I just finished Alberta's "American Carnage"; a very readable history of the so-called Republican Civil War between 2012 and 2018. He does a good job of humanizing some of them: John Boehner, Paul Ryan and Mario Rubio mostly.
Regarding the hell thing: Jesus himself never mentioned hell except metaphorically as "gehanna"; the constantly burning trash dump in Jerusalem. I'd really recommend this documentary:
The key point is that if God condemns souls to eternal torment then one of two things must be true:
1. God's mercy is not infinite. He's not cool like your dad when you dented the fender of his car as a teen.
2. God has no choice in the decision; he is not omnipotent.
For further down this rabbit hole, try Elaine Pagel's books:"Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation" and "The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics". Hell and Revelations were basically a scare tactic of the early church.