Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Brian 0:00
You see God loves nations with their ethnicity, their diversity, their language, their richness of culture, all of that God loves that. What God does not love it when a particular nation begins to believe it has a divine right to rule other nations, and a manifest destiny to shape history according to its agenda. The reason God opposes that is because this is the very thing that God has promised to his only begotten Son, God has promised to his Son, the right to rule the nations and a manifest destiny to shape History According to his agenda. So Empire by their very posture, position themselves to be opposed to God. And this is not a novel theme this is not a minor theme in Scripture, those that are raised in the church that is hosted by a superpower tend to have this screen down. But it's absolutely a major theme in the Bible, quite literally from Genesis to Revelation.
Seth Price 1:38
As this year further gets into the season of politics, we're quickly going to enter into discourse. Every single corner of our country will be yelling at each other and we will begin to use the Bible as a weapon even more so than we do now. There will be nationalists that use the Bible as a weapon for them, there will be progressive Christians that will use the Bible as a weapon for them. And there is no power in a gospel like that there is no power built on an ideology of less greed and pride. There is no power in a church that colludes with any administration and pretend that that is the Gospel. And so let's reframe it. I had a conversation with Brian Zahnd where we talk about America as a superpower, America as an empire. And what that means when the Bible is really written to exiles that live under the oppression of a superpower. What does it mean to re embrace a vision of what it is to be chosen by our Lord and what that vulnerability comes to show us about ourselves. This conversation will press you that's entirely fine. What better topics to talk about than a topic that forces us to look inward, reflect upon ourselves and really come to grips with what we see in the mirror and whether or not that is Christ like. Because if we don't look like that, Christ like, what's the point of being Christian? So here we go the conversation with myself and Brian Zahnd about Postcards from Babylon.
Seth Price 3:46
Brian Zahnd thank you so much for coming back onto the Can I Say This At Church podcast-recently I've had a very few number of repeat guests and so you're on the list of less than five people between you Alexander Shaia and a few other people and so I'm very happy to have you back on.
Brian 4:02
Thank you a Seth, it’s nice of you to have me. I'm glad to be here.
Seth Price 4:05
A couple things. I follow you on Instagram. And so last night you posted some I believe Rolling Stones music. And I'm upset that it's only 60 seconds worth of stuff because I was beginning to jam. And then it started over I was really sad about it really kind of sad. It made me go and actually stream the whole album. And so Rolling Stones if you're listening…
Brian 4:27
It was Exile on Main Street, which is their best album. I can say that definitively because I'm opinionated like that about certain things. Exile on Main Street also, by the way is a sermon title in my forthcoming book. See, I just did your segue for you...
Seth Price 4:50
Yeah you are a professional speaker, I am not so we're gonna go with that (but) before we get there. For those that are unfamiliar with Brian, instead of having him go back through kind of his upbringing. I did already an episode. I think 9. So find the Google, go back to the beginning of the feed, and listen for the first 10 minutes and then come back here. We actually listen to that whole episode because the end will spawn off to here. And so going with your segue, what is that forthcoming book?
Brian 5:16
Postcards From Babylon: the church in American exile, that's the title in the subtitle comes out. You know, if you asked me tomorrow, I could give you an exact date. I can give you what I think is the exact date. I think it comes out January 14, it will be January. I think it's January 14, but I don't quite know at this moment.
Seth Price 5:45
Who's publishing it?
Brian 5:47
Well, this one I'm bringing out with Spello Press, which is me, which is what I did with Water to Wine. The reason I'm doing that I had numerous publishers. Let's see Erdman’s wanted it for Fortress Press wanted it. But, you know, having published six times previously with conventional publishers, and I'm not saying I won't do that in the future, I probably will, in fact, but they take, they take 18 months, I give them a completed manuscript, you can ask the editors that have worked with me, here's what they say to me. They say, Brian, you're easy money, we don't really have to do much, you know, copy editing, and that's it.
So I give them a completed manuscript, but it's still 18 months for them to you know, market and do all they do. And this book, I just felt a certain urgency, a time pressure in that I felt I was writing to this present moment. And I didn't want to wait 18 months for it to come out. So it's under the name Spello Press, which is also the publisher of one of my books, just one Water to Wine, but just between you and me, Spello Press is me.
Seth Price 6:55
How about that? So I'm talking with both the publisher, producer, and mind behind at least the entire book, I know that you've spent a lot of time over the last year, intentionally getting away and honestly getting out of the country you did the what's it called the Camino. And so how do you find the time to self publish and market and figure out printing and all that stuff a book and do that while you're disengaged on the car now?
