172. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? Faith, History & Power with Daryll Bryant

There's a claim Craig keeps seeing on Facebook.

America is a Christian nation.

Sometimes it comes from someone he follows. Sometimes it's a post that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. Either way, Craig finds himself doing the same thing: opening the comments and asking people to prove it.

What makes America a Christian nation? Where does the Constitution say that? And what do we mean when we use the word Christian to describe a government?

Then Daryll Bryant sends Craig an article titled America Is Not a Christian Nation.

Craig reads it and knows they need to talk.

Daryll isn't arguing that Christianity had nothing to do with America's founding. He's making a distinction that often gets lost in the argument: a nation founded by Christians is not necessarily a nation founded as Christian.

In this episode of The Bad Roman Podcast, Craig and Daryll examine that distinction through American history, the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, religious freedom, and the Treaty of Tripoli. Their conversation also takes them back to the early church, Rome, Constantine, and the question of why Christians continue looking to political power for protection.

But the episode opens somewhere else.

Daryll is talking about the Christians in Acts who were accused of proclaiming another king instead of Caesar.

Then he imagines someone telling those early believers that they could follow Jesus and still devote themselves to making Rome great again.

The comparison is funny because it's familiar.

It's uncomfortable for the same reason.

What if the problem isn't that America has stopped being Christian? What if we've confused being Christian with making America something it was never called to be?

Founded by Christians. Founded as Christian. What's the Difference?

Daryll grew up in a conservative Christian environment in Colorado Springs. His family was politically involved. He attended Christian school, participated in Christian leadership and apologetics programs, and eventually started his own ministry.

For years, politics and Christianity seemed to fit together.

Then he began pulling at some of the assumptions he'd inherited.

Reading Pagan Christianity? by Frank Viola and George Barna led him to reconsider church traditions. Later, a friend in his Bible study challenged his understanding of voting by pointing him toward 1 Samuel 8.

Daryll remembers thinking the man was crazy.

At the time, he believed Christians needed to vote to maintain political protection and influence. But the passage about Israel demanding a king made him question what he was asking government to provide.

The last time he voted, he says, was in 2016.

That background matters because Daryll isn't approaching the founding of America as someone who has always rejected conservative Christianity or dismissed the country's religious history. Much of that history shaped his own understanding of the world.

He still believes Christianity played a significant role in America's founding.

He just doesn't think that settles the question.

In his article, Daryll distinguishes between the beliefs of people living in a country and the structure of the government those people create.

It's one thing to say many founders professed Christianity.

It's another to say the government they established was itself Christian.

Craig wants to know where the evidence leads.

What Does the Constitution Actually Establish?

Craig points out how often American founding documents are used as evidence that the United States was meant to be Christian.

A reference to God or the Creator becomes proof of a Christian government. A founder's religious beliefs become evidence of a national religious identity.

But how much do those details actually establish?

Daryll and Craig discuss the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the religious diversity of the founding era.

They also return to something central to the American constitutional system: religious freedom.

The Constitution prohibits religious tests for federal office. The First Amendment protects religious exercise while restricting federal establishment of religion.

Those protections raise a question that's easy to miss when Christianity and American identity are treated as interchangeable.

If religious freedom protects people whose beliefs differ from Christianity, what does that tell us about the government's relationship to religion?

Daryll's answer is not that American history was free of Christian influence. It's that influence and constitutional establishment are different things.

That distinction allows for a more complicated account of the founding—one in which Christian convictions mattered, but didn't provide the only framework the founders used.

America Looked to Athens and Rome, Too

One passage from Daryll's article catches Craig's attention.

Daryll argues that the founders' political thinking wasn't confined to Jerusalem. It also looked toward Athens and Rome.

The American republic drew from a wider intellectual inheritance, including Greek and Roman political traditions, English constitutional thought, and Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke.

Even familiar political words (senate, republic, capitol) reflect connections to the ancient world.

Craig finds the Roman influence particularly interesting.

The first Christians lived under Roman authority. They didn't treat Rome as an extension of the Kingdom of God. They proclaimed Jesus as Lord in a world that already had emperors, rulers, and established religious institutions.

So what should Christians make of a modern nation whose political structures draw partly from that same Roman inheritance?

Craig sees a contradiction in calling America Christian while placing so much confidence in institutions of worldly government.

Daryll sees a recurring problem: Christians taking traditions, institutions, and political arrangements that aren't inherently Christian and giving them Christian meaning.

The conversation calls that blending syncretism.

It's a word that comes up repeatedly, especially when the discussion turns from America's founding to the history of the church.

Another King, Not a Better Caesar

Daryll brings the conversation back to Jesus standing before Pilate.

He challenges the way Christians sometimes understand Jesus' declaration that His Kingdom is not of this world. Daryll interprets it not as a promise that Christ's Kingdom is irrelevant to earthly life, but as a declaration that His authority doesn't operate according to Rome's rules.

Then he points to Acts 17, where followers of Jesus are accused of proclaiming another king.

Their message wasn't simply that Jesus could offer private spiritual comfort while Caesar continued to receive their ultimate allegiance.

It was a claim about kingship.

Daryll makes the contrast memorable by imagining an early Christian saying that Jesus could save people while they worked to make Rome great again.

As he puts it, Scripture doesn't instruct Christians to make pagan nations great again.

Craig agrees, pointing to the history of the early church and the absence of a command to build Christ's Kingdom by securing the power of the Roman state.

It's the moment that opens this episode.

And it reframes the whole discussion.

If Jesus is King, why would Christians need their nation to be Christian before they could faithfully follow Him?

Constantine, the Church, and the Cost of Political Power

The discussion of Rome leads Craig to ask Daryll about Constantine.

Craig has often understood Constantine as a turning point when the church's relationship with imperial authority changed. Daryll agrees that the emperor matters, but believes some troubling developments began earlier.

He points to the growth of professional clergy and church hierarchies, arguing that institutional status, salaries, and competition for authority changed how church leadership worked.

It's a provocative interpretation, and the two recognize that the subject deserves a conversation of its own.

They also discuss Constantine's association of Christian symbols with imperial power and the historical blending of religious and political traditions.

Craig draws a parallel to American Christianity today.

He worries that political movements haven't merely persuaded Christians to support particular policies. They've drawn Christians into treating the state as an instrument of their faith—and sometimes as the institution they ultimately trust.

The parallel isn't exact, and centuries of church history can't be reduced to a single turning point.

But the question is worth asking.

When political rulers welcome Christianity into their institutions, is the church gaining power?

Or is political power gaining the church?

The Treaty of Tripoli: What Did the United States Say About Religion?

Later, Craig returns to a passage of Daryll's article that surprised him: the Treaty of Tripoli.

The English-language text of the treaty, ratified by the United States in 1797, includes a declaration that the American government was not founded on the Christian religion.

It's an arresting sentence, especially in a country where the opposite claim is often presented as obvious.

But the document has a complicated history.

The treaty was negotiated during George Washington's administration and ratified during John Adams's presidency. The surviving Arabic text doesn't contain a direct equivalent of the famous passage in the English version.

Craig and Daryll discuss that difference, and Daryll acknowledges that he doesn't know exactly why the texts differ.

The uncertainty is part of the story.

The Treaty of Tripoli deserves attention, but it shouldn't be treated as a shortcut around the wider historical record. Neither should the religious commitments of individual founders be treated as a shortcut to establishing the country's constitutional identity.

If we're going to argue about what America was founded to be, we need to examine more than the passages that support what we already believe.

That means reading carefully, understanding context, and being willing to say when we don't know.

Questioning America Isn't Hating Americans

Toward the end of the conversation, Craig addresses an accusation familiar to people who question American nationalism.

If you don't like America, why don't you leave?

Craig rejects the idea that criticizing a government means hating the people who live under it.

He distinguishes his opposition to political institutions from his responsibility to love his neighbors.

Jesus teaches His followers to love their neighbors and their enemies. That calling doesn't disappear because someone lives in a country whose government we oppose.

Daryll agrees.

For both men, the issue isn't whether someone can appreciate the place they live or recognize meaningful freedoms within it.

It's whether appreciation becomes allegiance, and whether Christians begin excusing political power because it speaks in the language of their faith.

The challenge applies beyond any one country or political party.

If our objection is to coercion, domination, and the elevation of earthly rulers, those concerns shouldn't disappear when the ruler shares our preferred politics.

A Republic Is Not the Kingdom

By the end, Craig and Daryll haven't tried to resolve every dispute about the Founding Fathers.

They've asked listeners to consider a distinction that changes the conversation.

America may have been deeply influenced by Christianity. Its founders may have drawn on biblical language and Christian moral traditions.

But that doesn't make its government the Kingdom of God.

And perhaps Christians don't need to prove that it does.

Daryll has built his writing around the conviction that believers should examine inherited assumptions for themselves. Craig has built The Bad Roman Project around a similar challenge: what happens when we begin measuring politics, institutions, and national loyalties against the teachings of Jesus?

The answer won't necessarily make us better Republicans or Democrats.

It may make us question why those identities have been allowed to define so much of what it means to be Christian.

America has a government.

Christians confess a King.

Knowing the difference might be more important than winning another argument about the founders.

Not left. Not right. Just following Jesus.

About the Guest

Daryll Bryant | REAL Xians

Daryll Bryant writes about Scripture, church traditions, political allegiance, and what it means to follow Jesus apart from inherited religious and institutional assumptions.

His REAL Xians project includes essays, theological reflections, and resources for Christians reconsidering the relationship between faith, church, and government.

He also discusses his Unbound community, which he is developing as a place to ask difficult questions, study, and learn with others.

🤝 Connect with Daryll 🤝

• Read America Is Not a Christian Nation

• REAL Xians on Substack

• REAL Xians website

• Unbound on Skool

Highlights & Takeaways

• Founded by Christians isn't the same as founded as a Christian nation. Daryll examines the difference between the beliefs of the founding generation and the constitutional system they established.

• America's political ideas came from more than one tradition. John Locke, the Enlightenment, Greece, and Rome all enter the discussion alongside Christianity.

• Religious freedom complicates the Christian nation claim. Craig asks what the Constitution's protections mean for believers and nonbelievers alike.

• 1 Samuel 8 changed Daryll's understanding of voting. He describes moving from conservative political involvement toward questioning dependence on earthly rulers.

• The earliest Christians proclaimed another King. Acts 17 and Jesus before Pilate provide a theological contrast to modern nationalism.

• Institutional Christianity and political power have a long history. Craig and Daryll examine Constantine, paid clergy, and their concerns about church-state entanglement.

• The Treaty of Tripoli deserves historical care. Its English wording is significant, but its diplomatic and translation history matters.

• Criticizing government isn't the same as hating people. Craig closes by returning to Jesus' command to love neighbors and enemies.

Listen

Notice the difference between Craig's questions about historical evidence and Daryll's questions about Christian allegiance.

Where does the conversation move from What did the founders intend? to What should followers of Jesus intend?

Reflect

When you've heard someone describe America as a Christian nation, what did you understand them to mean?

A country with Christian citizens? A society shaped by Christian morality? A government established to promote Christianity?

Have you ever treated those as the same thing?

And when you think about political power, what are you hoping it will protect or provide that you don't believe the church—or the people of God—can live out without it?

Read

Read Article VI and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Then read 1 Samuel 8, John 18:33–38, and Acts 17:1–9.

The documents and passages aren't addressing identical questions. That's part of the point.

Ask what each one actually says before deciding what it proves.

For the historical argument behind this episode, read Daryll's essay, America Is Not a Christian Nation.

Practice

Choose one claim about the American founding you've heard repeated often.

Find the original document people use to support it. Read the surrounding passage. Learn when it was written and who wrote it.

Then ask someone who reaches a different conclusion how they interpret the same evidence.

You don't have to agree.

But you can refuse to let a familiar slogan do all your thinking for you.

Episode Timestamps

(01:00) Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?

• Craig introduces Daryll Bryant

• The social media claim that sparked the conversation

• Why Daryll wrote his article

(02:49) Christianity and the American Founders

• Different religious traditions in early America

• Ministers and the independence movement

• Christian influence versus a Christian government

(07:27) Daryll's Background and Changing Beliefs

• Conservative Christianity and political involvement

• Christian apologetics and church experience

• Beginning to disentangle faith from institutions

(11:00) 1 Samuel 8, Voting, and Another King

• A Bible study challenge that changed Daryll's thinking

• Why he stopped voting

• Looking to government for protection and provision

(18:13) Can Human Government Provide What Christians Seek?

• Kings, presidents, democracy, and republics

• Voting and the question of political allegiance

• Craig's concerns about participation in government

(21:24) Religious Freedom and the Founding Documents

• God, nature, and the language of the founders

• Constitutional protections for different beliefs

• Craig asks for evidence of a Christian nation

(23:55) Did the Constitution Establish Christianity?

• The Declaration of Independence and Constitution

• Daryll distinguishes founders' beliefs from federal institutions

• Religious qualifications and state governments

(31:04) Jefferson, John Locke, and Natural Rights

• Enlightenment ideas in the American founding

• Property, liberty, and natural law

• The difference between political philosophy and Scripture

(36:22) Christianity, the Ten Commandments, and Political Myth

• Religious differences among the founders

• Claims that American law rests on the Ten Commandments

• Craig questions political religious symbolism

(37:40) Athens, Rome, and America's Political Inheritance

• Roman and Greek influences

• The early church's relationship with empire

• Why Craig compares America to Rome

(38:58) Jesus, Pilate, and Another King

• The Kingdom of God and Roman authority

• Daryll's interpretation of “not of this world”

• Acts 17 and the allegiance of early Christians

(45:31) Constantine, Paid Clergy, and Church Power

• Did institutional problems begin before Constantine?

• Daryll's concerns about professional clergy

• Christianity's growing relationship with empire

(49:46) Christian Nationalism and the Institutional Church

• Craig draws parallels to the present

• Political movements and religious cooperation

• When faith becomes entangled with state power

(54:35) The Treaty of Tripoli

• The English-language treaty statement

• The difference between the English and Arabic texts

• Questions about how the treaty should be interpreted

(57:41) Does Questioning Government Mean Hating America?

• Craig separates love of people from loyalty to institutions

• Criticism of government and love of neighbor

• Government power across national boundaries

(1:03:27) REAL Xians and the Unbound Community

• Daryll's community and ongoing work

• Studying Scripture and questioning inherited assumptions

• Where to read more and connect

Continue the Conversation

Episode 153 — Star-Spangled Jesus: Waking up From Christian Nationalism with April Ajoy

April's experience offers a personal perspective on how Christian nationalism can become part of someone's understanding of faith—and what happens when they begin to question it.

Episode 164 — Breaking Free from Political Christianity: Rediscovering the Gospel Beyond Partisan Faith with Brian Drinkwine

Brian explores Christian nationalism, Constantine, political power, and the difference between the politics of empire and the way of Jesus.

Episode 170 — Allegiance to Jesus: Why Tyler Boyd Stopped Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

Tyler asks a related question about the words Christians use to promise loyalty—and what those promises mean when they already confess Jesus as King.

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The Bad Roman Project is a place to ask hard questions about government, Christianity, and the allegiances we sometimes accept without examining.

Want to keep it going? Consider supporting the project through onetime or on going donations. Everything beyond production costs supports local charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

You can also support the project by trying Bad Roman Salsa, connecting on social media, or simply sharing an episode with a friend! No King but Jesus!

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171. From ICE to Flock: Safety, Surveillance & Accountability with Jason Bassler

There is a moment about eight minutes into this conversation when Craig is trying to remember George Floyd’s name.

The name comes back, and so does the reason he was trying to remember it.

Craig used to be a “back the blue” guy. When someone was hurt or killed by police, he could reach for the explanation a lot of people still use now:

“If they would’ve just obeyed.”

He says it never sat completely right with him, but George Floyd was the moment when that answer stopped working.

“I can’t defend this all the time anymore,” Craig remembers thinking.

That history hangs over the rest of this episode with Jason Bassler, co-founder of The Free Thought Project. Because now Craig hears a similar argument being made about ICE.

They broke the law.

They should have complied.

The agents are keeping us safe.

Craig and Jason spend the first half of the episode pushing on where that reasoning leads when the people enforcing the law are masked, heavily armed, increasingly difficult to identify, and backed by a federal government with extraordinary power over the person standing in front of them.

Then, about halfway through, Craig changes the subject.

Sort of.

He starts talking about cameras.

The Mask Is the Point

The episode opens with a preview from later in the conversation.

Jason is talking about masked federal agents and the strange reversal they create.

The citizen can be stopped. Detained. Handcuffed. Transported. Required to identify themselves.

The person doing all of that on behalf of the government may remain anonymous.

Jason puts it this way:

“The more coercive power the state possesses, the more visible and accountable the person exercising it should be.”

He also acknowledges the obvious argument on the other side. Agents may be worried about being identified, threatened, doxxed, or having their families targeted.

That concern does not disappear just because someone works for the government.

But neither does the problem Jason is pointing to.

If someone has the legal authority to put you in handcuffs, how much anonymity should come with that authority?

And if something goes wrong, who exactly are you supposed to hold accountable?

Craig is much less sympathetic to the masks than Jason is. To him, scrutiny comes with choosing a job that gives you coercive power over other people.

That argument leads naturally into body cameras, and then into something that sounds like it belongs in dystopian fiction but does not: electrically shocking gloves being acquired for immigration enforcement.

Jason and Craig talk about the language surrounding them, particularly the idea that they are a “de-escalation” tool, and compare that promise with what happened after Tasers became common in policing.

A tool arrives as an alternative to something worse.

Then it becomes normal.

Then it gets used for things that would never have justified introducing it in the first place.

That possibility (mission creep) keeps showing up throughout the episode.

Not only with weapons.

With power itself.

Jason asks the people who support these powers under the current administration to imagine them surviving into the next one.

Trump will leave office.

ICE will still exist.

The surveillance infrastructure will still exist.

The authorities that people defend today do not vanish when their preferred president does.

Craig’s description is simpler: The Leviathan keeps growing.

“Is Legality Morality?”

Eventually the immigration conversation gets stripped down to four words.

Jason asks: “Is legality morality?”

That question does more work than arguing over immigration statistics for another hour.

A person can violate an immigration law.

That tells you something about their legal status.

It does not tell you everything about how another human being should treat them.

Jason says the debate has become so partisan that it is increasingly easy to lose “the human element.”

Craig takes that thought somewhere explicitly Christian.

He says he chooses to look at these questions through the teachings of Jesus because that is where he has placed his allegiance.

For him, that makes one fact impossible to erase with a political label:

The person being detained is still made in the image of God.

The person in handcuffs is still made in the image of God.

Even the person you believe entered the country illegally is still made in the image of God.

Craig is not especially gentle about this part of the conversation.

He tells Christians who celebrate people being harmed or killed to go back and read the red words of the Bible. It moves the argument away from, “Which immigration policy is correct?” and toward something harder to outsource to a politician:

What does your allegiance to Jesus require you to see in the person standing on the other side of the issue?

Then Craig Started Seeing Flock Cameras Everywhere

Craig’s interest in Flock is recent. He had heard people talking about the cameras without paying much attention. Then he started noticing them around town.

Once he knew what he was looking for, they seemed to be everywhere.

That led him into an argument in a local Facebook group, where someone gave him a version of an argument many people make when surveillance comes up:

You already carry a smartphone.

You probably use apps that collect your location.

Maybe you have a Ring camera on your house.

So why suddenly care about a camera reading license plates on a public road?

Jason answer is not that phones are private, rather the distinction is control.

He can chose to own the phone. He can turn it off. He can disable location services. He can leave it at home.

He did not choose the roadside camera.

That still does not settle the Flock debate. Cities do not hold a referendum every time they install a piece of public infrastructure.

But it gets closer to what actually bothers Jason.

It is not simply that a camera can see a license plate that was already visible from the road.

It is what happens after the camera sees it.

Where were you yesterday?

Where were you last week?

Which cameras saw your vehicle?

Can those observations be searched together?

Who gets access?

How long does the information remain useful?

Craig describes noticing one near his own neighborhood and realizing nobody had ever asked him what he thought about that system being there.

That discovery seems to have bothered him almost as much as the technology itself.

The cameras had become ordinary before he had really noticed them.

Safety Keeps Showing Up

This is where the two halves of the episode meet.

Both ICE and Flock are defended in the name of safety.

Let’s look at the facts: Governments really do investigate crimes. Police really do recover stolen vehicles. Immigration policy raises real questions that do not disappear because enforcement can be abusive.

The more interesting problem is what the word safety can make people stop asking.

Jason sees it as one of the easiest ways to normalize new authority.

First you establish the threat. Then you introduce the tool. Then questioning the tool begins to sound like questioning whether the threat matters.

Craig and Jason do not buy that logic.

You can want stolen vehicles recovered and still ask how a surveillance network operates.

You can believe a country may enforce immigration laws and still ask what agents should be allowed to do to another human being.

You can want officers to be safe and still ask whether officers exercising extraordinary power should be identifiable.

Those things can exist in the same thought.

The key is refusing to stop thinking once someone says, “This keeps you safe.”

Craig Invents the Gray Pill

For an episode that spends this much time on ICE, surveillance, Tasers, shock gloves, data collection, police encounters, and political power, it ends in a surprisingly hopeful place.

The Free Thought Project often tries to end difficult episodes with a “white pill,” something that gives people a reason not to surrender to despair after spending an hour looking at ugly things.

Craig says he struggles with that, and some days he feels black-pilled.

Then he sees people pushing back against something, asking better questions, showing up at city council meetings, or refusing to accept an explanation that used to work. And thinks maybe things are getting better.

So Craig decides he is something else.

A gray pill.

A little black.

A little white.

Aware of how bad things can get without concluding that nothing can change.

Jason likes it.

He is particularly hopeful about younger people, not because he thinks they have everything figured out, but because they grew up knowing how to find information that previous generations often depended on institutions to provide.

Jason’s generation came of age in what gets called the information age.

His hope is that the next one turns all of that information into something else:

an age of accountability.

Not another revolution.

He uses a different word.

Evolution.

Keep exposing things.

Keep asking questions.

Keep putting information somewhere people can find it.

Plant ideas even when it seems like nobody is listening.

Craig has his own name for those people who are listening quietly.

The remnant.

People who may never comment.

They may not argue online.

They may never start a podcast.

But something they hear today may make an old answer stop working tomorrow.

Craig knows that can happen.

It happened to him.

🤝 Connect with Jason Bassler

• Jason’s Personal Links

• Police the Police Links

• Free Thought Project Links

Highlights & Take Aways:

• Jason argues that the more coercive power the government gives someone, the more visible and accountable that person should be, not less.

• Powers created under a politician you trust do not disappear when someone you distrust takes office.

• Body cameras may increase accountability; new enforcement tools like shock gloves also raise the question of how quickly an exceptional tool can become an ordinary one.

• “Is legality morality?” becomes the simplest question in the immigration discussion. Breaking a law and determining how a human being should be treated are not the same decision.

• Political and legal labels do not erase the image of God in another person.

• A smartphone and a roadside surveillance camera can both collect information, but the distinction in choice: one can be turned off, location services disable, or leave it behind, the other can not.

• Being visible in public is not necessarily the same thing as having your movements recorded, stored, combined, and made searchable later.

• “Nothing to hide” does not answer who should have access to surveillance data, how it can be used, or what happens when the information is wrong.

• “Gray pill” is an attempt to reject both denial and despair: acknowledge what is going wrong without becoming convinced that nothing can change.

• Can the information age can become an age of accountability, not through another political revolution, but by people continuing to document, question, learn, and pass those ideas forward?

Listen

For the places where the same argument reappears in different clothes.

“They should have obeyed.”

“The agents need to be protected.”

“If you have nothing to hide, why do you care?”

“You already carry a smartphone.”

Craig and Jason are talking about very different technologies and situations, but much of the episode turns on what happens when the promise of safety becomes the point where questioning authority is supposed to stop.

Reflect

Would you support the same government power if someone you deeply distrusted controlled it?

When you hear that something is legal, how much moral work does that fact do for you?

And when a political label (illegal immigrant, criminal, protester, cop, federal agent) appears first, how easily does the human being underneath it disappear?

Read

Read Genesis 1:26–27 alongside Craig’s insistence that the person being detained remains made in the image of God.

Then read Matthew 5:43–48 and consider whether Jesus leaves Christians room to reserve concern for human dignity only for people they believe deserve it.

For the surveillance side of the conversation, read the Supreme Court’s Chatrie v. United States decision. The case concerns government access to Google location-history data rather than Flock cameras specifically, but it raises a related question about what changes when individual pieces of location information can be gathered together and searched.

Practice

The next time someone defends a government power because it is being used for a purpose you support, change one variable:

Give that same power to someone you do not trust.

Would you still want them to have it?

Then look locally.

If your community uses automatic license plate readers or similar surveillance technology, find the actual policy rather than relying on what supporters or critics say about it.

Who can search the system?

What gets stored?

How long is it kept?

Who else can access it?

You do not have to know your conclusion before you start asking questions.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Preview: Power & Accountability

• coercive government power

• masked agents

• why greater authority should mean greater accountability

(00:38) ICE, Flock & the Surveillance State

• Craig sets up the episode

• ICE and Flock as connected questions about power

• what happens when authority grows faster than accountability

(01:06) Jason Bassler Returns

• nearly three years since Jason’s first Bad Roman appearance

• The Free Thought Project

• where the conversation is headed

(08:00) Craig’s “Back the Blue” Turning Point

• “they should have just obeyed”

• George Floyd

• when Craig could no longer automatically defend police actions

(17:30) Why the Masks Matter

• anonymous federal agents

• identifying citizens while concealing government identities

• safety for agents versus accountability to the public

(18:57) What Happens When Power Changes Hands?

• authorities that survive presidential administrations

• would you trust the same power under someone you oppose?

• the Leviathan keeps growing

(20:37) Body Cameras, Shock Gloves & Mission Creep

• body cameras as a possible accountability measure

• electric shock gloves

• how extraordinary tools can become ordinary enforcement

(26:23) “Is Legality Morality?”

• immigration and the human element

• whether breaking a law settles the moral question

• what political labels can make us stop seeing

(29:35) Craig Brings It Back to Jesus

• allegiance to Jesus

• the image of God

• what Christians should see before the political label

(31:09) From ICE to Flock Cameras

• the police state and the surveillance state

• Craig starts noticing cameras around his own town

• a local Facebook argument over surveillance

(34:32) Phones, Consent & Location Privacy

• choosing to carry a smartphone

• turning location services off

• what makes roadside surveillance different

(40:00) “Nothing to Hide”

• “nothing to hide, nothing to fear”

• public resistance to surveillance

• who should have to justify expanded monitoring

(41:09) False Alerts & Real Consequences

• automatic license-plate reads

• inaccurate alerts

• what can happen when bad data enters a police encounter

(48:23) The Gray Pill

• black pill versus white pill

• Craig finds a third category

• seeing real problems without surrendering to despair

(55:10) From Information to Accountability

• younger generations and institutional skepticism

• the information age

• Jason’s hope for an age of accountability

(57:50) Planting Seeds for the Remnant

• podcasts, articles, and ideas that remain after us

• the quiet people who are still listening

• knowing information versus knowing how to find it

Everything beyond production costs supports local charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

No King but Jesus.

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170. Allegiance to Jesus: Why Tyler Boyd Stopped Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

For years, Tyler Boyd said the Pledge of Allegiance like most people around him. Then one word started bothering him: Indivisible.

So he did something small. He kept saying the pledge, but when everyone reached that word, Tyler stayed quiet. That tiny silence eventually opened a much bigger question.

If Christians already confess Jesus as King, what exactly are we promising when we pledge allegiance to a nation?

Tyler, a writer at The Christian Exile, joins Craig to talk through the argument behind his article The Case Against Christians Saying the Pledge of Allegiance. It is not a conversation about hating America, disrespecting veterans, or creating a new purity test for Christians.

It is about taking a familiar sentence seriously.

The Word He Stopped Saying

Tyler did not grow up suspicious of patriotism.

He describes his younger self as a “principled Republican.” Christianity came first, but conservative politics still made sense to him. Ron Paul helped him question some of the positions he had inherited, and two books sitting on his father’s shelf pushed the questions further.

One was David Lipscomb’s On Civil Government. The other argued from a much more nationalist direction. Tyler read them side by side.

Then he started looking differently at the pledge.

At first, “indivisible” was the problem.

“I would just be quiet when it got to that word indivisible.” — Tyler Boyd, around 09:02

What if a country stops protecting the very liberty and justice named in the pledge? Is a Christian really prepared to promise that the nation must remain indivisible no matter what it becomes?

Eventually Tyler’s discomfort moved beyond a single word. Maybe the problem was not which parts of the pledge he could say. Maybe the question was why a Christian was pledging national allegiance at all.

“I Pledge” Is a Bigger Sentence Than It Sounds

The pledge begins with two words most of us can say without thinking: I pledge.

Tyler wants Christians to slow down there.

A pledge is a promise. An oath. A declaration of loyalty.

Jesus’ words about oaths in Matthew 5 have been interpreted in different ways by Christians, and Tyler does not pretend that debate is settled. His narrower point is easier: if Christians are going to make a pledge, it should not be automatic. We should mean what we say.

Craig knows how uncomfortable that can become in public. He remembers deciding not to participate during the patriotic ceremony at a Memphis Grizzlies game. Sitting while nearly everyone else stood brought the pressure of the crowd into focus quickly. Tyler has felt a similar tension at Chamber of Commerce events.

Tyler still stands and removes his hat as an act of respect. He simply stops before putting his hand over his heart or reciting the pledge. That distinction matters to him. Refusing allegiance does not require contempt.

Can You Respect a Government Without Giving It Your Allegiance?

Romans 13 enters the conversation, as it tends to do whenever Christians start talking about government.

Tyler points to Paul’s language about taxes, respect, and honor. Craig wonders how that passage should be read alongside everything else Christians are told about earthly power. Tyler argues that Christians should be able to disagree with rulers, political parties, and governments without becoming cruel toward the people involved. That leaves an uncomfortable middle ground.

How do you show respect without endorsing everything a government does? How do you obey where obedience is appropriate without turning obedience into loyalty? How do you refuse a pledge without turning the refusal itself into another badge of superiority?

Those questions may be harder than simply choosing whether to stand or sit.

What If “Faith” Includes Allegiance?

That distinction between respect, obedience, and loyalty leads the conversation into a deeper question: What does Christian faith itself ask of us?

