Read the full transcript of a conversation between Tucker Carlson and The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie on the Tucker Carlson Show episode titled “The Chosen’s Jonathan Roumie: Answering God’s Call & Christian Resilience in the Face of Persecution”, premiered on March 5, 2025.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Unexpected Call to Play Jesus
TUCKER CARLSON: You’re an actor. You’re looking for work. Your agent or somebody calls you and says, we’d like you to play Jesus. What’s that like?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: It was an answered prayer. The person who made that call was a friend and a colleague by that point, a guy by the name of Dallas Jenkins who created The Chosen. I had played Jesus for him for his church’s Good Friday service in these little vignettes three times over the course of four years between 2014 and 2017.
TUCKER CARLSON: Just literally in a church?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: In a church. So we’d go and shoot out on a farm, these vignettes. His church has a little studio, and we would film mostly on location. We would create these little films that would be in the spirit of Good Friday or illustrate a particular gospel passage or scripture scene, in line with the theme of the service for that year.
The First Time Playing Jesus
The first time I played Jesus in one of those short films was the crucifixion. I was in it for five minutes. The film itself is called “The Two Thieves.” You can actually find it, I think, on Amazon still. It was a “what if” story about the two thieves crucified on either side of Christ. Like, who were they? How did they get there?
In one of the gospels, in one paragraph, it goes from him being mocked and reviled even by the thieves next to him to all of a sudden, the penitent thief, as he’s referred to, gives his life basically to Jesus in that moment, saying, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus says, “Truly, today, you will be with me in paradise.” It’s like the first confession on the cross, and he grants him access to the kingdom.
Dallas tries to answer the question of how you go from being one of the mockers, revilers to this sudden conversion on the cross in the course of this 25-minute film.
I actually read for the penitent thief because he’s got this fantastic narrative arc. I thought I’d had a great audition. It was in LA at the time. I knew it was an opportunity to get paid a nominal stipend for some work in another city, in this case, suburban Chicago. I thought, “I would audition for this short film. I don’t care if it’s for a church. It’s a great story. The script is great.”
From Supporting Role to Lead
So I go and I auditioned. I had a great audition. I’m like, “I think I nailed it.” Couple days later, I get a callback to come back in, but this time to read for Jesus. And I thought to myself, “Oh, man. I didn’t get the first role.” And then I looked again at the script. I’m like, “Jesus got, like, five lines in the whole thing.”
But I had happened to have played Jesus six months prior for another completely independent project up in Washington State. They were at a studio for this Catholic company called Saint Luke Productions about a saint in the early twentieth century named Saint Faustina who was considered a mystic. She had these visions. She wrote an entire diary that was sort of dictated to her by Christ himself in these visions. And so I played Jesus in the vision aspect of that story.
Fast forward six months later, I get this audition for “The Two Thieves.” I didn’t get the penitent thief. I go and I audition for Jesus because I’m like, “You know what? I enjoyed playing Jesus six months ago. This would be cool if I got anything.” It’d be cool because I wasn’t working steadily or consistently.
And the way Dallas tells the story, about ten seconds into the audition, he’s like, “That’s Jesus. That’s my Jesus for this show.”
The Path to The Chosen
So we did that film, and it was screened. He brought me back to view it, like, a month later at the Good Friday service with his church, about seven services. It was fifteen thousand people who saw this thing in a matter of a day and a half. And it was remarkably well received. It was so beautiful, and it was essentially the foundational bones of the concept of The Chosen.
It’s this sort of Ignatian spirituality, this Ignatian insight into the gospels, which is basically you put yourself in the gospel. You ask yourself a series of questions, and that’s how you meditate on the gospels through this form of spirituality.
We did it again the following year for a different kind of scene, and then we skipped a year. And then spring of 2017, I did one more film with him for his church. And then it was in probably the summer of 2018 where he called me and said, “Hey. Want to put the sandals back on? I think we’re going to do four episodes of a crowdfunded TV show. Probably not going to go anywhere, but it’d be some consistent work.” And I jumped at the chance.