Brian 7:22
Well, the question is, how do I find time to write and I just scheduled time, I make time I don't, I don't write in the middle snatches. I don't go like oh, I've got three hour All right, I block out a day, or two or three in and I it takes, you know, I write on my writing days and I average advancing a book 1600 words per writing day.
Now that means going back and also working on what I've written previously, I can write a book in 40 days doing that. So I don't work too slow I work fairly quick. As far as what we call self publishing. Really, I got a team of people around me to help it's really no different than working with a publisher. In fact, if I had to say, and if publishers are listening to me, they're going to hate this. I mean, as one who has experience on both sides, it's for me anyway, it wouldn't be true for everyone I guess. For me, it's probably less work, bringing it out myself then working with a publisher, I’d say less work for me. And she beat you may see more people do this because I mean, you're in control of your own stuff totally. Although I really don't let editors push me around anyway.
I mean, I'm gonna write what I'm gonna write, they're gonna have to like it or not.
Seth Price 8:40
And if they don't like it, there's always your publishing firm. Yeah, I don't have that carrot or that stick.
Brian 8:48
Well, in see the thing is, unless you're, you know, JK Rowling or somebody, you pretty much selling your own books anyway. Right? And so there's more and more people saying, you know, I don't know…I don't know if I need this middleman. But I'm not saying that. I mean, truly the reason though that Postcards from Babylon, I mean, the reason I'm doing it myself if you want to put it that way, is it's gonna come out in January. You know, this coming year of 2019 instead of June of 2020. I don’t want to wait till June of 2020. So, that's the reason.
Seth Price 9:23
To expand out just on the title alone. Where is Babylon and who is sending the postcards? Is it you? Is it our culture? Who is it?
Brian 9:35
America is Babylon and I’m sending some postcards? Exactly. The epigram for the book comes from the conclusion of First Peter, where the author of that epistle writes cryptically,
she who is in Babylon greets you.
Well, what is meant Okay, this is this is an epistle written by Peter or someone associated with Peter in the first century who is writing in Rome and writing to believers throughout the Roman Empire, especially the Eastern provinces, in fact, they're named at the beginning of the book, the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire. And the author of this epistle calls them exile and strangers, foreigners, but they're not. He doesn't mean that they are literally expatriates now living in the Roman Empire, he means that because of their baptism, their identity has now been transformed.
And the place that they were once fully at home in, that is the Roman Empire, now they somewhat have to live as strangers and exiles in that land. And so she is the church who is in Babylon, Babylon is a cryptic way of talking about Rome, Babylon being the iconic image of Empire in the Bible. Rome at that time being the Contemporary expression of that.
Well, I see my situation as similar. I am now a pastor inhabiting a superpower in the early decades of the 21st century. And I have some things to say about what it means to be faithful to Christ while also living as a citizen of a superpower. How do you live as a citizen of a superpower and a citizen of the kingdom of Christ simultaneously? This has always been a challenge for the people of God, whether we're talking about the people of God in the Old Testament, during the Babylonian exile, or whether we're talking about the early church in the first century, in the Roman Empire, or at various times throughout the history of Christendom up into our present moment.
And I suppose just to put the ball fully in play at this moment, if I wanted to just try to sum up what I'm trying to do in this book in a sentence or two—I want my readers who I presume, are are mostly Christian people, mostly probably in the United States—I want them to see American not as a kind of Biblical Israel, but as a kind of Biblical Babylon. And so what is fidelity to Christ in the midst of that look like?
Seth Price 12:23
Ever since the conversation that I had with you then to be honest, I haphazardly asked you that question of and I forget how I asked you, but I asked you is America, the Babylon if today? And you said, oddly enough, I'm writing a book about that and it will be fairly wasn't really looking for it not hyperbolic, but like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this man just said this.
Brian 12:42
Perhaps people would regard it as pejorative elements, although I don't intend it to be that way. But I am writing with passion and conviction in this book.
Seth Price 12:52
What is the risk of America relating itself to being the Israel in the story of the Bible? Why are we not allowed to have that posture?
Brian 13:06
Well, because we're not because the Kingdom of God gets radically redefined following the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Spirit on Pentecost. So we could say it this way. God begins his program of redemption in earnest with Abraham, a man that he calls, who ends up forming a family through faith, that becomes a clan, a tribe, a nation and promises are made.
And yet Israel doesn't seem to live up to the fullness of their calling, for the most part. And when it looks like they really are going to fail in being what they're called to be this light to the Gentiles. This agent of salvific work of Yahweh in the Earth. When it looks like they're going to fail, suddenly there emerges on the scene, the true seed of Abraham, the true son of David, who becomes, as it were, Israel in person, and carries the whole project through to completion.
