Kirk Cameron spoke with ChurchLeaders about his recent roundtable discussion on hell, a conversation he titled “Hellgate.”
Cameron said he did not expect the controversy and was surprised that the sharpest criticism came from “his own team” in the church, not from atheists.
With the help of Christian apologist Wes Huff, Cameron gathered Gavin Ortlund, Dan Paterson, Chris Date, and Paul Copan for a two-and-a-half-hour theological discussion centered on the eternality of hell.
“Hellgate” was birthed out of a father-son conversation between Cameron and his son, James, on a podcast episode released Dec. 6, 2025.
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During the episode, James asked honest questions about whether hell means eternal conscious torment or annihilationism. Cameron argued Christians should not fear those questions because young people will find answers elsewhere if the church refuses to engage.
Cameron said the debate over how final punishment works is historic and legitimate, not heresy, and that the church needs to model careful Bible study and respectful disagreement. “Hellgate” aimed to help believers understand why they believe what they believe and to better respond to skeptics who struggle with the justice of eternal torment.
He also said it was harder to get traditionalists to publicly defend their position, even when they were willing to criticize, while conditionalists were more eager to discuss the topic because they have often been labeled heretics.
Cameron stressed that secondary issues should not fracture Christian unity, but they matter pastorally because many non-believers see hell as a major obstacle to faith.
“I really caught hell for this one and I didn’t expect to get torched the way I did by guys on my own team,” Cameron told ChurchLeaders. “What I realized is that when you’re a dad and you have children and you want them to believe the gospel and you want them to believe the Bible, we would be foolish to think that they don’t have questions.”
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“We can’t be afraid of those questions because if we’re afraid of the questions, guess who’s not afraid of them? Siri, Google, Grok, ChatGPT,” the actor and evangelist said. Cameron continued:
I mean, there’s lots of people who will answer your children’s questions for you. So, when church leaders say things like, “Hey, don’t question the topic of hell or don’t question what the Bible says about marriage or some other controversial topic—just believe what I tell you or, you know, you’re a bad person or you’re a heretic,” you’re going to send those young people right out the door of the church and they’re going to go find somebody who will actually talk with them and engage.
