The Christian Conscience vs. the Way of Trump — Pat Kahnke

80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in the 2024 GOP primaries—despite everything. Why? And what does it reveal about the state of the Christian conscience?

In this raw and pastoral conversation, Will and Josh speak with Pat Kahnke—author of A Christian Case Against Donald Trump—about the moral cost of evangelical allegiance to Trump. A former pastor and lifelong Republican, Kahnke shares his journey from voting a straight GOP ticket to being “deported” from the party for refusing to support Trump. Together, they explore how fear, political power, and theological drift have distorted the witness of the Church.

The episode dives into key moral foundations: care vs. harm, truth vs. deception, and justice vs. oppression. With rare empathy and candor, Pat explains why he believes the Church needs a “40-year wilderness” before it can heal.

Listen in for a conversation that challenges, convicts, and—most importantly—calls us to a better way.

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👤 Guest Bio
Pat Kahnke is a former pastor and author of MAGA Seduction and A Christian Case Against Donald Trump. Through his YouTube channel and Substack, “Culture, Faith, and Politics,” he critiques the misuse of Christianity for political gain and calls for a gospel-centered public witness.

🔗 Resource Links
A Christian Case Against Donald Trump by Pat Kahnke (Amazon)
https://a.co/d/fx7gNj2
MAGA Seduction by Pat Kahnke (Amazon)
https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798684280344
Culture, Faith, and Politics on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/  @culturefaithandpolitics  
Culture, Faith, and Politics on Substack
https://culturefaithandpolitics.substack.com

Transcript

0:17

I'll give it a little buffer at the beginning so that way when you do the editing, you don't have to kind of get it right, right up to to the point. So I do all the editing for the show, by the way. that's like, know the things that I would do like when I'm editing. But anyways, my my my question for you, Pat, and thank you, by the way, for just your your very well thought out testimony, because I think your story resonates with a lot of the folks that we've talked to. on here about being a conservative, being a Republican, Trump comes on the scene and you're like, WTF, like what's going on here? So you are in good company. I'll just say that. But the title of your book, A Christian Case Against Donald Trump is interesting because you are essentially saying, Trump considers himself a Christian. others consider Trump a Christian. So in essence, you're saying a Christian case against another Christian, which seems weird to me. like, what is the Christian case against Donald Trump and how do you reconcile the fact that, you know, he himself considers himself a Christian and he's got, you know, Paula White right next door to him, giving him kind of spiritual advice. Yeah, I think you're being really generous to say that he considers himself a Christian. He positions himself as a Christian. um Yeah, but um so that's a great question because I thought a lot about that title. You know, Megaseduction, the first book that I wrote, resisting the debasement of the Christian conscience, that was much more of a thing just saying, hey, there's this seduction coming and you got to resist this because otherwise... we're going to slide in terms of our conscience as Christians. And it was very much written as an insider. m This one also is, but what's very important to know about the title, first of all, it's a Christian case against Donald Trump rather than the Christian case against Donald Trump. It's one person wrestling with these things. And secondly, it's not against, it's like, I tend to go too long with titles, so this one I did much shorter, because what I want to say is, here's one guy's way of trying to convince you that Donald Trump isn't the guy you should vote for just because you're a Christian. um But a Christian case against Donald Trump is saying not that... because a lot of people will come at me... in comments to my videos and things saying, well, what about a Christian case against Kamala Harris? And that's not it. What I'm not doing is taking two candidates and lining them up next to each other and saying, let's see which one is personally more Christian, or let's see which one is, um you could make a case for their policies as a Christian. It's not a comparison. nothing like that. Donald Trump is a threat to the conscience of Christians who follow him. The Christian case against Donald Trump is to say uh it's not about is he more Christian than the other one. It's about he is perverting Christian faith. He's using Christian faith. People don't vote for Kamala Harris because evangelical Christians, for instance, don't say, well, I think that she's more Christian or whatever, and so I'm going to vote for her. Donald Trump, they're explicitly voting for him because they're Christians, and they say he's going to represent Christianity. And I'm saying that is dangerous, and he's perverting Christianity and um making it into a weapon, which Obviously throughout history, he's not the first one to do that. But when people do that, Christians have to call them out and say, no, you don't get to do this. And I'm going to make a case as a Christian against your distortion of the gospel and against your distortion of the role of Christians in the world. He has to be vocally opposed on those grounds. I think that makes a lot of sense. Your story resonates so much with me because I feel a very similar way. I voted for Donald Trump in 2016, I remember feeling like I can't believe I'm voting for Donald Trump. can't, I remember just