And Israel completely assumed into Jesus. Jesus takes on the whole project of Israel so that Jesus becomes Israel before God. Of course, what happens is Israel in Christ is crucified, but raised again, but in resurrection, things have changed. So to put it in a sentence, I would say it like this: in Christ, the chosen people is the human race, and the Holy Land is the whole Earth. And no longer is the temple defined geographically in other words, the temple that is built to the true and living God is not made of stone on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and we're not waiting for a Stone Temple made with human hands Mount Moriah in Jerusalem. No, the true temple, now again, this also comes from Peter is made of living stones, and it's not confined to one geographical location.
But it's spread throughout the nations, throughout the world, where people gathered together in the name of Jesus, break bread, share a cup of wine, call it the body and blood of Jesus and baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Wherever that is happening there is the temple, there is the Kingdom of God. The great temptation though, for the last 17 centuries, post Constantine has been to conflate particular nation states, generally empires, with the kingdom of Christ. Now I now said that throw around this word Empire and I want people to know that I'm not doing that. willy nilly, I don't just, you know, mean to just…
What does he mean by empire? What do you mean? Well, here's what I mean. Empires are rich, powerful nations that believe they have a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history. I'm gonna say that again. See, God loves nations with their ethnicity, their diversity, their language, their richness of culture, all of that God loves that. What God does not love it when a particular nation begins to believe it has a divine right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to its agenda. The reason God opposes that is because this is the very thing that God has promised to his only begotten Son. God has promised to his Son, the right to rule the nations and a manifest destiny to shape history according to his agenda. So empires by their very posture position themselves to be opposed to God. And this is not a novel theme. This is not a minor theme in Scripture, those that are raised in a church that is hosted by a superpower tend to have this screened out. But it's it's absolutely a major theme in the Bible, quite literally from Genesis to Revelation, very pronounced in Genesis, Exodus, several of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, especially Daniel, it's quite pronounced in the four gospels, and maybe reaches its crescendo with the final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, which is a prophetic critique of the Roman Empire and the thus by implication, all empires.
Seth Price 17:46
Yeah, so here is my question now. So then, as an American that grew up with no other context until I became, I guess what a fully functioning adult that decided I could finally make my own opinions regardless of whether or not Brian likes them or my neighbor likes them or anyone else likes them, how have we gotten it so twisted? I can't think that the church has always been as bad at it. Although if it's that many centuries, maybe we have been but how have we gotten it so blatantly twisted that Americans are afraid to disengage from empire for fear of love of political power? And then how do we disengage that from the pulpit? How do we disengage that from I don't want to pick on Fox News, but Fox News or Pat Robertson? There's just so much in entanglement, to use a bad metaphor, of the two that I feel like the church doesn't even realize that it is involved in empire building or maintaining.
Brian 18:39
Yeah, and that is, you know, that's what I take 200 and some pages to answer. But, I mean, really quite seriously. Let me just approach this as as methodically and carefully as I can. To begin with this has not always been a problem for the church. It is quite honestly, and I think nearly all church historians that aren't actually in the employ of some sort of, you know, Imperial agenda would agree with me, that there was a profound shift following the Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century.
So what you had was a church whose primary gospel was a gospel of the Kingdom, and its primary announcement was Jesus is Lord. Now if I say Jesus is Lord today, it sounds almost entirely religious, because the term Lord is never used, other than in a religious context. So if I say Jesus is Lord, people hear me making some sort of, you know, spiritual aphorism.
This is nothing like what it originally meant. For one thing, the term Lord was an imperial title granted to the Caesar by the Senate along with, and these were formal titles, but the Senate in Rome granted to the Caesar, and would be placed on coins that would have the Emperor's image with these particular titles, and it was the means of mass communication of the day because, of course, the coins circulated throughout the Empire. Other titles for the Emperor were Prince of Peace, Savior of the world, son of God, King of kings. So when Christians began to use these terms to speak of Jesus of Nazareth, they were, in one sense, employing terms that were already in circulation for the Roman Emperor.
So when they first second third century Christian says Jesus is Lord, lurking right there in that very political statement was the implication and Caesar is not because the first church, the pre-Constantine church, saw the kingdom of Christ as a present reality. Yes, they did believe in a culmination. They believed in an eschaton. They believed in a period of time that in which Christ that would sum up all things at the end of the age, but neither would you see them just kicking the can down the road saying, well, someday the kingdom of God will come. Oh no, they believe the kingdom of God had arrived in the life, death, burial, resurrection ascension of Jesus Christ. In fact, that's how they understood the ascension.
