Culture, Faith and Politics with Pat Kahnke

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.

Donald Trump now has a $1.776 billion settlement he plans to use to fund revenge for his political party. MAGA evangelicals held a MAGA cult worship service called Rededicate 250. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

This weekend, the Trump administration spent millions in federal funds on a 9-hour worship rally on the National Mall. The event was organized by the same company that ran Trump's January 6 Ellipse rally — on a largely no-bid government contract. Eric Metaxas invoked the Sinai Covenant from the stage. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to frame America's military posture in theological terms. And Trump sent a prerecorded Bible video. Rick Pidcock, a journalist and theologian who attended Rededicate 250, joins Pat Kahnke for a full eyewitness account of how MAGA theology went national on America's 250th birthday.

Joni Lamb, co-founder of Daystar Television Network — America's 2nd largest Christian TV network — died this week estranged from her own son. What he says happened inside that billion-dollar ministry is a disturbing story about modern Christian media. Pat Kahnke and Amy Hawk examine the Daystar story: a $3.9 million PPP loan used to buy a private jet, seven homes valued at $11.7 million, a honeymoon allegedly charged to ministry donors, and — most seriously — allegations that an abuse claim inside the Lamb family was pressured into silence. Daystar is classified as a church by the IRS. That means no financial disclosures. No accountability. And a billion-dollar operation that nobody is allowed to question. This is what the Fruit Test (Matthew 7:16) looks like when applied to Christian media empires.

Today we're talking about Adam Swenson's article on Stage 3 of Christian faith: Perplexity. And we're using Nick Kristof's article "This Is What Happened When Trump Abandoned the World's Poorest Children" as an example of what happens when the real world takes a wrecking ball to our assumptions.

The latest polls have revealed that Donald Trump is truly a record setter – his unfavorability is higher than Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate. Pat Kahnke is joined by Amy Hawk to discuss all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live! (5/12/26)

Robert Jeffress told Fox News that Donald Trump understands the Bible better than the Pope. I can't let that stand. In this video, I do a full breakdown of Jeffress's Romans 13 argument — the same passage used by enslavers and apartheid defenders — and show exactly how it's being weaponized to silence Christian criticism of the war in Iran.

They called Trump and Mike Johnson "modern-day Esthers" — chosen by God, appointed for such a time as this. But the Esther Bible story doesn't say what they think it says.   Esther was a powerless Jewish exile who risked her life to protect her people from annihilation. She had no army, no legislation, no executive authority. She was a refugee at the mercy of an empire. MAGA theology has taken one of Scripture's most profound stories of courage against oppression and turned it into a permission slip for political domination.   In this video, I apply the Fruit Test (Matthew 7:16) to the MAGA Esther claim — examining how figures like Mike Johnson, Franklin Graham, and Dutch Sheets have weaponized this passage to sanctify Christian nationalism and the consolidation of state power.      

What happens to your faith when authority figures stop answering your questions? Pat Kahnke and Adam work through Stage Two of Brian McLaren's stages of faith — a conversation for everyone navigating the space between certainty and collapse. Whether you're deconstructing Christianity, wrestling with faith and doubt, or just trying to stay sane in the age of MAGA theology, this is for you. We're working through two essays: Adam's "Complexity Is What Happens When Authority Figures Stop Answering Your Questions" and David Brooks' New York Times piece "The Shock of Faith" — possibly the most honest account of faith deconstruction written by a public intellectual in years. Brooks describes himself as "a wandering Jew and a very confused Christian." He told a room full of conservatives "you're supposed to boo" — and kept going. That's Stage Two in real time.

The latest polls have revealed that Donald Trump is truly a record setter – his unfavorability is higher than Richard Nixon at the height of Watergate. Pat Kahnke discusses all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live.

America can't plead ignorance — not when the evidence has always been right in front of us. Award-winning author Melvin E. Edwards joins Pat Kahnke to investigate how a nation chooses not to know, and what that moral choice actually costs. Edwards' debut novel Nuremberg, Mississippi asks the question that Nuremberg prosecutors put to Nazi officials: when what you're doing is legal — but legal is causing the deaths of people — did you ever think about just not doing that? From Jim Crow sundown towns to the patterns playing out today in the age of MAGA and Christian nationalism, this conversation draws a straight line from 1965 Mississippi to modern America. Purchase "Nuremberg, Mississippi" here: https://a.co/d/0gUiOpU3

Trump's administration released a 565-page report claiming 14 acts of "anti-Christian bias" by the Biden administration. Every serious follower of Jesus should be embarrassed by it. This isn't persecution. This is the loss of privilege — and the difference matters theologically.

The incident at the White House Correspondents' Dinner is just the latest example of the rising temperature in America. And that's all part of Trump's political strategy. Join Pat Kahnke for a live chat about all this and more on Culture, Faith, and Politics live!

How does tribalism shape our understanding of the shooting at the WHCD? Also, how does it fit into the 4 stages of belief? Adam Swenson and Pat Kahnke continue their discussion of deconstruction - with a focus on tribalism and false simplicity.

On May 17th, MAGA is staging a national Bible reading to "rededicate America to God" — and almost nobody is talking about what's actually happening. I sat down with Tihomir Kukolia, Executive Director of the Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, to expose the Christian nationalist infrastructure hiding inside the "America Reads the Bible" event — and why it should alarm every American, Christian or not.

Deconstructing Christianity doesn't mean abandoning the faith — it means finally growing into one. In this video, we walk through Brian McLaren's four stages of faith and ask the question the Evangelical Church doesn't want to answer: why does MAGA Christianity keep getting stuck at Stage One? If you've spent years inside evangelical certainty only to find it collapsing under the weight of real questions, this is for you. Drawing on McLaren's Faith After Doubt, we map the journey from Simplicity through Complexity and Perplexity — and into what a mature, reconstructed faith actually looks like on the other side. Whether you're exvangelical, still inside the church but quietly questioning, or an atheist trying to understand why American Christianity went so sideways — this framework explains it all.

Adam Swenson joins Pat Kahnke for the first Culture, Faith, and Politics MORNING Live Stream!