I thought, okay. I had now played Jesus for him a few times. I was getting really comfortable with the role. I was also pulled in during that time between, like, 2016 and 2019, I started doing these passion plays, being involved in these passion plays that a friend of mine was directing. And then I helped codirect, and then I co-wrote a version of the passion that we would put on for our church.
And so for whatever reason, God was putting me in these situations, in these stories about Jesus so often in such a relatively short period of time.
The Unexpected Success
And it became much more than anyone thought it would be.
TUCKER CARLSON: I would say so.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yes. The four episodes that probably wouldn’t go anywhere became eight episodes of a first season of the show that was crowdfunded by selling shares to fund the show and then released in the fall of 2019, rereleased for free because we were charging, I think, fifteen bucks for the season, the entire eight episodes on DVD and streaming.
And then when the pandemic hit, the folks at The Chosen said, “We want to do something to kind of ease people’s burdens and give the show away for free.” And it exploded after that, like, beyond anyone’s imagination. And since then, it’s always been free on the app, the Chosen app.
And then now we just did a deal with Amazon. Amazon is going to be our exclusive window for the streaming of the show after its initial theatrical run, which for season five will be March 28th. It’ll be in theaters for about a month, then it’ll go to Amazon for ninety days exclusively, and then it’ll go to the app where it will remain free.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, it’s turned into the biggest, you know, thing in that genre, maybe ever.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. They don’t often release figures in streaming for viewership and any of that kind of data, but we do because we’re like, “Well, we don’t care. We want to tell people.” It’s been estimated right now that about 280 million people have seen the show globally.
TUCKER CARLSON: 340 million in the United States total?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. So that’s a lot.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s pretty deep penetration as we see in TV.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I would say so. That’s amazing.
The Weight of Playing Jesus
TUCKER CARLSON: So the reason I asked the question, and you didn’t flinch, was that I think some people would feel like that’s a pretty heavy role. It’s Jesus. Basis of the world’s largest religion. God himself, according to Christians. Did you ever feel that on you? Like, that’s a lot.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: In the first season, I did. There was this moment, especially, that I’ve talked about at times where—and it still sort of affects me. I actually like telling the story because it’s a reminder for me to remember what it’s all about and who I’m serving as I endeavor to portray this role.
We were about midway through the first season, and the time came for me as Jesus to start preaching, you know, full-on sermons. And we started filming, and then as I was going through these words, I suddenly felt like I was outside of myself, listening to myself preach to a crowd outside the doors of, in our story, Zebedee’s house (James and John’s father).
There was a crowd of people that was growing—our wonderful background actors that participate in the show, many of whom have participated for years. This crowd starts growing outside the house as Jesus begins preaching, and the scene’s not specifically about Jesus. It’s about other stuff that’s happening in the background that becomes the foreground of the story.
In the background, Jesus is preaching, but I still have to preach. I still have to say these lines from scripture convincingly and try to mesmerize and galvanize the people that are listening to me and get their attention. And they seemed really attentive, so much so that it made me really self-aware.
And I thought, “What am I saying? What are these words? These are holy, holy words said by the holiest being that ever walked the face of the earth. I shouldn’t be doing this. This feels wrong.”
And so I would have those feelings, then, you know, we would stop and then move on to the next setup and put the camera in different place. And then as it went on, I just had to stop the production for a moment to talk to the director, to Dallas Jenkins. And I said, “Can we just hold? Can we just slow down a second?”
And he said, “What’s going on?” And so I took him aside. I said, “Listen, man. I’m having a hard time right now.” I was starting to feel panicked and overwhelmed, almost like a panic attack. I’ve only had one panic attack in my life, and it started to feel like it was creeping into that. And I didn’t know why or how—well, I kind of knew, I thought I knew why and what was going on, but I just said, “Hey. Can we slow it down?”