The Ascension was not, you know, Jesus becoming the first astronaut. It wasn't some sort of doctrine to explain the apparent absence of Christ. Rather by ascension, we mean promotion. We mean that Jesus Christ has been promoted to the Oval Office of the universe, that he is at the right hand of God and all authority in heaven and earth have been given to him, now. And so the church lived as citizens of a very present and very real kingdom.
But this often involves persecution not because of their Religious claims but because their claims about Christ had political implications, the Roman Empire was really pretty tolerant about religion. They didn't try to convert the whole world to some single religion, they’d let you hold on to your religion. But they wanted you to confess that Caesar is Lord.
The early Christians were not persecuted for religious reasons, but for political reasons. In fact, the early Christians by the Roman persecutors, or the Roman society that was opposed to the Christian faith, called the early Christians, “atheists”, because they didn't believe in the gods of the Empire. So this is how it is for three centuries. And then you have the phenomenon of a—well the story is that that general Constantine is about to have a decisive battle. He's not the Emperor yet, he’s contending for the throne. The winner of this battle is going to become Emperor because there's a civil war going on in Rome. And as Constantine, as the story comes to us, on the eve of battle, Constantine sees a Christian sign in the heavens, presumably a cross, with these words “in this sign you shall conquer”. Of course, conquer is a euphemism for kill. So in this sign you shall go and wage war and kill. And as the story is told, and maybe somewhat legendary, but there must be something lurking behind it, Christian symbols are placed on the weapons of war of Constantine's army and he prevails in the battle for the Milvian Bridge, and in quick succession becomes the Emperor and then very soon issues the Edict of Milan, which establishes Christianity as the favored religion, announced the fast track to becoming the state Religion.
The church made a mistake going along with that. I have no problem with saying that. But I also say I think it was an inevitable mistake. I don't know how the church avoided this mistake.
But what happened was, is now suddenly, instead of the kingdom of Christ being fully a rival Empire to all of the other empires of the world, you're trying to conflate two of them into one thing. The problem is, is now Jesus is a little bit out of a job, because we're really going to let Caesar be Lord. So what's Jesus going to do? Well, he gets demoted to Secretary of afterlife affairs, and it becomes the job of Jesus to get parts of people into heaven, their souls into when they die. But in the meantime, we're gonna let Caesar run the world.
You know, interestingly, this first so called “Christian” Emperor Constantine he appeared to understand that there was a conflict because contrary to any kind of Christian practice of the time, Constantine delayed his baptism until his deathbed; because I think Constantine himself understood that you really can't claim to be a follower of Jesus and be the emperor of a violent superpower Empire waging war simultaneously. And in fact, Constantine, even after giving favored status to Christians and associated with Christians, and maybe trying to call himself a Christian, although he wasn't yet baptized, even during that time, you are the execution of family members that he thought were maybe a rival to the throne.
And so it's pretty sordid in its background. And this has been repeated throughout history, whether we're talking about the Byzantine Empire, the Russian Empire, the British Empire, Spanish, Portuguese, etc., and now America is having its flirtation with it, so it's nothing new. But that doesn't mean it's not diabolical, and poses real challenges to Christians that live in the midst of it. Of course, from perspective of history it's relatively easy to bring the critique. The tricky part is actually to bring the critique while you are living in Babylon.
Seth Price 26:59
I have no idea how your book is set up (editors note* I hadn’t read it at time of conversation), but, I would assume the next chapter is a different postcard from Babylon. But that's just the way that I'm seeing it in my head. And if that's wrong, that's fine. That's the way I see it in my head. And so, are those postcards addressing individual flirtations, or what do some of those flirtations look like in 2018 or 2019?
Brian 27:18
I start the book with a chapter called Conversion, Catacombs and a Counterculture as chapter one, and in that chapter, I tell my own conversion story. As a 15 year old Led Zeppelin freak, come in the 70s overnight went to be in the high school Jesus Freak. And suddenly I was right in the midst of what was known as the Jesus movement of the 1970s. The spiritual revival among counterculture youthbeginning in America but really went throughout much of the Western world. That became a significant enough you know, spiritual movement that it was on the cover of Time Magazine and, you know, reported widely. I think it's safe to say that hundreds of thousands of young people came to faith in Christ during this time. And I was a part of that. And I talked about what a what a counterculture sense it had, we didn't see ourselves as fitting…we were pretty apolitical. I mean, we certainly wouldn’t have seen ourselves as Republicans or Democrats that would have appeared ludicrous to us. We did have strong anti war sentiment, not because we got it from the Beatles, but because we got it from the Sermon on the Mount.