Craig and Tyler turn to the Greek word pistis, often translated as “faith.” Tyler argues that modern Christians sometimes hear “faith” mainly as believing that something is true. But biblical faith, he says, carries a stronger sense of faithfulness, loyalty, and lived commitment.

His simple example is marriage. 

Being faithful to your spouse does not mean believing your spouse exists. It means loyalty. Tyler points listeners toward Matthew Bates’ Salvation by Allegiance Alone, which explores this understanding of pistis in much greater depth.

When “allegiance” is simply a form of loyalty aimed at a ruler, nation, government, or cause, the pledge question gets harder. If faith in Jesus includes loyalty to Jesus, what does it mean to stand and formally pledge loyalty somewhere else?

“There Is Another King, Jesus”

There is some language Christians use so often they have lost the political edge of their history.

Jesus is Lord.

Jesus Christ.

King Jesus.

Tyler points to Acts 17, where Christians are accused of announcing “another king, Jesus.”

His argument is that the accusation was not entirely a misunderstanding. Christians were not trying to build another Roman-style government or organize an armed revolt, but they really were proclaiming another ruler: Jesus.

That is the heart of Bad Roman’s familiar line, No King but Christ. It does not mean Christians stop living among governments. But rather it raises the question of who gets the final claim on our loyalty.

“There is another king, and his name is Jesus.” — Tyler Boyd, around 30:26

Not Every Loyalty Is the Same

As Tyler makes clear, Christians clearly have loyalties besides their loyalty to God. A husband can be faithful to his wife. A worker can be loyal to an employer. Tyler can remain very faithful to Tennessee football and Craig to Dallas football (win or lose). None of those loyalties automatically compete with Christ. In fact, faithfulness to other people can sometimes become an expression of faithfulness to God.

But Tyler argues that some loyalties are different. If he introduced his wife to a girlfriend and explained that everything was fine because his wife still ranked first, nobody would call that a properly ordered marriage. Some commitments are exclusive. Some commitments require sacrificing their alternatives. That leads Tyler to the real question beneath the pledge:

“Allegiance to one’s country, which category does that fit in?” — Tyler Boyd, around 35:54

Is national allegiance like loving your spouse, neighbor, or employer, a secondary loyalty that can sit beneath Christ? Or does an earthly kingdom make a competing claim to rule?

Tyler later expanded this distinction in Why Christians Keep Talking Past Each Other About Patriotism, because people on both sides often agree that Jesus comes first while disagreeing completely about what that means for patriotism.

The Lamb, the Beast, and Competing Kingdoms

Tyler’s answer to the allegiance problem comes from the way he reads earthly kingdoms across Scripture. He moves from Israel’s relationship with surrounding nations to Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, Paul’s language about rulers and authorities, and the beasts of Revelation.

Craig and Tyler do not pretend every passage is simple. They also do not think Romans 13 should be allowed to stand alone as though the rest of Scripture has nothing to say about power. For Tyler, Revelation is especially important because Christians are not told to reform Babylon by becoming more loyal to it. They are told to come out.

Whether you agree with Tyler’s reading or not, his larger challenge is worth hearing clearly:

When Christians say Jesus is Lord, is that merely a statement about personal spirituality, or is it a claim about who actually rules?

Polycarp Had an Easy Way Out

The conversation becomes less theoretical when Craig and Tyler turn to the early Christian martyrs.

Tyler is careful here. He does not treat early Christian writers as Scripture. They could be wrong. But they lived much closer to the world of the apostles, and their choices show how some of the earliest Christians understood loyalty to Christ.

Polycarp is the clearest example. According to The Martyrdom of Polycarp, Roman officials offered him a way out: swear by Caesar.

He refused.

The account also says that when the men came to arrest him, Polycarp had food brought out for them before they carried him away. That detail may be just as challenging as the refusal itself. Polycarp would not give Caesar what he believed belonged to Christ. He also fed the people taking him to his death. No violent revolution. No hatred of his captors. No oath.

Craig and Tyler also discuss Speratus and the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, another early account involving Christians refusing loyalty to Caesar. Tyler acknowledges that ancient Roman loyalty rituals are not a perfect one-to-one comparison with an American pledge before a basketball game.

The circumstances are different, but the question they raise remains difficult: What did these Christians believe they could give Caesar, and what did they believe belonged only to Christ?

Staying in the Church When You Disagree

Tyler brings the conversation back into ordinary church life. Finding a congregation without nationalism, patriotic worship, or political disagreement can be hard (as Craig knows). But, Tyler’s response is not: leave everybody who disagrees with you. Quite the opposite.

He talks about worshiping that very morning with people who may not share all of his conclusions. He even thanked the song leader for keeping the service centered on Christ rather than turning the Sunday after the Fourth of July into a patriotic service. Then they kept talking. Tyler believes churches need Christians willing to stay in relationship, study Scripture, disagree honestly, and encourage one another. 

That might be one of the most useful ways to carry this episode forward. Not by turning the pledge into another test of who counts as a real Christian. Not by beating somebody over the head with a new conclusion. Ask the question. Study together. Listen together. Read the sources together. Be together in Christ on a team for a political party. Then decide whether the words you say match the King you claim to follow.

🤝Connect with Tyler Boyd🤝

• The Christian Exile

• Tyler Boyd’s articles

• The Case Against Christians Saying the Pledge of Allegiance

• Why Christians Keep Talking Past Each Other About Patriotism

• How the Early Church Approached Politics

Highlights & Takeaways

• Saying a pledge by habit is different from examining what the words actually promise

• Tyler’s first break with the pledge began with one word: “indivisible”

• Respect for governing authorities and allegiance to them are not necessarily the same thing

• The biblical idea of pistis raises questions about faith as loyalty, faithfulness, and allegiance (not mere belief)

• “Jesus is Lord” was more than a private religious phrase in the Roman world

• Not every secondary loyalty competes with Christ; the central debate is whether national allegiance does

• Early Christian martyrs provide historical examples of believers honoring rulers while refusing oaths to Caesar

• Disagreement over patriotism does not have to become another reason for Christians to abandon community or each other

Listen

Notice the moments when Tyler’s argument moves from abstract theology into ordinary life: staying silent on one word of the pledge, standing respectfully without reciting it, comparing national loyalty to marriage, and worshiping beside Christians who disagree with him.

Reflect

When you say you are loyal to Jesus, what do you mean by “loyal”?

Are there promises, rituals, political habits, or cultural traditions you participate in mostly because you have never stopped to examine the words?

Read

Read Matthew 5:33–37, Romans 1:1–5, Acts 17:6–7, Romans 13:1–8, Revelation 18:1–4, and 1 Peter 3:21.

Then read Tyler’s original article and compare his argument with the passages yourself.

Practice

The next time you encounter the Pledge of Allegiance, do not begin by deciding what everybody else should do. Read the words slowly. Write down what you understand “pledge” and “allegiance” to mean. Then ask whether you can say each line truthfully and faithfully before Christ.

Resources Mentioned

• On Civil Government — David Lipscomb

• Salvation by Allegiance Alone — Matthew W. Bates

• The Martyrdom of Polycarp

• Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Allegiance to Jesus and the Pledge

• Tyler Boyd’s article

• early Christian questions

• loyalty to Christ and the state

(06:24) “I Pledge” and the Word “Indivisible”

• pledges as promises and oaths

• Matthew 5

• Tyler’s first hesitation

(11:44) Public Pressure, Respect & Romans 13

• Grizzlies game and social pressure

• standing without pledging

• honor, respect, and love

(18:52) What Does Biblical Faith Mean?

• pistis

• faith versus simple belief

• Salvation by Allegiance Alone

(25:30) Jesus Is Lord — and Caesar Is Not

• Romans 1

• Lord as a ruler’s title

• “another king, Jesus”

(31:04) Can Christians Have Dual Allegiance?

• ordered loyalties

• marriage and faithfulness

• Tennessee football

(36:30) Which Kind of Allegiance Is Patriotism?

• earthly kingdoms as rival authorities

• temptation of Jesus

• Revelation and Babylon

(43:44) What the Early Christians Did

• church before Constantine

• political power and military service

• enemy-love

(49:02) Polycarp, Caesar & the Cost of Refusal

• “swear by Caesar”

• King and Savior

• Scillitan martyrs

(53:24) A Different Kingdom

• loyalty already declared

• baptism as pledge

• invitation rather than coercion

(56:32) Church, Patriotism & Staying in Community

• finding a congregation

• Fourth of July worship

• disagreement without abandonment

• farmer’s market conversations

Everything beyond production costs supports local charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

No King but Jesus.

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Related Blog Post

169. The State vs. the Midwife: Obeying God, Defying Caesar with Brenda "Granny" Smith

The letter said cease and desist.

Brenda Smith got upset for about five minutes. Then she got angry. Then she did something that tells you a lot about the rest of this story:

She wadded it up and threw it in the trash.

Brenda, “Granny” to plenty of people who are not technically her grandchildren, has spent more than 30 years attending births. She believes that work is something God called her to do.

So when the State of Arkansas told her to stop, the question in her mind was not simply whether she might get in trouble.

It was much bigger:

Who gets the final word when the government tells you to stop doing something you believe God told you to do?

That question carries this conversation from home birth and midwifery into Christian anarchy, consent, fear, obedience, and ultimately hope. Because Brenda has seen enough of the state to distrust it. She has also seen enough of God to refuse to fear it.

Before Politics, There Were Babies

Brenda’s story begins far from political theory.

She grew up on a farm where faith was woven into everyday life. Her mother gathered five children around for family devotions. Brenda ran barefoot outside, watched life happen all around her, and learned early not to be afraid of everything that might go wrong.

Birth became personal before it became a calling.

Her first son was born breech in a hospital. Brenda remembers the doctor arriving too late for a C-section and a room filling with people who wanted to witness a vaginal breech birth they had rarely seen.

Years later, a neighbor from the Netherlands asked Brenda to attend her home birth. Brenda went.

Something clicked.

Over time, attending births became more than an interest. It became part of how Brenda understood service.

She does not argue that everybody should make the same birth choices. Early in the episode, she tells parents to learn, ask questions, interview caregivers, understand their own values, and make informed decisions.

Her point is not that she should choose for a mother. It is almost the opposite. The mother should be allowed to choose, but to do they need to know all their options. Including those that don't center on hospitals.

When “You Can’t” Meets “I’m Called”

Years into Brenda’s work, a friend called her crying.

According to Brenda, rules surrounding her friend’s pregnancy meant the midwife she had expected to use could no longer attend her home birth. Brenda believed her friend needed someone beside her.

So she stepped in.

She did not charge her.

Later came questions from the state. Years after that, Brenda received the cease-and-desist letter telling her to stop attending births.

“I’m gonna do what the Lord calls me to do.” — Brenda Smith (15:30–16:00)

That sounds bold if we put it on a T-shirt. But it sounds different when the next envelope might contain something that can put you in jail.

Brenda kept attending births.

Eventually, after a stillbirth, she says Arkansas authorities pursued a case against her even though the parents did not blame her. She learned there was a warrant for her arrest through someone who saw her posted online.

Then came the discovery process. Brenda says the government had collected years of screenshots from her Facebook activity.

“They had eight years of Facebook screenshots on me.” — Brenda Smith (17:15–18:00)

According to Brenda, the case was eventually dismissed.

But “dismissed” does not give back the year she spent wondering what might happen. It does not give back the sleep, and it does not answer the larger question: what happens when two adults voluntarily agree to something the state says they are not allowed to do?

The Birth She Refused to Miss

One of the wildest stories in the episode begins with flashing lights behind Brenda’s car. A mother was already pushing.

Brenda didn't stop driving.

She reached the house, jumped out, told the officer she was a midwife, and started toward the door.

The officer caught her.

Brenda describes being bent over with her arm behind her back while the mother inside was trying to have a baby. Outside the state wanted compliance.

A woman is in labor. The midwife had somewhere to be. The officer did not know what a midwife was.

Brenda eventually makes it inside, leaving her ID and registration for the officer to find himself. The officer followed, asking to speak to her, now by the name on on ID. Then the mother roars through another contraction. The woman's mother tells him: that's not happening right now.

Birth wins the argument.

Brenda ends up in court months later over the traffic stop, but the real question is already sitting there in the delivery room. 

What is the law for? Is it meant to protect people? And what happens when enforcing it gets in the way of people voluntarily caring for one another?

Consent Changes the Meaning of Anarchy

Brenda did not grow up calling herself an anarchist.

She says she did not even realize the word described her until around 2012, when a friend explained it differently than she had heard before.

Not riots. Not burning cars. Not chaos.

Consent and non-aggression.

“If somebody doesn’t want to do something, you don’t get to make them do it.” — Brenda Smith (38:40)

Suddenly, pieces of her life started fitting together. Midwifery was built around the choices of mothers. Her faith was built around voluntary obedience to God. And her growing distrust of government came from watching institutions use force where she believed persuasion, relationship, and consent should have been enough. She did not become a Christian anarchist and then decide how to apply the philosophy to birth. She looked backward and realized she had already been living many of its principles.

What Does Faith Cost?

Brenda imagines a situation where staying out of jail requires disobeying what she believes God told her to do.

What kind of faith would that be?

“If your faith doesn’t require something difficult of you, why are you even doing it?” — Brenda Smith (40:15)

That does not mean every act of civil disobedience is holy. It does not mean our personal desires automatically become commands from God. It means Christians have to wrestle seriously with allegiance.

Craig connects Brenda’s story with Acts 5, where Peter and the apostles answer earthly rulers with a dangerous sentence:

“We must obey God rather than human beings.”

That verse is easy to admire when we imagine ancient Rome. It gets harder when obedience costs money, reputation, comfort, or freedom.

Brenda asks it even more plainly:

“Who is your master?” — Brenda Smith (41:15)

That question belongs far beyond midwifery.

We Don’t Need a Perpetual Parent

Brenda was an obedient child. Very obedient. She remembers talking back to her mother once and being more shaken by the disappointment on her mother’s face than by the punishment.

That story leads somewhere unexpected. Children need parents. They need guidance, protection, correction, and people who know more than they do.

But children grow up.

At some point, Brenda says, we learn who we are. We make decisions. We accept responsibility. We no longer need someone standing over us to make every choice.

Then she offers one of the episode’s best descriptions of government:

“You don’t need a perpetual parent, and that’s exactly what government is.” — Brenda Smith (47:45)

You may disagree. But the image is worth thinking about. How much of state power depends on convincing adults that somebody else always needs to be in charge of them?

And how much Christian political thinking has quietly accepted the same assumption?

Jesus did not tell His disciples to become better rulers over everyone else. He told them that rulers “lord it over” people and then said: Not so with you.

Anarchy Without Losing Jesus

Brenda has also met anarchists who think her Christianity does not belong.

“No gods, no masters” can become its own test of belonging. Her answer is simple. She is not giving up Jesus to make somebody else comfortable with her politics. And she has no desire to use force to make an unbeliever accept her faith. That is where she finds common ground even with secular anarchists.

Faith cannot be forced. Neither can love.

Craig points out that many anarchists he has met once belonged to churches and later walked away, sometimes because of "church hurt" or because the Christianity they were given looked more like authority and control than Jesus.

That should bother us. 

If someone rejects Christ because we have shown them Caesar wearing a Christian costume, what exactly did they reject?

Brenda even left a church she loved because the American flag remained in the sanctuary. She could no longer make peace with national symbols sharing sacred space. For her, the issue was allegiance. No King but Christ cannot just mean “Christ is my favorite king.” It means He does not share the throne.

When the Enemy Becomes a Person

Late in the episode, Brenda tells a story from the film Gandhi.

A man has committed a terrible act of revenge after losing his own son. Gandhi gives him a strange path forward: find a child like the one he killed, raise him as his own, and raise him in the religion of the people he had learned to hate.

Brenda hears Jesus in that story: Love your enemies.

Not tolerate them from a safe distance. Not defeat them and then feel merciful afterward. Love them until “enemy” stops being the most important thing you know about them.

That is where Christian anarchy reaches beyond government. If we reject coercion but remain full of hatred, we have not made it very far. Jesus does not simply free us from rulers. He frees us to love.

Become an Apocaloptimist

Then comes a word Craig can barely pronounce: Apocaloptimist.

Someone who knows things look like they are falling apart and still believes they will turn out okay.

Brenda laughs because the word fits. Christian anarchy can sound angry if all we talk about is corruption, laws, police, taxes, surveillance, and state power. But Brenda insists we land somewhere else: hope.

“Our heart is elsewhere. Our home is elsewhere.” — Brenda Smith (1:01:00)

That is why she says she can keep doing “forbidden” and noncompliant things without being ruled by fear. Governments can threaten. Bodies can get sick. Systems can fail. The world can look like it is coming apart. But Caesar does not get the last word. Jesus does.

Maybe that is the difference between simple rebellion and Christian anarchy. One is defined by what it refuses. The other is defined by whom it follows.

🤝Connect with Brenda “Granny” Smith🤝

• Catching Freedom: Facebook Page**, **Brenda’s birth-and-liberty page

• Catching Freedom: The Connection of Childbirth and Liberty: Brenda’s 2025 People’s Reset presentation is available as an audio episode. Listen to Brenda’s Catching Freedom presentation

Highlights & Takeaways

• Brenda’s path to Christian anarchy grew from lived experience before she ever adopted the label

• Consent matters because people are not property of institutions, experts, or governments

• Calling something “legal” does not automatically answer whether it is right

• Faith becomes real when obedience costs something

• “Obey God rather than men” is more difficult when the consequences are personal

• Government can function like a perpetual parent if adults surrender responsibility for their own choices

• Christian anarchy loses its Christian center if it becomes hatred of rulers rather than love of neighbor

• Hope keeps noncompliance from turning into despair

Listen

When Brenda moves from her arrest story into the question, “Who is your master?” Notice how quickly a discussion about midwifery becomes a discussion about allegiance.

Reflect

Where do you obey mainly because you are afraid of consequences? How would you tell the difference between faithful obedience to Christ and simply doing whatever you want?

Read

Acts 5:27–32, Mark 10:42–45, and Matthew 5:43–48. Hold them together: obedience to God, Jesus’ rejection of “lording it over” others, and enemy-love.

For a separate current story about state prosecution of home-birth midwives, PBS’s 2026 documentary Arrest the Midwife follows Amish and Mennonite families confronting similar questions about birth choice and government regulation. Watch or learn about Arrest the Midwife on PBS

Practice

Pick one area of your life where fear makes your decisions for you. Do not start by breaking a law. Start by asking what faithfulness, responsibility, consent, and love require, and whether you have handed your conscience to someone else simply because they have authority.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Meet Brenda “Granny” Smith

• childhood faith and farm life

• motherhood, grandmotherhood, and birth

• more than three decades attending births

(06:20) Home Birth, Choice & Informed Decisions

• hospitals, midwives, and personal fit

• researching birth options

• trust, prayer, and informed choice

(12:10) When Arkansas Comes for a Midwife

• friend needing birth support

• choosing service over licensure

• cease-and-desist letter

(17:00) Arrest Warrant & Eight Years of Screenshots

• stillbirth and state investigation

• warrant discovered through a friend

• Facebook evidence and legal costs

(22:10) Obey God Rather Than Men

• state authority versus calling

• Acts 5 and Christian obedience

• regulation, power, and birth choice

(28:00) The Cop, the Midwife & the Baby Coming Now

• refusing to stop on the way to a birth

• police confrontation outside the house

• courtroom aftermath

(34:10) Bringing Babies Into a Fearful World

• children growing up after COVID

• perpetual war as normal life

• peaceful beginnings and hope

(38:00) Why Christian Anarchy Made Sense

• consent and non-aggression

• discovering the label around 2012

• faith already pointing beyond the state

(43:30) Fear, Obedience & the Perpetual Parent

• childhood compliance

• authority that deserves obedience

• government as permanent parent

(51:10) Christians Among Secular Anarchists

• “no gods, no masters”

• church hurt and unbelief

• American flags inside churches

(58:40) Love Your Enemies & Apocaloptimism

• Gandhi story and enemy-love

• hope while systems fall apart

• Christ beyond fear and despair

(1:03:00) Catching Freedom

• Brenda’s Facebook page

• birth and liberty content

• closing invitation

Keep the Conversation Going

For more Bad Roman conversations on Christian anarchy, revisit Episode 51, Jesus the Anarchist, with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos and Nicholas Harrelson. Episode 51: Jesus the Anarchist

You can also hear Craig’s conversation with Larken Rose in Episode 83, The Cult of Statism, including their discussion of religion, voluntary relationships, and why belief in God and anarchism are not automatically at odds. Episode 83: The Cult of Statism

Support The Bad Roman Project, share the episode with somebody who will wrestle with it honestly, and keep asking the question underneath all of this:

Who is your master?

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168. Christians in the Middle East: Have We Actually Tried Jesus? with Adam Stump

Adam Stump asked two congregations a pretty simple question.

Did they know there are Christians in Iran?

Not one hand went up.

Then he pushed a little further. Did they know some Christian communities in Iran have existed there for centuries? Did they know Christians live across the Middle East, including places Americans mostly hear about through war reports?

Again, almost nobody knew.

That little church pop quiz gets to the heart of this episode. What happens when Christians in America know more about the governments we are told to fear than the people who actually live under them?

And what happens when some of those people are our brothers and sisters in Christ?

Adam is a pastor with a background in sociology, anthropology, history, archaeology, and a long list of ordinary jobs before full-time ministry.

He also calls himself a “professional gadfly,” he likes asking questions that make comfortable answers harder to hold.

The People Missing From Our Map

For Adam, this did not begin as an academic interest in Middle Eastern history.

His wife started drawing his attention to Iranian Christians in the United States who were facing detention and possible deportation. Adam began reading. Then he began meeting people. He traveled to Washington, D.C., connected with an Iranian pastor and people from World Relief, and started paying closer attention to Christians whose stories rarely made it into his own church world.

What began as information became personal.

“That’s really where it all began with me… this chunk of human suffering that I had not previously been aware of.” — Adam Stump (14:43)

That sentence is uncomfortable because most of us have our own version of it.

There are people suffering right now whom we barely know exist.

It is easy to turn Iran into a word on a map. It becomes a government, a military target, a headline, or an “enemy.” Real people disappear inside the label.

World Relief has documented the struggle of Iranian Christians who fled religious persecution only to face immigration detention in the United States. World Relief — Iranian Christians, asylum, and detention

Once people have names and faces, foreign policy gets harder to discuss like a football game.

Christianity in Iran Is More Complicated Than We Think

Craig admits early in the conversation that he knew very little about Christianity in Iran.

That is probably true for a lot of us.

Adam explains that Iran contains old Armenian and Assyrian Christian communities as well as converts from Islam who often worship in much more dangerous conditions. Some historic Christian communities have a recognized place in Iranian society. Converts meeting in Farsi-speaking house churches can face a very different reality.

That means even the phrase “Christians in Iran” covers several different stories.

It also means the Middle East cannot be reduced to “Muslims over there.”

Christians, Jews, Muslims, and many other communities have shared those lands for centuries. Their history includes terrible persecution, but also ordinary seasons of living beside one another.

Adam makes a point that should be obvious but often is not: an entire country cannot be treated like one person.

Iran is not ninety million copies of its government.

Neither is America.

Can You Liberate Someone With a Bomb?

This is where the conversation turns from ignorance to power.

What happens when the United States says it wants to “liberate” people in another country through military force?

If Christians are already trying to survive quietly in a hostile environment, does bombing their country make them safer? Or can military action by a nation widely identified with Christianity make local Christians look like agents of the enemy?

The question is not whether the Iranian government deserves criticism. Both Craig and Adam are clear that defending human beings in Iran is not the same thing as defending the Iranian state.

The deeper issue is the strange phrase we have heard for decades: bombing for peace.

Adam offers a much simpler alternative.

“We have tried bombs and bullets and it doesn’t work. Why don’t we try love?” — Adam Stump (28:55–29:05)

It almost sounds too simple.

Then again, so does “love your enemies.”

Have We Actually Tried Jesus?

Craig hears Adam say “try love” and asks the question that eventually became the title of the episode:

“Have we actually tried Jesus when it comes to this stuff?” — Craig Harguess (32:12–32:25)

That deserves more than a quick answer.

Christians have tried political parties. We have tried presidents. We have tried military strength. We have tried Christian nations. We have tried laws, campaigns, coalitions, and the promise that the next ruler will finally put things back in order.

Have we tried Jesus?

Not Jesus as a mascot for the state.

Jesus as the man who told Peter to put away his sword.

Jesus as the King who told us to love our enemies and pray for people who persecute us.

Jesus as the Lord of a Kingdom that crosses borders without asking Caesar for permission.

Adam puts it this way:

“Christians ought to be kingdom people before they are… citizens of any country.” — Adam Stump (28:05–28:10)

That does not mean Christians stop caring about the world.

It means we stop letting the state decide whom we are allowed to love.

Because once we know there are Christians, human beings, beneath the bombs, we have to wrestle with Faith.

Once we know the person called an enemy is a mother, pastor, child, Muslim neighbor, or fellow believer, clean political categories start getting messy.

But, life is messy and Jesus calls us to follow him through it with love not fear.

When Politics Uses the Church

Adam calls himself a “recovering Republican.”

He is careful about what he means. He is not saying every conservative idea suddenly became evil. He is talking about the party structure itself and the way political movements can turn religion into a weapon.

“Our political parties in America have really used religion as a weapon… to increase political division rather than increasing unity.” — Adam Stump (45:10–45:30)

Christian nationalism tells us the nation needs Christianity in order to become strong. Jesus seems much more interested in whether Christians are faithful.

Those are not the same goal. A powerful nation can have weak disciples. A politically weak church can still love enemies, feed hungry people, forgive persecutors, welcome strangers, and refuse to kill.

No King but Christ means the church does not need Caesar to make Jesus Lord. He already is.

Constantine's Trade

Eventually Adam reaches back nearly seventeen centuries.

His judgment is strong: one of the worst things to happen to Christianity was Constantine and the rise of Christendom.

Before Christianity gained imperial favor, Christians lived for centuries without controlling Rome. They were sometimes tolerated and sometimes persecuted. They did not have the machinery of empire available to enforce the faith.

Then Christianity gained political power.

Adam argues that something was lost in the trade.

“Even though it grew in political and earthly power, the spiritual power waned.” — Adam Stump (55:48–55:55)

That is worth sitting with. What if political strength and spiritual strength are not the same thing?

What if they can even move in opposite directions?

The church may gain access to rulers and still lose sight of Jesus. It may win a culture war and forget how to love the people on the other side. Empire always offers the church something shiny. Jesus keeps handing us a cross.

People Are Made to Love and Be Loved

One of Adam’s clearest statements comes as the conversation turns back to the people we call enemies.

He does not pretend governments are harmless. He does not pretend violence and injustice are imaginary.

He simply refuses to let those things erase the humanity of ordinary people.

“Those people are all people created in the image of God, and they are actually created to love and be loved.” — Adam Stump (51:40–51:55)

That changes the starting point. We do not begin with, “What does America need from these people?” We begin with, “How does God see them?”

That is harder than nationalism because nationalism gives us categories. Friend. Enemy. Ally. Threat. Citizen. Foreigner. Jesus keeps turning categories back into people.

Get Out of the Bubble

Adam's final advice is refreshingly ordinary: meet somebody.

Talk to Muslims instead of only talking about Muslims. Visit an international grocery store. Meet someone from another country. Ask questions. Listen to how America looks from outside America.

Adam says that when he sees someone attacking Muslims online, he often asks one question:

How many Muslims do you actually know? The answer usually is silence.

His own shift began decades ago when he met Muslim classmates and became their friend. Real relationships made it harder to accept opinions that had simply been handed to him.

And learning cannot stop at “now I know more facts.” It has to change how we live. Adam urges listeners to use whatever influence they have to speak for people who are easier for society to ignore. But he also warns against becoming so angry that nobody can hear us.

“I think that we’re gonna change this thing through relationships.” — Adam Stump (1:10:50–1:11:00)

Maybe changing the world looks less like taking control and more like opening a table. Listening. Learning a name. Refusing to call millions of strangers our enemies. And then trying the strange, difficult thing Jesus told us to do all along: Love them.

Connect with Adam Stump

• Linktree: https://linktr.ee/Pastor.Adam.Stump

• Substack: https://pastoradamstump.substack.com/

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/pastor_adam_stump/

• TikTok: @pastor.adam.stump

• Facebook: https://facebook.com/p/Pastor-Adam-Stump-100095132295636/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PastorAdamStump

• Email: adam.joseph.stump@gmail.com

• Western Pennsylvania UMC Profile: https://wpaumc.org/clergydetail/479051

• Central Highlands UMC: https://wpaumc.org/churchdetail/218250

Highlights & Takeaways

• The Middle East is not one religious block; ancient Christian communities are still part of the region

• Meeting real people can break political categories that survive easily from a distance

• Christian nationalism confuses the worldwide Kingdom of God with the interests of one nation

• “Bombing for peace” deserves special scrutiny from people commanded to love their enemies

• Political power and spiritual power are not the same thing

• The church does not need state power to make Jesus King

• People called “enemies” remain image-bearers created to love and be loved

• Lasting change usually grows through relationships, listening, and honest questions rather than coercion

Listen

Pay attention to Adam’s church pop quiz and the silence that follows. Notice what happens when a political category like “Iran” turns back into real Christians, Muslims, families, pastors, and children.

Reflect

Who have you learned to think of mainly as an enemy? If you knew that person face to face, what might become harder to say about them?

Read

Read Matthew 5:38–48, John 17:20–23, and John 18:10–11. Sit with Jesus’ commands about enemies, unity, and Peter’s sword.

For a current look at Iranian Christians facing asylum and detention questions in the United States, read World Relief’s reporting on the issue. World Relief — From the Pulpit to the Capitol

Practice

This week, talk with someone whose culture, religion, or national background is different from yours. Do not begin with a debate. Ask about their life. Listen long enough to learn something you did not already know.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Meet Adam Stump

• West Virginia roots and Nazarene upbringing

• archaeology, anthropology, history, and ministry

• relational approach to pastoring

(04:27) A Long Road Into Ministry

• resisting the pastor path

• secular work and cross-cultural experience

• ministry beyond professional clergy

(09:10) Christians in the Middle East

• American blind spots

• Iran as the immediate focus

• U.S. power and regional war

(14:43) Iranian Converts and Underground Churches

• asylum and deportation fears

• house churches and Farsi worship

• historic Armenian and Assyrian communities

(20:11) A More Complicated Middle East

• Christians, Jews, and Muslims across centuries

• “people of the book”

• ancient communities behind modern headlines

(25:17) Bombs, Liberation, and Christian Nationalism

• danger of foreign intervention

• “bombing for peace”

• kingdom people before national citizens

(32:12) Have We Actually Tried Jesus?

