political weapon. This isn't about whether you believe in the Second Coming. It's about what happens when a specific reading of end-times prophecy gives political power a theological license to crave catastrophe instead of peace.

The death of Senator Lindsey Graham and the alleged death of Senator Mitch McConnell have kicked up a dust cloud of conspiracies and conversations on how to speak of the dead when you did not agree with them in life. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

ICE shootings, mass deportations, and the MAGA Christians who defend all of it — that's what this episode is about.  Here's my argument: none of this was necessary. Every ICE shooting is the result of a choice — the Trump administration's choice to build a system of mass deportations, to pull the FBI off counterterrorism and counterintelligence, to inflate ICE's budget by tens of billions, and to put armed agents on our streets without body cameras. And 80% of white evangelicals voted for it. When brutal authority is aimed at their brown neighbors, they call it "law and order" and reach for Romans 13 like a magic incantation — the same people who called Trump's felony convictions a "weaponization of justice" and cheered pardons for the January 6 rioters who beat police officers. This is for everyone who's exhausted, grieving, and tired of being told they're crazy for it. You're not crazy. You're awake.

Tim Whitaker (The New Evangelicals) and Pat Kahnke are go live together to take your questions, discuss the big news topics of the week, and more on this special episode from Culture, Faith, and Politics and Tim Whitaker Speaks

Graham Platner is out. JD Vance just published a book. And somewhere in between, white evangelicals became the least likely Christians to welcome a stranger. This week, Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson take apart three stories that share one spine: the gap between what MAGA Christians say they believe and what they actually do. We examine Vance's Communion — his four stated values, the ordo amoris debate, the papal rebuke, and why the immigrants he fears are already filling his own Communion rail. We look at the Platner reckoning as a live Fruit Test: one party moves against its own, one doesn't. And we run the immigration numbers that expose how Christian nationalism has quietly replaced the Great Commission with blood and soil.

This is Trump's world... and we're all trying to move past it. The Patriot Front marched unimpeded on July 4th, and Trump and FIFA are corrupt. There is a lot of bad out there, but we've found some Christians Behaving... Good! Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

A new Johns Hopkins ethnographic study followed 21 Trump voters to answer one question: what does MAGA actually want from democracy? Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson break down the tension between Jonathan V. Last's read and the study authors' own interpretation — moral disgust or wounded faith? We cover why so many conservatives recoil at the word "democracy," the "Faith, Family, Freedom, Place" moral foundation driving it all, and why "save democracy" messaging keeps failing with MAGA Christians. A theological look at Christian Nationalism, the illiberal core underneath it, and what it means for your MAGA family and friends.

Amy Hawk talks with Pat Kahnke about what's happening to children inside the Dilley detention center — and what she shares dismantles the "Godly" framing MAGA Christians have wrapped around family detention. In this conversation, we walk through the evidence: the "Letters from Dilley" written by detained children, the near-total rate of PTSD among kids held there, the moldy food, the denied medical care, and the case of a father whose criminal record was fabricated to justify taking his son. We also examine the revocation of Temporary Protected Status that could make 1.3 million people "illegal" overnight, and the financial machinery that keeps private detention profitable. But this isn't only a story about policy. It's a story about theology. When a movement calls the caging of children "Godly," when Romans 13 becomes a shield for cruelty, and when "pro-life" politics stops at the border — the question every Christian has to answer is whether their conscience still belongs to Christ or to a political project.

Let's go inside two BIZARRO Freedom Fests -- the MAGA-fueled Freedom 250 fair at the National Mall and Freedom Con 2026 in George , Washington. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

In this conversation, pastor and author Brian Zahnd makes the case that the doctrine of eternal conscious torment isn't the faith once delivered — it's a settlement that won a fight in church history. We trace where the idea actually came from: the Hebrew Sheol, the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna), the Greek word aiōnios, and how Augustine and Dante's Inferno shaped the fire-and-brimstone hell we inherited.   We also ask the harder question: what does this doctrine DO to us? When you believe billions of your neighbors are already destined for an eternal torture chamber, does it become easier to stop seeing them as fully human? Drawing on his book "Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God," Zahnd argues the traditional view turns the gospel inside out — and reveals a chapter his own publisher refused to print. This is a discussion for believers, exvangelicals, and skeptics alike — anchored in scholarship, biblical languages, and church history, not fear.

For 30 years, Reverend Rob Schenck was one of the most powerful leaders inside the pro-life movement and the religious right. He was in the room. He knew the players. He helped build the platform. And now he's answering the question I've wanted to ask for a long time: Was it all a lie?

In this conversation, Pat Kahnke sits down with pastor and theologian Brian Zahnd — one of the most important voices calling the church back from its entanglement with partisan politics. Zahnd argues that MAGA theology has fundamentally misread Scripture: America is not God's chosen nation, not the New Jerusalem. The Bible gives her a different name — Babylon. This is a conversation about discipleship, allegiance, and what it means to follow Jesus in an era when the church has traded transcendence for political power.

