Culture, Faith and Politics with Pat Kahnke

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.