The Bad Roman: Christian Politics for Modern Times

Was America founded as a Christian nation, or was it a nation founded by Christians?

There's a difference, and it's one Craig wants people to take seriously.

As claims about America's Christian identity circulate through churches, social media, and political campaigns, Craig welcomes Daryll Bryant of REAL Xians to examine the history behind them. Daryll's article, America Is Not a Christian Nation, challenges a familiar assumption: Christian influence on America's founding doesn't necessarily mean the United States government was established as Christian.

Together, Craig and Daryll explore the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, religious freedom, John Locke and Enlightenment thought, and the Treaty of Tripoli. They also discuss 1 Samuel 8, voting, the early church, Constantine, and what happens when Christianity becomes entangled with political power.

The conversation moves between American history and a more uncomfortable question: If Christians already have a King, why are so many looking to government to secure His Kingdom?

In this episode:

Why being founded by Christians isn't necessarily the same as being founded as a Christian nation

What the Constitution, Founding Fathers, and Treaty of Tripoli contribute to the debate

How Greek, Roman, and Enlightenment ideas influenced American political thought

Why Daryll's study of 1 Samuel 8 changed his thinking about voting

What Jesus, Caesar, and the early church reveal about competing allegiances

Constantine, paid clergy, and the relationship between church institutions and power

Why questioning government isn't the same as hating your neighbors or your country

As Daryll puts it, the earliest Christians weren't trying to “make Rome great again.” They proclaimed another King.

Read Daryll's article:

Explore REAL Xians:

Full show notes, reflections, and episode chapters:

Support and connect with The Bad Roman Project:

Support the project: https://thebadroman.com/donate

If this conversation raises questions you've been asking (or challenges an assumption you've never examined) share it with someone willing to think it through with you!

Not left. Not right. Just following Jesus.

Craig used to be a “back the blue” guy. When police hurt or killed someone, he could reach for the familiar answer: they should have just obeyed.

George Floyd made that answer harder to live with.

In this episode, Jason Bassler of The Free Thought Project returns to talk about ICE, masked federal agents, accountability, and a question that cuts through a lot of the politics: Is legality morality?

Then the conversation moves to something Craig has only recently started noticing around his own town: Flock cameras.

What begins as a discussion about immigration enforcement becomes a much bigger conversation about surveillance, safety, consent, and the powers we are willing to tolerate when the people we trust are the ones using them.

And somehow, after all that, Craig and Jason end up talking about hope.

Maybe Craig isn’t black-pilled or white-pilled.

Maybe he’s a gray pill.

🤝 Connect with Jason Bassler:

📖 For Full Show Notes and Summaries visit: https://thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-171

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Know someone who’s been asking “Bad Roman Questions” about the tradeoffs of privacy vs. safety in mass surveillance? Send them this episode and start a conversation!  

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100% of donations above production costs go to local Memphis charities. Donate at: https://thebadroman.com/donate

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Keep it Bad. Kept it on Jesus.

Tyler Boyd used to say the Pledge of Allegiance without thinking much about it. Then one word started bothering him: “indivisible.”

At first, he simply stopped saying that word. Eventually, a bigger question followed: If Christians already confess Jesus as King, what exactly are they promising when they pledge allegiance to a nation?

Craig sits down with Tyler, co-creator and writer at The Christian Exile, to discuss his article, “The Case Against Christians Saying the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Together they wrestle with the meaning of faith, loyalty, obedience, and allegiance—from the Greek word pistis and “Jesus is Lord” to Romans 13, competing loyalties, patriotic rituals, and the witness of early Christians like Polycarp and Speratus.

Can Christians respect earthly governments without pledging allegiance to them? And when we say No King but Christ, what does that actually demand of our loyalty?

Listen and consider the words for yourself.

Inside this conversation:

 📖 For Full Show Notes: https://thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-170

🤝 Connect with Tyler Boyd🤝

Other Resources Mentioned: 

💕Ways You Can Support the Bad Roman Project 💕

👀 Share the show with a friend or leave a review, It helps people find us!👀

Know someone who’s been asking “Bad Roman Questions,” tell them what you got from the episode and send it their way. The more Christians talking about how to stay focused on Jesus the better in our book!

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100% of donations above production costs go to local Memphis charities. Donate at: https://thebadroman.com/donate

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Stay Bad Romans! No King but Jesus.

The State of Arkansas told Brenda “Granny” Smith to stop attending births.

She wadded up the cease-and-desist letter and threw it away.

Brenda had already spent years helping mothers when she found herself facing state scrutiny, an arrest warrant, legal bills, and what she says were eight years of Facebook screenshots collected as evidence.

Why keep going?

Because Brenda believed God had called her to stand beside women who needed help, and she was not willing to let fear of the state become more important than obedience to Christ.

That lived experience eventually helped her recognize something about herself: the Christian faith she already practiced fit naturally with anarchy built on consent and non-aggression.

Her challenge is simple: “If your faith doesn’t require something difficult of you, why are you even doing it?”