And he said, “What’s going on?” And I said, “I’m saying these words, and hearing myself say them, I don’t feel worthy to be saying them.” This is why I tell this story because it drives home the point of the gift that I’ve been given in playing this role.
And he puts his hand on my shoulder, and he says, “Brother, none of us are truly worthy, but here we are. I mean, it’s you and me, we’re here. We’re doing this so that the world may know his story. Those who haven’t heard his story may know the impact that he’s had on the world and on our lives personally.” I’m slightly paraphrasing because it’s been many years since we shot that, but that was the essence.
And it settled my spirit, and I thought, “You know, he’s right.” For whatever reason, God saw fit to put me in that role and not somebody else. Nobody else auditioned. There weren’t auditions for the role. He had just called me up and said, “Do you want to do this again?” And I said, “Yes. Of course.” I didn’t hesitate.
But then when we got to that moment, it started to dawn on me the weight of what it was that I was being given to do and would then inform the encounters and the experiences that I would have as the show progressed and as we now arrive here at season five, the dawn of season five.
Faith Background
TUCKER CARLSON: When you started the series, did you believe in the gospel?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Oh, yeah. I was raised Christian. I was baptized Greek Orthodox. We lived in New York City. And then when my family moved into the suburbs, there weren’t really Greek Orthodox options. So my dad, having gone to a Catholic school in Egypt, and my mom being Catholic from Ireland and raised in the faith as well, were more than happy to just go down the street to the local Catholic church. It was familiar to my dad, and it’s part of my mom’s upbringing. And for myself and my sisters, it just didn’t feel different. It just felt right.
Jonathan Roumie on His Faith Journey
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And so I’m in my first communion and my confirmation as Catholic. And probably when I got into my early twenties, I was revisiting the idea of my Orthodox roots as cousins and family members were getting married in the Orthodox church. And I so admired the beauty and the sanctity with which they approach the liturgy, which is quite different than Catholicism for the most part. I mean, there’s Eastern Catholic rites, which are more similar to Greek Orthodox, but it was different. But it didn’t draw me to go back completely because I think I just felt like, no.
This feels like the truth as I understand it in God’s eyes. This seems true, and it’s the church that Christ himself ultimately started. And for the reasons God knows, and despite every effort to thwart it, especially the largest empire in the world at the time, despite the Roman Empire’s attempts to stamp it out through murder. Yeah.
It didn’t happen. It’s still going, and that means something to me. And so doing this show, playing the character of Jesus, working with the Hallow app, you know, doing all these prayer and meditation challenges with them, learning more about other stories of faith, other people of faith through the challenges that we have coming up for Lent here. I’ve grown deeper in my faith. It’s drawn me closer to the church to want to know more about the aspects of the church that I didn’t necessarily grow up learning.
You know? I went to public school. So I had a Tuesday afternoon catechism or whatever the day was where you went to catechism CCD after school. And I didn’t learn any of the things that I’ve learned in the last several years because it’s just not designed that way.
And the church has such a rich history and tradition. It’s so vast. It’s such a storehouse. There’s so much to know and to learn. And through the experiences of playing Christ and getting to force myself to go into prayer and meditation prior to every season through these periodical prayer challenges, like we just did one in Advent for Hallow, and now we’re doing the pray forty, which starts today, Ash Wednesday.
It’s forced me to just spend more time in the presence of God and wants me to get closer to him.
Understanding Lent
TUCKER CARLSON: What is Lent?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Lent begins today. It’s forty days of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving leading up to Good Friday, the Friday before Easter, the day Jesus Christ died on the cross and gave his life for humanity. Three days later, if you include Friday, Easter Sunday, Jesus resurrected from the dead and original sin, the stain on mankind, is lifted through our belief in Christ.
And so, for me, Lent is a time to simplify, it’s a time to sacrifice, and it’s a time to draw myself closer through the way of the cross. Basically, the theme of Hallow’s pray forty challenge this year is called “The Way,” and it’s the way of surrender, the way of Christ, basically. And everything that he did leading up to his passion, death, and resurrection is something for us to meditate on in that forty days.