And the epicenter of the catacombs, where I'm from here in St. Joseph, Missouri, was called The Catacombs. And eventually, by the time I was 17, I was leading that ministry, which was kind of a music venue for the Jesus music scene, but it's what turned into Word of Life Church. And we call it The Catacombs partly because our our meeting place, our first meeting place, was in the basement of a dive bar on Third Street here in St. Joseph.
So it was subterranean and was underground it was kind of dank and dark and so, catacombs but also we were riffing on the idea of week since some sort of connection with the Christianity of the catacombs in Rome. Remember, you know, you couldn't bury the dead in Roman culture, you burn them but Christians adopting the Jewish practice said no, as a sign of our hope of resurrection, we bury our dead, but they had to create these underground labyrinths to do their, you know, burying of the dead, which they, you know, eventually buried hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, it's you know, I've toured them several times when I've been in Rome. It's quite fascinating, but it also became sites at times of Eucharistic worship.
And so catacombs is a nice, I want to say metaphor symbol for early Christianity, and so we were referring On the to that, yeah, we're meeting underground. But we're also an underground movement. We saw ourselves as subversive. We saw ourselves as a challenge to just easygoing American Christianity as usual, we saw ourselves challenging that.
But I end that whole section with that we were so very young. And then I go into talking about how, over the over a period of about a decade, we found ourselves moving from our very edgy counterculture, you know, believing the Sermon on the Mount should be taken seriously to being a part really, of what became the religious right. And serving the interests of well, what happened was is that evangelical Christianity instead of being this energetic, witness to the possibility of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, in effect becomes the religious wing of the Republican Party and I see that as a tremendous, catastrophe, disaster, failure and so that's where I start with on the book.
And then I talk about various aspects of what I think we ought to do about it. I think we have to see the kingdom. I think the main thing though is, can we see ourselves as not a kind of Biblical Israel, but I kind of Biblical Babylon, talking about the United States. And then say, Okay, so how do how did Christians live in the time of Daniel, in the Persian Empire? How did Christians live in the first century in the time of the apostles in the Roman Empire? And I think that gives us clues, that gives us some direction.
You know, the book of Daniel is very interesting. Most Bible scholars say it's written about 150 years before Christ. Most academic Bible scholars all say that, but it's set in an earlier time. The reason this is done is because the present crisis 150 BC, was a vicious persecution by the Seleucid Empire on the Jewish population, there was a forced hellenization program that was being employed by Antiochus IV Epiphane.
And he wanted to just force all Jews to become Hellenistic Greeks and adopt Greek ways. And so they're resisting that and there's a persecution going on. And so this book is written at that time, but to keep it a little bit safe, they set it in a, you know, what would it be 200 years earlier, or so 250 years earlier, in the time of the Jews under the Persian rule. And if you look at the book of Daniel really what it's about is, it's how to instruct particularly young men to get along in the empire, have jobs, survive, you know, be a productive part of society but don't compromise your Jewish faith. And it's tricky, you know it's a dance and it’s not always easy. It would be easy to capitulate, it would be easy to get killed. The Book of Daniel says well let's try to find this narrow tightrope and try not to get killed. But you know if you must die you might have to go to the lions den, you might have to go to the fiery furnace of course, both of those stories. They survived, but there's always the risk of martyrdom, but you don't go necessarily inviting it to the extent that you can you seek the well being of the city of the Empire, the nation in which God has caused you to live as exiles.
But that's what I want American Christians to see themselves as doing. To not see themselves as serving trying to further the American agenda in the world, but trying to further the kingdom of Christ and understand there's a radical difference between the two.
Seth Price 34:07
Two questions on that. I feel like as I checked the pulse of the internet, or Facebook or anything else, or anything that you read, a lot of the most vocal voices ended up being people that are young, younger than me all the way up to my age. And there are a few that are older than me that are extremely vocal, and that use their platform to do that. And obviously, you're one of those, but I find that many youth don't have the tools or the knowledge to actually engage in anything outside of just words of “we should not do this”, we should, you know, “we should help the people with the caravan” or “we should not do this” or “we should do something for the people in Yemen”, without any actual backbone to stand on outside of words that aren't theirs. And so what would be one or two things that young people that feel called to this kind of subversiveness, and I wonder if there's a part of being young that helps us posture ourselves to that but I'm not a psychologist, but what would be one or two things that you would advise people to do to equip themselves to both not become a martyr in America, but also use their voice wisely to affect actual change?