thinking, can't believe that this is the person that we have put up as the Republican Party, of all the people. And then I was... There's so many thoughts that come in my head like how vehement the left is against sometimes against Donald Trump, which makes sense. But then the way they treated someone like Mitt Romney, someone who is like, as far as you can see, a very moral and character filled person. Obviously, no, it's perfect. And yet like now we get Donald Trump because the people that we did, the people that we did um put forward. They got treated in the same way, lambasted and all this stuff. And anyway, I know that's kind of an aside, but it's like now we have because the people of character we were putting forward, it wasn't working. We couldn't beat Obama, right? And now you have the guy with, I can't say no character. The guy with questionable character is coming up there, this rap sheet, right, of issues and he wins. It does not bode well for the Republican Party, for America in general, in my opinion. And I just feel so deeply connected to your story because I felt myself in the same place. Like, I can't believe I'm doing this. What's going on? And then coming up to the 2020 election, a guy had started a church and Will and I were talking and I really, I was going to vote for Donald Trump again because I'm like, I just, don't know, man. I don't know if I have another option. That's kind of what I felt. And I remember Will was like, I was like, so why don't you like Donald Trump? And I just was asking a genuine question. He's like, I just don't think he's good for our country. I think he's creating a lot of division. And when Will said that, it just made so much sense to me when I started looking at like actually what was happening. And I'm like, yeah, it is creating division. I don't see any unity right now. I see a country. so divided. I'm like, this is is craziness. So I so I knew I had to do something different. And, you know, I I'm feeling like this. The question I'm getting to is this sense of like feeling like a political sojourner, feeling like someone who doesn't belong. Right. um I don't belong in either party. That's what I feel like. I feel like I am a refugee in some ways in terms, like quote unquote, that's extreme. you know, I don't have a party. I'm homeless, politically homeless. And this idea of a 40-year wilderness or 40 years in the wilderness for GOP, I'm super interested in understanding what do you mean by that? What is that? What's going on there? And why do you propose that? So that's interesting. I didn't propose it as something that we should make like sort of a mission, you know? The way that that came up for me is I just have to be honest with people that I personally have gotten to the point where I will never vote for the GOP again until they do 40 years in the wilderness, until this generation of GOP... Wow. dies out. I don't know if that's fear, if that's actually going to be 40 years, but that sense from the scripture of like, you have strayed so far and worshiped false gods and shown, you know, fear rather than courage and all this stuff. And now, so until this generation in 40 years in the wilderness, until this generation passes on, you're not coming into the promised land. And this generation, they've kicked out every Republican leader that I respect. You talk about feeling like a sojourner. what do Republicans do to sojourners nowadays? They deport them. And I got deported from the Republican Party. uh I got kicked out and they kicked out, you know, I could list. mean, Mitt Romney, you just talked about. Yeah, the Democrats were hard on Mitt Romney when he ran for president. That was, I would put that in the category of normal political discourse where they're exaggerating some of his quirks or whatever, and they disagree strongly with it. But the Republicans eviscerated Mitt Romney as a person. Why did they do that? Because Donald Trump did that. And so what we see, first of all, um is I came to this, I get accused all the time of being a liberal, which there's nothing wrong with being a liberal, Will. You I don't even know what I am. You don't need me to tell you there's nothing wrong with it, but, you know. But, yeah, right. But it's like, my point is, I just don't even know what I am anymore when it comes to policies. But I came to this as a staunch conservative Republican. And I opposed Donald Trump. And the first couple of years, I voted a straight Republican ticket in 2016, except for Donald Trump, because I thought they would hold him accountable. And they didn't. And not only that, they kicked out of the party everyone who tried to hold him accountable. then as a Christian, in a lot of churches, you end up getting Deported from the church if you if you start to speak against Donald Trump And so here's one of the the things that I mean about it's what's happening whether he's doing it or whether it's church leaders doing it that are that are perverting the gospel in a way Donald Trump has become you know, Jesus said I come to bring a sword between you know father and son Sister and brother and it's on me You know, is that is where the dividing line will come. Donald Trump has made himself the sword. So all of a sudden people are getting judged whether they're a true Republican or not based on how they align with Donald Trump. They're being judged. What I care about for their faith based on whether they support this. Absolute like you again were charitable when you said he has questionable character. I have no questions about Donald Trump's character. And don't think you do either, honestly. um You're just nice. And as a Minnesotan, I get that. But I have no questions about his character, and yet he has become the dividing line between