Typically, we try to make some sort of meaningful sacrifice. Some people say, “Oh, it’s the time to give up chocolate.” Well, if chocolate is something that gives you joy and happiness, then, yeah, that might be a good thing for you to give up for forty days. And it can be really hard. For some people like me, it’d be coffee. For some people, it’s alcohol. For some people, it’s cigars or cigarettes or something.
TUCKER CARLSON: Do asparagus every year. It’s not the toughest Lent program.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Does asparagus give you joy? Because if it doesn’t… Just kidding. Tucker, I would think you may want to revisit or rethink that.
The Hallow Prayer Challenge
TUCKER CARLSON: Lent is here, the period before Easter, the forty days, and it’s a unique chance to get closer to God. That’s the point of it. Hallow, the world’s number one prayer app, can help you do that. Joining their prayer forty challenge, it’s a great way to connect with Christians all over the world and unite in preparation for Easter, which is the payoff of this season.
It’s called “The Way.” It helps participants focus on how Jesus is the way to heaven. If you join the challenge, you’ll embark on a spiritual journey with some of America’s most convicted Jesus followers. Powerful stories, prayer, you grow in your ability to sacrifice, that’s what Lent is, it’s a sacrifice, and taking thought provoking sermons and true stories of faith in action, which are amazing. This year is going to be the best Lent ever, thousands of people praying together all over the world, and you can be part of it through Hallow, which, by the way, is in use in my house and a nightly topic of conversation.
So you can sign up at Hallow.com/Tucker when you join. Check out thousands of guided prayers, meditations, music, and everything. There’s a ton on all designed to help you find peace and closeness to God. Download the Hallow app and jump onto the Lent pray forty challenge right now. So how do you observe it?
The Power of Fasting
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, I start typically by going to mass, getting ashes, which I have not yet done, and then fasting on Ash Wednesday. But typically, and it’s not an obligation, but I like to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. Sometimes, it’s nothing but maybe water. Sometimes, it’s just no meat. Fridays in Lent, especially, no meat. Fish, soups, broths are even okay.
It’s like fasting from the flesh. You’re denying the flesh. You’re denying yourself. It’s about denial. You know? And it recalls Christ’s forty days in the desert prior to the start of his ministry when he denied himself everything, food, water, the temptations that he was faced with in the desert. He held steadfast and came out ready to basically start his ministry.
And the practice of fasting is, spiritually speaking, super powerful. I mean, if there’s obstacles or challenges that you’re experiencing in your life that just don’t seem to be resolved through traditional prayer, you know, Jesus himself was confronted by the disciples at one point. I think they were trying to cast out these demons in their community, and it wasn’t working.
And they had been given the power to do that, and he comes up on them, and they basically said, “Well, we tried everything. We tried to cast them out in your name and everything. It didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?” And he said, paraphrasing, “Some demons can only be cast out through prayer and fasting.”
And so that’s like an extra superpower level that you get given when you commit to denying yourself the things that the body needs with the intention that you are offering something up to God.
TUCKER CARLSON: Have you experienced that?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. I’ve had decisions in my life that I really… People. I’ll go even more personal. People that I prayed for that were sick, were in a comatose state, and through prayer and fasting, remarkably, on a particular day that I did this, they came out of it. And then for weeks, just unresponsive. Really?
TUCKER CARLSON: Really?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. It’s a game changer. Fasting.
In fact, to tie to part of the reason why I’m here today is on Fridays, in this prayer challenge on Hallow, Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt handle the fasting portion of the challenge. So you go through this challenge seven days a week. And on Fridays, which is the day we typically fast from meat, they get into the spirituality and the psychology of fasting, but the potent spirituality of denial and what that means. And it’s super powerful, man. It affects change like few things do.
TUCKER CARLSON: Really?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. And that’s like a true fast, not eat.
