Is Our Understanding of Hell Making Evangelical Christians Cruel?

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Pat Kahnke's books are available on Amazon:

"A Christian Case Against Donald Trump" (2024)

"MAGA SeductionResisting the Debasement of the Christian Conscience" (2020)

Pat Kahnke's video from last year "How MAGA evangelicals' beliefs about the afterlife can lead to cruelty in THIS life"

Brian Zahnd's story "The Reverend"

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.