Faith & two jasons

A couple of years ago Bishop Julian Dobbs interviewed me for his Living Through the Word podcast. In recent weeks, I was privileged to be interviewed about global Christian persecution on two other podcasts. Coincidentally, both podcasters are Jasons!

Jason Poblete and the Global Liberty Alliance

I was the guest of attorney and human rights activist Jason Poblete on the May 11 edition of his Global Liberty Alliance podcast. Poblete is the founder of Global Liberty Alliance, a legal and public policy non-governmental organization (NGO) based on strengthening fundamental individual rights, free enterprise, and the rule of law. Because of the global scope of Poblete’s own work, the podcast has listeners from all over the world.

The week before he interviewed me, Poblete interviewed U.S. Representative Frank R. Wolf (retired). Mr. Wolf is a hero to the persecuted. Throughout his decades in Congress, Frank Wolf displayed great passion for persecuted Christians and other religious believers, fighting for their freedom and, in many cases, their very lives. And he continues his advocacy today.

In the podcast on May 11 Poblete and I spoke about what is to come and what must happen in the next decade of advocacy for international religious freedom. We reviewed the successes and failures involved in all of the work that has led up to where we are today. We even reached back to the bad old days of the Soviet Union and Communist Eastern Europe to talk about the persecution of Christians under that form of Communism. That era is more on my mind than usual after visiting the Museum of the Bible earlier this spring. I wrote about the amazing exhibit dedicated to the American economics professor who brought the Bible to the Soviet Union in the 1980’s that the Museum is hosting.

But most of the podcast focused on the precarious state of religious freedom in so many countries today. We talked about the horrific persecution of Christians in Nigeria. We also discussed the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s brutal oppression and persecution of religious believers and freedom lovers of all kinds. And we exhorted Poblete’s listeners, especially young ones, to value and be advocates for religious freedom. If you are a podcast listener, you will love the Global Liberty Alliance podcast.

The Jason Jones Show

In May I was also a guest on film producer/author/human rights activist Jason Jone’s podcast. Jones, who is a producer and promoter through his Movie to Movement organization of such films as Bella, The Stoning of Soroya M, and Divided Hearts of America, has a passion for the vulnerable and persecuted from the unborn to Iraqis targeted by ISIS to the Uyghur people of East Turkistan to the Christians of Sudan.

Jones and I talked about the state of the Persecuted Church around the world from Africa to the Middle East to Asia. Movie to Movement launched a campaign to protest China hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics. That campaign joined up with a similar campaign of the Committee on the Present Danger: China, of which I am a member, Stop the Genocide Games.

You will never hear as many (mis)pronunciations of Katartismos as by Jason Jones and I in this podcast! But finally we got around to seriously discussing what that Greek word actually means, and its origin for our ministry in the Epistle to the Ephesians. We talked about the importance of equipping the saints, and how the average Christian, or just concerned citizen, can do something for those who are suffering for their faith.

Jones astutely pointed out that one more harmful aspect of “woke” culture sees Christians as privileged and as persecutors, not persecuted. We talked about how one critical task of advocates is to counter the false narratives and reveal the truth about the place of Christians in most cultures and societies.

One of those places where we work to shatter the false narrative, is, of course, Nigeria. That false narrative is that the only conflict in Nigeria is a “clash” between herdsmen and farmers. During the interview I told Jones about the Free Nigerian Slaves campaign that KGI Global Advocacy helped launch. This is another area in which every person, or as Jones puts it “the average Christian that coaches his son’s soccer team” can help make a difference.

Check out The Jason Jones Show and add it to your podcast playlist.