In this episode, Craig and Brenda dig into:

👶 Home birth, midwifery, and informed choice

📖 For Full Show Notes: https://thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-169

🤝 Connect with Brenda 'Granny' Smith 🤝

💕 3 Ways You Can Support the Project 💕

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100% of donations above production costs go to local Memphis charities: https://thebadroman.com/donate

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Send this episode to someone and ask: When does obedience become compliance? What should a Christian do when the state commands something that conflicts with conscience? If faith never costs us anything, how much does it actually shape us?

🔗 Get Involved with the Project 🔗

Adam Stump asked two congregations if they knew Christians lived in Iran. Not one hand went up.

We hear plenty about Iran as an enemy, a government, or a military target. But how often do American Christians think about the people living beneath those labels, including fellow Christians?

Adam joins Craig to talk about Christians in the Middle East, Iranian converts worshiping in underground churches, and what happens when nationalism teaches us who our enemies are before Jesus teaches us how to love them.

Adam puts it simply: “We have tried bombs and bullets and it doesn’t work. Why don’t we try love?”

So Craig asks the question hanging over the whole conversation: Have we actually tried Jesus?

They dig into:

📖 For Full Show Notes:

🤝 Connect with Adam Stump:

💕 Support the Project 💕

If this conversation with Adam helped you see the people behind the politics, and question whether bombs, borders, and nationalism belong in the way of Jesus, help us keep conversations like this going.

Support The Bad Roman Project at:

100% of donations above production costs go to local Memphis charities.

🌶️ SALSA THE LOVE 🌶️

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Grab a jar of Bad Roman Salsa at badromansalsa.com. Every jar helps fuel more Jesus-first, No-King-but-Christ conversations.

FREE: Share & Start a Conversation

Send this episode to a friend and ask: Do we know any of the people we call our enemies? Can Christians be Kingdom people first if national loyalty tells us who to fear? If bombs and political power keep failing us, have we actually tried Jesus?

Meet people. Listen well. Love the person behind the label.

No King but Christ.

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

Does questioning your theology mean you're losing your faith, or could it mean you're finally taking faith seriously?

Craig sits down with Jon Kinder of The Geeky Preacher to talk about Christian deconstruction, church hurt, political allegiance, Christian nationalism, pacifism, hell, the rapture, and what happens when inherited beliefs stop looking like Jesus.

Jon's deconstruction began in two places: politics and a hospital bed.

Growing up in rural Christian culture, Republican politics and Christianity seemed almost inseparable. Then books like Greg Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation challenged Jon to judge political power by the teachings of Christ rather than by party loyalty.

A few years later, Jon was hospitalized with stage-three lymphoma. While lying in bed, he heard a television preacher claim that sick people were sick because they did not have enough faith. 

That hit differently when Jon was the person with cancer.

Instead of abandoning Christianity, he began taking his theology apart one question at a time.

His picture of deconstruction is not a wrecking ball. It is a home renovation:

Christ stays as the foundation. The rooms get examined.

Craig and Jon explore:

One line may sum up the whole conversation:

“If anything is true, it's gonna survive scrutiny, it's gonna survive questions.”

Maybe deconstruction is not about destroying faith.

Maybe it is about finding out what was actually built on Jesus.

🤝Connect with Jon Kinder / The Geeky Preacher🤝

📖 Full Show Notes: https://thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-167

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

When the U.S. wages war in the Middle East that American Christians support, do we remember that some of the people beneath those bombs are fellow Christians? And even when they are not Christians, how can we forget that Jesus calls us to love our neighbor and enemy alike?

Mennonite pastor, writer, screenwriter, and activist Nathan Perrin joins Craig for a conversation about the people Western headlines often leave out. Nathan has spent nearly a decade working alongside Assyrians, Kurds, Palestinians, and other Middle Eastern communities through local organizing and visits to northern Iraq.

He recounts visiting an Assyrian church that had been rebuilt again and again after attempts to destroy it. A cross in its courtyard covered in bullet holes. Yet when new bombardments began, Christian and Muslim neighbors exchanged keys to their homes so each family would have a place of safety.

That act of neighbor-love stands in sharp contrast to the fear often preached in American churches.

Craig and Nathan explore why the word evangelical carries painful baggage in parts of the Middle East. Ancient Christian communities have sometimes been treated as mission targets, while humanitarian aid has been tied to conversion. Nathan challenges us to consider whether people abroad encounter Jesus through Western Christianity, or the pressure of empire.

The conversation also covers:

Nathan reminds listeners that ordinary Muslims he has met often describe Christians in simple terms: “Christians are our neighbors.”

What would change if the Western church began there?

🤝 Connect with Nathan Perrin

📚 Resources Mentioned

📚Full show notes: https://www.thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-166

Support the project by visiting Spot Fund or grabbing a jar of salsa at https://badromansalsa.com/. All funds received above production costs support charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

Read the Gospels. Meet your neighbors. Refuse to whitewash war.

Key Moments:

(00:00) The Christians missing from our maps

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

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

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

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

(24:45) A Ramadan meal breaks through fear

(32:06) “Christians are our neighbors”

(36:36) Assyrians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans

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

(46:23) What remains after Trump

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

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

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

Ancap Tim returns to discuss his new album, It’s Not Left vs. Right, and the story behind the song inspired by the phrase, “Sometimes being a good Christian means being a bad Roman.”