Yeah. I mean, it’s something that I would pray about. Like, for some people, having just bread and water is extremely difficult or even just like a bowl of soup or water. The Catholic church has suggested guides. So it’s essentially one meal and partial meals, not a full second meal, I believe, one meal a day. But if that’s too easy for you, and you’re like, “Well, I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing anything by just one meal. I want to go no food at all or maybe just some water or couple of pieces of bread, bread and water,” then that becomes your fasting.
So I think it depends, but it’s always something that I take to in prayer first. “Lord, what do you want me to approach this fast? How can I deny myself? What do you need from me in this fast, and how can I serve you better through this fast?”
The Lost Practice of Fasting
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s funny. Fasting is the one piece of religious observance that has pretty much disappeared in public conversations about religious observance. I mean, fasting sounds like a medieval practice.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, especially here in the West. If you go to the Middle East, it’s like, what are you talking about? Of course, I’m fasting.
TUCKER CARLSON: Or is it full month?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. We’re at it right now. No food or water or tobacco or sex during the day, period.
TUCKER CARLSON: Wow.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yep. No water. But there, you know, it’s considered like a celebration as you know. But I also find, like, even the Middle Eastern Christians, like Orthodox, Coptic Orthodox, they’re much more culturally rigorous when it comes to fasting. Not just meat, but no dairy. And same thing with Muslims. No dairy. No meat, no dairy. No oils. Like, there’s a number of different levels, but the same thing with the Christians in my family. I’m like, wow. Catholics don’t do the no dairy thing.
But yeah. You’re right. I mean, here in the West, it’s… If you say you’re fasting, people say, “Why?” Then you gotta explain. You know? It’s foreign.
TUCKER CARLSON: I mean, that’s it’s all over the New Testament references to fasting.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. And as you just said, it’s not simply Christianity. It was just a feature of religious observance, like, from the beginning of time.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. And it’s gone. In the mainstream, it’s gone. So you wonder, like, is there a connection between eating and spiritual awareness? Clearly, there is.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Mhmm.
TUCKER CARLSON: Is there a connection between overeating and spiritual dullness? Maybe there is. And if you wake up and everyone’s fat, which is true, including me from time to time, so I’m not joking. There’s just like, a spiritual component there now, or am I…
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, I mean it’s a crazy suggestion. One of the seven deadly sins is gluttony.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Doesn’t have to be food, but it can be. Like, how are you being gluttonous in your life? Is it or are you hoarding things? If it’s food, like, not putting any kind of boundaries on your satiety? And I think it’s something that can fuel other sort of leeches into breaking that spiritual connection to the divine. I mean, there’s no doubt.
Rediscovering Ancient Wisdom
TUCKER CARLSON: One of the most striking things about having grown up and living in the modern West is realizing things later in life that are glaringly obvious, and you think to yourself, like, how did I not notice that?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course, gluttony is bad. Like, greed is bad. Worshipping money is bad. These are all… violence is bad. These are all the things that I’ve realized in the last couple of years that never occurred to me. Not one time.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, then you see movies. I mean, here’s the power of entertainment. You see a movie like “Wall Street.” You got Michael Douglas, who was a superstar at that time, the height of his career. “Greed is good.” I mean, isn’t that the phrase from that movie?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. But the funny thing is, like, I’m old enough to remember when that came out, which I think was in the late eighties.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Eighties. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And it was used… it became political immediately, and it was like, “This is what the Reagan era’s like, and they’re all greedy” and whatever. And so, of course, you know, I was not a liberal, so I was like, “Oh, shut up.” But I do think that was the… it’s been almost forty years. That was the last time I remember anybody in the United States saying greed was bad. When was the last time? Have you heard anybody say that?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Maybe some, like, far out wacko protester or something, but no one you’d ever meet.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. I really have ever heard anybody say greed is bad since then. Have you?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: No. It’s… I mean, it is… yeah. But it’s everywhere too.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. It’s everywhere, which is maybe why you don’t… every day till you get fat. Also bad. Again, not judging. I’ve been greedy, and I’ve been a glutton. So, like, I’m not again, not judging, but it’s bad. Like, why not say… I don’t know.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. Sorry. I’m just coming to these very obvious conclusions.
