For our first podcast of the New Year we sat down with pastor, author, and Comino walker Brian Zahnd and Kathi and David Peters, the founders of Global Stories Films, to discuss their joint project, Postcards From Babylon. Postcards From Babylon is a long-form documentary featuring Brian, as he investigates possibly the most important question for the church in North America today: How does the church stay faithful to the beautiful way of Jesus while situated in one of the most divisive political climates in our nation's history?

If are able and would like to contribute to our Postcard From Babylon Premiere Fundraiser to fund seven tickets, please visit: www.thebadroman.com/fundraiser

Timestamps & staring points for further exploration:

01:07 Kathi’s Background

• Global Stories Films (Facebook)

• How she and David started working with Bryan

4:13 David’s Background

• Media Pastor

• Independent Filmmaker

• Making Postcards Documentary

10:19 Christian Nationalism - Trump Worship

10:42  Biran’s Story

• “Jesus boy all grown up”

• Leading a ministry since 17

• Word of Life Church

• The Camino

12:30 America as a Biblical Babylon 

• The shift needed in the evangelical church

• Manifest Destiny Fallacy of Empires

• Churches and flags

19:10 The film and challenges in production during corona

• Snow Storm, Pandemic Shutdowns, time zones

• Walter Brueggemann

• Weaving covid into the story

21:23 Early church and government

• Constantinian Shift

• The American Context may be getting worse, but this is not a new phenomena

• Baptism made early Church strangers in their own worlds

• World Wars and Nationalism between Christians

• Trump will be hard to recover from

27:55 Motivation for making the documentary

• Christianity and militarism

• Gregg Boyd, Myth of a Christian Nation

• Christian Heritage College

  • Tim LaHaye

  • Jerry Fallwell

• Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President 

• Changing the flags

31:02 Ambassadors for Jesus

• Limited ability in sharing the gospel, requires consistent messaging as representatives of Christ

• Calling the church to account

33:15 Political Rhetoric and compromising hope in Christ as King

• Exiles by baptism

• Live in the political reality, but don’t belong to it

• Call to a counterculture of Christ

37:55 Bearing witness for Christ and those who do not yet know Him

• The Republican party can not be the Christians future

• Conservative push back: if we are Democrats, the Democrats are in trouble

• Can like Trump’s policies, but cannot defend his behavior/character

• Speaking truth to power   

43:22 Staying Faithful to Jesus in a divisive political culture

• Can it be done through politics?

• Is the church an alternative politics

  • Perhaps, but this does not mean directly

• Politics of Sermon on the Mount

53:25 Brian’s plugs

• Twitter

• Postcards Doc

• Brain’s website

• Instagram

• Facebook

Learn more about Kathi and David’s work on their website or Facebook page.