• politics tangled with faith

• Peter's sword and Christian nonviolence

• U.S.–Israel policy and Christian witness

(41:35) The Church Pop Quiz

• zero hands in two congregations

• Christians in Iran and Lebanon

• ignorance, discomfort, and small-group learning

(48:11) Love Your Enemies Gets Uncomfortable

• trying love instead of another political savior

• comfort-driven Christianity

• image-bearers beyond enemy labels

(55:10) Constantine, Christendom, and Empire

• Christianity gaining political power

• spiritual power versus state power

• empire, party movements, and global perception

(1:00:19) Seeing America From Outside America

• Adam's 2002 experience in France

• political personality and national reputation

• shrinking American perspective

(1:05:23) How We Actually Change Things

• “How many Muslims do you know?”

• meeting people outside the American bubble

• listening, using influence, and changing through relationships

Keep the Conversation Going

If this episode challenged the way you see Christians in the Middle East, share it with someone who may have the same blind spot.

For another angle on the same region, listen to Episode 166, Christianity in the Middle East: U.S. Foreign Policy vs. The Holy Land with Nathan Perrin. Episode 166 with Nathan Perrin

You can also hear Iranian pastor Ara Torosian’s story in Episode 162, Iranian Christians, ICE Raids, and the Cost of Following Jesus. Episode 162 with Ara Torosian

Read the Gospels. Meet people face to face. Love the person behind the label.

No King but Christ.

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

167. Deconstructing Faith & Keeping Jesus: Bad Theology, Christian Nationalism & Cancer with Jon Kinder

What happens when the thing shaking your faith is not Jesus, but what Christians have told you about Jesus?

Maybe it starts small.

You hear something from a pulpit that does not sit right anymore. You notice the American flag standing beside the cross and wonder if it belongs there. A teaching you once accepted without question suddenly sounds cruel. You open your Bible and realize that what Jesus says does not always fit neatly with what your church, political party, or favorite preacher taught you.

Then comes the scary question:

If I start pulling on this thread, will my whole faith fall apart?

Jon Kinder knows that feeling.

Jon has spent much of his life in ministry. He served in church leadership from a young age and later created The Geeky Preacher, a project that looks for God in movies, gaming, horror, anime, and other places church culture sometimes tells us not to look. His story of deconstruction did not end with him abandoning Christ. It pushed him to ask what was actually built on Christ, and what had simply been built around Him.

This conversation moves from Dungeons & Dragons and Satanic Panic to cancer, Christian nationalism, church flags, universal restoration, pacifism, voting, the rapture, and the strange freedom that comes when we finally admit: Maybe asking questions is not an act of rebellion. Maybe it is part of faith.

When Everything Strange Becomes “Demonic”

Jon’s story begins in a surprisingly geeky place: Dungeons & Dragons.

For years, many Christians were told D&D could lead children into witchcraft or demon worship. Jon remembers church leaders going pale when he suggested playing the game with other ministers.

His explanation is much less dramatic:

“It is math… with little dice and people doing funny accents.”  03:34

Craig remembers the same kind of warnings around rock music, horror films, Harry Potter, tattoos, and even yoga.

Jon actually built part of The Geeky Preacher around challenging that fear. He once used the horror film It to talk about courage. The monster feeds on fear. The children become stronger when they stop letting fear control them. Jon connected that to the biblical reminder that God has not given us a spirit of fear.

That is a small example, but it points toward a much larger problem. Sometimes Christians call something evil simply because it is unfamiliar. And once fear becomes our method for deciding what is true, questioning becomes dangerous. What if curiosity is not the enemy of faith? What if fear is?

Deconstructing Politics Before Theology

Jon did not begin by questioning hell, the rapture, church structure, or Pentecostal theology. He started with politics.

He grew up in a rural setting where Republican politics and Christianity seemed almost welded together. Being Christian meant being conservative. Being conservative meant voting Republican. Pulling those identities apart could make a person feel like an outsider in both church and community.

Then a friend challenged him.

Jon was already reading different theological views and comparing them. Why was he not willing to do the same thing with politics?

That question led him to Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation. It became a turning point.

Jon began reading voices that questioned war, nationalism, and Christian allegiance to government. He mentions Boyd’s The Crucifixion of the Warrior God and Brian Zahnd’s A Farewell to Mars as books that pushed him toward Christian pacifism and Christian anarchism. He had always tested theological arguments by asking which view seemed closest to Christ. Now he began doing that with politics too. That is when a problem appeared. The politics he had inherited did not always look much like Jesus.

Cancer and the Sermon Playing in the Hospital Room

Then theology became personal. In 2018, Jon was hospitalized with stage-three lymphoma. One night, with little to do in the hospital, he turned on a Christian television program. He does not remember who was preaching. The preacher said that if someone was sick, it was because that person did not have enough faith. Jon was lying in a hospital bed with cancer.

“Stage three cancer, laying in a hospital, but I don’t have enough faith?”  11:25

Suddenly, this was not an abstract theological debate. Jon had been in ministry. He had believed. He had prayed. He had served. Was his cancer really evidence that he had failed God?

That moment forced him to face something many of us avoid: bad theology can sound harmless until life makes us live inside it. A teaching may work fine when we are healthy. Then somebody gets cancer. A doctrine about eternal punishment may feel normal until someone we love dies. A sermon about obeying government may sound harmless until that government starts killing people. A theology of fear may feel powerful until we realize we have spent our whole Christian life terrified of the Father Jesus told us to trust.

Jon decided it was time to examine the house.

Don't Burn Down the House: Remodel It

One of the best pictures in this episode is Jon's way of describing deconstruction.

He does not picture a wrecking ball. He pictures a house. If one room needs work, you do not have to bulldoze the whole building. You can take one room at a time.

Hell. Salvation. The end times. Speaking in tongues. Politics. Violence. Church.

Whatever the question is, examine it. Study it. Listen to people who disagree with you. Then move to the next room.

“If you remodel a house, you don't take the foundation too… Christ is the foundation of the house.”  36:28

That matters because deconstruction has become a loaded word. For some Christians, it sounds like code for leaving Christianity. Jon describes something different. 

He was not trying to escape Jesus. He was trying to find out which parts of his belief system were actually Jesus. That distinction may save someone a lot of fear. You are allowed to discover that a pastor was wrong without deciding Christ was wrong. You are allowed to change your mind about hell without abandoning Jesus. You are allowed to question nationalism without abandoning the Kingdom of God. You are allowed to repair the room.

Is Fear Really the Point?

Universal restoration became one of the rooms Jon spent years studying. Craig understands why. Both grew up around versions of Christianity where fear could become a tool of evangelism:

What if you die on the drive home? What if Jesus returns tonight? What if you believed the wrong thing? What if you are left behind? What if God burns you forever?

That kind of preaching can produce decisions. But does it produce trust?

Craig points back to the way Jesus treated people. Jesus did not seem interested in terrorizing people into loving His Father. Jon talks about studying different biblical uses of fear and considering whether “fear of God” always means the mortal terror many Christians were taught. The larger point is worth sitting with.

Do we worship God because He is good? Or because we are scared of what He might do if we do not?

Those are very different relationships. And if Jesus reveals the Father, then perhaps our picture of God should look more like Jesus.

Pacifism Gets Personal Too

As Jon's politics changed, so did his understanding of violence. He began moving toward Christian pacifism. That does not mean Jon pretends dangerous situations are simple. He has children. He admits that protecting them would create hard choices. But his first instinct is no longer violence. He wants restraint, escape, de-escalation, and every other option on the table before hurting someone.

Craig says something similar. We spend so much time imagining the moment when we may “have to” kill someone that we rarely train our minds to ask what else we could do. If Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and love enemies, shouldn't avoiding violence at least be something Christians seriously practice?

Instead, churches sometimes spend more energy defending violence than imagining peace.

The Flag Behind the Pulpit

Jon eventually began bringing his changed political theology into church. That is where things got tense.

Around Memorial Day, he preached a message comparing the way ancient Israel mixed the worship of Yahweh with other loyalties to the way churches can mix devotion to Jesus with devotion to America. His provocative image was the American flag standing behind the pulpit like a modern “Asherah pole.” It did not go over well.

Jon was pulled aside.

The concern was not mainly whether his argument was biblical. He was asked whether he understood how many veterans he had offended.  That exchange gets to the center of the episode: What happens when protecting patriotic feelings becomes more important than asking whether patriotism belongs in Christian worship?

Jon was not telling people to hate their neighbors or despise the place where they live. He was questioning allegiance, and there is a difference.

Craig sees the same problem every time Christians defend the Pledge of Allegiance by saying it is simply about loving your country. The pledge does not say, “I care about my neighbors.” It pledges allegiance to a flag and “the republic for which it stands.”

Jon says the language always made him uncomfortable.

“Why am I swearing my fealty to something? I thought we don't have kings anymore.”  23:40

That question will make a lot of church rooms quiet. Good. Some quiet rooms need questions.

What If the Truth Can Handle Questions?

Over time, Jon says church leaders urged him to back away from these subjects. He tried (at least from the pulpit), but behind the scenes, the questions continued.

Why should a nation have special spiritual status? Why should Christians join nationalism to worship? Why should government loyalty determine whether someone belongs? Why should certain doctrines be protected from examination?

Jon eventually landed on a simple rule:

“If anything is true, it's gonna survive scrutiny, it's gonna survive questions. If it's not, then it's meant to burn down.”  29:20

Craig brings up Jacob wrestling with God. Jon points out that Jacob received the blessing after the wrestling. 

Faith has a strange history of being strengthened by difficult questions. Yet some church cultures treat questions as rebellion. Why? If the answer is true, what are we afraid of?

Maybe the greater danger is building a faith so fragile that one honest question can destroy it.

Reading the Bible Toward Jesus

The conversation eventually reaches one of the hardest questions for Christians committed to nonviolence: What do we do with the violence attributed to God in parts of the Old Testament when Jesus teaches enemy-love?

Jon introduces Craig to the idea of progressive revelation.

Jon's explanation is that people did not receive the full picture of God all at once. He compares it to taking a man who has spent his whole life in a dark cave and suddenly placing him in the noon sun. The light itself could overwhelm him. Jon sees Jesus as the fullest revelation of God. Earlier biblical stories, in this view, show humanity gradually being led toward that clearer picture.

You may agree, disagree, or need more self-study (that is almost the point). The episode does not demand that every question be solved, it asks whether we are willing to wrestle honestly and still keep our eyes on Christ.

Leaving the Building Without Leaving Jesus

Jon no longer participates in a brick-and-mortar church the way he once did. Yet he tells Craig that he feels closer to Christ. For some of us, that may sound impossible.

How can someone stop attending church and become more serious about faith?

Jon describes how church life can become a formula: songs, sermon, prayer. go home, and repeat next week.

Outside that structure, he found himself reading, praying, studying, and worshiping without waiting for a schedule. He is also careful not to portray himself as a lone theological genius. He still talks with trusted ministers and friends. He asks others what they think. He wants accountability.

What changed is the pressure to fit inside a denomination's approved box.

“Whenever you can worship and engage without expectation, it makes a difference.”  33:30

That is an important distinction. Community matters, but control is not community.

The Ship of Theseus and the “Anarchist Mutt”

So what does faith look like after years of changing one belief at a time? Jon uses the old philosophical puzzle known as the Ship of Theseus.

Imagine an ancient ship in a museum. A board rots, so you replace it. Then the mast. Then another board. Then another. Eventually every part has been replaced. Is it still the same ship?

Jon sees his faith journey that way.

“I started out a Republican Pentecostal and ended up an anarchist mutt.”  37:15

The joke carries something important. He changed (a lot), but Christ remained the foundation. We do not have to tackle everything at once. Pick the questions that will not leave you alone. Study them one at a time. Find people who have walked the same road. You may be surprised how many are out there. Craig and Jon both thought they were nearly alone when they began separating Christianity from nationalism and statism. Then they found other people asking the same questions. Sometimes community begins when one person finally says out loud: Does this seem wrong to anybody else?

Deconstruction Doesn't Have to Mean Losing Jesus

There is a popular fear that once Christians start questioning, they will never stop. Maybe they will question hell. Then the rapture. Then nationalism. Then church authority. Then war. Then politics. Then everything.

Jon would probably say: good. Ask. Test. Study. But keep Christ beneath the house. Deconstruction does not have to be a funeral for faith. Sometimes it is what happens when we finally separate Jesus from the things we were told were Jesus. The flag is not Jesus. Republicanism is not Jesus. Pentecostalism is not Jesus. A particular theory of hell is not Jesus. The rapture is not Jesus. A church building is not Jesus. Your pastor is not Jesus. Your nation is not Jesus. 

Jesus is Jesus, and maybe that is enough foundation to start rebuilding.

God Outside the Four Walls

Jon shares why he started The Geeky Preacher. The idea behind the project is simple: God is not trapped in church. Jon looks for glimpses of truth in movies, anime, video games, horror, fantasy, books, nature, and whatever else gets his attention.

“I think God is outside the four walls more than He is inside the four walls.”  41:57

That is not an attack on every local church. It is a reminder about scale: The Creator of the universe is bigger than a Sunday schedule.

🤝Connect with Jon Kinder / The Geeky Preacher🤝

• The Geeky Preacher (Linktree for YouTube, Podcast, Facebook, TikTok, Twitch & Instagram)

• Substack

• No King But Christ Network

Highlights & Takeaways

• Christian deconstruction does not automatically mean abandoning Jesus. Jon describes it as examining inherited beliefs while keeping Christ as the foundation.

• Fear can protect bad theology. From Satanic Panic to hell and rapture preaching, fear often stops Christians from asking whether a teaching is actually true.

• Political deconstruction can be theological. Jon's movement away from Republican identity began when he judged politics by the teachings of Jesus.

• Bad theology becomes clearer when life gets painful. Hearing that sickness comes from weak faith while fighting stage-three lymphoma forced Jon to reconsider what he had once accepted.

• Christian nationalism often hides in ordinary church habits. Flags behind pulpits and pledges of allegiance can feel normal precisely because few people stop to ask what those symbols teach us about loyalty.

• Truth does not need protection from honest questions. If a belief cannot survive study, scrutiny, and disagreement, fear should not be used to keep it alive.

• Take deconstruction one room at a time. Trying to rebuild everything at once can overwhelm us; Jon recommends studying individual questions deeply and finding trusted community.

• Leaving a church structure is not the same as leaving Christ. Jon's spiritual life continued through prayer, study, relationships, and accountability outside traditional church membership.

Listen

Listen for the moments when Jon's inherited beliefs collide with real life: cancer, church conflict, politics, and fear. Which collision sounds most familiar to your own story?

Reflect

What Christian belief have you never truly examined because questioning it felt dangerous? Is the fear protecting Christor protecting a tradition?

Read

Read Genesis 32:22–32 and notice Jacob wrestling with God. Then read Matthew 5–7 and ask what happens when Jesus becomes the measuring stick for our theology, politics, and use of power.

Practice

Choose one “room” in your theological house. Do not try to solve everything this week. Read one thoughtful voice you agree with and one you do not. Write down what each gets right, then return to Jesus.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Christian deconstruction and The Geeky Preacher

• Jon Kinder's ministry background

• No King But Christ Network

• Faith, gaming, movies, and geek culture

(03:01) Dungeons & Dragons and Satanic Panic

• Churches warning against D&D

• Horror films, rock music, tattoos, and fear

• Finding Christian themes outside church media

(07:50) Deconstructing Republican Christianity

• Rural Christianity and Republican identity

• Greg Boyd and The Myth of a Christian Nation

• Movement toward pacifism and Christian anarchy

(10:36) Cancer exposes bad theology

• Stage-three lymphoma

• “Not enough faith” preaching

• Beginning theological deconstruction

(13:00) Hell, fear, and universal restoration

• Fear-based salvation preaching

• Different meanings of “fear of God”

• Slow movement toward apokatastasis

(15:05) Christian pacifism and alternatives to violence

• Christian anarchy and nonviolence

• Self-defense, restraint, and de-escalation

• Firefly and the “kneecaps” joke

(18:47) The American flag behind the pulpit

• Memorial Day sermon

• Asherah pole comparison

• Veterans, offense, and national loyalty

(23:15) Pledging allegiance to empire

• Flag rituals in Christian spaces

• Loyalty to republic versus love of neighbor

• Growing conflict inside Jon's church

(28:35) Why Christians need to ask hard questions

• Questions treated as heresy

• Jacob wrestling with God

• Truth surviving scrutiny

(30:21) The Old Testament, violence, and Jesus

• Difficulty reconciling biblical violence

• Progressive revelation

• Christ as the fullest picture of God

(31:40) Closer to Christ outside a church building

• Worship without formula

• Prayer and study outside weekly structure

• Accountability without denominational control

(35:30) How to deconstruct without losing your foundation

• “You're not alone”

• Room-by-room reconstruction

• Christ as the foundation

(36:45) The Ship of Theseus and changing faith

• Gradual replacement of inherited beliefs

• “Republican Pentecostal” to “anarchist mutt”

• Finding community after theological change

(38:45) “I don't vote. It's against my religion.”

• Rural expectations around voting

• Christian objections to political allegiance

• Face-to-face conversations about faith and politics

(41:20) Finding God outside the four walls

• The Geeky Preacher's mission

• Theology through movies, anime, games, and culture

• Returning to writing after church conflict

(45:43) Coming through deconstruction

• Discomfort followed by greater peace

• The Matrix “waking up” comparison

• Community for people asking similar questions

(46:43) Deconstructing the rapture

• Rapture teaching tied to salvation

• Inherited beliefs versus studied beliefs

• Jon Darby and the history of the doctrine

(48:04) Universal restoration and future conversations

• Hell compared with cancer treatment

• Jon's early Substack writing

• Possibility of a future Bad Roman roundtable

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Help us keep No King But Christ in the conversation by donating. One time donations or even $5 or $10 a month helps cover production, with donations beyond production costs supporting charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

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Christianity in the Middle East: U.S. Foreign Policy vs. The Holy Land with Nathan Perrin

What happens when American Christians pray for persecuted believers on Sunday, then support foreign policies that place those same believers in danger on Monday?

Many of us hear words like Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, or Palestine and picture one large Muslim world. We forget that these lands are also home to some of the oldest Christian communities on earth. Christians were worshiping there long before the United States existed. Some still pray in Syriac, a form of the language Jesus spoke.

Yet their churches are bombed, their families are displaced, and their stories rarely enter our Sunday morning conversations.

In this episode, Craig talks with Mennonite pastor, writer, screenwriter, and activist Nathan Perrin. Nathan has spent nearly a decade working alongside Assyrians, Kurds, Palestinians, and other communities in the Middle East and Chicago.

This is not a simple conversation about choosing a political side. It is about seeing people whom our maps, headlines, and churches often hide. It is also about asking whether Western Christianity has become so tied to American power that people in other lands fear the empire when they hear the name of Christ.

A Cross Full of Bullet Holes

Nathan’s path began with discomfort.

As a teenager, he spent time in Messianic Jewish circles. He heard Christians speak about Arabs and Muslims as if they were less than human. One pastor even spoke about turning the Middle East “into glass” if people there refused to support Israel.

That language did not sound like Jesus.

Nathan was also dating a Palestinian Christian. The people he knew did not match the enemy pictures he was being given. The story began to crack. Later, while studying at Bible college, his growing belief in Christian peace moved from an idea into a calling.

After graduation, he traveled to northern Iraq with Community Peacemaker Teams. He visited an Assyrian church that Saddam Hussein’s regime had reportedly tried to destroy several times. Each time, the people rebuilt it.

In the courtyard stood a cross full of bullet holes. It was not a monument to revenge. It was a sign that the community was still there, that they would rebuild.

Even more striking was what happened when Turkish bombardments threatened the village. Christian and Muslim neighbors exchanged keys to their homes. Each family knew the other might need shelter.

No speeches. No campaign slogans. Just neighbor helping neighbor.

During the church service, Nathan could understand almost nothing. The liturgy was loud and spoken in Syriac. But one translated line reached him:

“Jesus wants us to be the church to the world.” — 05:30

That sentence changed the direction of his ministry.

Maybe we do not need to bring Jesus to these ancient communities. Maybe they have something to teach us about Jesus.

When “Evangelical” Sounds Like Empire

In many American churches, evangelical sounds like a normal Christian label. In parts of the Middle East, it carries a much heavier history.

Nathan explains that Assyrian Christians were cautious when he first approached them. Their first concern was whether he planned to “evangelize” them.

Think about how strange that is. These are Christians whose traditions reach back toward the earliest centuries of the church. Yet Western missionaries have sometimes treated them as if they knew nothing about Christ.

Nathan describes missionaries offering more aid to people who converted (even when those people were already Christians). Help became a sales tool. Food, money, or safety came with a religious condition attached.

That is not the way of Jesus.

Jesus healed people who never joined His movement. He fed crowds without making them sign a statement of faith. He loved before anyone could repay Him.

Nathan says many Muslims he has met do not reject Christian belief itself. They are often willing to work beside Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and others who honor their full humanity. What they distrust is a Christianity mixed with coercion, colonial power, and nationalism.

The question for us is uncomfortable: when people meet Western Christians, do they sense the love of Christ, or do they wonder what we are trying to take from them?

Praying for Persecuted Christians While Funding the Danger

The Middle East cannot be treated as one nation with one story. Iran is not Iraq. Iraq is not Lebanon. Palestine is not Kurdistan.

Nathan describes Iran as a harsh theocracy. Traditional Orthodox and Catholic communities have sometimes been allowed to worship, while public evangelism and conversion from Islam may bring serious danger. He tells Craig about a Farsi-speaking church near Chicago with only a few people in the room but many more joining online from Iran.

The Iranian government deserves honest criticism. But condemning a government does not make bombing its people righteous.

War rarely harms only rulers. It tears through apartment buildings, water systems, schools, churches, mosques, and family homes. It also creates what intelligence agencies call blowback: harmful results that return after military intervention.

Nathan argues that when the United States attacks Muslim-majority countries while presenting itself as a Christian nation, local Christians can become targets. Extremist groups begin to treat them as agents of the West, even when they have lived peacefully beside Muslim neighbors for generations.

He offers a hard challenge to American churches:

“Whenever I’m in an evangelical service and I hear prayers for persecuted Christians, I wonder if that pastor will also preach sermons about not supporting policies that put Christians at risk.” — 17:05

Praying is good. But what does the prayer mean if we keep blessing the machine creating the danger?

And the concern cannot stop with Christians. Muslims, Yazidis, Mandaeans, Jews, Kurds, Palestinians, and every other person caught beneath the bombs bear God’s image too.

Jesus did not tell us to protect only the neighbors who share our theology.

The End-Times Story Behind the War Story

Why do so many American churches support the State of Israel without question?

Nathan traces much of that loyalty to dispensationalism, an end-times system that became popular in the Western church during the last two centuries. In this system, the modern State of Israel becomes part of a prophetic checklist. Its existence is treated as a step toward the return of Jesus.

But this can turn real Jewish people into pieces on someone else’s religious game board.

That is not friendship.

Nathan explains that it is possible to love Jewish neighbors, oppose antisemitism, and still criticize the actions of the Israeli government. A government is not an ethnic group. A state is not a religion. Criticizing bombs, blockades, forced displacement, or collective punishment is not the same as hating Jewish people.

In fact, Jewish people themselves hold many different views about Zionism and the modern State of Israel.

Christian Zionism can also feed anti-Muslim racism. Muslims become the permanent villain. When something goes wrong, churches blame Islam instead of examining Western weapons, coups, sanctions, occupations, and proxy wars.

After September 11, 2001 fear made this easier. Muslims were presented as a single violent mass. The church often repeated that story instead of questioning it.

When our end-times chart requires us to ignore suffering, perhaps the chart, not compassion, is the thing that needs to go.

The Plate of Food That Broke the Spell

Craig shares a small story that carries much of the episode’s message.

After September 11, he had accepted the idea that Americans had to kill Muslims before Muslims killed them. He did not think of himself as hateful. He was afraid.

Then he met a Muslim neighbor during Ramadan.

The man was cooking outside and offered to bring Craig some food. Craig had to leave for work, so the neighbor saved him a plate and brought it to his apartment the next day.

That simple act broke through years of fear.

The man was not a distant symbol on television. He was a neighbor with a name, a meal, and enough care to ensure that Craig didn’t miss dinner.

Empire needs strangers. Jesus keeps turning strangers into neighbors.

This is why face-to-face life matters. A television host can tell us to fear millions of people at once. It is harder to hold that fear when one of those people is standing at our door with a plate of food.

“Christians Are Our Neighbors”

When Craig asks how Muslims in the region view Christians, Nathan gives a simple answer:

“Christians are our neighbors.” — 33:10

The tension Nathan witnessed was often not between ordinary Muslims and Christians. It was between communities and state power.

Many people were warm toward Christianity but cautious around white Western Christians. That caution came from history: missionaries tied to colonial power, governments speaking the name of God while dropping bombs, and churches treating ancient believers as mission projects.

Nathan also introduces listeners to communities that rarely appear in Western Christian discussions.

Assyrians are an ancient people whose ethnic identity is closely tied to Christianity. Yazidis suffered mass killing and enslavement under ISIS. Mandaeans, a small religious group connected to ancient Gnostic traditions and John the Baptist, have also faced violence and displacement.

Their stories differ, but a pattern appears again and again: when religion joins the government’s hunger for control, neighbors begin to fear one another.

Faith becomes a flag. Identity becomes a target. Human beings become categories.

The Kingdom of God moves in the opposite direction. Jesus gives people back their names.

Human Rights Without the Bombs

Nathan is not arguing that governments should never be criticized. He supports standing for human rights. But he asks whether a country can honestly lecture another nation about justice while funding bombs, suppressing local self-rule, or placing its own interests above the people living there.

He remembers being in northern Iraq during a Kurdish independence referendum. The vote passed by a wide margin, but the United States and Iraqi governments opposed the outcome. Nathan uses the story to point toward the many smaller proxy conflicts that never become major American headlines.

We usually hear about a region only after a missile is fired. We miss the years of outside pressure, secret agreements, sanctions, weapons shipments, and political interference that came first.

This does not excuse terrorism or cruelty. It helps us understand how violence grows.

Understanding is not the same as approval. It is simply refusing to pretend history began on the day our preferred news channel started covering it.

Thinking Theologically, Not Tribally

Nathan has been called a heretic and a dangerous socialist because he opposes war and questions American foreign policy.

His answer is almost funny in its simplicity: he believes in the resurrection, reads the Bible, and tries to follow Jesus.

“I don’t really think politically. I think theologically.” — 29:50

That does not mean theology has nothing to say about politics. It means party loyalty and nationalism do not get the final word.

If Jesus tells us to love enemies, a pastor cannot erase that command with a sermon about national security. If Jesus blesses peacemakers, a politician cannot turn warmaking into a Christian virtue. If Jesus identifies Himself with hungry and wounded people, we cannot ignore their suffering because they live beyond our border.

Craig puts it another way: when someone becomes angry because we quote Jesus, their argument may not truly be with us.

It may be with Jesus.

Christian Nationalism After the Politician Is Gone

Craig and Nathan also discuss the rise of Christian nationalism during the Trump era.

Churches did not invent flag ceremonies, political loyalty, or fear-based preaching in 2016. But those habits became louder. Political leaders were treated as protectors of the faith. Some believers reached a point where no action by their chosen leader could make them withdraw support.

Craig remembers asking one man where his line was. What could Trump do that would finally be too much?

The answer was, “There is no line.”

That is no longer ordinary political support. It is surrendered judgment.

Nathan believes Christian nationalists may someday distance themselves from a particular politician. But the deeper ideology will remain. It survives in closed information silos where every outside voice is treated as an enemy.

People can see suffering with their own eyes and still reject it because their trusted group tells them it is not real.

How do we respond? Not with our own cult of anger.

Nathan calls Christians to patient, honest engagement. We tell the truth, keep listening, and leave room for the Holy Spirit to do work that no argument can force.

Patience does not mean silence. It means we refuse to become cruel while confronting cruelty.

We Cannot Whitewash War

Near the end, Craig asks where listeners can begin learning.

Nathan recommends Palestinian Christian teachers, books, sermons, documentaries, and films that show war from inside the lives of those who endure it. Some focus on Palestinians. Others come from Israeli Jewish filmmakers wrestling with their nation’s use of violence.

The goal is not to replace one propaganda feed with another. It is to recover the people hidden behind slogans.

Nathan sums up the lesson clearly:

“You can’t whitewash war. You can’t whitewash genocide.” — 53:35

Following Jesus requires us to look.

We look at the wounded child, the frightened family, the ancient congregation, the Muslim neighbor, the traumatized soldier, and the person our political tribe has taught us not to see.

Then we ask the question empire avoids:

What does love require of us now?

🤝Connect with Nathan Perrin🤝

• Website: https://nathanperrinwriter.com

• Writing and film: Essays, screenwriting, a forthcoming novella, and a children’s project developed with an Assyrian media company

• Mennonite Action Chicago: Christian organizing under Palestinian community leadership; search “Mennonite Action Chicago” on Instagram

• Community Peacemaker Teams: Peace and human-rights work in Iraq, Kurdistan, Palestine, and other regions

• Resources Mentioned by Nathan

  • Munther Isaac: Christ in the Rubble and his sermons from Bethlehem

  • Mitri Raheb: Books and teaching on Palestinian Christianity

  • Naim Ateek: Justice and Only Justice and A Palestinian Theology of Liberation

  • Documentaries: Israelism and 1948: Creation & Catastrophe

  • Films: Munich, Waltz with Bashir, and Lebanon

Highlights & Takeaways

• Christianity was born in the Middle East, not the United States, and ancient Christian communities still live throughout the region.

• Western military intervention can create blowback that places both Muslims and local Christians in greater danger.

• Aid tied to conversion is coercion, not Christlike service.

• Loving Jewish people does not require unquestioning support for the Israeli government.

• End-times theology becomes dangerous when real people are treated as pieces in a prophecy puzzle.

• Personal contact can break political fear; a shared meal often teaches more than a thousand angry broadcasts.

• Ordinary Muslims and Christians frequently view one another as neighbors until governments, militias, and foreign powers turn identity into a weapon.

• Christian nationalism will not disappear with one politician; churches must confront the theology and fear that allow it to grow.