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I mean, I think, luckily, we have, I mean, that’s what repentance is for.
Jesus on Fasting and Spiritual Awareness
JONATHAN ROUMIE: You know, in the Christian life, it’s becoming aware of your faults and the way that you’ve hurt people or hurt yourself even. And if the body is truly a temple of the Lord, a reflection of the creation and of the creator, God, and you’re hurting yourself, then it’s like an affront to God, which is why things like gluttony are sinful. But it also dulls you. It’s like a long headache or, you know, three beers or something. It keeps you from experiencing anything beyond yourself kind of.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. You’re now creating a wall around the ability to be connected to from the divine. You know? It’s like you’re walling yourself off from God anyway.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: It puts cheesecloth over your soul.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. You know what I mean? I love that you used food as a reference to something that kind of dulls the camera and makes the edges softer, and you sort of don’t fully perceive what’s happening.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I mean, you eat two Big Macs, you know, you’re not as aware of anything. Oh my gosh. It’s like talk about comatose. You just… It’s a head injury. Right?
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Hundred percent. And so fasting is the opposite. You’re hyperaware.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: That’s right. In your mind, it’s just like you sense everything.
TUCKER CARLSON: Interesting. And then the longer you do it, it starts to… I know people who have done, like, forty day water fasts. With electrolytes and stuff—that’s not, you know, where they’re… it still sounds dangerous, but I don’t know. I tried it for a week, one Lent.
I got through four days of it, and I’m like, this isn’t going to work. Your body starts to do stuff that you have no control over. You know? I can’t imagine. And it’s like, I think we’re dying, so let’s just get rid of everything.
I’m like, wait. Woah. Woah. Woah. I’m at work. I’m on a set. This doesn’t work. I can’t keep running to the… So I said, Lord, please forgive me. I can’t continue this if I’m going to work for the rest of the week because I just… unless you make it stop, it’s not stopping. So I gotta… did.
But their friend of mine… the truth. Last winter, he was coming off a three week fast. He’s very spiritual man, and I happened to be at his house when he broke his fast, and the first course was soup. And he put… he hadn’t had one thing in his mouth for three weeks other than water. That’s it.
Three week water. Three weeks, twenty-one days, and he puts the spoon in the soup, and he holds it. He’s talking, and he holds it in front of his mouth. He’s making a point, and I’m watching as everyone’s looking at it, and then he puts it down. And then he does it again, and he’s making this point, and then he puts it down again.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I like to eat soup. That’s self control.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. So as you… At that point, I would think you almost don’t want to break it. You’re like, how long can I go?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Totally right. How far can I go with this? So funny, though. People go, like, you know, climb… pay to climb Everest or participate in some radical sport and they take these crazy risks and they push themselves past obvious boundaries. And I’m not… I admire that. It’s great. But no one ever thinks to just, like, not eat for a week and see what happens. That is a pretty bold thing to do, and maybe worth trying.
TUCKER CARLSON: I think everybody should try fasting if they’ve never fasted.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Everybody should try fasting. I mean, you know, if you’ve got medical conditions I’m not a doctor. Of course.
TUCKER CARLSON: Right. But discern it, pray about it, and, like, I’ve only found it helpful. And I think it just even if it’s just, like, for a day, like, see what denial, denying yourself food. What does that do for your mind, for your spirit? You know? I mean, if I don’t know. If you don’t have a sense of spirituality, it might not mean anything. It might just be like a challenge. Like, wonder if I can do it. You know?
But I think the point is not to do it for the sake of doing it. I think to do it for the sake of depriving yourself and offering up the pain and the discomfort. And for some people, the suffering that that might cause…
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yes. Taking that pain and suffering and discomfort through the fact and offering it towards an intention, a sick person, the decision to move to a new home, problems that a child is having in school.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes. Any kind of obstacles or challenges that seem insurmountable, fast. Fast about it. Pray and fast about it, and see what the Lord can do with that and with your heart because then it’s what you’re doing is you’re opening up your heart.