whether you're a good Republican or not, but more importantly, whether you're a good Christian or not, with a lot of conservative Christians. That's why I write a book to say this is wrong. um But another thing I'll say, I mean, so my brain could go with so many directions. But another thing I'll say is that what prompted me to write the book, the first one and the second one, is much more pastoral than political. Even though I am not a pastor anymore. I made a video a couple days ago that was completely pastoral because I can't help but think, like when I see people worrying about Trump moving into LA with the military. I want to just say this is terrible, but then I think, but my listeners, what they need from, they're hearing that from everyone, what they need to hear from me right now is do not be afraid. You know, so, because like this pastoral thing kicks in. Well, the books that I wrote came out of a pastoral concern. What happens to a human being when you consume lies constantly? What happens to a human being when the people that you trusted, whether it's politically or much worse, your church leaders, line up behind obvious lies? What happens when you see those people—and you're saying you're being told by your pastor and by your Bible study group all the time to build discernment, develop discernment, and then— you're trying to practice that discernment, and you're seeing things that are obvious, obvious about the character of this guy. First, know, at first in 2016, it was very much his character, not quite as much the authoritarian stuff. But day after day after day, more and more gets revealed, and every step of the way, the people that you trust, the people who told you to develop character, develop your own character, to develop discernment. The people who said character matters when it was Democrats that they were railing against. When all of these things happen, what does that do to the spiritual condition of a person? What does that do to the emotional condition of a person? You know, I talked about, I talked with a friend yesterday who has a podcast and he did one about uh emotional dysregulation, you know, and I have lot of experience with that, with people that I've pastored and stuff, where when they're dysregulated, you make really bad decisions and you lash out at people. Donald Trump, as a political strategy, creates emotional dysregulation in his followers, as a political strategy, and pastors... stand there and say, he's the guy you need to support. What does that do to a person? What does that do to a church? That's why I say the 40 years in the wilderness thing. It's like the entire generation of people who bought into this have to be repudiated and we need to start over with new leadership. And I just think that's why I say it. I don't have a plan for making that happen, but that's how I honestly see it. This poison goes deep and every month that he continues to pour hatred, lies, and division into the culture, and pastors sit silently by and say, well, I don't want to be political. Then they're allowing their people to have a distorted mind. So that's why I wrote Magus Seduction. I was telling people, don't let your minds be taken by this guy. And now we're to the point where I understand 2016 people voting for him, you know, like it was a hard decision for me to not, and I didn't know a tenth of what I know about him now. But um what I don't understand, but if you want to see what I mean by the debasement of the Christian conscience that I warned about in 2020, is that in 2024, evangelicals were his largest base of support in the primaries, in the primaries against all of these other Republican candidates that you might say you could totally resonate with. Evangelicals are the ones who supported Trump. That's a debasement of the Christian conscience. That's where you've chosen I'm just saying that's where evangelicals have chosen power over rather than the upside down nature of the kingdom. know where the last shall be first and blessed are the meek and all of that stuff. The kingdom of God does not look like Donald Trump and in the primaries evangelicals chose Donald Trump's kingdom. And then, once again, said, what do you expect me to do? You want me to vote for Kamala? And I'm just calling BS on that. I've heard it for too many years. There's something about Trump that they like. I think you hit on it when you said Mitt Romney was a nice guy and he lost. They want to win. And if that means hiring the neighborhood bully, and I'm saying hiring the neighborhood bully has... consequences that go really deep. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because I have thought about kind of the church's role and complicity in Trump being in power. And I'm not sure if it's like a chicken egg thing, you know, like if it's, uh know, evangelicals help Trump or Trump was really good at convincing the evangelicals. And there was this really great TV show years ago called Legion. I'm a big Marvel fan, by the way. ah uh So the whole show is about Professor X's son, not really important, but there's a little montage in it that talks about the human brain and how as a child, if we were taught that red means go and green means stop, like our entire lives, like what consequences could we expect when we are at a stoplight, you know, and getting ready to cross or pull through? You know, like, like how we're taught, you know, and the things that we are sort of, um, you know, formed about the world really do have a bearing on how we kind of navigate it and whether or not we are successful or not. And it seems like in this regard, you know, a lot of complicit pastors have been pushing this. Excuse me. This is like Republic. If you're a Christian, you vote Republican, like no