Drawing from his life as a musician, homesteader, homeschooling father, and Christian anarchist, Tim explains why allegiance to Jesus must come before allegiance to government, party, or nation.

This is not a call to become more anti-government. It is a call to become more like Christ.

They dig into:

Can Christians seek power over their neighbors while following a King who knelt to wash feet? Can love be commanded, enforced, or legislated? What does “Not so with you” mean in a church shaped by political fear and tribal loyalty? Let’s talk about it.

🤝Connect with Ancap Tim🤝

Starting Points and Key Moments:

(00:00) Ancap Tim returns with a new album

(11:42) The salsa table and the song that started it all

(17:18) The law of love versus the logic of coercion

(27:41) When party loyalty overrides Jesus

(35:33) “But I'm Extreme” — who decided what counts as extreme?

(40:16) An AI choir, Rothbard, and Scott Horton

(52:51) The Iran war, Hormuz, and a tragedy neither side can spin away

(1:02:19) The new album, the road, and where to find Tim

📖 For Full Show Notes: thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-165

Support the Show

💕 Feed the Feed 💕

You can donate to the project at thebadroman.com/donate. Every sized donation helps, and anything beyond production costs is given to charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

🌶️ SALSA THE LOVE 🌶️

Want to support the project another way?

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

When did we start believing that someone has to be in charge?

Maybe it's one of the oldest stories we tell ourselves. If the right people hold power, everything will be okay. If the wrong people do, everything falls apart.

But what if Jesus was inviting us into a completely different way of living?

In this special bonus episode, Craig catches up with longtime friends of the show Larken Rose and Amanda Rose ahead of Approaching Humanity, an upcoming gathering in Sedona. What begins as a conversation about an event quickly becomes something much deeper. Together they explore why people from very different backgrounds keep arriving at the same uncomfortable questions about authority, conscience, and what it means to love our neighbors without trying to rule them.

This isn't a debate about politics. It's a conversation about becoming more fully human, and whether the Kingdom Jesus announced has been offering another way all along.

They dig into:

📖 For full show notes: https://thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-bonus

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

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

Key Moments:

(00:00) Announcing Approaching Humanity

(02:02) Who Actually Shows Up

(05:27) Faith, Atheism, and Getting Shut Out

(09:24) The Core Challenge

(13:10) Renaming the Book

(15:30) Rereading “Give Unto Caesar”

(18:52) The God Nobody Names

(23:06) Candles in the Dark

(25:55) Why Approaching Humanity Brings Together So Many Beliefs

(33:22) Meet More of the Speakers

(36:30) Even More Speakers

(41:04) Why the Event Won't Hand the Ring Back

(48:45) Getting to Sedona

3 Ways You Can Support the Show

💕 Feed the Feed 💕

You can donate to the project at thebadroman.com/donate. Everything beyond production costs is sent to charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

🌶️ SALSA THE LOVE 🌶️

Or simply share the show for free!

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

Jesus over empire. Mercy over shame. No King but Christ.

What if the biggest political threat facing the church is not opposition, but formation?

Brian Drinkwine returns to The Bad Roman Podcast to discuss his new book, Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity.

Drawing from his own journey through conservative evangelical politics, Brian explains how empire shapes what Christians fear, whom they treat as enemies, and where they place their hope.

This is not a call to switch parties. It is a call to recover undivided allegiance to Jesus.

They dig into:

Can Christians defend cruelty because their side gets results? Can the Kingdom of a crucified King be advanced through domination, fear, and coercion? Let's talk about it.

📖 For Full Show Notes: thebadroman.com/show-notes/episode-164

🤝Connect with Brian🤝

Kingdom Over Empire: Recovering the Gospel from Political Captivity

Also available through Amazon and other book retailers

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://briandrinkwine.com/

Linkedin

X

Facebook

Instagram 

Ministry at Breakthrough Church

Key Moments:

(00:00) Introducing Kingdom Over Empire

(05:30) A Crisis of Hope and Identity

(09:30) How Empire Disciples Us

(18:50) Enemy-Love and the Way of the Cross

(24:30) Winning, Certainty, and Control

(28:45) When Party Loyalty Overrides Jesus

(36:30) Remembering the Poor and the Marginalized

(43:49) The Cost of Leaving Political Identity

(49:30) Image-Bearers Over Political Categories

(53:25) Constantine and the Co-opted Cross

(57:45) When the Church Gains Power

(1:01:10) Seven Mountains, Cyrus, and Political Power

(1:05:25) Nebuchadnezzar and Assimilation into Babylon

(1:07:45) Assimilation and the Subtle Loss of Identity

(1:09:40) Finding and Sharing the Book

Support the Show

💕 Feed the Feed 💕

You can donate to the project at thebadroman.com/donate. Every sized donation helps, and anything beyond production costs is sent to charities in Memphis, Tennessee.

🌶️ SALSA THE LOVE 🌶️

Want to support the project another way?

🔗 How to Get Involved with the Project 🔗

Jesus over empire. Mercy over shame. No King but Christ.