You know, it’s not about, well, if I do this exactly x, y, and z… I mean, that Jesus’ whole thing, issue with the Pharisees, you know, you cleanse the outside of a cup, but then the stuff that’s already inside you is just rotten. Your thoughts and your heart is rotten. So it doesn’t matter that you wash your hands before you eat this and you eat that.
Like, he was calling out the Pharisees at one point for being so specific and attentive to the law. But meanwhile, he could see in their hearts that they just had malice and they had evil, and they weren’t doing the right thing for the priests of the time, what they should have been doing.
The same thing. It’s like fasting just to see if you can get through it doesn’t really serve anyone other than your own ego.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: But offering up the pain that comes with the fasting, the denial that comes with fasting, the hunger pains, that then gets applied in a spiritual way. That then assigns spiritual rewards to you by offering that for someone.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s right. And it’s… by the way, just for in point of fact, I know, because I’ve done a lot of fasting, actually, and I love it. But it’s not… What’s been the biggest thing that you’ve seen? It’s not an effective weight loss at all.
In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who’s Muslim. He said, “I always get fat during Ramadan,” you know, because the second the sun goes down, you know, you’re pounding a dozen dates and going crazy with the hummus, which is awesome.
I don’t think—I’m not, don’t ever go to me for medical advice, of course, but I don’t think going to fasting to lose weight is effective at all, but I do think… I think this way, it’s like if they’re pushing on you weed, Xanax, and endless bread baskets, maybe there’s an agenda which is to make you duller and less aware of what’s going on around you. And I think…
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Sicker.
TUCKER CARLSON: And sick and, of course, sicker. That’s exactly right. But I’d rather be dead than dull. You know what I mean? It’s like sick is bad, but unaware is worse, in my opinion.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. There are a lot of really enlightened sick people out there, actually. You know, joyful sick people.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yeah.
Jesus and the Pharisees
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay. So you said you made reference to Jesus’ exchanges with the Pharisees.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Mhmm.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m reading Matthew right now. I’m really struck this time by the intensity of his rage at the Pharisees. Like, he doesn’t… he’s pretty gentle with everybody else, like, literally including, like, the Roman officer.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Mhmm.
TUCKER CARLSON: The occupying army, pagan, worshiping the stars or whatever. Jesus is really kind to him. Pharisees, I mean, it is just… Matthew goes on for, like, five pages, and he’s mad. What do you make of that?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, I think you have to ask yourself, well, why is he mad? And what is he mad about? And who are the Pharisees to him? And I think it goes back to what I was referencing in that here you have people that are supposed to be models of God’s law and rule and grace, the Pharisees, the priests, the people that the people look up to for spiritual advice and wisdom and guidance.
And because Jesus can read souls and read their hearts, he sees they’re probably the worst of them. And he knows that they have ill will towards him, and they don’t have the interests of the people in their hearts because they’re so enraptured by the letters of the law.
So he said, “You’re so concerned about the letter of the law that you’re not even concerned about the heart of the law, which is God’s mercy and justice. And how are these people… how are you treating these people?”
I mean, the fact that they would go every year on Passover, the poorest of the poor trying to bring their offerings and sacrifices that through extortion were getting charged five hundred percent, probably more than what they should have. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the point was that they were being extorted every step of the way by their own leaders, these Pharisees.
And that for him was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and the next day, he’s, like, clearing the temple. You know? He’s flipping the tables over. Flipping tables, whipping, using a whip to clear money changers stands and just outraged—God’s righteous anger.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. It’s not the gentle Jesus at all.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: No. Excuse me. No. It’s not. It’s the fury of the Lord really come to visit them. It’s not, you know, fire from heaven, but it’s fire on earth in this man’s eyes.
