Culture, Faith and Politics with Pat Kahnke

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.