matter who's on the ticket, cause the Democrats are a bunch of evil, you know, demon crap or whatever. And that's something I learned heavily actually from somebody I think who lives in her state, Greg Boyd. We had him on the show. Super smart guy. I I've read two of his books anyways, and they were very informative. Yeah, I was profoundly shaped by Greg Boyd. And the same time I was attending Piper's Church, I was listening to Greg Boyd's sermons. And those two had very famous debates. And I was listening to both of them, so if that tells you anything about me. uh Yeah. Yeah. What I wanted to get to was um kind of like how you reconciled not voting. Like basically, like how did you break out of that mold in the sense of your entire life? You've been told, you know, red means go, green means stop. then 2016 rolls around and you're like, wait a minute. You know, like everything I know about the world says I should probably you know, stop when there's a red light, but I've been told to go the entire time. So like, can you walk us through like, how did you, how did you kind of overcome that, that, that issue? It was actually really a pragmatic decision for me at first because what I thought, so I'll put myself back in the mold of say that right now I'm still a Republican, say that, even though I'm just whatever, I'm not. ah But say I was. My reasoning would still hold to the reasoning that I had back then. And my reasoning was we have to vote against this person. to show that we won't take just whoever they give us. To me, politically, politically, that's the central issue, is that you can't let whoever's running any party, whoever the party is, you can't let them take you for granted. and Christians, evangelical Christians have allowed themselves to be taken for granted. So, because they know that When it comes to the choice between, in this case, was Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, because of the pro-life issue, maybe a couple other things, they're going to reflexively go with the Republican. And so, it's almost like they're seeing, I almost envisioned them in a back room laughing and saying, let's see who we can give them next. Because they know that the evangelicals are going to vote for them as long as they say the right words. about a couple of key cultural issues. so pragmatically, I saw that in 2016, and I was like, I'm not going to vote for this guy. I hope he loses. I hope he loses. I, could, given my background of when I stopped following the news, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton were like all Rush Limbaugh was talking about and everything. I left, I stopped listening. during those, that era pretty much. And now I'm like, I would rather have Hillary Clinton win than Donald Trump. It's the reason was because I saw this, that if we affirm this choice of Donald Trump, they'll give us anybody. They'll give us what turns out they've given us him three times. And evangelicals, 80 % white evangelicals have said, okay, I guess you've got me over a barrel. Guess that's what I've got to do. So pragmatically, you just gotta say no. No, give us somebody good or you can't count on our vote. We don't owe you our allegiance. If you want 80 % of the white evangelical vote, give us somebody that we can be proud to vote for. So. So there's so many things that go through my mind, you know, like right now I'm pastoring and I have people in my church that are very strong Trump supporters. And I love these people. don't, and I don't, I don't see anything, like I don't look at them at all. There's something wrong with them, right? Like, like, like, but I do see that kind of attitude. Like I would see things like, um you know, being my friend or being in relationship with me, there's this thing going around on Facebook, right? It doesn't count for transphobia, homo, know, transphobia, homophobia, like racism, hatred, all this stuff, right? And I get the sentiment of that. And I do understand that, that there are limits at some point. So the idea is like, at what point are you like, you know, that you're just turning a blind eye. Like there's, how can you... How can you not see what's going on, right? You're either not paying attention because you just don't want to. It's will for ignorance. Or you're seeing it and you're just like, hey, uh ends justify the means kind of logic. And then that creates all sorts of issues for the exact reason that you're saying. That people, we have basically just given over because someone could come in and say the right things. or say some buzzwords. But one of the things with Donald Trump is he isn't just saying the things that they like. He's doing these things um on a grand scale that I'm just shocked at how much my Christian brothers and sisters, not just are like, hey, it's necessary, but they revel in it. They love it. that hearing, seeing things like, oh, deport all of them, get them all out of our country. em And they're celebratory about, hey, we're renaming these forts and these things after, you know, Southern generals, Confederate generals or whatever. And again, my guess is they don't know very many black people. to be honest with you, are people of color, because the guys I know and I talk to them, it makes a lot of sense why they don't like these things being named after Confederate ah generals. even just a basic empathy, like if you disagree, okay, that's fine. Sure, have your argument, but don't you understand why your friends of color would not want something named after someone who You defended systematic oppression and slavery of your ancestors. I mean, doesn't that is anyway, but I just, it's my mind is blown by it. And yet at the same time, these are people that I love that I think are rational that I think, and