Listen

Listen for the moments when Nathan describes Christians and Muslims protecting one another. Notice how different those stories sound from the fear-based picture often presented in Western media and churches.

Reflect

When you hear about Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, or Palestine, whom do you picture? Are there people, churches, or whole histories missing from that picture?

Read

Read Matthew 5:43–48, Luke 10:25–37, and Romans 12:14–21. Ask whether our ideas about war, national loyalty, and enemies could survive a plain reading of Jesus.

Practice

Share a meal or conversation with someone from a religious or cultural background you were taught to fear. Listen to their story without treating them as a debate or mission project.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) The Christians missing from our maps

• Western blind spots about Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine

• Nathan’s Mennonite ministry, writing, and solidarity work

• Local activism in Chicago and experience in northern Iraq

(04:20) A bullet-marked cross and shared house keys

• Tishkawa church rebuilt after repeated destruction

• Assyrian and Muslim families protecting one another

• Syriac worship and “the church to the world”

(08:15) Why “evangelical” carries painful baggage

• Colonial missions and conditional aid

• Ancient Christians treated as conversion targets

• Trust built through service without coercion

(12:40) Middle Eastern Christians and the cost of intervention

• Different conditions in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza

• Traditional churches, converts, and Farsi online worship

• Blowback against Christians and Muslims

(19:45) Dispensationalism, Zionism, and prophecy politics

• Modern Israel as an end-times checklist

• Jewish people separated from state policy

• Christian nationalism and anti-Muslim racism

(24:45) A Ramadan meal breaks through fear

• Craig’s post-9/11 assumptions

• A Muslim neighbor’s plate of food

• Foreign policy, proxy power, and hidden conflicts

(32:06) “Christians are our neighbors”

• Warmth toward Christianity, fear of Western power

• Assyrian distrust shaped by missionary history

• Empire mistaken for the Gospel

(36:36) Assyrians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans

• Ancient ethno-religious communities

• Genocide, displacement, and state corruption

• Peaceful neighbors divided by political religion

(41:30) A political issue and a theological issue

• Church teaching behind fear and foreign policy

• Christian nationalism’s rapid growth

• Dispensationalism and government power

(46:23) What remains after Trump

• Political personality cults and missing moral lines

• Closed information silos

• Patient truth-telling and the work of the Holy Spirit

(50:55) Learning to see the people behind the war

• Palestinian Christian authors and sermons

• Documentaries and Israeli anti-war films

• Refusing to whitewash war or genocide

(54:18) Nathan’s writing and peace work

• Novella, children’s project, and screenwriting

• Mennonite Action Chicago

• Community Peacemaker Teams

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

165. Not Left vs. Right: Ancap Tim Returns with a New Album and an Old Question

Not Left vs. Right: Ancap Tim Returns with a New Album and an Old Question

What happens when following Jesus starts making us uncomfortable?

Not uncomfortable in the easy ways. Not the kind where we nod during a sermon about being nicer, then go home and keep doing what we were already doing.

What happens when Jesus steps across the lines our tribe has drawn?

What happens when He refuses to wear our colors, repeat our slogans, or bless the people we have chosen to fear?

Many of us were taught that faith and politics fit together like two pieces of the same puzzle. We learned to place the cross beside the flag. We learned to speak about God and country in the same breath. We learned that being a good Christian meant supporting the right leaders, opposing the right enemies, and protecting the right way of life.

Then Jesus starts talking.

He tells us to love our enemies.

He blesses the meek.

He warns us not to seek power over others.

He kneels and washes feet.

And suddenly, the puzzle pieces do not fit as neatly as they once did.

In this episode, Craig welcomes back musician, homesteader, and homeschooling father Ancap Tim. Tim has a new album called It’s Not Left vs. Right. One of its songs grew from a phrase at the heart of this project:

Sometimes being a good Christian means being a bad Roman.

That line may sound political. But this conversation is not focused on politics. It is about allegiance.

Politics only reveals what we already trust.

The deeper question is simple: When Caesar and Christ point in different directions, which one will we follow?

The Kingdom We Already Belong To

Tim’s life does not begin in a recording studio or behind a microphone. It begins with family, fields, animals, and old machines that may or may not start when they are supposed to.

He and his family homeschool and homestead. They raise lambs. Tim has been learning to cut his own hay with farm equipment built before many of us were born. He bought a 1953 Ford Jubilee tractor and has spent time fixing it with his dad.

There is something holy in that picture.

A father and son with grease on their hands. A stubborn piece of old iron. Hay waiting in the field. Children learning at home. Food being raised close to the table.

It may not look like a grand movement. It probably does not make the news. No one is standing behind a podium announcing it.

But much of the Kingdom of God looks like this.

It looks like daily faithfulness.

It looks like repairing what is broken.

It looks like caring for the people and animals placed in front of us.

It looks like sharing work with our parents and passing wisdom to our children.

We often want the Kingdom to arrive with banners and thunder. Jesus kept comparing it to small things: yeast in dough, a seed in dirt, a tiny mustard seed that grows while no one is watching.

Maybe we miss the Kingdom because we are looking for a stage while Jesus is standing in a field.

Tim also spends his week making short videos with names like Two Kingdoms Tuesday, Wills of War Wednesday, and Free Market Friday. He knows many people will not listen to a three-hour lecture. They may, however, stop for two minutes.

“If we’re gonna reach people, the short format is an underused tool,” he says around 2:45.

That sounds a lot like Jesus too.

Jesus taught with seeds, sheep, coins, birds, bread, and farmers. His stories were short enough to remember on the walk home. They carried deep truth without needing a lecture hall.

The Kingdom is not made real because we explain it perfectly.

It becomes visible when we live it plainly.

At the farmer’s market.

At the dinner table.

In the field.

In the repair shop.

Beside a folding table covered with jars of salsa.

Sometimes Being a Good Christian Means Being a Bad Roman

The song began with the idea at the center of this project:

Sometimes being a good Christian means being a bad Roman.

When Tim heard it, something clicked.

“That’s a song. We gotta do this,” he remembers thinking at 12:25.

The phrase carries weight because it names a tension many Christians feel but struggle to name.

The phrase “Bad Roman” does not mean being cruel, reckless, or hostile toward our neighbors. It does not mean we spend our lives shaking our fists at every public office.

It means we refuse to confuse Caesar with Christ, and that refusal is exactly what Tim set out to capture in the song itself.

Rome wanted people to believe Caesar was lord. The early Christians answered with a dangerous sentence:

Jesus is Lord.

That statement was not a private feeling. It was an allegiance. And in the song, that allegiance becomes something you can hear and repeat, not just agree with in theory.

To call Jesus King means other rulers are not.

They may hold office. They may command armies. They may print money, write laws, and place their faces on screens.

But they do not own our conscience.

They do not decide whom we are allowed to love.

They do not get to turn our enemies into people who no longer matter.

Tim’s song doesn’t just describe that tension—it puts it into words meant to be sung out loud: “I won’t bow down to Caesar’s throne,” and, “I serve a King who will never die.” The chorus becomes a kind of declaration, a reminder that allegiance to Christ is not abstract—it’s something we live, speak, and even sing.

That is the heart of being a Bad Roman.

It is not that we hate Rome.

It is that Rome is not our lord.

It is not that we are against our neighbors.

It is that our neighbors are too precious to place beneath the demands of a political tribe.

We belong to another Kingdom already.

Not So With You

In Matthew 20, two disciples approach Jesus with a request that feels familiar to anyone who has ever wanted to matter. They ask for seats of honor beside Him when His Kingdom comes. They are not asking for something strange or unusual. They are asking for what people have always asked for: proximity to power, recognition, significance.

The other disciples hear about it and become angry. Not because the request is outrageous, but because it exposes something in all of them. They wanted those seats too.

That moment sounds a lot like the instincts we still carry, whether we call ourselves left, right, libertarian, or anything else. We want our side to win. We want influence. We want to be close to the people making decisions.

This is exactly what Tim is wrestling with in his music and what the conversation keeps circiling back to throughout the episode.

When Tim sings lines like “I won’t bow down to Caesar’s throne” and “I serve a King who will never die,” he’s not just making a political statement. He’s asking a deeper question: if Jesus is really King, what does that actually change about how we live, especially when it comes to power?

That’s where Craig brings the conversation to Matthew 20.

Jesus does not pretend that power structures do not exist. He names them clearly. The rulers of the nations exercise authority over people. Those in high positions make sure their importance is seen and felt. Power, in the world’s system, is something to be held, displayed, and used.

Then Jesus says something that cuts straight through every attempt to baptize that system:

“Not so with you.”

He does not offer a softer version of domination. He does not suggest a more compassionate form of control. He does not tell them to take the same structure and simply behave better within it.

He draws a line.

Not so with you.

For those who follow Him, greatness is not measured by how many people you can direct, but by how many you are willing to serve. Status is not found in climbing higher, but in lowering yourself for the sake of others. Whoever wants to become great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first must become a slave.

Then Jesus points to Himself as the example. The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.

This is exactly the tension Tim is naming in his songs and Craig is pressing in the conversation. If Jesus defines greatness this way, then a lot of what we chase in politics—control, influence, dominance—starts to look out of place.

The world builds systems that elevate. Jesus kneels.

The world secures power. Jesus gives Himself away.

The world protects its own. Jesus touches the untouchable.

The world eliminates enemies. Jesus prays for His.

When we hold that picture clearly, many of our assumptions begin to fall apart. Especially the assumption that the Kingdom of God advances through the same mechanisms as every other kingdom.

This is where the tension with Christian nationalism becomes unavoidable—and why it keeps surfacing in the episode. Christian nationalism asks how Christians can gain enough influence to shape or control a nation. It assumes that if the right people hold power, the right outcomes will follow.

But Jesus never points His followers in that direction. He forms people who embody a different way entirely. He does not train them to rule over others. He teaches them to serve, to sacrifice, to love without coercion.

Christian nationalism looks for victory through laws, elections, courts, and strong leaders. Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey. He does not seize the throne. He walks toward a cross.

Jesus looked at the way rulers used power and said, “Not so among you.” 

Not so with you when everyone else is chasing control.

Not so with you when fear is used to secure loyalty.

Not so with you when a leader promises safety in exchange for unquestioned obedience.

Not so with you when cruelty is excused because it benefits your side.

Not so with you when people are reduced to categories—voters, threats, outsiders, enemies, instead of neighbors made in the image of God.

This kind of life is not passive. It requires a different kind of courage. It takes courage to serve when serving is seen as weakness. It takes courage to love enemies when hatred is rewarded. It takes courage to refuse revenge when revenge feels justified.

It also takes courage to speak honestly to your own tribe. It is far easier to criticize those on the other side than to confront the ways your own side has drifted from the way of Christ.

Jesus does not call His followers to withdraw from the world. He calls them to live within it without becoming shaped by its patterns of power.

That path is harder than winning an argument or an election.

But it is also the only path that actually looks like Him.

Love, Songs, and the Stories We Tell

The conversation moves from one song to another, and each one carries a different angle on the same tension: what it means to follow Jesus in a world that keeps asking for our loyalty.

When Tim talks about “Enemy of the State,” there’s a different energy. It’s faster, sharper, almost restless. He jokes about not being a rapper, but there’s something honest in the attempt. He’s trying to say something that doesn’t fit neatly into a single genre, just like the ideas behind it don’t fit neatly into left or right.

Then there’s the AIPAC song, which Craig laughs about, a kind of call-and-response gospel piece where every question gets the same answer. It’s funny, but it’s also uncomfortable. That tension runs through a lot of Tim’s work. Humor opens the door, but the point lingers after the laugh fades.

And then we circle back to the line that started it all: “The law of love breaks their chains.”

Craig pauses there, not to lecture, but because it feels like the thread tying everything together.

Tim doesn’t unpack it like a theologian. He just says, almost offhand, 

“Love is, I think, the Christian’s best alternative to coercion.”

You can hear it in the way they talk about real life, not theory. A neighbor bringing food. A friend showing up. A parent caring for a child. None of those things happen because someone was forced to do them.

They happen because someone chose to.

That’s the difference.

And it’s why the stories matter more than the arguments.

Craig brings up conversations he’s had with atheists, people who didn’t leave because they studied their way out of faith, but because something didn’t line up. What they saw in Christians didn’t look like Jesus.

That’s not a statistic. That’s a story.

And it’s harder to dismiss.

Because it raises a quieter question: what are people actually seeing when they see us?

Not what we say we believe.

Not what we post.

But how we treat people when it costs us something.

The songs don’t answer that question directly. They just keep pointing back to it.

The Quiet Revolution

By the end of the episode, the biggest picture isn’t political or even musical. It’s Tim heading back home.

Back to the tractor that still needs fixing.

Back to the lambs.

Back to his kids.

Back to making music without a big machine behind him.

There’s something grounding about that.

Because for all the talk about systems and power and influence, most of life doesn’t happen there. It happens in small places, with real people, doing ordinary things.

Jesus seemed to think that mattered.

He kept telling stories about seeds and bread and fields, things people already understood. Not because they were impressive, but because they were real.

And that’s where this conversation keeps landing.

Not in a grand solution, but in a different way of living.

A way that shows up in small decisions.

In how we treat the person in front of us.

In whether we choose control or care.

In whether we need to win, or we’re willing to serve.

It doesn’t look like much at first.

But neither does a seed.

And yet, that’s how the Kingdom grows.

Quietly.

Patiently.

Through people who decide, in the middle of ordinary life, that their allegiance really does belong to another King.

Sometimes being a good Christian really does mean being a bad Roman.

Not because we’re trying to fight the world.

But because we’re learning, slowly, to live differently inside it.

Gest BiO: Ancap TIm

Tim Wade, who performs and posts as Ancap Tim, is a singer-songwriter, homesteader, and homeschooling father whose music blends outlaw folk, southern rock, and country with a voluntaryist and Christian-anarchist point of view. His weekly short-form video series, Spooner Sunday, Two Kingdoms Tuesday, Wheels of War Wednesday, and Free Market Friday, covers history, Scripture, war, and economics in two- to three-minute doses. Tim first appeared on The Bad Roman Podcast in “Stateless Psalms: Songs for Liberty with Ancap Tim” (Episode 142), discussing his debut album, The State's Just a Mafia. He returns here to talk through his second album, It's Not Left vs. Right, including a track titled “Bad Roman.”

Links

• Website: ancaptim.crd.co

• Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/artist/ancap-tim

• Spotify: open.spotify.com/artist/0V00pFy29YAmmaKqSRKTRC

• YouTube: youtube.com/@AncapTim

• Instagram: instagram.com/ancaptim

• X: x.com/ancaptim

• Facebook: facebook.com/p/Ancap-Tim-61571241265825

• Playing the Midwest Peace & Liberty Fest, Aug 6–9, Laingsburg, MI: mplfest.org

• Previous episode: “Stateless Psalms: Songs for Liberty with Ancap Tim,” Episode 142

Also Mentioned in This Episode

• Scott Horton: antiwar commentator and host of The Scott Horton Show, who shared Tim's AIPAC song on X

• Justin Raimondo's An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard: the biography that inspired Tim's song “Enemy of the State”

• Aree Spivey and Brian Grant of Failed Kingdoms:  musicians who first appeared on The Bad Roman Podcast in Episode 7 and whose song has long served as the show's theme

Highlights & Takeaways

• Jesus defines greatness as service. Matthew 20 does not teach Christians to rule more kindly. Jesus says, “Not so with you.”

• Allegiance comes before politics. Our political choices often reveal whether we trust Christ’s way or the world’s way of power.

• The Kingdom is already present in ordinary faithfulness. Family, work, meals, music, repairs, and neighborly care can all become places where Christ’s rule is made visible.

• Love cannot be forced. Jesus invited people to follow Him. He did not use political power to create disciples.

• Christian witness matters more than Christian control. People should be able to see Jesus in the way we treat atheists, enemies, outsiders, and those wounded by the church.

• Truth does not need hatred. We can challenge war, propaganda, nationalism, and injustice without dehumanizing those who disagree.

• Small acts are not small in the Kingdom. Mustard seeds, yeast, shared meals, repaired tractors, and honest songs can carry more life than a thousand angry speeches.

• No King but Christ is a way of life. It means serving rather than ruling, loving rather than coercing, and trusting the cross more than the sword.

Listen

Listen for the moments when the conversation moves from political language back to the words of Jesus. Notice how the meaning changes when Matthew 20 becomes the starting point rather than a political label.

Reflect

Where have you been tempted to excuse behavior from your own political tribe that you would condemn in another? What would “not so with you” change?

Read

Read Matthew 20:20–28 slowly. Then read Philippians 2:1–11. Pay attention to how Jesus uses power and what kind of greatness He asks us to seek.

Practice

Choose one ordinary act of discipleship this week. Repair something with someone. Share food. Call a person who feels forgotten. Serve a neighbor without posting about it. Let the Kingdom grow quietly.

Epsiode Timestamps:

(00:00) Welcome Back, Ancap Tim

• New album, It's Not Left vs. Right, announced

• Catching up on homesteading, hay season, and old tractors

• Why Tim keeps his content short: Spooner Sunday, Two Kingdoms Tuesday, Free Market Friday

(03:37) Banned, Throttled, and Watched

• Getting banned from TikTok over central-banking history

• Who really owns TikTok now

• YouTube throttling and walking on eggshells

(09:07) Ungovernable

• An arrest over a single word

• Free speech that isn't actually free

• Snowflakes on every side

(11:42) The Salsa Table

• Selling Bad Roman salsa and talking to a pastor

• The sentence that became a chorus

• Writing the “Bad Roman” song

(14:12) Caesar's Throne and a Sky You Can't Chain

• Unpacking the first verse

• A line borrowed from Firefly

• Contrasting Caesar and Christ

(17:18) The Law of Love

• Why voluntary love disarms the state

• Coercion versus consent

• Room for atheists inside a voluntary society

(19:26) Leviathan and the Meek

• The second verse, unpacked

• Obey versus resist

• A kingdom that's here but doesn't belong

(25:56) Loving Your Atheist Friend

• Tearing down the walls Christians build

• Common ground through voluntarism

• A years-long dialogue over Romans 13

(27:41) When Party Loyalty Overrides Jesus

• Matthew 20:25–28 and “not so among you”

• Losing principles when your tribe is winning

• Statism, anarchy, and no in-between

(35:33) But I'm Extreme

• Taxing a man to death and calling it civic duty

• Why voluntarism gets called chaos

• Writing for people who already agree vs. everyone else

(40:16) Enemy of the State and the AIPAC Choir

• Rothbard, Raimondo, and a nu-metal chorus

• Building an AI choir of Ancap Tims

• Scott Horton, Dave Smith, and a congressman's lost primary

(49:52) Cracks in the Coalition

• Libertarians who voted for Trump anyway

• The Iran war and broken promises

• Republicans drifting toward “just leave people alone”

(52:51) Two Empires, One Playbook

• Controlled opposition and blackmail theories

• The Strait of Hormuz and a modern Suez Canal

• A tragedy neither side can spin away

(1:02:19) The Road Ahead

• Where to find ancaptim.crd.co

• The new album's July release

• Playing the Midwest Peace & Liberty Fest

(1:06:37) Outro

• Supporting the project through Spotfund

• No King but Christ

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

No One Fit to Rule: Larken & Amanda Rose on Approaching Humanity (BONUS Episode)

Why do you stop at a red light, even when no one is watching?

Most people would say it's easy. It's just safe. It's just smart. But think about it a little longer. You didn't pick that rule. You didn't sit down and decide, all on your own, that this exact corner needed this exact rule. Someone else made that choice. And somewhere along the way, without even noticing, you agreed to follow it.

Now think about how many other rules work the same way.

We follow rules we never really looked at. We fear people we've never met, just because someone told us to. We say things like "the law" as if that phrase explains everything. But "the law" is really just a pile of choices other people made. We treat it like it's sacred, and most of the time we never stop to ask why.

Here's the strange part. A lot of us think that's just fine. We think someone has to be in charge. We think most people are too selfish or too foolish to make good choices on their own, so someone else needs to make the big decisions for us.

But where did that idea come from? Did you choose to believe it? Or did it get planted in you before you were even old enough to ask questions?

That question sits under this whole episode. It's not really about which political side is right. It's something much simpler, and much bigger: why do we keep believing that someone has to rule over us?

That question isn't just an idea in a book. It shows up in real moments, in real people's lives. 

This episode of The Bad Roman Podcast is a little different from most. Craig isn't talking with someone who slowly changed their mind about church and politics. He's talking with Larken Rose and Amanda Rose. They're two well-known voices in a small world of people who believe no human being should rule over another. They're getting ready for an event called Approaching Humanity in Sedona, Arizona. Larken isn't even a Christian. He says so right out loud, in his usual blunt way.

But what starts as a conversation about an upcoming event turns into something bigger. It becomes a dialogue on where our beliefs really come from, who put them there, and what it might feel like to finally notice.

What We Never Chose to Believe

Larken tells a story about a woman who once challenged him on speaking about a Bible verse. She asked if he was a Christian. He said no. She pushed back. If he's not a Christian, what gives him the right to talk about what the Bible means?

"I’m not," he said, "but I can read."

It's a funny line. But it's also a small earthquake. Hidden inside her question was an idea she probably never thought about: that only certain people, with the right badge or the right membership, are allowed to understand certain things. Larken didn't need a badge. He just needed the words in front of him and the will to actually look at them.

That idea runs through the whole episode. It's not about "here is the one correct answer." It's more like: what happens when we stop assuming we already know everything, and we actually take a real look?

Amanda tells a story that hits even harder. She wears a shirt to church. It shows Jesus being arrested by ICE agents. A few people compliment it without really thinking about what it means. But one woman can't move past it. She keeps a stiff smile and says, three separate times, that it concerns her. Amanda explains why she wears it: Jesus was from the Middle East. He didn't look like the people cheering on the raids. If he walked around today, some of the very people so sure he'd be on their side might be the ones putting him in handcuffs.

Nobody in that story changed their mind right away. That's not really the point. The point is the flinch. Something in that woman noticed a wall in her own mind, a wall between "people who get arrested" and "Jesus," that had never once been allowed to fall.

A lot of us are carrying walls just like that one. We just haven't seen our own shirt yet.

What Jesus Actually Refused

There's a story that people love to use to prove Jesus stayed out of politics, or even that he backed the people in charge. A group of religious leaders sends men to trap him. If Jesus says don't pay taxes to Rome, he's a troublemaker. If he says pay them, he looks like a friend of the soldiers crushing his own people.

Jesus asks for a coin. Whose face is stamped on it? Caesar's. So, Jesus says, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar. And give God what belongs to God.

Read fast, it sounds like Jesus is just being safe. Read slow, and it's not safe at all. Everyone listening that day knew something we've mostly forgotten: nothing really belonged to Caesar in the first place. His whole empire was built by taking things from other people. So when Jesus says "give God what's God's," he's not handing Caesar a slice of anything. He's quietly saying the whole pie was never Caesar's to begin with.

That's not a political policy. That's a trap turned right back on the people who set it. They walked away amazed, and they got nothing to use against him.

It still cost him everything. Not because he broke some rule. Because he refused to bow down to power just because power said he had to. Rome didn't kill Jesus because he stayed quiet about politics. It killed him because his kingdom worked by a totally different rulebook: mercy instead of control, serving instead of ruling, truth instead of the easy lie that some people are simply born to rule over others.

Earlier in his life, after Jesus fed a huge crowd with just a little food, the people tried to grab him and force him to be their king. He didn't take the deal. He didn't ask for smaller terms. He walked up a mountain by himself and let them figure out that this wasn't a game he was going to play.

Sit with that for a second. He was handed the chance to rule, a huge crowd, full stomachs, people ready to follow him anywhere, and he walked away.

You don't have to agree with everything Larken Rose believes to notice something. That same refusal sits under his main idea, too: that no human being has the right to rule another. Jesus didn't argue about which policy was best. He walked away from the mountain.

The Question Nobody Wants to Answer

Larken doesn't spend a lot of time telling people what to believe. His real project, the one behind his new book, Unbound, and behind the whole Approaching Humanity event, is smaller and stranger than that. He wants to know if people are actually living by the things they already say they believe.

"Are you being consistent with your own moral code?"

That's the whole challenge, in one line. Not "come believe what I believe." Just: does what you do match what you say is true?

Ask most people if it's wrong to steal from a neighbor, and they'll say of course it is. Ask if they've ever voted for a program that takes money from a neighbor who didn't want to give it, and something shifts. The answer gets longer. A "well" creeps in. A "we" creeps in too.

Amanda talks about running a class built around watching that shift happen, over and over. They'd bring people in, friends, family, even strangers paid fifty dollars for fifteen minutes of their time, and ask a few careful questions. Every single time, the same pattern showed up.

"They don't know what they don't know. It's an actual blind spot."

People don't dodge the question because they're lying. They dodge because part of them senses a hole in the floor and doesn't want to look down. It's scary to admit there's a whole area of your own beliefs you never really chose, and never really checked.

Larken has his own way of describing what happens when we skip that check, and just let someone else decide for us without ever noticing.

"They don't even recognize the chains wrapped around their own brains."

It would be easy to think this is only about politics. It isn't. It's really a spiritual question wearing political clothes. Every faith that takes the idea of repentance seriously is describing the same thing: waking up to a chain you didn't even know was there, and choosing, on purpose, to take it off. The Bad Roman Project has a phrase for this: "no king but Christ." Larken, starting from a totally different place, calls it noticing the blind spot. Different words. A strangely similar discovery.

Different Roads, Same Clearing

What makes Approaching Humanity interesting isn't that every speaker agrees. They don't. But they all ended up in almost the same place anyway.

There's David Hathaway, a real sheriff, someone most people would expect to defend "the system" without question. Instead, Craig says Hathaway ran for the job for one main reason: he didn't want a tyrant sitting in that office. He's not there to praise police work. He's watched what happens when power has no limits, and decided he'd rather stand in that door himself than let someone worse walk through it.

There's Patrick Smith, who took the opposite road from most guests on this show by leaving Christianity and becoming an atheist. From a completely different direction, he still landed on the same refusal to bow down to the state that Craig found from inside his own faith.

There's Brittany, a homeschooling mom and comedian. Her whole talk is built around one simple idea: kids are people. Not animals to be trained. Not lumps of clay to be shaped into perfect obedience. People, with their own growing sense of right and wrong, the very same thing every other speaker at this event is trying to protect in the grown-ups in the room.

There's Rebecca Anzini, who once watched someone build a so-called "freedom community" while quietly running it like a cult. She learned the hard way that the words "freedom" and "liberty" can be worn like a mask, hiding the exact same hunger for control they claim to fight against.

None of them needed the same books or the same prayers to see it. They just needed to pay close enough attention to their own lives for the chains to become visible. As Amanda puts it, nobody set out to end up somewhere so unfamiliar. They were just thinking things through, one honest step at a time, until one day they looked up and asked, "How did I get here?"

That's not really about ideas or politics. That's what a real change of heart looks like, in whatever words a person has to describe it.

Larken's hope for the event isn't that everyone leaves agreeing on doctrine or economics or theology.

"I want everybody to be themselves, unbound by weird manipulations and lies."

You don't have to agree with his conclusions to notice that this sounds a lot like what Jesus wanted too. Not a room full of people who all think and act exactly alike. People who are finally free enough to be exactly who they were made to be.

Approaching Humanity

The name of the event says it all. Approaching Humanity. Not approaching a new law. Not approaching a political party. Not approaching AI for president. Humanity, the thing we lose every time we hand our conscience over to someone else and let them decide who deserves kindness and who deserves suspicion.

Amanda and Larken joke through most of the episode. Salsa. Arizona heat. Hot peppers. There's even an old bit about a group of friends debating whether to use a powerful, dangerous ring "for good" instead of just destroying it. It's funny because it's so backwards, you don't gather people together to talk about breaking free from control, and then hand the ring right back to somebody at the end. But the joke has a real point behind it. So many movements built around freedom quietly end up rebuilding the very throne they said they wanted to tear down. Just give me the ring. I'll use it the right way. Put me in charge. I'll fix it this time.

Jesus was offered that same kind of deal. Once on a mountain, after he fed thousands of people with almost nothing. Once again out in the wilderness, before his work had even started. Both times, he said no. Not because power itself is evil, but because his kingdom was never going to be built that way. Mercy doesn't grow bigger by force. Truth doesn't need an army to protect it. Love for your neighbor falls apart the second you try to force someone else into it at gunpoint, no matter how good your reasons sound.

That's the humanity this event wants people to walk toward. Not a better system. Not a stronger fence around the "right" kind of freedom. Just people, finally taking an honest look at the chains they never chose to wear, willing to sit with how uncomfortable that is, instead of smiling through it the way that woman smiled through Amanda's shirt.

Craig doesn't need Larken to become a Christian for this conversation to matter. He needs him to keep asking the question neither of them can fully escape: is there really any person on this earth fit to rule over another? Jesus never answered that question with a new law or a new policy. He answered it by walking away from a crown. By washing the feet of the very men who would abandon him by morning. By dying rather than pretend that any earthly power, however much it borrowed religious words, deserved his loyalty more than the God he called Father.

"No king but Christ" was never meant to end an argument. It's an invitation to keep asking who you've really been listening to your whole life, and to notice, maybe for the first time, that you were always free to stop.

Guest Bio

Larken Rose has spent over two decades making the same simple, uncomfortable argument: no human being has the right to rule another. He's the author of The Most Dangerous Superstition, the novel The Iron Web, and creator/co-writer of The Jones Plantation (novel and film). His new book, Approaching Humanity, releases alongside the live event of the same name. He also created Candles in the Dark, a seminar that teaches people how to talk to friends and family about authority without turning it into a fight. Larken isn't a Christian — he says so plainly in this episode — but he and Craig keep landing in the same place anyway.

Amanda Rose is Larken's wife and partner in both life and work. A voluntaryist since 2012, she's a writer and public speaker who has appeared at Anarchapulco, Anarchovegas, and Anarchizona, and she co-hosts The Rose Channel alongside Larken.

Together, Larken and Amanda are hosting Approaching Humanity, a full-day event and book launch on Saturday, July 18, 2026, at the Sedona Performing Arts Center in Sedona, Arizona.

