Culture, Faith and Politics with Pat Kahnke

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.