Brian 35:12
You mean other than reading Postcards from Babylon, that's why I'm writing that book. Well, I mean, and I do have probably a younger audience in mind. I mean, I don't mind speaking to my peers. I'm 59, I'll be 60 in March. I've seen a lot of my…and it saddens me, my goodness, it saddens me. And I was one of the younger ones, really, I'm about as young as you can be, and really have been a part of the Jesus movement. A lot of the people that were there with me are five to ten years older than me. So they're in their 60s now. But I see them now and I and at some of them, I just want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and say; “What happened to that radical Jesus Freak? What happened to that person”? That really saw yourself as countercultural you know, here you are in your 60s, and now you just have, the best you can do is be a conservative Republican. I mean, ultimately, I consider myself both theologically and maybe somewhat politically, I consider myself a true conservative, not a full conservative, not this thing that has been foisted upon us. This populism and this nationalism, I'm not that. But I really do see the value in ancient traditions being preserved and I'm not too quick to jettison them. I see myself as a true conservative but also as a radical one. When people call me a liberal. They'll say you're a liberal I’ll say “I'm not a liberal. I'm a revolutionary Christian.” Because neither left nor right on the political spectrum, I was going to be interested in what it is I'm advocating for and that is that we truly live as citizens of the Kingdom of Christ here and now.
That whether the rest of the world does or doesn't, that we embody the reign of Christ here now. Now I do see amongst some of the if you want to use the word progressive, younger Christian movement, here's what I see that I would critique. And I don't do that this much in the book because it's not, maybe it didn't quite fit, but it may be what I write next. I see them having a zeal for justice. Okay, but being rather suspicious, or if nothing else, disinterested in worshiping Jesus, and just you know, doing church and worshiping Jesus. Well, I want to say there are two commands to great commands. This comes to us from the Old Testament, but it's confirmed by Jesus. But there are two great commandments: The first thing love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself.
In other words worship followed by Justice. I see a lot of young people maybe progressive leaning in the church or outside the church that would call themselves Christian or Christian-ish or they'd like Jesus or something like that, who are very interested in doing justice not so interested in the practices of worship. I'm suspicious of that whole project. I think what they're doing maybe, unwittingly, is borrowing on Christian capital that eventually they're going to run out.
I'll tell you a story. I was hiking in the mountains in the winter, few years ago. And winter hikes are very, very different. This is you know, up above treeline, snowshoes all that and part of the challenge of winter hiking is just route finding, you don't want to get lost because no trails or anything. And I came across another hiker and So we're hiking. It was good, you know, I felt a little security by having a hiking partner. And so we hiked for about a half an hour, we're having a lovely time talking mountains and things like that. And then he asked the dreaded question, what do you do?
Seth Price 39:17
I know many pastors hate that question.
Brian 39:18
I say, “Well, you know”, and I thought about saying, I'm an author, which is True enough, but it's still disingenuous. So I decided to tell the truth. And I said, “I'm a pastor”. Well, you know, it all went downhill pretty quick. From there. He was a disgruntled former Christian. That's, you know, he would describe himself as that. And then he said, I'm going to tell you what you Christians should do. I said, Well, please do.
He said, “You should do good works, but you shouldn't worship Jesus. You should you should do good work. You should help the poor you should help the weak you should advocate for justice. But you shouldn't spend all this time you know, getting in worshipping Jesus”.
So well hold on here a minute pal, I think you have overestimated me. I think you've made the assumption that I'm just really by nature, a generous, caring giving guy. I don't know, I think left to my own devices I'm a pretty selfish son of a gun. If I'm going to become the kind of person that generally does care about social justice issues, it's because I worship Jesus. And so what I would say to progressives on the left side of the spectrum within Christianity is don't lose worshipping Jesus as the necessary act of faith that forms us into the kind of people that can do justice.
So I remember, you know, if you think about like the hippie movement, so you had these hippies you know, they don't like nuclear weapons, I don't either. And so they go to a nuclear weapons plant and they protest and, and they do this for about six months, and then they burn out, and then they became insurance salesman and just went on with their life. But I know Benedictine Nuns who are now in their 80s, who were protesting at nuclear weapons factories in the 60s, and they're still doing it. Why? Because they had the practices of prayer, worship, contemplation, (and) formation that allowed them and enabled them to have a radical stance within society for a lifetime.
Well, I want to be that kind of person. I don't want to be a chaplain to the Empire, I want to be a prophetic voice. And I think that's not just me saying I want Brian's Zahnd to be that. I think that is the appropriate posture of the church within a superpower is to be a prophetic challenge, not a chaplain saying, “yes, we're going to bless your wars, we’re going to bless your greed. We're going to bless your economy”. Leave that to the priests of Mars and Mammon, the followers of Christ are to be something radically other.