Links

• The Rose Channel: therosechannel.com

• Larken Rose's personal site: larkenrose.com

• Candles in the Dark seminar: attendcandles.com

• Larken on X: x.com/larken_rose

• Larken on YouTube: youtube.com/user/LarkenRose

• Approaching Humanity event tickets: therosechannel.com/humanity

• Approaching Humanity pre-order the book: therosechannel.com/humanitybook

Also Mentioned in This Episode (Approaching Humanity Speakers)

• Sheriff David Hathaway: Sheriff of Santa Cruz County, Arizona; previously featured on The Bad Roman Podcast, Episode 53, “Love at the Border with Sheriff David Hathaway”

• Jason Bassler: co-founder of The Free Thought Project and founder of Police the Police

• Patrick Smith: host of Disenthrall

• Mark Maresca: host of The White Pillbox

• Carey Wedler: voluntaryist content creator; former editor-in-chief of Anti-Media

• Derrick Broze:  journalist, author, and founder of The Conscious Resistance Network

• James Corbett: independent journalist, The Corbett Report, joining remotely from Japan

• Rebecca Anzini: speaker on the hidden dangers inside “freedom-minded” intentional communities

• Brittany: homeschooling mother, comedian, and past cast member of The Jones Plantation

Highlights & Takeaways

• We often follow beliefs we never really chose. 

• Most of us are shaped by rules, fears, and loyalties we picked up along the way, and we rarely stop to notice the difference.

• Being consistent shows what we actually believe. 

• Larken's big challenge isn't "believe what I believe." It's "does what you do match what you say you believe?"

• Jesus turned down power more than once. 

• Both on the mountain after feeding the crowd, and later before Pilate, Jesus refused to build his kingdom through force.

• "Give unto Caesar" is not a blank check for obedience. It's actually a trap turned back on the people who set it, built on the truth that nothing ever really belonged to Caesar at all.

• Different starting points can still lead to the same place. 

• A sheriff, an atheist, a homeschooling mom, and a Christian podcast host can all land on the same idea, that no one has the right to rule over another person, even coming from totally different directions.

• Discomfort is often a sign that something true is being noticed. 

• The people in this episode who flinched or froze or smiled too hard weren't bad people. They were standing at the edge of something they didn't know was there.

• Even freedom movements can rebuild the very thing they meant to tear down. 

• The temptation to say "just let me hold the power, I'll use it responsibly" shows up almost everywhere, even inside movements built to fight against it.

Listen

Listen for how many different words are used in this episode to describe the exact same discovery, "unbound," "the blind spot," "no king but Christ," and notice how closely they line up.

Reflect

Think of one belief you've never really chosen, something you just picked up along the way. What would it cost you to take an honest look at it?

Read

Read Matthew 22:15–22, John 6:14–15, and John 18:33–37. Notice what Jesus turns down in each story, and what he offers instead.

Practice

Try Larken's question on one belief you hold strongly: are you really being consistent with it? Or have you carved out a quiet little exception for the parts that are inconvenient?

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Announcing Approaching Humanity

• Event details: Sedona, Arizona, July 18th

• Larken Rose returns to the show

• What this bonus episode is about

(02:02) Who Actually Shows Up

• Why the Rose Channel audience spans every belief system

• Labels versus consistency

• Craig on discovering The Most Dangerous Superstition

(05:27) Faith, Atheism, and Getting Shut Out

• Being sidelined by atheist anarchist circles for having faith

• Is any man fit to rule another?

• The question underneath every political argument

(09:24) The Core Challenge

• Are you consistent with your own moral code?

• Amanda's shirt: Jesus arrested by ICE

• A wall most people don't know they've built

(13:10) Renaming the Book

• Minds nobody knows are bound

• Why “Unbound” almost became the title

• What being unbound actually means

(15:30) Rereading “Give Unto Caesar”

• A trap sprung on the people who set it

• Two favorite memes: the cross, and “let the state do it”

• Render unto Caesar as admitting who you belong to

(18:52) The God Nobody Names

• “Government is the God they actually believe in”

• Worshipping Babylon without noticing

• The void: what people don't know they don't know

(23:06) Candles in the Dark

• The seminar built to change minds without arguing

• The $50 test for cognitive dissonance

• Craig's own uncomfortable awakening

(25:55) Why Approaching Humanity Brings Together So Many Beliefs

• Different starting points, same discovery

• Meet the speakers: Sheriff David Hathaway

• Jason Bassler of The Free Thought Project

(33:22) Meet More of the Speakers

• Brittany on homeschooling and “children are people”

• Pre-recorded talks from Carey Wedler and Derrick Broze

• Patrick Smith of Disenthrall

(36:30) Even More Speakers

• Mark Maresca and The White Pillbox

• Rebecca Anzini on a “freedom community” that hid a tyrant

• James Corbett joining remotely from Japan

(41:04) Why the Event Won't Hand the Ring Back

• “Give me the ring of power”

• The Boromir bit, freedom events that quietly rebuild the throne

• Building something all the way consistent

(48:45) Getting to Sedona

• Larken's last planned in-person event

• Tickets, the book, and the July 18th release

• Closing thoughts

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

164. Breaking Free from Political Christianity: Rediscovering the Gospel Beyond Partisan Faith with Brian Drinkwine

What happens when following Jesus starts pulling us away from the politics that once made us feel safe?

The change can be lonely. Friends may stop calling. Church conversations may grow tense. People who once praised our faith may suddenly wonder if we have lost it.

Brian Drinkwine knows that road.

He returns to The Bad Roman Project to discuss his new book, Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity. The book grows out of Brian’s own journey from political certainty toward a deeper allegiance to Jesus. It is not a guide for switching parties. It is a call to notice how political power forms us, and to recover the gospel from its grip.

Brian once believed that America needed the right Christians in office. He listened to conservative talk radio, protested taxes, feared Democratic leaders, and looked to elections for hope. He loved Jesus, but the empire had quietly taught him what to fear, whom to distrust, and what victory should look like.

Then he began reading the teachings of Jesus differently.

The Kingdom of God was not a religious decoration placed on top of American politics. Jesus was not offering spiritual support for one tribe. He was announcing another Kingdom, another King, and another way to live.

That discovery became the heart of Brian’s book, and the heart of this episode.

A Book Born from Political Captivity

Kingdom Over Empire is not written by someone throwing rocks from outside the church.

Brian writes as someone who lived inside political Christianity, believed its promises, and felt its fears. He remembers supporting John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008 because he believed they could help restore America as a Christian nation.

When Barack Obama won, Brian sat alone in his living room and cried.

He thought the country was finished.

Years later, that memory helped him see where his hope had been placed. He had treated the loss of an election almost like the loss of the gospel.

“It never occurred to me at the time to question whether our country being over or not even matters.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 07:45

That is not a claim that nations or policies never matter. It is a question about order.

What matters most?

If our preferred country, party, or leader falls, is Jesus still Lord? If the answer is yes, then why do elections sometimes have more control over our peace than the risen Christ?

Brian’s book is an attempt to name that tension and help Christians come home to Jesus.

The Political Smoothie We Were Handed

Brian uses the word syncretism to describe what happens when two opposing beliefs are mixed together.

The word may sound academic. The picture Brian gives is not.

He jokes about making a “Christian Republican smoothie.” We could make a Democratic version too. Add a few Bible verses, a flag, a favorite politician, some fear about the other side, and blend until nobody can tell where Christianity ends and party loyalty begins.

Many of us drank that smoothie without knowing what was in it.

We assumed Christians voted a certain way. We treated political opponents as spiritual threats. We learned which news sources good Christians watched and which people could not be trusted.

Our party became part of our identity.

But Brian argues that Jesus does not belong to the right, the left, or a polite middle.

“We take the narrow path. We’re going a different way entirely.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 10:10

The Kingdom is not a compromise between two empires. It is a different political reality under a crucified King.

The Main Question of Kingdom Over Empire

Brian’s book asks us to look deeper than policies and elections.

Before we decide how to vote, what cause to support, or which political claim to repeat, something has already happened to us.

We have been formed.

Campaigns, parties, algorithms, news channels, churches, and influencers teach us what to fear. They shape our view of safety. They tell us who threatens our family and who can rescue us.

“The real crisis that’s facing the church isn’t political opposition, but political formation.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 12:37

This is the book’s central warning.

Empire does not only want our vote. It wants to disciple us.

It wants our attention, loyalty, money, imagination, and anger. It wants to shape us into people who believe that control is the only path forward and that winning excuses almost anything.

Brian organizes the book around six ways empire does this: fear, seduction, winning, certainty, enemies, and pressure.

Fear, Seduction, and the Promise of Safety

Fear turns threats into teachers.

When fear takes over, we stop asking, “What does faithfulness to Jesus require?” We begin asking, “What must we do to survive?”

That change may seem small, but it opens the door to cruelty. Mercy begins to look weak. Empathy feels dangerous. Violence becomes protection.

Seduction works from the other side.

Empire offers hope, comfort, security, prosperity, and influence. It whispers that everything will be better once our people are in control.

Give us your vote.

Give us your loyalty.

Defend us when we fail.

We will protect your way of life.

The offer sounds like salvation because that is what it is trying to replace.

Winning, Certainty, and Control

Empire also forms us through winning.

Brian says the logic of winning replaces the question “Is it faithful?” with “Does it work?”

That is how Christians begin excusing what they once condemned. A dishonest leader becomes acceptable because he gets results. Cruel policies become necessary because the stakes are too high. Integrity becomes a luxury we cannot afford.

But Jesus did not tell His disciples to win at all costs.

He told them to take up a cross.

Certainty adds another layer. It lets us trade trust for control while calling the trade “conviction.”

Real trust leaves room for mystery. It admits that we do not control history, elections, or tomorrow. Certainty demands that we know exactly who the good people are, who the bad people are, and what must be done to them.

The Kingdom calls us to trust Jesus.

Empire offers the illusion that we can control everything ourselves.

Enemies, Pressure, and the Loss of Empathy

Empire needs enemies.

It cannot keep people afraid without a threat. It cannot demand loyalty without someone to blame. It cannot justify violence without first teaching us to stop seeing certain people as human.

Brian says empire can even make contempt feel like discernment.

“You can’t go kill somebody if you’re empathetic with them.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 15:00

That sentence cuts through a great deal of political noise.

Empathy does not mean pretending harmful ideas are harmless. It means remembering that the person in front of us bears the image of God.

Pressure is the sixth tool.

When the world feels chaotic, political tribes demand loyalty. Questioning the group may cost relationships, church standing, employment, or social belonging.

People we love may cut us off because we no longer repeat the approved political lines.

That is not an accident. Pressure teaches us that belonging depends on obedience to the tribe.

Faith as Allegiance to a Crucified King

Brian does not write Kingdom Over Empire to tell Christians to disappear from public life or find a better political party.

He wants to recover the New Testament meaning of faith.

Faith is not only agreeing with religious ideas. It is trust, faithfulness, and allegiance.

Brian describes it as an

“undivided allegiance to a crucified King whose Kingdom cannot be advanced by the tools of empire.” —Brian Drinkwine, 16:45

That means the method matters.

We cannot build a Kingdom of truth with lies.

We cannot build a Kingdom of mercy with cruelty.

We cannot build a Kingdom of peace by killing our enemies.

We cannot build a Kingdom of voluntary love through coercion.

Jesus does not need Caesar’s sword to complete His mission.

Jesus Was Not Joking About Enemy-Love

The chapter on enemies was one of the hardest parts of the book for Brian to write.

Enemy-love sounds beautiful until the enemy is real.

It is easy to pray for an annoying coworker. It is harder to love someone we believe threatens our family, religion, nation, or safety.

Yet Jesus gave this command in a world of soldiers, occupation, public torture, and political violence.

“When Jesus tells us to love our enemies, He’s not speaking hyperbolically.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 18:55

Jesus showed us enemy-love while hanging on a Roman cross.

He did not merely refuse revenge. He prayed for the people killing Him.

Brian contrasts that call with the version of cross-bearing he learned at youth camp. Taking up the cross meant not drinking, smoking, or cussing. It meant wearing a Christian shirt and putting a fish on the car.

Those choices may be fine, but they are not the full weight of the cross.

The cross is where love refuses to become hatred under pressure.

When an Online Opponent Became a Friend

Brian shares one of the book’s ideas through a real relationship.

A man repeatedly challenged him online, leaving combative comments and sending argumentative messages. Brian could have blocked him and moved on.

Instead, he asked, “Tell me who you are.”

The man was a missionary serving in Africa.

Brian began supporting him, praying for him, and talking with him. Their disagreement did not vanish, but the enemy became a person.

The missionary carried a deep fear about Muslim influence in America. As they talked, Brian saw all six tools of empire at work: fear, a named enemy, certainty, political seduction, pressure, and a demand to win.

Brian also had to apply his own book to himself.

“I’m always in process. Everything I wrote about in my book…is something that I feel like I’m actually experiencing. It’s not theoretical.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 23:20

That honesty matters.

Kingdom Over Empire is not written from a mountaintop by someone who has finished the journey. It is written from the road.

When Party Loyalty Overrides Jesus

Brian and Craig spend the next part of the conversation testing the book’s ideas against present political life.

Brian is careful not to declare that politically loyal Christians are not saved. He knows sincere followers of Jesus on both sides.

The deeper question is about reflexes.

What happens when our party does something that clearly clashes with Jesus?

Do we grieve?

Do we speak honestly?

Or do we rush to explain why this case is different?

“That’s where you’ve been compromised.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 29:49

They talk about immigration, political fear, government cuts, foreign aid, children suffering, and the way parties turn vulnerable people into threats.

The concern is larger than one program or policy. It is about what happens to our hearts.

When real people suffer, can we still see them?

Or has loyalty to our side made us numb?

Brian says he did not move from Republican to Democrat. He went from Republican to “nope.”

His goal is not to baptize another party. His goal is to ask why followers of Jesus can overlook suffering when their preferred leaders cause it.

Remembering the Poor

Brian reflects on how his political formation shaped the way he viewed poor and marginalized people.

He had been trained to see people in need as irresponsible, dangerous, or undeserving. He later compared that formation with the deep concern for the poor found throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the teachings of Jesus.

The difference was hard to ignore.

“I was not being formed in the ways of Jesus. I was being formed by empire.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 42:22

Political formation had not only changed his opinions. It had changed the kind of person he was becoming.

Eventually, even cruelty could be called love.

We may tell someone we are only “speaking truth,” when we are really enjoying the chance to be mean.

Brian puts it more simply:

“In reality, I’m just being a punk.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 42:45

That may be the least academic line in the episode. It may also be one of the most useful.

If our truth does not carry the character of Jesus, we should stop and ask who is really forming us.

The Social Cost of Coming Home to Jesus

The opening of Brian’s book includes a character named Jeffrey.

Jeffrey is a composite of three people from Brian’s life. Each relationship changed as Brian’s understanding of Jesus, empire, and the Kingdom changed.

Brian does not blame them for noticing the change.

He was changing.

But the change threatened more than political opinions. It threatened social networks, shared language, and a whole way of understanding the world.

Leaving political allegiance can feel like leaving a family.

The loss is real.

Brian describes meetings over coffee or lunch where friends quietly made it clear that the relationship could not continue in the same way.

“You lose a person you love…to wanting to follow Jesus more faithfully.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 48:10

Political deconstruction is not only about ideas. It can bring grief, isolation, and confusion.

That is why people need community. They need to know they are not crazy. They need others who understand what it feels like to choose Kingdom over empire and lose something along the way.

Image-Bearers Are Not Collateral Damage

Craig brings the discussion back to a simple truth.

Every person being discussed in our political arguments is created by God.

Immigrants, Muslims, political opponents, people in poverty, victims of war, and people caught in systems we barely understand are not categories. They are image-bearers.

Following Jesus may become uncomfortable when we refuse to overlook harm simply because our side caused it.

Comfort is not the goal.

Faithfulness is.

That discomfort also shaped the response to Brian’s earlier viral post about Charlie Kirk. The post brought a wave of messages and changed Brian’s daily life. It also became the subject of Brian’s previous appearance on The Bad Roman Project.

The response showed how hungry many Christians are for language that names the uneasy mix of Christianity, nationalism, celebrity, and political power.

The new book gives that unease a larger framework.

When the Cross Became a Weapon

The second half of the episode turns toward Constantine, one of the book’s major historical examples.

Before Constantine, Christians existed as a persecuted and often marginalized people within the Roman Empire. The movement grew through households, relationships, witness, sacrifice, and care.

Then the relationship changed.

Constantine claimed to see a vision of the cross before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. His soldiers placed the Chi-Rho symbol on their shields and entered battle under a Christian sign.

The cross, once a symbol of Rome killing its enemies, became a banner carried by soldiers killing in Christ’s name.

Brian calls it a stunning reversal.

“The thing that we take to represent ourselves being willing to die [became] the thing that we put on our shields so that we can go in and kill other people.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 58:00

The church gained legal standing, money, influence, and safety.

It also became tied to the machinery of empire.

Bishops received privilege. Church leaders gained access. Allegiance to Rome became more useful, and eventually more necessary.

The persecuted faith became the favored faith.

That bargain still echoes.

Constantine Did Not Invent Empire, He Co-opted the Church

Brian does not claim that empire began with Constantine.

Rome was already Rome.

The important change was that the empire learned to use Christianity.

The church did not need to be destroyed if it could be absorbed. The cross did not need to disappear if it could be placed on a shield. Jesus did not need to be denied if His name could be used to bless conquest.

That may be the more dangerous form of captivity.

Open persecution makes the conflict clear.

Political favor makes compromise feel like success.

Brian and Craig ask whether the same pattern appears in American Christianity. When pastors flatter rulers, excuse conduct they once condemned, or preach national power while ignoring Jesus, has the church gained influence, or has it been captured?

Seven Mountains and a Gospel of Domination

Brian then tells a story that becomes another major part of the book.

Years ago, he attended a Christian gathering where Lance Wallnau taught the Seven Mountains Mandate.

The teaching says Christians must take control of major areas of culture, including government, education, business, media, family, religion, and the arts.

At the time, Brian accepted it. He even brought the teaching back to his own ministry.

Now he sees it differently.

The Seven Mountains Mandate teaches Christians to climb, capture, and control culture.

Jesus did not climb a mountain to dominate His enemies.

He went to a cross.

Brian calls the mandate an anti-gospel because it replaces cruciform faithfulness with power and control.

“He didn’t go climb the mountain and show His dominance. He went to a cross.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 1:03:35

The contrast could not be sharper.

One path seeks the highest seat.

The other washes feet.

Cyrus, Trump, and the Political Loophole

The episode closes with one of the book’s strongest biblical challenges.

Lance Wallnau helped popularize the claim that Donald Trump was a modern Cyrus. In Scripture, Cyrus was a pagan ruler who helped release the Jewish people.

The comparison allowed many Christians to say that a leader’s character did not matter. God could use an immoral man to get the right political results.

Integrity became expendable.

Winning became the proof of faithfulness.

Brian asks whether Christians chose the wrong biblical king.

What if the better comparison is not Cyrus, but Nebuchadnezzar?

Nebuchadnezzar did not only conquer through violence. He brought Israel’s brightest people into his court. He gave them education, status, new names, new clothes, and access to power.

He offered influence in exchange for identity.

Brian describes it as

“proximity to power in exchange for an almost imperceptible surrender of identity.”

— Brian Drinkwine, 1:06:00

Babylon did not need to erase the faith of God’s people.

It only needed to make Babylon feel like home.

That is the final warning of Kingdom Over Empire.

Political captivity does not always begin with a threat.

Sometimes it begins with an invitation to the table.

Recovering the Gospel

Brian’s book is not simply a complaint about politics.

It is an invitation to recover something.

To recover faith as allegiance to Jesus.

To recover enemy-love as a real command.

To recover the cross as the opposite of domination.

To recover compassion for people our parties teach us to fear.

To recover a church that does not need state power to be faithful.

The path out of political captivity may cost us certainty, status, and even relationships.

But it gives us back the freedom to see Jesus clearly.

That is a trade worth making.

🤝Connect with Brian🤝

• Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity

  • Also available through Amazon and other book retailers

• Email: brian@briandrinkwine.com

• Website: https://briandrinkwine.com/

• Linkedin

• X

• Facebook

• Instagram 

• Ministry at Breakthrough Church

Highlights & Takeaways

• Brian’s new book is a recovery project. Kingdom Over Empire helps Christians recognize political formation and return to allegiance to Jesus.

• Empire disciples before it governs. Fear, seduction, winning, certainty, enemies, and pressure shape us before policy debates begin.

• Political compromise often appears as a reflex. When our party contradicts Jesus and we immediately defend it, our allegiance has been exposed.

• The cross cannot be used to bless domination. Constantine’s fusion of Christianity and military power changed how the gospel was practiced and imagined.

• Leaving political identity carries a social cost. Friends, churches, and communities may pull away when we question shared loyalties.

• The poor and marginalized reveal our formation. Our treatment of vulnerable people shows whether Jesus or empire has shaped our hearts.

• Seven Mountains teaching reverses the way of Christ. Jesus did not conquer culture from the top; He served and suffered from below.

• Babylon often assimilates before it attacks. Access, praise, and political influence can slowly replace Christian identity.

Listen

Listen for the six tools Brian develops in Kingdom Over Empire: fear, seduction, winning, certainty, enemies, and pressure. Notice how they return throughout the whole conversation.

Reflect

When your political side acts against the teachings of Jesus, what is your first response? Grief, honesty, silence, or defense?

Read

Read Matthew 5–7, Matthew 20:20–28, Daniel 1–3, and the crucifixion story in Matthew 27. Compare the politics of domination with the politics of the cross.

Practice

Choose one person or group your political tribe has taught you to fear. Learn a name, hear a story, and practice seeing an image-bearer before seeing a label.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Introducing Kingdom Over Empire

• Brian’s new book and personal journey

• Political faith, loneliness, and reassurance

• From Christian nationalism toward Jesus

(05:30) A Crisis of Hope and Identity

• Election-night despair and misplaced hope

• When politics feels like salvation

• Reordering what matters most

(09:30) How Empire Disciples Us

• Jesus as King beyond party categories

• Political formation before policy

• Fear, seduction, winning, certainty, enemies, pressure

(18:50) Enemy-Love and the Way of the Cross

• Jesus’ command without political loopholes

• Cross-bearing beyond Christian branding

• Online conflict transformed through relationship

(24:30) Winning, Certainty, and Control

• Results over faithfulness

• Certainty as a substitute for trust

• The illusion of control in political life

(28:45) When Party Loyalty Overrides Jesus

• Defending a party against clear Christian teaching

• Immigration, aid cuts, poverty, and political enemies

• Compassion numbed by tribal allegiance

(36:30) Remembering the Poor and the Marginalized

• Formation that reshapes how we see people in need

• Biblical concern for the vulnerable

• When truth-telling becomes cruelty

(43:49) The Cost of Leaving Political Identity

• Friendship loss and Brian’s composite character “Jeffrey”

• Social belonging, worldview, and political deconstruction

• Image-bearers, discomfort, and the Charlie Kirk response

(49:30) Image-Bearers Over Political Categories

• Seeing people beyond labels and tribes

• Discomfort as a sign of faithfulness

• Compassion in a polarized world

(53:25) Constantine and the Co-opted Cross

• Milvian Bridge and Christian symbols in battle

• Persecuted church becoming state-favored faith

• Cross of self-sacrifice turned into military power

(57:45) When the Church Gains Power

• Influence, privilege, and compromise

• Empire absorbing rather than opposing the church

• The danger of political favor

(1:01:10) Seven Mountains, Cyrus, and Political Power

• Lance Wallnau and cultural domination

• Seven Mountains teaching as an anti-gospel

• Trump as Cyrus and integrity made expendable

(1:05:25) Nebuchadnezzar and Assimilation into Babylon

• Access to power in exchange for identity

• Daniel’s resistance as the exception

• Political influence as a tool of captivity

(1:07:45) Assimilation and the Subtle Loss of Identity

• Babylon’s strategy of comfort and access

• When empire feels like home

• The slow surrender of allegiance

(1:09:40) Finding and Sharing the Book

---

Support The Bad Roman Project through Spotfund. Donations above production costs go to local charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

You can also Salsa the Love and share the episode, everything helps spread the message of Jesus over empire. Faithfulness over winning. Neighbor-love over coercion.

Thanks for being here, and No King but Christ!

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163. Faith, Politics, & the War Within: Allegiance, Grace & Addiction with Josif Wright

What happens when the beliefs we were handed no longer look like Jesus?

Maybe we were taught that America was God’s special nation. Maybe we were told that supporting war was patriotic, voting was a Christian duty, and questioning a pastor showed weak faith. Then one day, we opened the Gospels and noticed something strange: Jesus did not sound much like the system built in His name.

Josif Wright knows that feeling. He is a public-school teacher, longtime coach, hospice chaplain, former youth minister, and church speaker. He has spent years helping young people think, grieving with families, and asking hard questions about what Christians have been taught. He is also the author of The War Within: My Story, a father’s account of his son Ryan’s long struggle with addiction.

At first, Christian nationalism and addiction may sound like two separate subjects. Yet the same thread runs through both parts of this conversation: our desire to control people.

The state controls through laws, fear, taxes, borders, and violence. Religious leaders may control through shame and claims of unquestionable authority. Families facing addiction may try to control a loved one because they are scared to death of losing them.

But Jesus shows us another way. Truth without coercion. Grace without denial. Love that stays close without trying to play God.

“Don’t Trust the Government and Be Kind to People”

Josif teaches Jobs for America’s Graduates, or JAG. There is a curriculum, but no single textbook. That gives him room to discuss work, current events, faith, and life with his students.

After one test, Josif asked his class what they had learned so far. One senior wrote:

“Don’t trust the government and be kind to people.” — Student response, around 04:25

That is a pretty strong report card.

The line is funny, but it also gets close to the heart of this episode. Government asks us to believe that force will keep us safe. Jesus asks us to love our neighbors. Empire teaches suspicion. Christ teaches mercy.

Josif’s classroom sometimes turns into a kind of group therapy session. His students ask why people are being bombed. They question the stories adults have handed them. Josif does not demand that they copy his answers. He wants them to think.

That may be one of the most loving things a teacher, or a pastor, can do.

When Questions Become an Act of Faith

Josif’s change did not happen in one dramatic moment. One question led to another.

He began looking again at teachings about tithing, women in ministry, Israel, government, and Romans 13. The more he studied, the more he wondered how much of his old certainty had come from Scripture and how much had come from people with microphones.

He now tells both his students and his church congregation to do their own research. Do not accept a claim just because it comes from a pulpit, a podcast, or a person with a title.

“God wants us to think and ask questions,” Josif says.

God can handle those questions. The harder question may be whether we can handle the answers.

Real faith does not need us to hide from truth. It does not fall apart when we examine it. Sometimes asking better questions is how we clear away the rubble and find Jesus again.

God Is Pro-People

The hardest part of Christian nationalism may be the way it divides human beings into teams.

We are told that one nation is righteous, another nation is evil, and the people living under each flag somehow inherit those labels. Once we accept that story, violence becomes easy to excuse. Dead children become “collateral damage.” Grieving parents become members of the wrong group.

Josif offers a simpler answer:

“I’m not pro-Israel, pro-Palestine. I think God is pro-people.” — 08:30

That does not erase history or pain. It does not mean every action is good. It means every person remains an image-bearer.

No modern nation-state gets a blank check from Jesus. The command to love does not stop at a border. Christ does not ask for our enemy’s passport before telling us to pray for them.

As Josif later says, we are called to love people “no matter who they are.”

The Flag Beside the Cross

Josif remembers churches where people stood, faced the American flag, and pledged their allegiance during worship. At the time, it felt normal.

That is how idols often work. They do not walk into the sanctuary wearing devil horns. They arrive wrapped in tradition.

Josif now sees the conflict clearly:

“We should be pledging allegiance to the King—to King Jesus—and not to a flag.” — 22:42

The Pledge of Allegiance is not only a promise to a piece of cloth. It is a promise to “the republic for which it stands.” That raises a question Christians cannot avoid: can our highest allegiance belong to both Jesus and an empire?

Jesus said we cannot serve two masters.

This does not require hatred for our neighbors, veterans, or the land where we live. Josif speaks with care about those who returned from war with lost limbs, trauma, homelessness, or despair. His concern is not contempt for people. It is the worship of the machine that used them.

“No King but Christ” means what it says. No president, nation, pastor, party, or flag gets the loyalty that belongs to Jesus.

When Pastors “Call the Shots”

Josif’s questions also led him to challenge church authority built on fear.

He remembers pastors saying things such as, “Don’t challenge me,” and, “I call the shots.” But that is not the leadership Jesus modeled. Jesus knelt. Jesus washed feet. Jesus warned His disciples not to rule like the kings of the nations.

Josif no longer stands behind a pulpit when he speaks. He comes down to the same level as the people in the room. The movement is small, but the message is clear: we are learning together.

Religious control and state control often speak the same language. Both demand submission. Both punish questions. Both build systems that benefit the people at the top.

Josif believes much of this is fear-based. Fear of punishment. Fear of disorder. Fear that everything will collapse unless a strong leader takes control.

But Christians already have a King. We do not need to manufacture another one.

Walking Away from Political Salvation

Josif once considered running for local office. He voted because that was what responsible Christians were expected to do. He even heard pastors suggest that a person was not a real Christian unless they voted.

Today, his view is different.

He no longer expects the political system to bring the Kingdom of God. He has watched systems change people more often than people change systems. Craig makes the point plainly: being “the light of the world” does not mean ruling over our neighbors.

Light looks like enemy-love. It looks like feeding people, telling the truth, forgiving, serving, and refusing to repay evil with evil.

We do not become more Christlike by gaining the legal power to force people to behave as we wish. Jesus changes hearts through invitation, truth, sacrifice, and love, not through a ballot-backed threat.

The Other War Within

Around the middle of the episode, the conversation shifts. The flag gives way to a father’s journal. Political control gives way to the helplessness of watching someone you love suffer.

Josif’s son Ryan dealt with childhood migraines and chronic pain. Pills were available. Pain relief slowly became something else. Feelings of being unloved, painful losses, broken trust, and the death of his grandmother added to the weight.

Josif wrote The War Within from a parent’s point of view. He did not want to write it at first. Returning to old journal pages brought the fear and grief back to life. Yet writing also became part of his healing.

For years, addiction shaped the whole family. Josif and his wife described their condition in medical terms. Sometimes they were stable. Sometimes critical. Sometimes on life support.

“I had a knot in my stomach for a decade,” Josif says. “Addiction is a beast.”

Love Cannot Force Someone Free

Families dealing with addiction know the terrible urge to fix everything.

Find the right rehab. Make the right phone call. Drive another three hours. Say the right prayer. Watch more closely. Try harder.