Blue and Green make a MAGA mess! The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool chaos is the perfect metaphor for the Trump Era. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

Senator Jon Ossoff recently walked into Beulah Missionary Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia, opened the Book of Amos, and delivered one of the most theologically precise speeches I've heard from any political figure in years. In 8 minutes and 41 seconds, he did what MAGA pastors with massive platforms and full-time theology staffs refuse to do: name the corruption, place it in a 3,000-year-old prophetic tradition, and connect it to the suffering of real people in real zip codes. Ossoff is not pandering. He's not decorating a political speech with Bible verses. He's doing exegesis — and he's doing it in front of a Black Baptist congregation with a 60-year covenant to the civil rights movement. That matters theologically.

Peter Thiel and JD Vance are building a future that doesn't need God — and Pope Leo XIV is the one man with the standing to call it what it is. In this episode of the Culture, Faith, and Politics Podcast, Pat Kahnke sits down with Mark Ramm to unpack the collision between Silicon Valley's most powerful MAGA billionaire and the Vatican's vision of what it means to be human. Peter Thiel has openly framed anyone who wants to restrain technology — including the Pope — as a "Luddite," and in his own lectures, a force of the Antichrist. When a New York Times interviewer asked Thiel whether the human race should even survive, he hesitated. That pause tells you everything about the worldview now funding the MAGA movement through his protégé, Vice President JD Vance.

The MAGA project promises to restore a nation built on Christ's teachings — by systematically breaking every one of them. ICE raids. Alligator Alcatraz. Gutted USAID. Slashed Medicare. Banned Pentagon plaques honoring women and minorities. That's not a Christian program. That's heresy with a flag on it. We examine the 1950s nostalgia at the heart of Christian nationalism, who that era was actually great for, and why the evangelical church's wholesale embrace of Donald Trump may be the most self-defeating theological mistake in American history.

MAGA declared war on science. People died. And the body count is still growing. In this conversation, Pat Kahnke sits down with Rebecca Watson — science communicator, founder of Skepchick, and one of the most recognizable voices in the skeptic community — to follow the evidence wherever it leads. What they find is damning.

The Freedom 250 UFC event, recent comments from Stephen Miller, and the general actions of Donald Trump's MAGA movement are examples of performative masculinity -- and that quest for power is failing. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

When the UFC came to the White House lawn, fighter Josh Hokit stepped up to a microphone and gave America a perfect picture of what MAGA Christianity has become — a religion of power, dominance, and spectacle that bears no resemblance to the Jesus of the Gospels. In this episode I break down the Josh Hokit White House UFC moment and what it reveals about Christian nationalism in the Trump era: a faith that worships the strong, mocks the weak, and mistakes brutality for blessing. We'll trace the "bread and circuses" parallel back to Rome — the empire that fed Christians to the lions in arenas just like this one — and ask how the followers of a crucified Savior ended up cheering for the coliseum.

One year after Melissa Hortman was assassinated in her own home, Vance Boelter has pleaded guilty — and the motive that MAGA spent a year denying is now a matter of federal record. Boelter, a self-described preacher and Christ for the Nations graduate, hunted lawmakers by name with a police disguise and a 70-person target list. This is the story of how spiritual-warfare theology stopped being a metaphor.

Yuval Noah Harari's conversation with Ezra Klein exposes something theologians have been slow to name: MAGA is not a political movement — it's a redemption narrative. And redemption narratives are the most powerful force in human history. Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson break down what Harari gets right, where theology goes further, and why Christian nationalism has succeeded by replacing the Gospel with a story that feels better than the truth.

Mark Driscoll is one of the most documented bullies in modern American Christianity — so why do people keep following him? In this conversation, Amy Hawk and I dig into the pattern: from the collapse of Mars Hill Church to his current Trinity Church in Arizona, and the lawsuit he's now filed against a pastor who walked away. We play the clips and let Driscoll speak for himself — the pulpit rants, the "biblical manhood" that looks a lot more like intimidation than discipleship. Then we ask the harder question: what is it about this brand of domineering, fear-based leadership that still draws crowds, builds platforms, and gets a national stage? We look at the documented behavior, hold it up against the character Scripture actually calls for in a leader, and try to understand why so many Christians mistake cruelty for courage — and control for conviction. If you've ever sat under a leader like this, or watched someone you love get pulled in, this one's for you.