they're coming out of their own motivations, own sense of fear. think a lot of it is driven by fear. think Donald Trump captured the fear. that was rampant because of the Obama years. I truly believe that. I was listening, like right when you took a break, it's funny, right when you took a break, Pat, is right when I got into it. And I was listening. And so your Rush Limbaugh was Albert Mueller for me. I have a lot of respect for Albert Mueller, but it was daily, I would listen to his daily briefing every day. And I, but everything was like, look, and eventually it's like, you can't, Christians cannot vote for the democratic party. Essentially that's what he said. They're so far away from a biblical point of view that we just can't do it with a good conscience. I remember him saying that. And he was not a fan of Donald Trump at the beginning, right? He had a lot of criticism and I would, and so I listened to this, right? And I heard the fear and I felt the fear. And I saw, look what Obama has done to our country. When the White House is bathed in rainbow colors, I'll never forget when I saw that. And my feeling inside was not yay and celebratory, and I want to go on the streets. My feeling was fear and disgust, if I'm honest. Now, I think I've moved beyond that, thankfully, in a lot of ways. I don't want to feel that way towards my fellow citizens and human beings in the LGBT community. I want to love them. I don't know exactly how to do that and hold to my views. I'm still working. I'm still working through that, but I know that they deserve love. Why wouldn't they like they and so, but I just remember seeing that in the visceral fear and, and you capitalize on that. I mean, he, he, there was a place, he is a reaction. I, I couldn't necessarily prove that to you right now, but that's my, that's my gut. And so throwing that out to you, I would love to hear, why do you think so many evangelicals, I mean, you alluded to it, but I would love for you even go deeper into that if you can. Why do they care about these issues so much? Why is it this and they won't look at anything else? Why do evangelicals vote for Donald Trump? Why do you think from your conversations, your research, what motivates that beyond just the platitudes you hear, well, they're racist and they're homophobic and they're transphobic. Okay, maybe, but I know a lot of people that aren't and they still devote for them. So I'm just super curious because it's the tension and the passion you're sensing is the tension I feel. Mm-hmm. from even like we're trying to be in the middle, even on this podcast, we're trying to be in the middle at some level. We're trying and we're trying to get conservative voices on. We're trying to get MAGA voices on. They hardly come, but we're trying to get MAGA voices on. um Should we? Should we just say no way? We're not going to give them any airtime. I mean, we feel like this is so much part of our cultural moment that we need to represent both sides. And yet it's just very, very difficult. I just would love to hear your thoughts. Yeah, yeah, I have so many thoughts. I could talk for the next eight hours just on what you just said. So I'm sure I'm going to lose a lot of it. First of all, should you get mega voices on there? It depends on who. I would love to have, like, I would love to have conversations on my podcast with people who voted for Trump, but are Trump skeptical. I would want to know what pushed you to answer some of your questions, you know, like what pushed you into this camp, even though you don't like him, but you chose him again for the third time, but they would at least admit to the problems with him, you know, like that sort of person I would have on who I wouldn't get on is somebody like Charlie Kirk. ah I despise Charlie Kirk. I'm sorry. You're not supposed to despise people. So I whatever, whatever is just below the level, just whatever is just below the level of where I'm sinning, um right up a bumper up there. ah That's how I feel about him. Because for instance, I was talking with a friend the other day, I didn't listen to his uh talk with Gavin Newsom, but a friend of mine did, you know, the podcast where Gavin Newsom interviewed Charlie Kirk. And my friend said, Charlie Kirk just ran rings. verbally around Newsome. And I have two thoughts about that. One is, yeah, I care deeply about the things I care about. I believe them. I have good foundations for believing it, but I'm not a debater. I have zero interest in debating. Usually a debate in a public setting is a waste of time because it's just people learn the skills. for how to make their point and how to cut the other person's point down, but you're not really learning anything from each other. This is a conversation. And I think you could have almost anyone on for a conversation. ah But Charlie Kirk isn't gonna have a conversation with you. He's gonna debate you. And what he did to Gavin Newsom, according to my friend, is like, Gavin Newsom at one point said, you know, Jesus Christ. And Charlie Kirk was like, do not take the name of my Lord and Savior in vain. You know, I'm getting the second hand, but I believe it because I know what Charlie Kirk is like. And what I want to say is Charlie Kirk has made millions of dollars taking the name of the Lord in vain. Charlie Kirk has perverted the gospel in the name of Jesus Christ and leveraged it for financial gain and for political power, and he's corrupted the souls of very many people in this younger generation, all in the name of Jesus, that's taking the Lord's name in vain on a grand scale. I wouldn't talk to him. I wouldn't have coffee with him. And I'm sorry, I wouldn't because I know at some point if somebody is going to have an honest conversation or not, but somebody who, who honestly struggles with this and still even a third time voted for Donald Trump, I'd be totally willing to have that conversation. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. That's most of my family. That's my family. That's half of my church friends. So I would have anybody like that on, why not? We want to hear it. And I think one of the things you would hear is, um I mean, there's a couple of things. There's the people who just feel abandoned by These are like a lot of the people that used to vote Democrat, you know, so not necessarily evangelicals, but there's a lot, if you look at the Venn diagram, you know, of like white people with like uh less than a college education and trying to make a living, you know, day to day, you know, trying to survive. You think coal miners, you know, and then the other diagram being... white evangelical Christians. There's a lot of overlap in that. So a lot of people might say, I'm an evangelical Christian, but I'm also a coal miner. And I'm really worried about, you know, the Democrats in 2016 got a big wake up call when they realized it was those people. I'm just saying coal miner, but you know what I mean? It was those people that have always reliably voted Democrat who swung to Trump. Cause he was speaking to disillusionment that they had that the elites in their party seem to be caring about the kind of cultural issues you're talking about. And they might not even have a problem with those cultural issues, but that's not what they wanted their leaders to be focusing on, to the exclusion of their economic concerns and things like that. So I mean, there's very good reason. I wrote about this. actually, I just reread a chapter from Megaseduction, my first book, about... the George Floyd protests in my city, you know, because that happened here in the Twin Cities. That's where it started. And I was talking about this issue of burning the neighborhood down, you know, like where people would claim, you know, well, they're burning their own neighborhood down. And now I would say, A, oftentimes it's not true. Oftentimes it was people coming in. I mean, we had buildings burned three blocks from my house, you know. So it's like it's people coming in and burning the neighborhood. But let's assume that it's true that some of these people were burning their neighborhood down, to use that phrase. It was, if you ask them why, they would say, well, we don't own it. We don't own We just live here. We don't own it. We don't have the power to change it. We're just, you know, and it's gone on so long and no one's listening to us. Why not burn it down? And it seems really counterproductive, but it's this emotional thing that a few people have. I equate that to the political system for a lot of Trump's voters, you know, where they might make fun of somebody burning their neighborhood down, but I say, no, what you're doing is you're doing the exact same thing. You feel like you don't own the system. You feel like this political system hasn't worked for you. And so, um, you're going to burn it down. And the problem is there's consequences. We still don't have, there's a bank that we used to have in our neighborhood that's not here five years later after the George Floyd protests. The bank can't survive going back there. was hard enough for them economically to have the bank in our neighborhood. It got destroyed and uh it's not back. In the same way there's consequences if you burn your political system down out of anger. It has lasting consequences. So Donald Trump is an arsonist. He's a cultural arsonist. He understands the fear you were talking about. He understands the anger you were talking about. Every demagogue in history has understood fear and anger and tribal divisions. Every demagogue in history has inflamed those things and empowered. themselves through it. And so that's what we're seeing, is there's legitimate—there's a legitimate loss of control that people feel economically. There's a legitimate loss of control that they feel culturally. And I would say a demagogue is going to exploit that every time. So what you need is you need—when people are getting dysregulated about these things—that's why you need pastors. That's why you need politicians who actually will tell the truth. You know, that's why you need sometimes politicians to sacrifice their political career to say the unpopular thing, to say, I understand what you're thinking and what you're feeling, but I can't go along with this burning the system down thing, you know? And even if that costs me votes, you know? Like, there's gotta be people who stand there in the gap and say, can we just all take a step back? And, you know, so that, that's what I see. see demagogues like Donald Trump stir the stuff up and we're seeing it happen in LA now. There were protests and I'm not minimizing any of the damage that was done, but, what he wants, because what every demagogue wants is for that to blow up because that's how he empowers himself. so there's all that. I would also say, specifically Christians, ah when you talked about the rainbow flags or all that kind of stuff, yeah, the pace of change that happened while I was not paying attention, while I was not listening to the right-wing news and all that stuff, or any news much, there was a pace of change that happened culturally that was... much faster than almost any culture could absorb. Even, let's say it was all good. Let's just say, say I agree with every bit of that. It still happened in a way that it's like, isn't it one of Newton's laws of thermodynamics? know, to every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. That's just gonna happen. Even if it's like something that. that a person totally agrees with, but a lot of these