Josif drove across the state again and again during one terrible month. Ryan told him, “The hooks are in so deep. I don’t know how I’m going to get out of this.”

Then someone at a church service offered Josif a hard word:

“You’re trying too hard. You’re trying to control the situation. Just step back. Just let God be God.” — 44:05

Letting go did not mean Josif stopped loving Ryan. It meant admitting that a father could not become his son’s savior.

Three days later, Ryan called and asked Josif to come get him. Recovery was not smooth or simple. There were setbacks. There was detox, long treatment, reading, faith, and a slow rebuilding of life. Josif says Ryan had been clean for eight years at the time of the recording.

The story is not a formula. Every person and every recovery path is different. It is a witness to grace that kept showing up.

More Than a Label

Josif challenges the shame often placed on people with addictions.

Churches may call people dirty, hopeless, or permanently defined by the worst part of their lives. Josif points instead to the New Testament language of new creation, saints, and a royal priesthood.

That does not mean pretending harm never happened. Grace tells the truth. But grace also refuses to reduce a human being to a label.

Craig connects this to his brother TJ, who died after struggling with alcohol and depression. TJ was not a bad person. He was a peaceful man who carried pain and could not find a way out.

The stories of Ryan and TJ remind us that addiction touches more than one body. It reaches parents, siblings, spouses, children, and friends. Yet shame does not heal anyone.

Love may not control the outcome, but it can keep the door open.

“God Just Calls Us to Love”

Near the end, Josif talks about the people he has met in treatment centers and recovery spaces.

“They are wonderful people,” he says.

Addiction can lead people to say and do awful things. Families need boundaries. Harm should not be denied. But the addiction is not the whole person.

Josif remembers hearing someone use cruel terms for people struggling with drugs. After she read his book, her language changed.

“We’re all struggling with something… God doesn’t call us to judge. He just calls us to love.” — 54:40

There is the thread connecting both halves of this episode.

Christian nationalism looks at enemies and asks how the state can control them. Religious legalism looks at sinners and asks how the church can shame them. Fearful families may look at addiction and ask how they can force someone to change.

Jesus meets people without turning them into projects.

He tells the truth. He protects the wounded. He resists coercion. He loves without pretending. He lays down His own life rather than taking someone else’s.

Flags demand allegiance. Shame demands hiding. Jesus invites us into truth, freedom, mercy, and love. That is the Kingdom.

🤝Connect with Josif🤝

• Book: The War Within: My Story at Barnes & Noble & Amazon

• Email: thewarwithinmystory@gmail.com

• Instagram: @Josifwright 

• X: @Josifwright 

• Nostr/Damus: @j3

Highlights & Takeaways

• Questioning inherited teaching can be an act of faith, not rebellion.

• No modern nation deserves unconditional Christian loyalty or support.

• A flag in a sanctuary can quietly teach divided allegiance.

• “Be the light” means loving and serving people—not gaining power over them.

• Fear-based pastors often mirror the control methods of the state.

• Addiction affects entire families, and recovery cannot be forced from the outside.

• People struggling with addiction are still image-bearers, not insults or labels.

• Grace tells the truth while refusing to abandon the person.

Listen

Notice where Josif’s political awakening and his family’s addiction story overlap. Listen for the moments when control fails and mercy begins.

Reflect

Where has fear shaped your faith? Have you placed more hope in a political leader, pastor, program, or personal plan than in the patient way of Jesus?

Read

Read Matthew 5:43–48, Galatians 3:26–29, John 18:33–38, and 2 Corinthians 5:17. Ask what these passages say about enemies, identity, nations, and new creation.

Practice

Sit with someone who is struggling without trying to fix them in the first five minutes. Listen, learn their story, and offer one form of help they are willing to receive.

Episode Breakdown:

(00:00) Leaving Christian nationalism

• Josif Wright’s changing beliefs

• The War Within: My Story

• Craig’s connection through TJ

(02:42) Meet Josif Wright

• Public-school educator and coach

• Hospice chaplain and church speaker

• Rare-disease advocacy

(04:20) “Don’t trust the government and be kind”

• JAG classroom lessons

• Student questions about war

• Thinking beyond the curriculum

(07:02) Questioning old church teaching

• Doing your own research

• Pastors and microphones

• Tithing, ministry, and inherited claims

(08:30) God is pro-people

• Israel and Palestine

• Galatians and human identity

• Love beyond political teams

(11:22) Nation-state Israel and Christian nationalism

• Biblical Israel vs. modern government

• Allegiance to Jesus

• Violence without a Kingdom blank check

(16:19) Josif’s slow change of mind

• No single conversion moment

• Five years of deep rethinking

• Regret without hiding

(19:14) Digging deeper into Scripture

• Original-language study

• Romans 13 questions

• The Bible beyond American assumptions

(21:40) Legalism, flags, and fear

• National symbols in worship

• Authoritarian pastors

• Submission benefiting institutions

(25:18) Two masters and the pledge

• Allegiance to the republic

• Craig’s personal conviction

• Flag beside the cross

(27:37) Students who will not stand

• Classroom Pledge of Allegiance

• Respect without forced participation

• Younger people questioning nationalism

(29:10) Voting and political identity

• “Real Christians vote”

• Leaving party categories

• Josif’s changing civic habits

(33:17) Being light without ruling

• Neighbor-love and enemy-love

• Political office and coercion

• Trust in Christ beyond collapsing systems

(34:53) Introducing The War Within

• Ryan’s decade-long addiction

• Craig’s memories of TJ

• Grief as shared ground

(36:10) Writing from a father’s view

• Journals and painful memories

• Ryan’s permission

• Writing as therapy

(37:10) Pain beneath addiction

• Childhood migraines

• Pills and chronic pain

• Loss, loneliness, and grief

(40:00) A family on life support

• Years of fear

• Multiple treatment programs

• Limits of short-term fixes

(42:35) “The hooks are in so deep”

• December 2016

• Repeated drives to help Ryan

• Belief, struggle, and grace

(44:05) Letting God be God

• Releasing control

• Prayer across states and nations

• Trust without clear answers

(45:00) “Come get me”

• Leaving the heroin house

• Home detox

• A new opening

(46:00) Building a life after addiction

• Reading and new interests

• Setbacks without surrender

• Finding the next step

(47:10) Eight years and a new identity

• Recovery and freedom

• New-creation language

• Saints instead of shame

(51:00) Craig remembers TJ

• Depression and alcohol

• COVID-era isolation

• Limits of family control

(53:40) Changing how churches speak

• People beyond their addiction

• Cruel labels challenged

• Love where people are

(55:56) Where to find Josif

• Book retailers

• Social media and email

• Free copies for people in need

---

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162. Iranian Christians, ICE Raids, and the Cost of Following Jesus with Ara Torosian

What does it mean to follow Jesus when governments demand your allegiance, your silence, or your fear?

That question is not abstract in this episode. It has a name, a face, a church family, and tears on a Los Angeles sidewalk and Iranian streets. Craig sits down with Ara Torosian, an Iranian-born Armenian pastor now living in Los Angeles, to talk about Iranian Christians, war, asylum, ICE arrests, and what it means to follow Jesus when governments on every side demand our fear.

Ara’s story does not fit into our neat American boxes. He loves Iran. He loves America. He has suffered under the Iranian regime. He has been and watched Christians be persecuted in Iran. He has seen fellow asylum seekers be detained here in the United States government. That kind of story makes slogans fall apart fast.

And maybe that is the point.

Because if Jesus is Lord, then no flag gets to blind us. No empire gets a blank check. No ruler gets to replace mercy. No King but Christ.

When the government Becomes a Teacher of Fear

Ara was born in Iran in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution. He grew up as part of an Armenian Christian minority in a country shaped by pressure, control, and fear. As a child, he remembers being pushed to step on painted U.S. flags and Israeli flags at school while chants were taught like lessons.

That is what governments do. They train children to hate the “enemy” before the children even know what the word means.

But here is the catch: the U.S. does this too. Maybe the songs are different. Maybe the flags are treated with more reverence. Maybe the slogans sound more polished. But when any government teaches us who to fear, who to bomb, who to cage, and who to ignore, Christians should pause.

Jesus never said, “Blessed are the well-propagandized.” He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”

The Underground Church and the Cost of Saying Yes

Ara came to faith as a teenager after reading the Bible in Farsi. He knew from the start that following Jesus could cost him. This was not church as a hobby. This was not Sunday morning culture. This was a dangerous yes.

“When I say, ‘Yes, Lord, I wanna follow you,’ I knew this is going to be dangerous. This might cost my life.” — Ara, around 10:17

That kind of faith exposes how soft our U.S. church games can be. We argue about music styles, coffee brands, and which politician God supposedly likes this year. Meanwhile, brothers and sisters in Iran have been arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and killed for gathering around Scripture.

Ara says the church in Iran went underground after pressure increased. And yet, the gospel kept moving. Not through government power. Not through a Christian nation. Not through forced religion.

Through witness. Through courage. Through people hungry for truth.

War, Peace, and the Sermon on the Mount

One of the hardest parts of this conversation is the tension around war. Ara has seen evil up close. He has watched people suffer under the Iranian regime. He understands why many Iranians are desperate for outside pressure and even military help.

Craig does not brush that pain aside. But he also asks the question Bad Romans have to ask:

“As I read the Sermon on the Mount, where am I gonna see this in the words of Jesus?” — Craig, 33:25

That question should haunt us in the best way.

Because the government always has a reason to bomb. Always. It is always freedom, safety, justice, defense, liberation, or national interest. But Jesus calls us to enemy-love, mercy, prayer, and cross-shaped faithfulness.

Ara says plainly, “As a Christian, I want peace. I want peace for all world.” He also admits the world is broken and the answers are not simple.

That honesty matters. We do not need cheap answers. We need Jesus-shaped ones.

The Church Is Not a Political Platform

Ara shares something every U.S. church should hear. In his own church, people have wanted to bring political loyalty into the pulpit. Some support Iranian opposition leaders. Some want the church to bless a movement or party.

Ara refuses.

“In my church, my platform is for Bible and preaching the gospel.” — Ara, around 37:34–38:23

Amen and amen.

The church is not a campaign office. It is not a nationalist clubhouse. It is not a place to crown Caesar, Trump, Biden, Pahlavi, or anyone else. The church belongs to Christ.

That does not mean Christians stop caring about real suffering. It means we care without handing our worship to rulers.

When ICE Looks Like the Regime You Fled

Then the episode turns from Iran to Los Angeles.

Ara describes Iranian Christian asylum seekers from his congregation being detained by ICE, including people with pending asylum cases and legal paperwork. He says one couple had lawyers, documents, and a live asylum case when they were arrested.

Ara watched masked agents detain people from his church. It brought him back to Iran.

“Seven minutes I was crying… Because that triggered me back in Iran.” — Ara, 52:49–53:00

That sentence should stop us cold.

What does it say when a pastor who fled persecution sees masked agents in U.S. uniforms and feels like he is back under the terror he escaped?

This is where “law and order” talk gets tested by Jesus. These are not talking points. These are image-bearers. These are families. These are people seeking refuge. Ara says it clearly: “They are just people. They are just Christians, persecuted Christian. They want freedom.”

Acting Christian, Not Using Christianity

Ara does not ask U.S. Christians to pick a party. He asks them to act like Christians.

“The Christian show the act, mercy, and also compassion for human life.” — Ara, 58:00–58:09

That is the line.

Not “Who did you vote for?”
Not “Which side owns the news cycle?”
Not “Can we make this fit our immigration policy?”

Mercy. Compassion. Human life.

Craig adds that silence in the face of oppression makes us complicit. That is not a call to worship politics. It is a call to stop hiding behind politics when our neighbors are suffering. 

May we be people who speak for the voiceless, refuse the worship of empire, and follow the crucified King.

Jesus over empire. Neighbor-love over coercion. No King but Christ.

🤝Connect with Ara Torosian🤝

• Instagram: Ara Torosian, @aratorosian (Instagram)

• Facebook: Ara Torosian (Facebook)

• Church connection: Cornerstone West Los Angeles / Farsi-speaking community; Ara has written publicly for the church about war, immigration struggle, and his congregation’s pain. (cornerstonewla.org)

• Related reporting: Christianity Today covered one Iranian Christian connected to Ara’s church being freed after nine months in immigration detention. (Christianity Today)

• Related reporting: Religion News Service covered Ara’s hunger strike and advocacy for detained Iranian Christians. (RNS)

• Related reporting: Reuters covered immigration arrests of Iranian asylum seekers in Los Angeles and Ara’s response as pastor. (Reuters)

Highlights & Takeaways

• Governments train fear. Jesus trains enemy-love.

• Iranian people are not the Iranian regime. We must stop confusing rulers with the people under them.

• War always promises freedom, but often multiplies death. Christians must test every claim by the words of Jesus.

• The church pulpit belongs to Christ. It should not become a stage for parties, rulers, or national movements.

• Persecuted Christians need protection, not political theater. Asylum seekers are neighbors, not props.

• Mercy is not weakness. It is what faithfulness looks like when the government gets cruel.

• Speaking up matters. Silence can become cooperation with oppression.

• No King but Christ means no empire or government gets our full trust. Not Iran. Not America. Not any government.

Listen

Listen for the tension in Ara’s story. He loves America, grieves Iran, opposes oppression, and still wrestles with what peace looks like in a broken world.

Reflect

Where have you let a government tell you who your enemy is? What would change if you looked at that person first through the eyes of Jesus?

Read

Read Matthew 5–7 slowly this week. Pay special attention to enemy-love, mercy, prayer, and the way Jesus rejects revenge.

Practice

Find one immigrant, refugee, prisoner, or detained family story in your own community. Do not turn it into a debate. Pray, listen, and look for one concrete act of mercy.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) government oppression and Iranian Christians

• Standing by or speaking up

• Iranian Christians in Iran and United States

• Ara Torosian introduced

(00:37) Meeting Ara

• Brian Drinkwine connection

• Western blind spots about Iran

• Hidden Christian communities

(02:01) Ara’s background

• Armenian Christian roots

• Born during the Iranian Revolution

• Minority life under pressure

(03:32) Discovering the Bible in Farsi

• First encounter with the gospel

• Six months of searching

• A dangerous yes to Jesus

(04:06) Childhood under government propaganda

• Anti-Western school rituals Iran

• Forced slogans and flags

• Fear taught young

(07:00) Pressure on Christians in Iran

• Closed churches

• Pastors killed or imprisoned

• Underground Christian faith in Iran

(10:17) Following Jesus when it costs

• Faith with real danger

• Prison and persecution

• American comfort challenged

(11:28) Smuggling Bibles into Iran and house arrest

• Arrest at the airport

• Two years under pressure

• Intelligence office interrogations

(12:43) The underground church grows

• House churches after closures

• Hunger for truth

• Iran as mission field

(15:03) People versus regimes

• Iranian people not the regime

• American government comparison

• government power and coercion

(17:10) War, freedom, and mixed Iranian views

• Some wanting intervention

• Some fearing bombs

• Media narratives questioned

(30:57) Craig presses the Jesus question

• War on terror comparison

• More war making more death

• Sermon on the Mount tension

(33:32) Ara’s struggle with war and peace

• Wanting peace as a Christian

• Broken world realities

• Rights versus righteousness

(34:46) Presenting, not protesting

• White House fasting

• Voice for the voiceless

• Persecuted Christians detained

(35:37) Government worship in churches

• Leaders lifted over Scripture

• Jesus as Savior, not rulers

• Peace prayed for daily

(37:03) Politics inside the church

• Iranian opposition movements

• Pulpit not for parties

• Church as gospel space

(48:01) Bad Roman donation break

• Spotfund support

• No King But Christ message

• Donations beyond costs to Memphis charities

(48:38) ICE arrests and asylum seekers

• Church members detained

• Pending asylum cases

• Legal path concerns

(52:03) Masked agents and trauma

• Couples detained

• Panic attack and emergency room

• Iran memories triggered

(54:00) Broken immigration system

• Asylum eventually granted

• Months in detention

• Families harmed

(55:44) Children praying for their dad

• Nine- and seven-year-old kids

• Detained father

• Sunday prayers

(56:08) Speaking because he can

• Freedom to criticize government in U.S. vs. Iran

• White House advocacy

• Church silence challenged

(58:00) What Christians should show

• Mercy and compassion

• Human dignity

• Persecuted Christians seeking freedom

(59:36) Silence and complicity

• Speaking out against oppression

• Possible costs

• Refusal to stay quiet

(01:01:03) Life belongs to Jesus

• Threats from Christians

• Fear admitted

• Kingdom purpose

(01:03:11) Bad Roman Salsa break

• Salsa support

• Homemade freedom joke

• No King but Christ jingle

(01:03:54) How many Christians in Iran?

• Numbers hard to know

• Underground church reality

• Fundraising claims questioned

(01:05:30) Where to find Ara

• Instagram and Facebook

• Open to honest questions

• Avoiding hateful arguments

(01:07:14) Lakers, Luka, and closing

• Basketball side quest

• Keeping in touch

• Final thanks

---

Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

161. Flock Cameras, Privacy, and the Surveillance State with Jon Padfield

Should Christians care about privacy?

That question may sound strange at first. After all, if our Kingdom is not of this world, why worry about cameras on poles, license plate readers, data brokers, or government contracts? But then we remember something important: Jesus did not teach us to ignore our neighbors. He taught us to love them.

And love does not shrug when people are watched, scored, tracked, sorted, and controlled.

In this episode of The Bad Roman Podcast, Craig sits down with Jon Padfield, host of Business Reform, former Indiana state representative, engineer, professor, and privacy advocate. Jon brings a rare mix of tech knowledge, public policy experience, business insight, and Christian faith. His concern is simple: surveillance changes people. It makes them afraid to speak. It trains them to live like suspects.

As Jon says early in the conversation,

 “When people know they’re being surveilled, it affects the way that people behave” (03:00). 

That is not just a tech issue. That is a discipleship issue.

The Lie Behind “Nothing to Hide”

Most of us have heard it before: If you’re not doing anything wrong, why do you care who’s watching?

It sounds reasonable until you slow down. Who decides what “wrong” means? The same government that shut churches while calling other places “essential”? The same system that changes rules, shifts targets, and punishes people based on whatever fear is popular that week?

Jon calls that line a fallacy. It assumes guilt. It says if you want privacy, you must be hiding sin. But privacy is not guilt. Privacy is part of human dignity.

Jon gives a better answer he heard on the road: 

“Who gave you the right to decide if you’re doing anything wrong?” (18:00). 

That question cuts through the fog. Caesar always says he is only watching bad people. But Caesar also loves changing the definition of “bad.”

From Flock Safety to Flock Surveillance

Flock Safety is best known for license plate readers. Jon calls them “Flock Surveillance,” and he says their patent points to something bigger than simple traffic cameras: a “dynamic surveillance network” (06:00).

That matters because this is not only about stolen cars. Jon explains that Flock’s system can take in video from many sources: license plate readers, dash cams, doorbell cameras, police body cams, parking lot cameras, and other third-party cameras. The goal is not just to see one car. It is to catalog movement.

“Flock is tracking everybody doing everything, not just license plates,” Jon warns around the 11-minute mark.

 That is the part that should make Christians pause. A society built on constant watching is not a society built on trust. It is a society built on suspicion.

When Safety Becomes a Sales Pitch

Nobody sells surveillance by saying, “We want to control you.” They sell it with fear.

What about stolen cars? What about a kidnapped child? What about danger in your neighborhood?

Those are real fears. Craig does not dismiss them. Living near Memphis, he knows crime is not imaginary. But the question is not whether evil exists. The question is whether we should hand more power to the same institutions that already abuse power.

Jon points out that many camera searches are logged under the vague word “investigation” (24:20). That can mean almost anything. And when audit logs showed an officer using Flock information to provide data to ICE, Jon says the system changed from a free-form reason field to a pull-down menu. In other words, the problem did not go away. The paper trail got cleaner.

That is empire logic: not repentance, just better optics.

The Daycare Question

One of the most disturbing parts of the conversation comes when Jon talks about a daycare in Dunwoody, Georgia. According to Jon, a concerned father used public records to review audit logs and found Flock employees accessing cameras inside the daycare during the day, including cameras over the pool and gymnastics area.

Jon’s response is sharp and needed: if little girls at daycare are not doing anything wrong, why should anyone care who is watching them?

That question exposes the sickness of the “nothing to hide” argument. We know children deserve protection. We know watching people without cause is not harmless. So why do we forget that when the state points the camera at everyone else?

Consent Without Knowledge Is Not Consent

Craig and Jon spend time talking about consent. Cities and counties often install cameras without real public debate. People find out after the system is already in place. Then officials act like silence means approval.

Jon puts it plainly: 

“If you’re doing it without my knowledge, you are doing it without my consent” (49:00).

That line belongs on a shirt.

For Christians, consent matters because love does not force itself on people. Jesus invites. Caesar imposes. Jesus knocks at the door. Caesar installs a camera over it.

Christians, Voting, and Different Paths of Resistance

Craig brings the conversation back to a familiar Bad Roman tension: what should Christians do when they no longer consent to the government through voting?

Jon and Craig do not land in the exact same place. Jon still believes Christians should engage the political process. Craig explains why many Christian anarchists and voluntarists have stepped away from voting, especially when voting empowers rulers who can tax, spy, cage, and kill.

But the beauty of this exchange is that it never becomes a cable-news food fight. Jon says, 

“You’re my brother in Christ. You’re not the enemy” (1:02:54).

That is how Christians should disagree. Not by trying to own each other. Not by forming new tribes. But by asking: how do we resist evil without becoming what we resist?

Craig’s answer leans toward removing consent, speaking truth, making podcasts, writing, building community, and refusing to crown another king. Jon’s answer leans toward public pressure, state-level limits, data retention laws, and legal accountability. 

Both agree on the danger. Both agree the machine is real.

Practical Resistance Without Panic

This episode is not hopeless. Jon shares that cities and counties have canceled Flock contracts after citizens spoke up at meetings. He also talks about working with a state representative on language to restrict Flock statewide.

That does not mean the beast is tame. It means people are not powerless.

For those who do not vote, there are still ways to act: talk to neighbors, show up at meetings, request public records, share information, map cameras, support privacy advocates, and teach people how surveillance works. Christians do not need to worship the government to confront it.

We can be faithful without being frantic.

No King but Christ in a Watched World

The early church lived under empire, too. Rome had its own tools of control: soldiers, taxes, informants, prisons, crosses. Today’s empire has cameras, databases, data brokers, drones, and algorithms.

The tools changed. The temptation did not.

Will we trade freedom for safety? Will we cheer surveillance when it targets people we fear? Will we trust Caesar to define “good” and “bad”? Or will we remember that our King sees all things already, and unlike the government, He uses His power to heal, restore, and save?

Privacy is not about hiding sin. It is about resisting a world where every neighbor is treated like a suspect.

Sometimes being a good Christian means refusing to be a well-tracked Roman.

🤝Connect with Jon Padfield🤝

• YouTube: Business Reform

• Patreon

• Buy Me Coffee

• Tour: Brush Fires of Freedom Tour

• Privacy tool mentioned: DeFlock Me

• LinkedIn

• X: @Dr_Jon_Padfield

• TikTok: businessreform

Topics Jon covers: business, technology, society, privacy, surveillance, public policy, and faith

Highlights & Takeaways

• “Nothing to hide” is not a Christian argument; it assumes guilt and gives Caesar too much power.

• Flock cameras are not just about stolen cars; Jon warns they are part of a larger surveillance network.

• Safety language can hide control, especially when searches are logged under vague terms like “investigation.”

• Consent matters. If cameras are installed without public knowledge, the public did not truly consent.

• Christians can disagree on voting and still work together against surveillance, coercion, and state overreach.

• Privacy protects human dignity, neighbor-love, and the courage to speak truth.

• Local action can work: public pressure has helped some communities cancel Flock contracts.

• “No King but Christ” means refusing to trust empire with powers only God should hold.

Listen & Reflect

Listen

Listen for the way Jon connects technology, public policy, business, and faith. Ask yourself where surveillance has already become normal in your own town.

Reflect

Where have you accepted “safety” language without asking who gains power from it? Have you ever used the phrase “nothing to hide” without thinking about who gets to define guilt?

Read

Read Matthew 10:16–31 and Psalm 146. Sit with Jesus’ call to be wise, fearless, and loyal to God above rulers.

Practice

Look up whether your city or county uses Flock cameras. Talk with one neighbor about privacy, consent, and what it means to love people without treating them like suspects.

Episode Timestamps

(00:00) Should Christians care about privacy?

• Surveillance state concerns

• Flock cameras and public unease

• Following Christ, not the government

(01:23) Meet Jon Padfield

• Business Reform YouTube channel

• Engineering, public policy, and business background

• Faith and technology

(03:00) Surveillance changes behavior

• Reputation scores and monitoring

• Fear of speaking up

• “Stained Glass Masquerade” connection

• You Already Have a Reputation Score

(05:25) The “nothing to hide” fallacy

• Assumption of guilt

• Privacy as dignity

• Christians and concern for surveillance

(06:00) What Flock cameras are

• License plate readers

• Dynamic surveillance network

• Deflock mapping tool

(09:30) Beyond license plates

• Dash cams, doorbells, body cams

• AI cataloging movement

• Facial and vehicle recognition

(12:00) Daycare camera concerns

• Audit logs from Dunwoody daycare

• Pool and gymnastics area cameras

• Children and the privacy question

(17:54) Who decides what is wrong?

• Better answer to “nothing to hide”

• Lockdown memory

• State power defining guilt

(20:37) Local, state, and federal use

• Memphis and Fayette County examples

• Flock’s federal-data claims

• ICE and local law enforcement sharing

(22:30) Who owns the data?

• Agency ownership claims

• Flock’s perpetual license

• Data retention concerns

(24:20) “Investigation” as a search reason

• Vague police search labels

• ICE audit log example

• Pull-down menus replacing written reasons

(27:08) Pushback and privacy laws

• Ring  Superbowl backlash

• Thomas Massie and Lauren Boebert bill

• Warrant requirements and Fourth Amendment concerns

(28:15) Local wins against Flock

• Cities and counties canceling Flock contracts

• Public pressure at meetings

• State-level restriction efforts

(31:00) Federal privacy law concerns

• Stronger state protections

• California and Illinois examples

• Private right of action

(34:21) Data brokers and insurance companies

• Privacy policies as invasion policies

• Sensitive personal data

• Browsing, purchase, and search history

(41:30) How cameras appear without debate

• Local implementation questions

• Complacency and compliance

• Safety versus privacy

(45:56) Consent and government power

• Declaration of Independence language

• Consent of the governed

• Knowledge as part of consent

(49:30) The four boxes

• Soapbox

• Ballot box

• Jury box

• Ammo box warning

(52:32) Christian resistance and voting

• Craig’s Christian anarchist position

• Early church and empire

• Removing consent from rulers

(55:00) Jon’s case for engagement

• Christians in public office

• Not ceding ground

• Different paths, shared concerns

(1:02:54) Brothers, not enemies

• Agreement on the goal

• Different strategies

• Privacy advocacy and Christian unity

(1:04:00) Pragmatic limits on surveillance

• Data retention policies

• Warrants and targeted searches

• Higher chance of passing restrictions

(1:07:00) Safety arguments

• Kidnapped child scenarios

• Stolen vehicle concerns

• Cost of “a little privacy”

(1:28:00) Where to find Jon

• Business Reform on YouTube

• Patreon community

• Future conversation invitation

(1:29:13) Closing and support

• If this conversation helped you rethink privacy, surveillance, and Christian faithfulness, share it with someone who still says, “If you have nothing to hide, why worry?”

• Look up the cameras in your town. Ask questions. Talk to neighbors. Read the Gospels. And remember: our hope is not in better surveillance, better rulers, or better empire management.

• No King but Christ

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

160. Revelation 18, Ephesians 6, and the Love of Money with Brandon Kroll

Is Christian anarchism a faithful place to stand as governments grow darker, or should we still try to “fix” things through the kingdoms of this world? That is where this episode begins, and Brandon Kroll does not answer with soft edges.

This is one of those Bad Roman conversations that feels like a long walk into deep water. Some listeners will nod the whole way. Others will stop every few minutes and ask, “Wait, what did he just say?” But even when the details get wild, the central question of the episode is clear enough: Christians must decide whether our allegiance belongs to Christ or to the systems of power built on money, control, and fear.

Brandon Kroll, of the Manna Daily Podcast, returns to the show to connect Revelation 18, Ephesians 6, the merchant class, the founding of America, spiritual warfare, and the love of money. It is not a neat conversation. It is a provocative one. But the heartbeat underneath it is old and familiar: the powers of this age are not neutral, and disciples of Jesus should be careful not to confuse the machinery of government with the Kingdom of God.

When Merchants Become the Great Men of the Earth

Brandon starts in Revelation 18:23, where the merchants are called “the great men of the earth.” That phrase becomes a doorway into the whole conversation. What happens when commerce no longer serves people but rules them? What happens when wealth, technology, government power, and public deception all start moving as one machine?

That question does not stay in the first century. Brandon brings it right into our world of billionaires, corporate-government partnerships, and systems that seem too big to resist. Whether or not listeners agree with every link he makes, the deeper issue is hard to ignore: money is never just money when it starts shaping our desires.

Jesus warned us about Mammon because Mammon is not simply a budgeting problem. It is a loyalty problem.

And if the merchants really are the great men of the earth, then maybe empire does not only wear a crown. Maybe it also wears a suit, signs contracts, and smiles through a press conference.

The Government, the Market, and the Old Temptation of Control

One striking thread in this episode is Brandon’s insistence that America’s founding cannot be separated from merchant power. He moves through the East India Company, chartered privilege, the Articles of Confederation, federalization, and property requirements for voice and representation.

Some listeners will want to sift through every historical claim. Fair enough. But the spiritual point underneath the history is what gives the episode its force: concentrated power tends to gather around concentrated wealth, and both tend to justify themselves with grand language about order, freedom, and progress.

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

We still live in a world where poor people are told to trust systems designed by people who profit from distance. We still treat “representation” as though it means consent. We still call people free while they are trapped in structures they did not choose and cannot meaningfully challenge.

The old temptation remains the same. We keep hoping Caesar will become kind if the right people advise him. Jesus offers a different path entirely.

The Love of Money Is Never Just About Cash

Around the middle of the episode, the conversation shifts hard into 1 Timothy 6:10 and the love of money. Here Brandon ties money, identity, digital control, and dependence together.