Booed at Madison Square Garden. Storming out of a Meet The Press interview. It's not been a great week for the President of the United States. Are we seeing the unraveling of Trump? Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

Eric Metaxas claims America's founders intended to organize the United States around the Old Testament's Sinai Covenant — a "Christian nation" built on biblical law. In Part 2 of this series, we put that claim under the microscope and ask a simple question: where are the receipts ?The answer, according to virtually every working historian, is that they don't exist. This is a careful, evidence-based refutation of the Christian nationalism narrative Metaxas is selling — and an honest look at why he's selling it now. We trace how the rhetoric works, who it's meant to mobilize, and what it actually does to the Christian witness when bad history gets baptized as theology. This isn't about scoring political points. It's about scholarship, the historical record, and the difference between what scripture says and what Christian nationalism needs it to say. Whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, the goal is the same: sanity, sound reasoning, and a defensible account of where the United States actually came from.

Donald Trump has named Bill Pulte — the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and a 38-year-old real estate heir with zero intelligence experience — as Acting Director of National Intelligence, replacing Tulsi Gabbard. The DNI oversees all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. In this episode I break down why this appointment should alarm every American, not just Democrats.

Franklin Graham's May 2026 visit to Belarus wasn't just an evangelistic crusade — it was a diplomatic mission for Donald Trump. Lukashenko, Europe's last dictator and Putin's key ally in the northern invasion of Ukraine, used Graham's visit to send "warm greetings to President Trump." That's not gospel. That's Christian nationalism with a passport. Tihomir Kukolja, former Executive Director of the Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, was born in the former Yugoslavia, where Billy Graham preached to 10,000 people in a steady rain in 1967 — braving communist power to reach ordinary people with nothing to offer him politically. He watched that legacy get dismantled in real time when Franklin Graham sat across from Lukashenko and called it an honor. In this conversation, Tihomir — a Croatian theologian, reconciliation leader, and eyewitness to both legacies — walks through exactly what happened in Minsk, what it reveals about Franklin Graham's double gospel, and why a message that poses no threat to authoritarian power is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the Belarus dictator story American evangelicals aren't talking about. It should be.

The Freedom 250 celebration fair is rapidly turning into a rally from the one man at the center of his own universe - Donald Trump. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

This is the first in a short series, which will be a theological autopsy of how one of Christianity's most respected communicators became MAGA's most dangerous court prophet — and what his collapse tells us about the spiritual crisis inside American evangelicalism.   We'll examine Metaxas's two recent speeches at the Rededicate 250 event and Sean Feucht's Christian nationalist rally — what he said, why it matters, and why it qualifies as false prophecy. We trace his full arc: from the Access Hollywood tape to the January 6th insurrection to his claim that Trump's election was "an outrageous gift from God." We also expose the deepest irony: Metaxas literally wrote the definitive biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer — the theologian who died resisting exactly the kind of regime Metaxas now enables. In October 2024, 86 of Bonhoeffer's own descendants signed a public statement condemning Metaxas by name for misrepresenting their ancestor to serve a far-right Christian nationalist agenda. This is what a false prophet looks like. This is what Christian nationalism does to a man's conscience. And this is why it matters for every believer trying to hold the line.

Mark Greene at "Remaking Manhood" and "Walking Talking Men" joins Pat Kahnke and Adam Swenson to talk about healthy masculinity vs. "Man Box" culture in this Thursday morning LIVE episode.

Ken Paxton — impeached, credibly accused of bribery, and caught lying to federal investigators — just became the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas. And MAGA Christians helped make it happen. In this episode, I break down why MAGA Christians keep voting for Donald Trump's most corrupt lackeys, what it reveals about the debasement of the Christian conscience, and why "normie" Republicans are just as complicit. This isn't virtue signaling. It's VICE signaling — and the data from the 2024 primaries makes it impossible to ignore.

Mark Driscoll, Al Mohler, and a host of religious leaders share one common trait: they are men who fear women. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

Trump's $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" has been framed as a truth and justice initiative — but a careful theological examination reveals it as something far more dangerous: a corruption architecture designed to reward political violence and insulate power from accountability. In this episode, I analyze the fund through the lens of biblical justice — specifically the Hebrew concepts of mishpat (legal justice) and tzedek (moral righteousness) — and demonstrate how Donald Trump's proposal inverts both. This is not a policy debate. This is a character audit. And the fruit does not lie. We also examine how evangelical Christianity's 80% bloc vote for Trump made this moment possible — and why conservative Christian voters now bear direct moral responsibility for the pardoning of January 6th rioters, including those convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers.

Journalist and Substack writer Mark Ramm joins Pat Kahnke to break down the architecture of the new Christian right: Catholic integralism, Reformed evangelical dominionism, and the Pentecostal New Apostolic Reformation -- three theologies that can't agree on baptism, eschatology, or church structure, but have built a shared infrastructure of funding, influence, and political power that is reshaping America.

Adam Swenson and Pat Kahnke continue their series of discussions on deconstruction - of both religious and political faith. Using Brian McLaren's four stages of faith as a jumping off point, this conversation focuses on the final stage: Harmony. Desmond Tutu is an example we'll talk about today.