things were controversial. So yeah, then Christians need to ask, what is my role? Is my role to legislate all of this stuff that makes me uncomfortable out of existence? Well, you're not going to. These are human beings you're talking about who have lives and concerns, and you might not agree with... all the choices they make, and they would say, hey, it's not even a choice. Okay, whatever. All that stuff is super complicated. Christians aren't put in the world to legislate our discomforts away. I um just have to keep reminding myself that the Church started as a persecuted Church. that had no political power. And so I would like to return a little bit to that and to say, what if we just said, I'll put it on the abortion issue, okay? I'll just put it there. I worked for years to win the public argument on that issue. I spoke in churches, I spoke in schools. Pro-lifers lost the public argument on that issue if the argument is there should be no abortion ever. The culture seems to be, I don't know, the percentages, maybe, let's say 70-30. Something like Roe versus Wade. Something like allowing it in the early stages of pregnancy. And em so, I have to at some point say, I lost that argument. And another step I have to make is to say, I want to understand why I lost that. Maybe I was wrong. that legislating this at those stages is the solution. Maybe I was wrong about that. But what I can say for sure is... Donald Trump has set whatever argument I was trying to make to win the hearts of the American people in all those years, Donald Trump has set that argument back a generation. He has so, he's thrown so much gasoline on it, and he is a, as a litigated sexual abuser, as somebody who brags about the way he sexually abuses women on tape, and then is found by a court to have done that, you put that face on the pro-life movement, and then you take immigrants, illegal immigrants, and you send them out, not just out of the country, but into a brutal concentration camp in El Salvador for life with no due process. And you put that face on the pro-life movement? you've set that movement back a generation. And so what I'm saying is, where I'm starting from now is for the rest of my life, yeah, there might be a few states that completely outlaw abortion, but for the rest of my life, for the most part, abortion in the United States is gonna be legal, at least in the early stages of pregnancy. That's not my argument anymore. I want to help people to build a consistent human life ethic from a Christian point of view. And if the next generation takes that and extrapolates it and says, hey, wait, what about the unborn? They were talking about back then. Beautiful. But now you're building it on a shared cultural understanding that the culture was able to get out of the dysregulated state about this issue. and talk with each other and come to something that we can agree on. not only that, but we've built what it even means to be pro-life into the conscience, not just of Christians, but of the country. And it's not about power over anymore. And so that's what I think. And to me, that's actually kind of pragmatic thinking, because it's saying, I don't have to win a battle right now. What's my role as a Christian? It's to be salt and light. It's to build an understanding of what the Kingdom of God even looks like and to exhibit that through the way I act and win people over to the beauty of it. Because I still, you you asked before we started if I'm still a Christian. Yeah, I'm still a Christian. I find the Gospel beautiful. I find the Kingdom of God beautiful. And, uh, I want to work for Shalom. The picture picture I have in my head of Shalom is beautiful. I want to work for that. I don't want to be fighting these political battles. I don't like that. I have to talk about Donald Trump. If, Donald Trump were not supported by Christians, I wouldn't talk about him. I hate politics. I used to love it. I've come to hate it. I talk about him because he poses a threat to the Christian conscience and he's undoing everything that I was working for. So that's that's I don't know if that answers it but You know, I am curious and I want to be a little bit honest with you and the audience here for a second and talk about a character flaw of mine. So one of the things I hear a lot and we actually had a guest, Shannon Fleck from Faithful Alliance talk about this too, about how we live in an era and a generation where sometimes the words of Jesus are perceived as, like, if you are using Jesus' words to critique, you know, the suffering of others, you're labeled as a liberal. So as a liberal Christian, like, I'm like, hey, cool, that's all right, you know? Like, they're just like me. But for a conservative or a Republican that might hear this, it's like, ew, like, it just feels dirty, you know, or... Or it encourages them to maybe rethink, you know, speaking out, like, and I'm thinking about that Bishop Budd lady that gave the sermon in DC to Trump, you know, and how she was completely eviscerated by many on right. So like, how much should we care that people are labeling, you know, the Jesus that we display in public as liberal when it doesn't like suit their kind of political narrative. Yeah, I just think it's stupid, you know, honestly. There's some things that I can understand and I can say, oh, I get why you would think that. And then, there's some things that I think, come on, now you're just being, you know, you're not being reflective here. So, for instance, let's look at the immigration issue. When I voted against Donald Trump in 2016, I heard people talking about immigration. And honestly, that was not my issue. It was just, was... I hadn't thought enough about it. In the time since, I've done a lot more work trying to think