Again, some of his applications are unusual. But the warning itself is painfully relevant: the more tightly our lives are tied to central systems of access and approval, the easier it becomes for those systems to train us. Buy. Sell. Comply. Scan. Submit. Repeat.

What if the real danger is not just greed, but slowly becoming the kind of people who cannot imagine life without being managed?

That lands close to home. We all know how easy it is to trade freedom for convenience, conviction for access, and discipleship for comfort. The love of money is not only about wanting more. Sometimes it is about being too afraid to lose what keeps us comfortable.

And once comfort is king, Jesus becomes a consultant.

Our Struggle Is Not Against Flesh and Blood

One of the strongest moments in the episode comes when Craig brings the whole conversation back to Ephesians 6:12. That is the right move. Because if Christian anarchism means anything in a Bad Roman sense, it does not mean rage, chaos, or macho rebellion. It means seeing that our deepest battle is not against our neighbors, but against rulers, authorities, and dark powers that shape the world.

Craig asks plainly whether those “authorities” and “powers of this dark world” refer to the government, demons, or both. That question matters because Christians often make one of two mistakes. We either reduce evil to “bad people over there,” or we spiritualize everything so much that we stop naming real systems of domination.

The New Testament refuses both shortcuts.

The powers are spiritual, yes. But they also take visible form in institutions, economies, governments, and habits of obedience. Evil does not only show up in dramatic places. It can also show up in laws, rewards, and systems that train us to compromise.

Christian Anarchism and Heavenly Citizenship

Near the end, Brandon circles back to the idea that Christians belong neither to the land nor the sea, but to heaven. Whatever one makes of the imagery, the point resonates with Philippians 3:20: our citizenship is in heaven.

That line is so easy to quote and so hard to live.

Because if our citizenship is really in heaven, then the government cannot claim our ultimate loyalty. Flags cannot tell us who we are. Money cannot tell us what we are worth. Political structures cannot tell us what hope is possible. The Kingdom of God is not an improved version of government. It is a rival reality.

This is where Bad Roman listeners should lean in. Christian anarchism, at its healthiest, is not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. It is a refusal to hand over to Caesar, to governments, what belongs to Christ: our conscience, our worship, our neighbor-love, our fear, and our future.

Closing

If this episode unsettled you, that may not be a bad thing. Sometimes we need our reflexes interrupted before we can hear Jesus clearly again. 

🤝Connect with Brandon Kroll🤝

• Previous Bad Roman Episodes

• EP 123 Patriot or Saint with Brandon Kroll

• Mana Daily Podcast on YouTube

• Mana Daily Podcast on Spotify

• Mana Daily Podcast on Rumble

• Mana Daily Podcast Patreon

Highlights & Takeaways

• Revelation’s warning about merchants still speaks in an age of corporate-government power.

• The love of money is about loyalty, not just greed.

• Christians should be careful with systems that demand dependence in exchange for access.

• Representation without real consent is not the same as freedom.

• Ephesians 6 pushes us to see both spiritual evil and real systems of domination.

• Christian anarchism is not chaos; it is allegiance to Christ over coercive power.

• Material comfort can become a rival master if we are not paying attention.

• Philippians 3:20 reminds us that our deepest citizenship is in heaven.

Listen

Listen for the tension running through the whole episode: are we trying to beat the government and empire at its own game, or are we learning to live as citizens of another Kingdom?

Reflect

Where are you most tempted to trust the government or the market to do what only Christ can do? What forms of comfort or control make you slow to question empire/government?

Read

Read Revelation 18, Ephesians 6:10–20, 1 Timothy 6:6–10, and Philippians 3:17–21. Hold them together and ask what they reveal about money, power, and allegiance.

Practice

This week, examine one area where your life is tightly bound to systems of convenience and control. Don’t start with panic. Start with honesty. Ask what faithfulness to Jesus would look like there.

Episode Timestamps:

(0:00) Is Christian anarchism a good place to be as empires grow?

• Craig frames the episode around Christian anarchism, empire/government, Ephesians 6, and the love of money

• Brandon Kroll returns to talk spiritual warfare and allegiance

• Christ vs. the kingdoms of this world

(2:58) Starting with Revelation 18:23

• Craig hands the conversation to Brandon

• Revelation 18:23 tied to Ephesians 6

• the episode’s scriptural frame comes into focus

(3:20) The merchants, sorcery, and deception

• “the merchants were the great men of the earth”

• pharmakeia / sorcery language

• nations deceived through power and commerce

(4:44) America founded by merchants

• Brandon moves from Revelation to modern elites

• Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution enters the discussion

• merchant power becomes a lens for reading America’s roots

(6:58) Articles of Confederation and federal control

• looser confederation vs. franchise-style federal control

• one center of power over many states

• Brandon’s “franchise” analogy

(7:33) Property, money, and public voice

• representation tied to property and money

• peasants, patriots, and class language

• Leviticus 25 raised against land-selling and ownership claims

(24:18) Saints, rulers, and the governments of this world

• saints defined as people set apart from this world

• being against the rulers of this world

• money, materialism, and merchant control

(35:03) Technology, feeds, and programmed belief

• AI, feeds, and controlled information

• shaping people to believe what they already want

• programming people to act on behalf of power

(36:53) Ephesians 6 and the real battle

• Craig returns to Ephesians 6:12

• rulers, authorities, and spiritual warfare move back to the center

• the episode shifts from history and money back to the powers

(37:20) Government, demons, or both?

• Craig asks the question directly

• Brandon keeps pressing the powers language

• spiritual warfare stays tied to visible systems of rule

(49:14) Rome, seven mountains, and America’s symbols

• America, Rome, and symbolic parallels

• Catholic influence and founding imagery raised

• the conversation turns from abstract powers to public symbols

(49:49) Charlie Kirk and Christian nationalist imagination

• Brandon reflects on Charlie Kirk’s name and symbolism

• Christian nationalism comes into sharper focus

• the talk shifts into a dystopian thought experiment

(50:40) Restrictions, surveillance, and forced “Christian” order

• “make America Christian again” on a world scale

• Palantir surveillance and restrictions on the population

• public executions and corporate power used as a warning image

(59:23) Fear, compliance, and getting back to normal

• confusion and fear drive people toward control

• compliance is tied to comfort and normalcy

• Christians who resist power are contrasted with those who go along

(1:00:00) Voting, agency, and what we hand to government

• Craig shifts toward voting and political participation

• agency, trust, and dependence come into view

• allegiance to Christ is measured against what we hand to Caesar

(1:02:41) Caesar, land and sea, and citizenship in heaven

• “give that to Caesar” language returns

• land empire and sea imagery are tied to the government

• Philippians 3:20 closes the argument with citizenship in heaven

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

159. Delivered from the Evil Age: The Law Paul, & Christ's Gospel with Cody Cook

Can we be made right by the law, or are we made right through Christ? That question sits at the center of this episode, but it does not stay small for long. Before long, Craig and Cody Cook are walking through Galatians, spiritual powers, Paul’s strange and beautiful logic, and the way modern Christians often ask Paul questions Paul may not have been trying to answer.

This conversation feels like standing in a doorway between two worlds. On one side is the tidy, familiar version of faith where everything is reduced to rule-keeping, categories, and being declared right. On the other side is the larger, stranger world of the New Testament, where Jesus does not simply help us behave better. He rescues us from an evil age. He breaks the grip of powers we barely know how to name. He brings us into a new family and a new creation.

Cody Cook returns to The Bad Roman Podcast to talk about his book Delivered from the Evil Age of the Present. What follows is not just a book discussion. It is a reminder that the gospel is bigger than legal formulas and deeper than online arguments. If Jesus really came to deliver us from this present evil age, then we have to ask: what are we still trying to crawl back under?

When We Ask Paul the Wrong Question

A lot of us were taught to read Paul through one main lens: law versus grace. Works versus faith. Trying hard versus trusting Jesus. There is truth in that, of course, but Cody helps slow the conversation down and ask whether that frame is too small.

He walks through the old perspective, the new perspective, and newer debates around “Paul within Judaism” and “apocalyptic Paul.” That may sound technical, but the heart of it is simple enough: are we reading Paul as if his biggest concern is personal guilt, or are we seeing that he is also talking about spiritual slavery and rescue through Christ?

That difference matters. A lot. If we reduce Paul to “How do I get forgiven?” we may miss the bigger thunderclap: Jesus has invaded a world held captive and has begun setting people free.

As Cody puts it,

 “Jesus Christ gave himself on behalf of our sins in order that he might deliver us from the evil age of the present” (20:36–20:50). 

That is not small language. That is rescue language. That is Kingdom language.

Declared Right, or Made New?

There is a line in this conversation that lands like a brick because it names something ugly in us with painful clarity: 

“We wanna be declared right. We don’t wanna be right. We don’t wanna do right” (15:08–15:12).

Ouch. But isn’t that often true?

We want the label without the surrender. We want justification without transformation. We want a religious stamp that says “approved” while still holding on to our old loves, our old fears, and our old group loyalties. We would often rather be pronounced innocent than become holy.

But union with Christ is not a loophole. It is adoption. It is new belonging. It is a move from one realm to another. Cody keeps bringing the conversation back to the idea that in Christ we become sons and daughters, not just defendants who got good legal counsel. The law had a role, but it was temporary. Christ is not merely helping us manage the old world better. He is bringing us into a new one.

Rescued from the Powers We Barely See

Cody explains why Galatians 4 matters so much. He argues that Galatians 1:3–4 gives us Paul’s main point: Jesus gave himself to deliver us from this evil age. Then Galatians 3 and 4 show what that deliverance means.

This is where the Greek word stoicheia enters the conversation. In Galatians 4, many readers know the line, “we were in slavery under the elementary principles of the world.” That English wording can make Paul sound like he is only talking about basic rules or first lessons. But Cody says the Greek word stoicheia can carry more weight than that. It can mean elements or basic parts, but it can also point to spiritual powers. His point is that Paul may be warning the Galatians not just about bad ideas, but about a deeper kind of bondage. They had once been enslaved to pagan powers, and now, in a tragic twist, they were being tempted to go back under another form of slavery.

That is one of the hardest lessons for us to learn. We can leave one kind of bondage and then gladly embrace another one because it feels cleaner, more respectable, and more religious. But if it still enslaves, it is still slavery.

How often do we do the same? We leave the chaos of the world only to kneel before nationalism, ideology, partisanship, or religious performance. We trade one chain for another and call it maturity.

A Gospel Big Enough to Break Divisions

This episode also quietly pushes against modern identity obsessions. If Christ has truly brought a new creation, then ethnic, national, and political identities are no longer first. That does not erase history or culture, but it does put them in their proper place.

The powers love divided humanity. They thrive on categories that can be weaponized. They want us to keep introducing ourselves first by tribe, class, nation, and ideology. But Paul keeps pointing somewhere else. In Christ, the old walls are not the point anymore. A new world is breaking in.

That raises a hard question: do we really want that? Or do we only want a Jesus who blesses our side and leaves our favorite lines in place?

The Law Was Never the Destination

Cody is careful here, and that matters. He does not treat the law as useless or evil. He says there is still wisdom there. We can still learn from it. But we are not under it in the same way anymore. It served a role for a time, but it was not the end of the story.

That is freeing, but it is also disorienting. We like systems we can master. We like rules we can measure. We like faith that can be managed. Christ does not always give us that kind of safety.

Instead, he gives us himself.

And that means the Christian life is less like following a checklist and more like learning how to live as adopted children in a new household. It is more relational, more demanding, more beautiful, and harder to fake.

🤝Connect with Cody Cook🤝

• Book: Delivered from the Evil Age of the Present: How Jesus Brought About a New Creation by Subverting the Powers Behind Nationalism and Ethnic Identitarianism

• Explore Cody’s Books: The Anarchist Anabaptist, The Pocket Anabaptist, Fight the Powers, What Belongs to Caesar?

• Podcast and writing: Cantus Firmus

• Libertarian Christian Institute author page

• X: @CantusFirmusCC

• Podcast: Cantus Firmus

• Website: cantus-firmus.com

• Bad Roman Episodes with Cody Cook:

• EP 89 God's Country or Jesus’s Kingdom? Navigating the Nexus of Nationalism and Faith in America

• EP 99 Navigating Revivals in Christianity with Cody Cook

• EP 128 The Anabaptist Way: Rediscovering Radical Christianity with Cody Cook

Highlights & Takeaways

• Galatians is not just about personal guilt; it is about deliverance from an evil age.

• We often want to be declared right more than we want to become holy.

• Union with Christ is not just legal language; it is family language.

• Paul’s vision is big: Christ defeats the powers that enslave humanity.

• The law had a purpose, but it was never the final destination.

• Spiritual bondage can return in respectable religious forms.

• National, ethnic, and political identities lose their highest place in Christ.

• The gospel is not self-improvement. It is rescue, adoption, and new creation.

Listen

Listen for the way Cody widens the frame. This is not only a conversation about law and grace. It is about rescue, powers, and the new creation breaking into the old one.

Reflect

What kind of Christianity feels safest to you: one that gives you clear status, or one that calls you into real change? Where are you still asking Paul smaller questions than he is answering?

Read

Read Galatians 1:3–4 and Galatians 4:1–11 slowly. Then read them again with this question in mind: what if Paul is talking about deliverance from more than personal guilt?

Practice

Name one identity you lean on too hard: political, national, denominational, or cultural. This week, hold it under the lordship of Jesus and ask what has to loosen if Christ really is your primary allegiance.

Episode Timestamps:

(0:00) Can law make us right, or only Christ?

• opening question

• Cody Cook’s new book introduced

• law, Christ, and online arguments

(1:26) Why Cody wrote this book

• Galatians 4:1–7 as the anchor essay

• revised school work

• chapters 4–6 as the key section

(4:13) Different ways people read Paul

• old perspective

• new perspective

• later debates about Paul

(9:27) Courtroom, table, and battle

• salvation in a courtroom

• salvation at the table

• salvation as conflict with the powers

(15:08) “We wanna be declared right”

• declared right vs being made right

• union with Christ

• change, not just status

(20:23) Why Galatians 4 matters

• Galatians 1:3–4 as the thesis

• rescue from the present evil age

• stoicheia and slavery

(34:13) Ordo amoris, J.D. Vance, and nation-first love

• “ordered loves”

• Christian nationalist excitement over the phrase

• Augustine, Aquinas, neighbor-love, and church history

(57:48) Athanasius, incarnation, and the defeat of evil

• On the Incarnation

• image of God, mortality, and corruption

• Jesus defeating demons and idols

(1:01:23) Christians, weapons, and the words of Jesus

• swords into plowshares

• “you can’t kill the devil with a gun or a sword”

• national identities lose their grip in Christ

(1:06:16) Where to learn more

• Libertarian Christian Institute

• Cody’s interviews there

• Nick Quint on apocalyptic Paul

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

158. Conservative Politics vs. Bible Politics with Jordan Grant

There’s a moment a lot of us remember, even if we wish we didn’t.

A moment when politics stopped feeling like a hobby or a duty and started feeling like a religion. A time when we could repeat the talking points, defend the system, and call it wisdom. We were sure we were being faithful. Sure we were being responsible. Sure we were on the side of truth.

But what happens when the spell breaks?

In this episode, Craig sits down with Jordan Grant to talk about that slow, often painful unraveling. Jordan is a physician from Texas whose journey moved from conservative certainty and talk-radio formation to deep questions about authority, coercion, medicine, the church, and what it really means to follow Jesus. This isn’t a play-by-play of one man changing political labels. It’s the story of what happens when conviction gets more important than tribe, and when the words of Jesus become harder to ignore than the noise of government.

And maybe that’s the real question under this whole conversation: what if the issue isn’t that we got our politics slightly wrong? What if we trusted the wrong kind of power altogether?

When the Script Starts Writing You

Jordan’s story begins in a place many listeners will recognize. He grew up in Texas, in a Christian home, with politics more assumed than deeply examined. You’re a Christian, so of course you’re conservative. You vote Republican. You defend America. You support the system. That’s just what “our people” do.

Then 9/11 happened, and like it did for so many people, it hardened the script. Talk radio filled in the blanks. Fear gave authority a moral glow. What had once been background noise became formation. Jordan describes becoming a full-blown “cage-stage conservative,” devouring the arguments, the voices, the outrage, the confidence. Craig laughs about doing his own version of the same thing, falling asleep to Fox News and waking up angry at Democrats. Funny, until it isn’t.

That’s how propaganda often works. It doesn’t just tell us what to think. It teaches us what kind of person to become.

Reading the Bible Without the State’s Glasses

But Jordan’s shift didn’t begin with politics. It began with Scripture.

During the years between finance work and medical school, he started reading the Bible for himself. Not just hearing verses filtered through church culture, but sitting with the text and wrestling with it directly. That changed him. Not all at once. Not with a dramatic lightning bolt. But enough to make him harder to manage.

That matters. Because once a person starts reading the Bible without automatically assuming Caesar is the good guy, things get uncomfortable fast. The teachings of Jesus don’t fit neatly inside our favorite patriotic categories. Enemy-love does not help campaign strategy. “Not so among you” doesn’t sound much like winning elections.

And Jordan makes that tension plain later in the episode: “It doesn’t get any clearer than that” when Jesus says His followers are not to lord power over others the way Gentile rulers do (1:04:48).

Medical School and the Myth of the Expert

A big turning point came in medical school.

Jordan says it was there that he started seeing the deeper authoritarian instincts behind modern systems. Not just in government, but in medicine too. He saw dogmatism. He saw hubris. He saw how easily people in respected institutions can begin to treat ordinary people like problems to manage rather than neighbors to love.

That part of the conversation lands hard because it isn’t really just about doctors. It’s about power. It’s about what happens when people begin to believe that expertise makes coercion righteous. Jordan says he saw firsthand the kind of mindset that quietly says, we know best, so trust us and obey.

That same mindset didn’t stay in the hospital. It spilled into the church, the culture, and the COVID years. And when churches echoed the government instead of standing against tyranny, both Jordan and Craig felt the betrayal.

Craig puts it bluntly: the church should have been the first to say, “I don’t think we will” when power tried shutting everything down. Jordan agrees: Christians pushing these kinds of tyrannies and blindly trusting “the expert” had to be called out (26:43).

The Cracks in Conservative Certainty

One of the most human parts of this episode is how familiar the old world still feels.

Jordan remembers the talk-radio years. Craig remembers the Fox years. Both of them know what it’s like to think Sean Hannity sounds profound. That’s why the conversation never turns smug. There’s no chest-thumping here, no “look how enlightened we are now.” There’s just recognition. We know how easy it is to get swept up, because we were.

And still, there’s hope.

Craig says he has more faith in younger people now, because at least many of them are asking questions. Jordan agrees that he sees a trend: people are beginning to question authority more than they used to. Not everyone. Not at the same speed. But enough to notice.

That matters, because every awakening starts with one forbidden question.

Can I Do This to My Neighbor?

Late in the episode, Jordan gives what may be the clearest summary of the whole conversation.

For people still on the fence, he says to start with principles, not pragmatism. Use this as the filter: Can I do this to my neighbor or not? If it would be evil for you to do it personally, why does it become righteous when the state does it with a flag and a larger budget?

Jordan describes using this line of thought in medical school and in everyday conversations. If he came to your house with a gun and demanded 30% of your income “for good things,” you wouldn’t call that moral. So why do we accept it when a system does it? His point is not that every hard question becomes instantly simple. His point is that principles matter more than outcomes we happen to prefer.

Or as he says, “principles trump pragmatism” (1:05:48).

That’s a deeply Christian idea, even if modern Christians often forget it.

Questioning Pastors, Churches, and the Things We Were Told Never to Touch

Jordan ends with one more challenge, and it’s a brave one.

He says Christians should be thinkers. Good thinkers. Solid thinkers. And that means it’s okay to question your pastor. It’s okay to leave a church if it’s pushing evil things. That won’t sound radical to everyone, but for people raised to equate church loyalty with obedience to God, it can feel like breaking a family curse.

Jordan isn’t encouraging rebellion for rebellion’s sake. He’s calling for conviction. If a church is teaching things that are antithetical to Christ, we do not owe it our silence.

Christian nationalism survives on borrowed trust. It counts on us being too scared to ask whether the people leading us actually sound like Jesus.

Sometimes faithfulness begins with a very simple act: refusing to pretend.

A Different Kind of Wake-Up

This conversation isn’t about becoming libertarian, anarchist, or anti-establishment as an identity. It’s about becoming honest.

Honest enough to admit that many of us once mistook certainty for wisdom.
Honest enough to admit that “Christian politics” often discipled us more than Jesus did.
Honest enough to ask whether the church has been waving the wrong banners for a very long time.

Jordan’s story reminds us that shifts like this rarely happen in a straight line. They come through reading, questioning, noticing, grieving, and slowly learning how to see our neighbor again.

Because maybe leaving the political script behind isn’t losing faith at all.

Maybe it’s the first time we’re actually starting to trust Jesus.

Highlights & Takeaways

• Many of us did not reason our way into statism; we were formed into it by fear, habit, media, and church culture.

• Reading Scripture for ourselves can expose how often we’ve filtered Jesus through patriotic assumptions.

• Authoritarianism does not only show up in government. It can appear in medicine, church life, and any system that treats people as manageable objects.

• COVID revealed how quickly many churches sided with power rather than with courage, mercy, and truth.

• Younger people asking hard questions may be one of the more hopeful signs in this cultural moment.

• “Can I do this to my neighbor?” is a powerful moral test for politics, voting, taxation, and coercion.

• Principles must matter more than pragmatism if we want to follow Jesus consistently.

• Christians should be thinkers, and that includes questioning pastors, churches, and traditions that defend what Christ would never command.

Listen

Listen for the way Jordan describes his shift not as a trendy political reinvention, but as a long collision between principle, Scripture, and lived experience.

Reflect

Where have we accepted coercion from the state that we would condemn in our own personal lives?

Read

Read Matthew 20:25–28 and ask whether our political instincts actually fit Jesus’ words: “Not so among you.”

Practice

Pick one belief you have about politics, voting, or authority and run it through this question all week: Can I do this to my neighbor in good conscience?

Episode Timestamps:

(0:00) Jordan Grant joins the show

• Craig introduces Jordan

• paradigm shift in faith and politics

• social media connection becomes podcast conversation

(4:35) Jordan’s background: Texas, finance, medicine, and faith

• small-town Texas upbringing

• finance degree, hated the cubicle life

• pre-med years become spiritual turning point

(8:38) 9/11, Bush-era politics, and the conservative script

• Christian = conservative assumption

• post-9/11 political awakening

• Republican identity without much examination

(10:46) Talk radio formation and becoming a “cage-stage conservative”

• devouring radio and pundit logic

• Sean Hannity talking points

• outrage as discipleship

(13:25) Younger people, military disillusionment, and questioning authority

• Craig’s hope in the younger generation

• refusing to die for empire

• asking questions older generations often avoid

(17:53) Medicine, the state, and forced trust

• medicine/state crossover

• losing trust in institutional authority

• coercion as a warning sign

(18:28) Medical school and the authoritarian mindset

• dogmatism in professional culture

• private contempt for “normies”

• expert culture and hubris

(19:30) Authoritarian systems inside modern medicine

• Rockefeller-era legacy

• approved knowledge vs. “quack” labels

• power holders deciding how people must live

(26:43) COVID, church shutdowns, and Christian compliance

• church entanglement with the state

• outrage at Christian silence

• ICE, experts, and pushing tyranny

(28:37) Reformed theology, Romans 13, and civil magistrate thinking

• Bible reading gets serious

• attraction to “intellectual” theology

• proof-texting for power

(40:14) Ron Paul, conviction, and the church’s blind spots

• justice, mercy, widow, orphan

• Christians booing what should convict them

• voting as legitimizing tyranny

(57:47) Wrestling with Scripture, certainty, and honest questions

• questioning inherited assumptions

• Jesus’ words as the clearest anchor

• letting hard questions stay hard

(1:04:48) “Not so among you”

• Jesus rejects lordship politics

• Matthew 20 as political confrontation

• the Kingdom not built on domination

(1:05:48) Practical advice for fence-sitters

• principles over pragmatism

• “Can I do this to my neighbor?”

• moral consistency as the filter

(1:08:20) Christians should be thinkers

• question your pastor

• leave churches pushing evil

• conviction over belonging

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

157. Freemasonry vs. Christianity: Hidden Altars of Government with Scipio Eruditus

What happens when we start asking where our public myths came from? Not just our slogans, but our symbols. Not just our laws, but the spiritual imagination sitting underneath them.

In this episode of The Bad Roman Podcast, Craig sits down with Scipio Eruditus of Dispatches from Reality to talk about the historical and theological entanglements between Freemasonry, Christianity, and the state. On the surface, that might sound like a niche topic. But the deeper the conversation goes, the more it starts to feel like a mirror. Why are Christians so quick to trust power? Why do symbols on currency, patriotic myths, and secret oaths seem easier for many people to defend than the plain teachings of Jesus?

This is not a light conversation, but it is an important one. Scipio shares how his own journey, from military service and patriotism to deep suspicion of government, forced him to rethink the stories he once believed. And as the episode unfolds, the bigger question comes into view: can followers of Jesus stay awake in a world built on hidden loyalties, or will we keep baptizing government and calling it righteousness?

From patriotism to disillusionment

Scipio’s story begins with the kind of loyalty many Americans understand. He joined the Air Force in the wake of 9/11 believing he was fighting for freedom. But war has a way of exposing the distance between what we are told and what is true. What happens when the script falls apart in real time? What do we do when the nation we trusted starts to look less like a protector and more like a storyteller protecting its own image?

That experience became a crack in the wall. The guest describes Afghanistan as a turning point, not only because of the violence, but because of the lies that seemed to surround it. Later, his involvement in a fraternity opened another door, this time into rituals, symbols, and hidden inheritances that would lead him into researching Freemasonry in much greater depth. Sometimes awakening does not come all at once. Sometimes it comes in layers, one false promise at a time.

“It was an absolutely major paradigm shift for me... and has forced me to look at the constitution and the founding of this nation in a much more critical light.” (10:03)

The mystery beneath the surface

Craig wisely begins with the language of mystery, pulling from 2 Thessalonians and asking whether the foundations of the United States are more spiritually loaded than most Christians realize. That is where the episode gets especially provocative. Scipio argues that Freemasonry is not just a fraternal club or harmless social network, but a modern expression of a much older spiritual rebellion, one that promises enlightenment, self-perfection, and power apart from God.

Whether listeners agree with every historical claim or not, the deeper challenge lands hard: Christians must learn to ask what kind of story a symbol is telling. A cross calls us to die. A flag calls us to rally. A secret oath calls us to conceal. Those are not small differences. And once we stop treating public life as neutral, we may begin to see how easily spiritual compromise wears respectable clothes.

“This is really the oldest heresy... the same temptation that the serpent tempted Eve with... ‘ye shall be like gods.’” (14:25)

Power loves secrecy, Jesus works in the light

One of the clearest themes in this conversation is that power protects itself. Secret societies, elite networks, and mutual loyalty structures are useful precisely because they shield influence from public accountability. That is one reason the discussion of the Morgan Affair matters so much in the episode. For Scipio, it becomes a case study in how a relatively small group can exercise outsized influence through shared secrecy, political relationships, and cultural fear.

That raises a very Christian question: what kind of kingdom does Jesus build? Not one held together by hidden handshakes, blood oaths, and carefully managed access. The Kingdom of God moves in truth, confession, mercy, and open proclamation. Jesus says let your yes be yes. Government says keep the inner circle protected. Jesus washes feet. Systems of domination guard the ladder.

“A more perfect agent for the devising and execution of conspiracies against church or state could scarcely have been conceived.” (11:05, quoting Charles Francis Adams)

Why Christians still cling to government

Maybe the most sobering part of the episode is not the discussion of Freemasonry itself. It is the repeated question underneath it: why do Christians keep trusting the very systems that train them away from Jesus? Craig returns more than once to the frustration of seeing believers recognize evil in the abstract, yet continue supporting government in practice. We can spot corruption, but we still want our side to run it.

And that may be the real spiritual danger here. We like visible strength. We like belonging. We like the feeling that if the right people held the levers, things would finally become righteous. But Jesus never told us to seize Caesar and clean him up. He told us to love enemies, tell the truth, reject hypocrisy, and follow Him. That path is slower. It is less glamorous. It gives us less control. Maybe that is why it feels so hard.

False light and true light

Late in the conversation, Craig asks directly about the guest’s claim that Masonic thought points toward Luciferian themes. However listeners hear that part of the discussion, the contrast that follows is deeply Christian and worth sitting with: what counts as light? Is it secret knowledge? Elite access? Self-deification? Or is it Christ Himself, the true Light who enters the world without coercion, spectacle, or domination?

That contrast matters far beyond this topic. Every age has its version of “further light.” New techniques. New access. New power. New ways for humanity to save itself. But Jesus does not offer enlightenment as a ladder for the strong. He offers Himself to the poor in spirit, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers. He does not flatter our pride. He crucifies it.

“What do you most desire? Not Christ, but the further light in masonry...” (53:17)

No king but Christ still matters

By the end, the conversation widens back out. Freemasonry may be the subject, but allegiance is the deeper issue. What are we really trusting? What stories have formed us? What are we willing to overlook because the symbols feel familiar and the system feels normal?

This episode does not ask us to become obsessed with hidden things. It asks us to become faithful in plain things. Tell the truth. Refuse idolatry. Be skeptical of power. Measure every claim, symbol, and system against Jesus. If something needs secrecy, coercion, and flattery to survive, it probably does not belong to the Kingdom.

And maybe that is the final invitation here: stop chasing the machinery of government and return to the Lamb. The Church does not need better hidden networks. It needs clearer allegiance.

🤝Connect with Scipio Eruditus🤝

• Substack: Dispatches from Reality — dfreality.substack.com

• YouTube: Dispatches From Reality / @ScipioEruditus

• Podcast: Dispatches from Reality - Narrated (Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

Highlights & Takeaways

• Patriotism can feel holy until lived experience reveals how deeply government depends on myth.

• Hidden rituals and public symbols both disciple people; neither is neutral.

• Jesus builds His Kingdom in truth and light, not secrecy and elite protection.

• The temptation to “be like gods” still shows up anywhere power is pursued apart from God.

• Christians often condemn corruption in theory while still defending it when their tribe benefits.

• “Further light” is a dangerous promise when it pulls us away from Christ, the true Light.

• The real issue is not curiosity about secret societies, but clarity about allegiance.