Seth Price 42:07
Yeah, well, and I know, the more often and no, that's the wrong way to say it, the more open and at ease I am in my church community, the more actual fuel I have to do things like this, because actually doing interviews at the frequency that I try to do them at and to learn what I need to learn to try to be prepared to talk about it is exhausting. And it's also exhausting to constantly protest if all you ever do is expend fuel right without any contemplation or fellowship, or maybe we'll use a Biblical metaphor if I don't lay that cross down for a second, worship, recharge, reengage, pick it back up, and let's go a little further down the road. As you've gotten out of the country over the past year, and I have to assume you've discussed the themes of America, plurality America, nationalism in America, whatever you want to call it, not patriotism. America worshiping itself how did these concepts come off as you're talking with people in communities that aren't American? As you're on the roads and you know doing the same, the Camino and Santiago as you're talking with other people outside of our frame of reference? How do they view America? Do they view us as as a Babylonian type, Roman type oppressive Empire? Do they care? Do they think we'll even be able to change?
Brian 43:30
No, they care. Let me answer this in a bunch of different ways. Let me first say America is four things. America is a nation, a culture, an empire, and a religion. As a nation and a culture America is a mixed bag. It's good and bad. There are things I can critique, but there's a lot that I could admire. There's a lot that I can genuinely be proud of in being an American as a nation and culture. When you step into the realm of superpower or Empire, I've already addressed that the problem with Empire is their claim to have divine right to rule nations manifest destiny to shape history is what God has promised to Jesus. And then finally, you take the last step into Americanism, which is a kind of religion, which the adherents of our are loath to admit, because it creates far too much cognitive dissonance.
So they try to conflate Christianity and Americanism into a single entity, but you can't do it. It's blasphemous. It's idolatrous. It's not a new problem. It's been around for 17 centuries, but it's a real problem. So America has four things. So it's hard you know, it's unwieldy, to talk about America just as simple as that.
What do people think about America's and you're right, last couple of years, I've spent probably about a third of each year, you know, in New Zealand, Australia, Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, England, Middle East, and other places. So you understand that there has been post World War Two, you know, for 60 years-70 years, you know, there's been a deep admiration of America in the rest of the world and that though has come under pressure. There are three things that always come up and here I'm just acting as a reporter. I don't know what our listenership consistent of and I don't know if people are gonna like this, but at this moment, I'm going to try to step out of being a preacher and just, I'm gonna report to you what comes up.
There's still an admiration for America. But there's two things they don't get about America. They there's two things they don't get. They don't understand our obsession with guns, and they don't understand why we don't have the same kind of health care that the rest of the advanced, prosperous, world has, I wouldn't say there's they're not raging against they just they find it is just as odd to them. You know, why is America this way? They'll ask me that and it's hard for me to answer. Of course the other thing that comes up, you know, there's guns in health care but now what comes up is of course Trump. America is divided about Trump, we all know that that's not that's not me telling anything new. Outside of America, there isn't that much of a division. Unless you're in Russia or Israel, which are nations I've been to a lot with the exception of Russian and Israel, I would say that Donald Trump is wildly unpopular, outside of those two nations, and make of that what you will.
So that's how we're seen. Now a lot of my travel are, you know, I find myself in some version of Evangelical Church, preaching, teaching seminaries speaking, teaching, whatever I do, there is also the issue of they just don't understand. I mean, if I'm with Hillsong, let's say in London or Sydney, Australia, these are people that are really conservative evangelical type Christians, that with American evangelicals would be on the same page, theologically and in ecclesiology, that sort of stuff. They're pretty much on the same page, but then you come to politics and Trump. And then they just like, what, why are American evangelicals on board with this guy?
Again, if you're, I'm trying to report a little bit now I have my opinions and you can guess what they are. But, so I'm not talking about you know, some sort of progressive, far left, mainline way out there Presbyterian, USA. I'm talking about evangelicals outside the United States, look at their evangelical brethren within the United States and cannot for the life of them understand why their American brothers are on board with someone they see as completely incompatible with anything that would reflect Christian values.
Those are the things that come up. And they come up all the time. They come up more than I wanted to come up, they come up and I get tired of talking about it, but I try to be polite and talk about it, but it comes up all the time.
Seth Price 48:37
Yeah, well, I want to make this my final question. If we can't pivot away from our love of Empire, will it destroy the church in such a way that my grandkids don't have an easy way to worship?
Brian 48:50
Yes.
Seth Price 48:53
Uhhh…I don't like that. I don't like that you so easily can say yes without any nuance.