about that issue. And it's just one example of where the Old Testament, not just Jesus' words, the Old Testament, there's all of this stuff about justice, including justice for the sojourner among us, that sort of thing. um What I... would say is there are certain issues that whether you're a progressive Christian or a conservative evangelical, there's nothing about your theology that should dictate, don't agree, know, so immigrants, immigration would be one of them. There's nothing about conservative theology that says, we need to be especially mean to immigrants, you know. ah There's, you know what I'm saying? And so the thing that I said a couple days ago about this, LA protests and Trump putting military in there is here's the debate that we're going to be having. You know, here's the debate we're going to be having this whole summer, probably for the whole next three and a half years. It boils down to whose view of justice are we going to embrace? Are we going to embrace a Christian view of justice, mean a biblical view of justice, which I would say has two parts, all from the Old Testament, by the way. You know, you can find all of it in the Old Testament. The first part is equity before the law, the rule of law. Everyone's treated equitably. Everyone's treated fairly. You don't let the rich person win in court just because they're rich, you know, and you also don't favor the poor person, know, equity before the law and all that that entails. That's one version, that's one half of what I would say is the way the Bible talks about justice. The other half is what gets labeled now in a negative way as social justice, making sure that the culture appropriately for however this culture is built is caring for the poor, is protecting the rights of people who don't have a voice. And again, when I was really active in the pro-life movement, I included that. I still would, but I'm just not to take it far afield, but I'm saying this is a consistent view of justice. The social justice thing, the Bible doesn't talk about social justice, it just talks about justice. And half of what it says involves those sorts of things about caring for the poor. Okay, so So the big debate that we're going be having this summer as we watch military go into cities ah is between biblical justice and this perversion of justice that we call law and order. Law and order is a fascist phrase. It's a phrase that fascists use. Or if you don't want to use the fascist word, authoritarians. But if we look through history, law and order... is a catchphrase that they'll all use to justify taking control. And law and order, Jason Stanley says, law and order for the fascist means um the law gets applied to the others, to the out group, to keep them down. For the supporters of the authoritarian, they're allowed to run free as long as they're supporting the authoritarian. The authoritarian himself, the fascist leader himself, by definition can't break the law because he is the law. So that's in stark contrast to a biblical understanding of law and justice. so, and I would say the perfect example of this is that Trump and his regime are all talking about law and order right now and saying there were some cars lit on fire. All things that I oppose, obviously. um that sort of stuff, and we need to crush this. When on his first day in office, he pardoned 1,500 January 6 rioters who beat up cops. That's not, from a biblical justice point of view, that is a stunning contradiction. But from a perverse law and order view of justice, that is not a contradiction. That's how it works. Because the authoritarian is the law. And you're legal or not. based on how you align with the authoritarian. Wow. Well, Pat, we probably could talk to you for another seven hours. um This has been so, so amazing. But um for for people that are unaware of your show or, you know, where you're located at, can can you give people just some links and places that they can go to find your stuff? Yeah, sure. So when you said located, I'm in St. Paul. I'm four blocks from the governor's mansion, from Tim Walz's mansion. So, temporarily his, but anyway. um Yeah, so I am on YouTube under Culture, Faith, and Politics. I'm on Substack under Culture, Faith, and Politics. And then, my books, uh Magus Seduction, um that's the one that I wrote in 2020. And then this one that you've been talking about a Christian case against Donald Trump. Those are both available on Amazon. So yeah, and i'll just say about a Christian case against Donald Trump. I never did I'm just going to say this really quick that that it's four four chapters is all it is It's the way of Jesus versus the way of Trump, you know sort of set the stage, but then it's it's three main points the way of peace Versus the way of the demagogue So what I was just talking about in some ways. Secondly, the way of truth versus the way of the deceiver. And then the third one is the way of justice versus the way of the oppressor. Those are the three, it's just basically three ways of saying, here's the way Christians look at this. Here's the way that Trump and his and people like him talk about these things. So I try to keep it as simple as I can. No, I think that that's great. And I definitely encourage all of our listeners and watchers to pick up the book, study it, maybe do like a Bible study around it. Who knows? ah But thank you so much again, Pat, for coming on the show. This has been totally awesome. Really, really appreciate it. Yeah. And to our viewers and listeners, hey, thanks again for stopping by and make sure you like, subscribe, do all that kind of stuff. um And yeah, just be good to each other. And until next time, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. and we will see you next time. Take care.