• No reform of government can replace the call to simple obedience to Jesus.

Listen

Listen for the deeper thread running through the whole conversation: not just Freemasonry, but the way power forms our imagination and teaches us what to trust.

Reflect

Ask yourself where your own loyalties have been shaped more by national myth, institutional respectability, or cultural fear than by the words of Jesus.

Read

Read 2 Thessalonians 2:7, Genesis 3, John 1, and Matthew 5–7. Notice the contrast between mystery, false light, and the way of Christ.

Practice

Take one symbol, slogan, or civic ritual you have always treated as normal, and honestly ask: does this move me closer to the Lamb, or closer to the logic of government?

Episode Timestamps:

(0:00) Opening the question: Freemasonry, Christianity, and the state

• Craig’s curiosity and caution

• Searching for truth beyond documentaries and TV narratives

(1:15) Meeting Scipio Eruditus

• Pseudonym and writing background

• Long-form essays as method

• Entering the subject through research, not spectacle

(2:12) War, patriotism, and the breaking of trust

• Air Force service after 9/11

• Afghanistan as paradigm shift

• Propaganda, freedom-talk, disillusionment

(5:16) Fraternities as a gateway into deeper questions

• Former membership in Fiji Fraternity

• Masonic overlap in ritual and symbolism

• Secret oaths, handshakes, initiation patterns

(6:43) The initiation experience that shook him

• Hooded transport to a lodge

• Sense of dread, evil, spiritual unease

• Checkerboard floor, all-seeing eye, symbols everywhere

(8:28) Freemasonry and the making of the modern world

• History hidden in plain sight

• Influence on the last 300 years

• Mainline scholarship, not just fringe material

(9:24) Patriotism losing its innocence

• “American chauvinist” past

• Scales falling from the eyes

• Constitution and founding myths reconsidered

(10:14) The “mystery” question

• 2 Thessalonians 2 as framing text

• Freemasonry as hidden foundation

• Cornerstones, symbols, and spiritual undercurrents

(11:05) Secret societies and conspiracy against church and state

• Charles Francis Adams quote

• Elite men sworn to secrecy

• Bloody oaths, hierarchy, insulation from accountability

(12:26) Ancient religion, Babylon, and Egypt

• Mystery religion language

• Ritual parallels and symbols

• Ancient rebellion carried forward

(13:32) The unfinished pyramid and “the great work”

• Dollar-bill symbolism

• Human self-perfection apart from God

• Theosis without Christ, rebellion dressed as progress

(14:25) The oldest heresy returns

• Genesis 3 and “ye shall be like gods”

• False light, false liberation

• Christ vs self-divinization

(18:04) Lower ranks, hidden knowledge, and the shield of charity

• “We do good works” defense

• Scouting for the amenable

• Ignorance below the top levels

(29:01) Why such a small group carries so much influence

• Elite appeal, movers and shakers

• Influence on state and Christian imagination

• Surface-level Christianity confronted

(30:30) The Morgan Affair

• Competing public narratives

• Kidnapping and cover-up claims

• John Quincy Adams as outspoken critic

(31:46) Political dominion and suppression of scandal

• Public press influence

• Governors, senators, secret orders

• Small network, outsized power

(34:57) Support the Bad Roman Project

(49:09) Symbols on the currency

• Subtle and bold at once

• Masonic imagery in plain sight

• Public apathy, normalized corruption

(50:39) Allegiance, Lucifer, and false light

• Craig’s question about satanic allegiance

• Digging into Masonic literature

• Albert Pike and the language of light

(53:17) “Further light in masonry”

• Oath language contrasted with Christ

• Morning star imagery

• False knowledge vs true light

(58:58) Is Freemasonry still driving government today?

• Influence changing form

• Other occult groups taking cultural space

• Institution fading, deeper logic remaining

(59:17) Can Christians make government righteous?

• Voting to “improve” Caesar

• State reform vs Kingdom fidelity

• The limits of political salvation

(1:12:20) Where to find Scipio’s work

• Dispatches from Reality on Substack

• Weekly roundups and long-form essays

• YouTube: @ScipioEruditus

• Podcast: Dispatches from Reality - Narrated (Spotify and Apple Podcasts)

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Related Episodes

Related Blog Post

156. Are Rights from God or Government? with Cal Robbins

We use the word freedom so often that it has almost lost its shape. It can mean safety. It can mean privacy. It can mean prosperity. It can mean “leave me alone.” It can also mean “let my side win.”

 In America, freedom is one of those words everybody loves and almost nobody defines.That is why this episode matters. 

Craig opens with the real question right away: does liberty come from government, or does it come from our Creator? And if liberty is a gift from God, then we do not get to talk about it like the state hands it out, manages it, limits it, or takes credit for it. We have to ask a deeper question: what does liberty look like when Jesus, not Caesar, is Lord?

Defining Rightful Liberty

That is where Cal Robbins takes us. He goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s 1819 response to Isaac Tiffany, where Jefferson says the word liberty has been used so many different ways that it no longer gives a clear meaning to the mind. So Jefferson makes a distinction. There is liberty in the broad sense, which Cal treats as freedom, the unobstructed action of our own will. But then there is rightful liberty: the unobstructed action of our own will within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

That is the thread that holds this whole episode together. Not freedom without limits. Not control dressed up as order. Rightful liberty.

That distinction matters because it exposes the lie at the center of so much of our politics and even so much of our faith talk. We say we want liberty, but what we often want is permission for ourselves and limits for other people. We want freedom when it protects our comfort, then law when other people make us nervous. We want rights when we are talking about our tribe, then rules when we are talking about strangers. Rightful liberty ruins that game. It says the rights I claim for myself belong to my neighbor too.

Equal Rights And The Image Of God

There is a reason this conversation feels heavier than a normal political discussion. It is not just asking whether a system works. It is asking whether we have learned to see other people rightly.

Cal says that once he began to understand rightful liberty, he started to feel sympathy, empathy, even pity where he once might have felt anger or contempt. He says it changed the way he saw people. More than that, he says it brought him back to the teachings of Jesus. He began to see that rightful liberty was not just a political idea but something deeply tied to Christ, to free will, and to the straight and narrow path.

Craig picks up that thread by bringing in Galatians 5:1 and asking whether freedom in Christ might also mean freedom from slavery in a broader sense, even freedom from statism. That move keeps the whole episode from collapsing into civics. This is not a lecture on founding language. It is a wrestling match over whether the liberty we talk about in public life actually matches the freedom Christ calls us into.

If Christ sets people free, why are Christians still so eager to hand themselves over to rulers? Why are we so quick to trust systems of force, systems of control, systems that claim power over image-bearers made by God?

When Liberty Gets Tested

And that is where the episode gets sharp.

Because rightful liberty is not left floating in theory. It gets tested. Slavery comes up quickly, and Craig is blunt: he does not care whether slavery was legal, because legal does not mean moral. That line becomes a door into one of the hardest and clearest parts of the episode. If a law can bless something as evil as slavery, then Christians cannot pretend the law is the final measure of justice.

That same line of thought runs straight into immigration. Not as a side issue, but as a test of whether we really mean what we say about liberty. Craig points to the border as an imaginary line and asks why crossing it suddenly makes a human being “illegal.” Cal pushes further and says denying people free movement because the state says so is not liberty at all. He calls it a rejection of rightful liberty, a rejection of what God gave.

His logic is simple and hard to get around: if I claim a natural right to move, but deny that same right to somebody else because the government told me to, then I am putting man’s law above God’s gift. In his words, that is rendering unto Caesar what belongs to God.

Caesar, Voting, And The Tyrant’s Will

The same test shows up again when the conversation turns to voting and “render unto Caesar.” Cal says that when we vote to impose rulers on our neighbors, we are once again rendering unto Caesar what belongs to God.

Craig pushes back on the usual statist use of Matthew 22 and asks the harder question: what actually belongs to Caesar? If my life is God-given, if my rights are God-given, if my neighbor’s dignity is God-given, then what exactly are we handing over when we call the state our authority?

That is why Jefferson’s fuller line matters here too. Rightful liberty is not merely action within the law, because law is often but the tyrant’s will. That one sentence should break apart a lot of lazy Christian trust in the state. Christians cannot hide behind legality. We cannot keep saying “it’s the law” as if that settles the matter.

Jesus And The Shape Of True Liberty

What keeps this from turning into a cold political argument is that it keeps coming back to Jesus.

Cal says outright that rightful liberty became, for him, almost synonymous with Christ. He says Jesus was an excellent example of how to live in rightful liberty. That is not a throwaway line. It is the heart of the whole episode.

Jesus never forced people into discipleship. He never used power the way rulers do. He never treated people as objects to manage. He told the truth, loved His neighbor, and refused the kingdoms of the world when they were offered to Him. Rightful liberty, as this episode describes it, is free will exercised in the light of God and in the presence of neighbors who bear the same dignity we do.

That is why Cal can connect rightful liberty to Christ, free will, and even the path toward salvation. It is not just about politics. It is about what kind of people we are becoming.

The Church Must Tell The Truth Again

Craig also presses on the witness of the Church, especially the cruelty so often seen online from people who claim Christ. That part matters because the failure here is not just political confusion. It is spiritual contradiction.

If we say “No King but Christ,” but still crave rulers, still cheer domination, still use fear as our moral compass, then what are we really confessing? Rightful liberty does not just expose bad policy. It exposes a damaged discipleship that keeps trusting Caesar to do what only love, truth, and self-government under God can do.

By the end, the episode lands in a place that is both simple and demanding. Rightful liberty is the proper exercise of free will under God. It is not limitless freedom. It is freedom with moral shape. It is the refusal to violate the equal rights of others. It is liberty disciplined by love.

That is why Craig can boil the whole thing down to a plain phrase: don’t hurt people, don’t take their stuff. Crude maybe, but clear. And clarity is hard to come by in a world where we are constantly told that coercion is compassion, legality is morality, and empire is order.

“No King but Christ” means more here than a slogan against nationalism. It means no one gets to claim ownership over what God already gave. Not the president. Not the court. Not the border. Not the ballot. Not the church when it acts like an arm of the state.

Connect with Cal Robbins

• Republic Broadcasting

• Michael Gaddy’s Substack

Highlights & Takeaways

• Rightful liberty is not doing whatever we want.

• Rightful liberty means acting within the equal rights of others.

• Rights come from God, not government.

• Legal does not mean moral.

• Borders, ballots, and rulers fail the test when they violate God-given dignity.

• Cal connects rightful liberty to Christ, free will, and the straight and narrow path.

• Jefferson’s warning still stands: law can become the tyrant’s will.
  “No King but Christ” means we stop giving Caesar credit for gifts that came from God.

Listen & Reflect

Listen for how early the episode defines rightful liberty. Everything else builds from that one distinction.

Reflect: Where do we call something freedom when we really mean control? Where do we demand rights for ourselves that we deny to others?

Read: Galatians 5:1, Matthew 22:15–22, and 1 Samuel 8. Then hold them next to Jefferson’s definition of rightful liberty and sit with the tension.

Practice:  Galatians 5:1, Matthew 22:15–22, and 1 Samuel 8. Before you defend any law, policy, border, or political habit this week, ask one question: does this honor the equal rights of others, or violate them?

Episode Timestamps:

0:00 Rightful Liberty

• rights from God, not government

• Golden Rule

• Cal Robbins

1:04 Safety Over Freedom

• people want safety, not liberty

• state narratives

• Minnesota shooting, Venezuela

2:20 Cal’s Liberty Journey

• Ron Paul movement
  pocket Constitution days

• corruption in the system

3:45 Jefferson’s Definition

• many meanings of liberty

• rightful liberty takes shape

• Thomas Jefferson

• Isaac Tiffany

6:21 Equal Rights Of Others

• liberty within limits

• no man above another

• equal rights for all mankind

• Declaration of Independence

8:24 Freedom Vs. Liberty

• freedom without limits

• taking your car example

• limits set by God, not man

• property rights

9:27 Sympathy And Empathy

• seeing your neighbor as equal
  compassion grows when statism fades

• Craig’s old neocon days

11:12 Rightful Liberty And Christ

• pity instead of hatred

• free will

• straight and narrow path

• Jesus Christ

12:50 Freedom In Christ

• freedom from sin, slavery, statism

• Roman oppression

• Galatians 5:1

14:20 Slavery And Immigration

• legal doesn’t mean moral

• imaginary lines and free movement

• Patrick Henry

• Lion of Liberty

15:12 Rejecting God’s Gift

• borders as rejection of rightful liberty

• natural right to travel

• liberty as a gift from God

16:45 Image Of God

• no human becomes less human by law

• “illegal” people still bear God’s image

• God’s law over state law

17:30 Slavery Never Really Left

• chattel slavery, fiscal slavery

• debt and bondage

• posterity

• future generations

18:25 Voting And Coercion

• ballot box as force

• imposing rulers on neighbors

• voting

20:00 Render Unto Caesar

• what actually belongs to Caesar?

• rights from God

• gifts we hand to the state

• Matthew 22

22:45 War And Repentance

• blood on our hands

• owning past support for violence

• War on Terror

• Abby Neer

24:07 Unconditional Love

• love beyond comprehension

• people go out of their way to hate

• God is love

• loving one another

25:15 Broken Christian Witness

• Christians sounding cruel online

• witness to the world

• Church and public life

27:20 One Human Family

• same tribe

• equal dignity

• liberty and neighbor love

30:24 The Golden Rule

• rightful liberty in practice

• Reciprocity

• Jesus

• Confucius

31:30 Rendering To Caesar What Is God’s

• liberty handed over to rulers

• deception dressed as order

• God-given rights

34:00 Jesus Rejected The Kingdoms

• worldly power refused
  service over domination

• temptation of Christ

35:30 Why The World Rejects Us

• Christians not acting like Christ

• public witness problem

• how outsiders see the Church

37:15 Hate Cannot Heal

• unconditional love vs hatred

• good and evil

• what kind of spirit we carry

41:20 No King But Christ

• Christ alone is worthy to rule

• brotherhood over domination

• Kingship of Jesus

43:00 Asking For A King

• people still want rulers

• rejecting God’s rule

• 1 Samuel 8

44:05 What Jesus Never Did

• never imposed His will

• coercion vs discipleship

• WWJD

45:30 The Temptation Of Power

• Satan offers the kingdoms

• Jesus refuses state power

• temptation narrative

47:00 Rights Come From God

• rights not created by paper

• Constitution doesn’t grant liberty

• Creator

• Declaration language

49:45 Proper Exercise Of Liberty

• self-restraint

• rights with limits
  rightful liberty in daily life

53:45 Don’t Hurt People

• don’t take their stuff

• simple moral vision

• Don’t Hurt People and Don’t Take Their Stuff, by Matt Kibbe

54:57 The Full Jefferson Quote

• law is often but the tyrant’s will

• individual rights

• Thomas Jefferson

56:30 Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists

• warnings about centralized power

• Constitution skepticism

• Patrick Henry

• anti federalists

57:42 Forensic History

• back to source documents

• letters, speeches, original texts

• Michael Gaddy

• Republic Broadcasting

58:40 Learn The Real History

• history you were never taught

• Substack and classes

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155. The State of the Holy Union: Is the President Barabbas? with Paul Lazzaroni

Sometimes we say we follow Jesus… but we still want a “strong guy” to save us. We want someone who will fight, punish our enemies, and “fix the country.” But what if that hope is closer to Barabbas than to Jesus?

In this episode, Craig talks with Paul Lazzaroni (Cross and Cornerstone / No King but Christ Network) about a big idea from Paul’s article, “Is Trump Barabbas?” The point isn’t mainly about one politician. It’s about a mindset. The crowd picked Barabbas. Someone tied to violence and revolt instead of Jesus. And if we’re honest, we can still want that kind of “savior” today. So we ask: Are we being shaped by the Kingdom of God… or by the kingdoms of this world?

The Barabbas Temptation

Barabbas wasn’t just “some other guy.” He stood for a certain kind of rescue: power, force, control. The kind of rescue that feels fast and strong.

Paul and Craig talk about how easy it is for Christians to drift into that way of thinking. We may not say, “Give us Barabbas,” out loud. But we can say it with our cravings. Craving a leader who will “win” for us, crush the “bad guys,” and make our fears go away.

Jesus doesn’t offer that kind of victory. He offers a cross. And that’s the problem… and the invitation.

When Politics Becomes Discipleship

Paul shares that he doesn’t vote and tries not to live inside political arguments. Not because he doesn’t care, but because he doesn’t want politics to become what shapes him. Craig comes at it from another angle: he’s loud about this stuff because he’s watching Christians tie their faith to state power, and it keeps hurting people.

Here’s one of the main questions underneath the whole episode:

If Jesus teaches enemy-love, mercy, and humility… why do Christians so often chase power, punishment, and control?

And another question:

When we say “we’re protecting our country,” are we protecting our neighbors, or protecting our own comfort?

God’s Slow Work: From Slavery Thinking to Freedom Living

Craig asks Paul to lay down some Bible groundwork, especially around Israel leaving Egypt and being formed in the wilderness. Paul’s point is simple: people who lived under slavery don’t suddenly know how to live free. They have to be healed. Re-trained. Re-shaped.

That changes how we think about Scripture and law. Instead of reading the Old Testament like “God’s dream is control,” Paul points toward a story of God patiently forming a people who learn justice, care for the vulnerable, and a different way to live together.

That matters today because Christian nationalism often sounds like Egypt thinking with Bible words:

 “Force people to be good.”
“Control society.”
“Win at all costs.”

But God’s way is slower, and it looks a lot more like Jesus.

Modern Babylon: A Place or a Pattern?

The Bible uses “Babylon” as a picture of empire: a system that trains people to trust power, money, fear, and violence.

Craig and Paul ask whether America slips into acting like “a modern Babylon.” Not as a simple insult, but as a warning. Because Babylon isn’t only “out there.” It can be in us. It can shape what we think “safety” means. It can shape what we think “good” means. It can even shape what we think “Christian” means.

So we’re left with a hard but honest question: Are we trying to build God’s Kingdom… or are we helping Babylon feel holy?

The Kind of King We Keep Asking For

One of the hardest parts of this conversation is realizing this: we don’t only want safety. We often want control. We want a king who will make the world feel simple again: good guys vs. bad guys, winners vs. losers.

But Jesus keeps refusing to be that kind of king. He doesn’t grab power. He doesn’t build His kingdom with threats. He doesn’t save the world by hurting the “right people.” That’s why Barabbas is such a strong picture. Barabbas is the kind of “rescuer” the crowd understands.

 Jesus is the kind they don’t.

So the question is not just, “Who do we vote for?” It’s, “What kind of king do we secretly want?”

Good News Has A Target

Craig and Paul circle back to a simple test that cuts through a lot of noise: Is it good news for the poor? For the oppressed? For the outsider?

Jesus’ mission isn’t vague. He doesn’t just say “be nice.” He announces freedom, healing, mercy, and justice. That kind of good news has real faces: the hungry, the prisoner, the immigrant, the exploited, the outcast. If our “Christian” politics mainly protects the comfortable and punishes the vulnerable, something is backwards.

This is where Christian nationalism gets exposed. It often sounds like “God and country,” but it doesn’t always sound like Jesus.

No King But Christ Means We Live Different

If we say “Jesus is Lord,” that can’t just be a slogan. It has to show up in how we treat people, how we talk about enemies, and what we’re willing to do without the government’s help.

“No King but Christ” doesn’t mean we stop caring about the world. It means we stop believing power is the savior. It means we stop acting like fear gets the final word. And it means we practice the Kingdom right now, small, real, local, and brave.

Not with a flag. Not with threats. Not with “winning.” But with the kind of love Jesus actually taught.

Highlights & Takeaways

• The “Barabbas mindset” is wanting a savior who uses power and force instead of the way of Jesus.

• This isn’t just about one politician—it’s about what we crave when we’re afraid.

• If politics is shaping our hearts more than Jesus is, something is off.

• God’s story in Scripture is often slow formation, not quick domination.

• “Babylon” is an empire pattern—fear, control, and violence dressed up as “order.”

• A good test: Is what we’re supporting good news for the poor, the oppressed, and the outsider? If not, it probably isn’t Jesus’ way.

• Following Jesus means we don’t need a flag to tell us who we are.

🤝 Connect with Paul Lazzaroni 🤝

• Cross and Cornerstone (Website / Blog + Articles)

• C&C Facebook Page

• No King but Christ Network (Paul’s work is featured there): nokingbutchristnetwork.com

• Paul’s Personal Pages

• Instagram

• Facebook

• YouTube

• TikTok

Listen & Reflect

Listen: Pay attention to the moments where you feel the pull toward “we need a strong leader.” What emotion is underneath that: fear, anger, exhaustion?

Reflect: Where have we accepted the idea that “the state will love our neighbor for us”? What would it look like to take that responsibility back?

Read: Re-read Luke 23 (Jesus and Barabbas). Then read Matthew 5 (especially enemy-love). Ask: Which way looks more like my life right now?

Practice: Do one small, real act of love that doesn’t depend on elections: help someone, forgive someone, feed someone, show up for someone. Let Jesus shape your reflexes.

Episode Timestamps:

(0:00) Jesus or Caesar?

• state power / coercion

• violence vs cross-shaped love

• allegiance, obedience, faithful resistance

(0:45) Meet Paul Lazzaroni

• No King but Christ Network

• Paul’s background + why he’s here

• Cross and Cornerstone connection

(1:27) “Is Trump Barabbas?”

• title as provocation

• not about one person

• Barabbas as symbol / warning

(2:20) The Barabbas Mindset

• strongman savior instinct

• fear → anger → control

• “revolt for us” vs “take up your cross”

(8:36) Why Paul Doesn’t Vote

• informed vs formed

• political identity vs Kingdom identity

• stepping back from the outrage machine

(17:57) Wilderness First

• Exodus / slavery mindset

• formation before “law”

• Leviticus groundwork, God re-shaping a people

(47:30) Modern Babylon

• Babylon as system / pattern

• empire imagination

• fear, control, violence dressed up as “order”

(47:57) Mindsets and Mimic Kingdoms

• tribal belonging / “our team”

• empire logic: power promises salvation

• winning vs faithfulness, control vs Spirit

(53:33) What Is Cross and Cornerstone?

• website + blog/articles hub 

• learning-in-public: what Paul’s studying + wrestling through

• resources for folks not finding this in church

(55:32) Why “Cornerstone”?

• rejected stone / Jesus as foundation

• Paul’s story: rejecting, returning, grace

• identity built on Christ, not empire

(57:16) Writing, Learning, Humility

• learning through writing

• “journey of humility”

• Scripture forming us (not agendas)

Sit with Discomfort

If this episode made you uncomfortable, you’re not alone. That might be the Spirit pulling us away from the crowd, and back toward Jesus. 

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154. Kingdom Politics vs. Chaos: Can a Voluntary Society Reflect Jesus?

“What if the problem isn’t that we haven’t found the right rulers, but that we keep assuming someone needs to rule us at all?”

There’s a moment that shows up in almost every conversation about politics and faith. It usually comes right after someone says, “Okay, but what about bad people?” The room tightens. The air shifts. Because underneath the question isn’t policy, it’s fear. Fear of chaos. Fear of losing control. Fear that without someone in charge, everything falls apart.

This episode lives inside that moment.

Craig sits down with economist and author Bob Murphy to talk about Bob’s short book, Chaos Theory. On the surface, it’s about how law, courts, and public safety might work without a centralized state. But that’s not really why Craig wanted the conversation. What he’s really asking is something Christians rarely slow down long enough to face: Why are we so sure that force is necessary for order, and what does that say about what we believe Jesus actually taught?

Bob doesn’t come in trying to convince anyone. He comes in careful. Thoughtful. Almost pastoral. He knows the ideas he’s talking about can trigger alarm bells. So instead of starting with labels or slogans, he starts with a question that keeps circling back throughout the episode: Should anyone be allowed to do things that would be wrong for everyone else?

Craig Meets Bob Murphy

Craig opens with honesty. He’s familiar with these ideas. He’s heard them before. But he also knows where people get stuck. It’s not usually in theory. It’s in the details.

“How does this actually work?” Craig asks. “Not in a perfect world, but in this one.”

Bob nods. He doesn’t promise a world without sin or harm. “The goal isn’t utopia,” he says. “The goal is removing what I call an institutionalized aggressor.”

That phrase lands heavy.

Bob explains that every system has problems because people have problems. The difference is whether the system itself assumes that violence and threats are necessary tools. A voluntary society, he says, doesn’t eliminate wrongdoing. It eliminates the idea that some people are allowed to do wrong by design.

Craig pauses there, not because he disagrees, but because he recognizes how deeply that assumption runs. For Christians, this isn’t an abstract argument. It cuts straight into how we’ve learned to think about safety, authority, and obedience.

Why Bob Steps Around the Word “Anarchy”

Early in the conversation, Bob explains why he rarely leads with the word “anarchist,” especially among Christians. The word comes loaded. Too many images. Too many misunderstandings.

“I actually believe in order,” Bob says. “I just don’t think order requires rulers.”

Instead, he uses the phrase voluntary society. It sounds less dramatic, but it’s more accurate. A voluntary society isn’t about tearing everything down. It’s about cooperation without coercion. Rules without rulers. Agreement without threats.

Craig connects this to Christian nationalism almost instinctively. When Christians say “Jesus is King,” do we really believe it? Or do we still assume someone else needs to enforce things for Him? Jesus refused power when it was offered. He didn’t seize control. He invited people to follow.

That contrast lingers.

A Boring Word That Changes Everything

Midway through the episode, Craig opens Bob’s book and lands on a section that doesn’t sound very spiritual at all: contracts.

It almost feels like a letdown at first. No revolution. No big speeches. Just agreements.

But Bob leans in. Contracts, he explains, are how most of our lives already work. Jobs. Housing. Insurance. Services. We trust them not because someone is holding a gun, but because incentives, reputation, and accountability matter.

“Insurance companies don’t want to write million-dollar checks,” Bob says. “So they care about safety. They ask questions. They check training. They look at track records.”

Craig pushes back with the concern many listeners will feel. What about the vulnerable? What about people without power or money?

Bob doesn’t pretend this system fixes everything. He simply points out that our current system already fails the vulnerable, often while claiming moral authority. A voluntary system doesn’t solve sin. It just stops pretending that force is love.

Consent, Compliance, and the Ballot Box

One of the most uncomfortable turns in the conversation comes when Bob challenges the idea that voting equals consent.

“In normal life,” Bob says, “consent means you can say no. You can walk away.”

You can’t really do that with the state.

Markets depend on persuasion. Governments depend on compliance. Craig lets that contrast sit without rushing to resolve it. Because Jesus never appealed to majorities. He appealed to hearts. To repentance. To truth.

“If we wouldn’t do this to our neighbor,” Craig reflects, “why are we okay with a system that does?”

That question doesn’t get answered. And that’s the point.

Live the Question Jesus Calls us To Ask

This episode doesn’t give you a platform to stand on. It gives you a question to carry. And following Jesus has always meant carrying questions that cost us something.

If this conversation unsettled you, sit with that. Keep asking what it really means to follow a crucified King.

🤝 Connect with Bob Murphy 🤝

• Read the Book: Chaos Theory (buy on Amazon), Chaos Theory (pdf)

• Bob’s other books: Contra Krugman: Smashing the Errors of America’s Most Famous Keynesian; Lessons for the Young Economist; Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action

• Bob’s Podcasts: Human Action Podcast and The Bob Murphy Show

• X (Twitter): @BobMurphyEcon

• Bob’s YouTube Channel:@BobMurphyAncap

Highlights & Takeaways

• A voluntary society doesn’t promise a perfect world

• It refuses to give moral exemptions to people in power

• Order and control are not the same thing

• Consent requires the real option to walk away

• Jesus never modeled threat-based transformation

• Christian nationalism trusts force where Jesus trusted faithfulness

• You don’t need a political plan to name a moral problem

Listen & Reflect

Listen: Pay attention to where fear enters the conversation. What are we afraid would happen if control loosened?

Reflect: Where have we accepted systems that do things we would never justify in our own lives?

Read: Read Matthew 5–7 slowly. Notice which teachings feel “impractical,”and ask why.

Practice: This week, choose persuasion over pressure in one real situation. Let go of leverage and see what remains.

Episode Timestamps:

(00:00) Voluntary Society: “Wouldn’t That Be Chaos?”

• bad actors, security, fear of “chaos”

• why Bob Murphy + Chaos Theory today

• frame: Christ over the state

(00:45) Welcome Bob Murphy

• Craig’s intro + how they got connected (Dominic)

• Episodes with Dominic

• Judas the OG Christian Nationalist: Why Imposters Are Worse Than Opponents with Domenic Scarcella EP #147

• Christianity Unpacked in "Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen" with Domenic Scarcella EP #97

(06:19) Why Bob Avoids the “Anarchist” Label

• two kinds of “anarchists”

• “I have a king… not an earthly king”

• prefers “voluntary society” language

(07:19) Sermon on the Mount + Politics That Fit Jesus

• “dovetail… best with what Jesus told Christians”

• Craig’s shift from “looking for somebody to vote for”

• discipleship vs ideology

(10:57) “I Don’t Have to Have a Plan”

• refusing the election-pressure test

• “this current system… is crazy”

• Craig: “yeah, you’re allowed”

(11:33) Salsa Break: No King but Christ

• put the politics down

• support the show

• “no king but Christ” hook

(12:14) Chaos Theory: Contracts

• why contracts matter in a voluntary society

• how contracts already matter

(14:37) “Institutionalized Aggressor” + Imposed Rules

• no “my guy loses → stuff imposed on me”

• what the booklet is trying to show

• contracts “on the front end”

(33:14) Insurance as Due Diligence

• “standard package” idea

• insurance companies = background checks

• malpractice example bridge

(34:03) Incentives: Background Checks + Risk

• “we might have to pay $2 million”

• vetting training, history, reputation

• why incentives shape behavior

(46:57) “Give the Experts Guns” Problem

• “very naive” assumption

• experts can be the bad guys

• quick support spotfund message + Memphis charities

(58:27) “Aren’t Insurance Companies the Government?”

• “they seem like they play an important part”

• Bob: not government because it’s voluntary

• competition + no power to block new entrants

(1:03:24) Where to Find Bob + What He’s Building

• how to get Chaos Theory (PDF or physical)

• Human Action Podcast + other work

(1:04:22) Wrap-Up + Possible Part 2

• “small book… packed tight”

• Bob open to coming back

• Craig: “we didn’t get to cover everything”

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