Brian 48:58
I say it easily. I say it passionately, there's a difference. I don't say glibly. I pray every day. God helped me to help make Christianity possible for my grandchildren and their generation. So I'm 59 years old. I have seven grandchildren, all eight and under. So eight years ago, zero grandchildren, and then there was a tsunami of grandchildren.
Seth Price 49:24
(Laughter) A tsunami of grandchildren! I can picture in my head just waves of children and you just scooping out a few and keeping those.
Brian 49:30
They're divided between our two older sons. One has four children, one has three, they live across the street from each other five minutes from where I'm sitting here right now. So my they're here and I'm around them. Jude, Finn, Evie, Liam, Mercy, Hope, and Pax. In fact, the book is dedicated to Those seven grandchild Postcards from Babylon is dedicated to them. And it's part of my attempt to help make Christianity possible for them and their generation. But if that's going to happen, then Christianity is going to have to be willing to be a subculture and a counterculture.
I mean, I subtitled the book, the church in American exile, which is, I like that one, that should be the subtitle it is. But the alternative, but it was clunky, and I didn't want to go with it. But the other option was making Christianity countercultural again. If Christianity is going to be possible for our children and grandchildren, it's going to have to be willing to be countercultural.
Seth Price 50:47
So, the banker part of my brain. How do we pay for that because I feel like the moment that America tries to do that the churches will explode because the government will threaten to take away tax exemption. As that voting bloc goes away, to reinforce their power, I don't think that the churches is man enough to to give away that golden carrot.
Brian 51:11
Probably…probably not. What you're going to end up with is probably inevitable. We're going to be in a situation much like Western Europe within a generation or two. But the church is definitely present. I can take you to any of these countries. I mean, I go to them all the time. It seems I'm in a phase that over the last 10 years where I'm a lot in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, England, I'm just back from several of those countries just like a week ago.
So I know where to find the Christians there they're zealous, they're on fire, but they are a tiny minority. And that's just the reality of it. And I think it's going to be the reality here. I mean, Christendom over. Europe knows it, North America doesn't know it yet because presently we're still tangled up and be the de facto state church.
One chapter in the book is entitled tangled up in red, white and blue. Which is you know, a riff on Dylan’s tangled up in blue, it's tangled up in red, white and blue, you see what I'm doing here. But that is only going to last at most another generation-at most. And by a generation I don't mean 40 years I mean 15-20 because that has been sustained by people who the next stop is the grave. And when that generation is done, then the money's gone anyway.
And so the church is going to have to reinvent itself and I think either it becomes and is willing to be subversive, underground, counterculture or those that aren't limited, it's just gonna cease to exist. It just won't exist. Alright, so how do you do it? Well, then that's why you read the book of Daniel. It doesn't mean you can't work for Darius, or Nebuchadnezzar, you can. But there's certain lines you're not gonna cross. There's certain jobs you're not gonna do. There's gonna be times when they say, “All right, everybody, we're gonna play some music and everybody's gonna bow down to this big old statu. And Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego goes, Yeah, can't do it. I can't do it. And anyway, so a good part of the book is about that.
Seth Price 53:45
Well, I hope for those listening and for myself as well. That you go out and get the book. I know, I'm going to go out and get the book, because I like the way that you write. I like the way that I'm able to understand it. So often, I read a theology book and I have to read it again to figure out what I didn't understand the first time. So I appreciate that in the way that you're right. Where would you direct people to, to either engage with you engage with this type of contextual license of religion? Where would you direct them to?
Brian 54:15
You know, I'm easy to find because there aren't a lot of Brian's Zahnd’s out there, I think I'm the only one. If you just Google Brian's Zahnd, you'll find my blog site, you'll find Word of Life church, you'll find Twitter, Instagram, I do some stuff on Facebook, although Facebook scares me, but I still do some.
Seth Price 54:37
And so a monster you have to feed.
Seth Price 54:47
Well, Brian, thank you again for coming back on pleasure as always.
Brian 54:55
Thank you.
Seth Price 55:41
What do we do realizing or recognizing that America is a superpower, America is an empire, America has dropped nuclear bombs. America has the means to help the planet in a way that you were I personally can't. What does it mean that we can do all that? And we don't? What does it mean that we can do all of that and we treat people often as the Pharisees would treat to Samaritan? What does it mean that we haven't progressed?
Really, when we think about it, that we haven't wrestle with this? What do you call to do to be that voice of subversion that is not antithetical to truth and is not hypocritical, or as best as we can try not to be that calls light into the darkness that embraces God and Jesus in a way that people see him through us because of the way that we treat others. What does it mean when we act that way, as opposed to the way that we tend to? I don't know the answer to that. I like to think that I do it well, but I'm fully aware that I probably don't.
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