And also, you know, the precursor to what sets him up for the crucifixion. I mean, I think on some level, he knows number one, he has to make an impression, and he is vindicated through his actions because of who they are, who the Pharisees truly are deep down inside, but also that this will then continue the chain of events that have been set into motion that will put him on a cross so that he can redeem mankind.
TUCKER CARLSON: Seems like all of his anger is reserved for hypocrites. They get singled out repeatedly. He seems to really hate that.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. And the people in charge, the powerful.
TUCKER CARLSON: Mhmm. That’s my read. I mean, I’m the opposite of the theologian.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I think, you know, with power, you know, there’s greed. There’s hurting people at someone else’s expense. There’s taking advantage. When you have all of these forces that try to take control over a society and the people, through power, through influence, and there’s nothing that those people can do. I mean, it’s the definition of injustice.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And God is about justice. Blessed are those who thirst for righteousness, who thirst for justice, basically. It was one of the things that was most important to him and that people experience and have justice and feel human and be seen and not be discounted because of their status, because of their financial situation, because of who they were, what family they were born into or what case, for lack of a better term, that they were born into.
So I think it was a last stand for him, basically, when he cleared the temple. And all the preaching and the teaching didn’t have enough of an effect on the Pharisees for them to change what they were doing.
TUCKER CARLSON: No. It didn’t.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: So I think he had to show, don’t tell. He had to show and not tell.
TUCKER CARLSON: So when you’re reading your scripts, when you’re preparing, you’re basically reading the gospel?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
Jonathan Roumie on “The Chosen” and Creative Storytelling
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Gospel plus, I’ll say. Because as a TV show, the scriptures as they are don’t always give us the full picture of a conversation. They definitely don’t give us the complete picture of a character or a person. So through a group of biblical scholars and advisers that help us and give insight into the things that we’re writing, we have to craft plausible, hopefully authentic backstories that create believable characters that could have existed in the first century that augment the world that the gospels give us a glimpse into.
So a lot of it is scripture. But then there is some creative license taken just to be able to make a good TV show. Because at the end of the day, this isn’t the Bible. We’re not saying this is the Bible. We have a TV show, first and foremost, that is based on the gospels and hopefully is compelling enough for you to really get hooked into it and binge it just like you would binge any other TV show.
And then start asking yourself, “Well, what did Jesus really say? Did he say these things? Is this character really like this?” Like, I want to explore. And then if you can get people to read the Bible and then want to have a relationship or even explore what it means to have faith if you’ve never had faith, or even be curious about Christ.
I mean, inevitably, that is the relationship in a person’s life that will change their life irrevocably, forever. So if we can create an entertaining story that is based on the truth of the gospels and who Jesus and the disciples were, maybe it’ll introduce people to Christ in the way that the audience has introduced to him, and maybe they’ll want to follow him too.
The Living Word
TUCKER CARLSON: How did it change your life, the gospel?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I think the more I read the gospels, the more I discover. The Bible is the living word. They say the Bible is alive. And so at any given time, you can read a passage from scriptures from the gospels, even from the Old Testament, the letters of Paul, the Acts, that somehow will apply to your own life, especially when you’re struggling with something.
You know, if I’m struggling with something, I just can’t figure it out, I just don’t have any ideas about where to go to resolve it. Inevitably, the answer is somewhere in the book, and it’s a matter of sitting down with it and reading it. And, I mean, it’s remarkable the amount of times I’ve had something in front of me that I just didn’t know how to deal with. And then I would flip to a random page, and it’s like, the answer is right there. It’s right there.
So I stopped being surprised about it. I was just like, “Of course, that’s this.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Sincere Christians never seem surprised by anything. Noticed that.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: It is amazing. And I’ve met those people where—and we kind of talked a little bit about this at one point—where the craziest things are happening that they kind of already had an intuition was going to happen.
Like, I don’t even know what’s a good example. There’ve been so many times where somebody wanted to try and get rid of their house or something like that, try to sell their house and, like, say they had a week to get out of their house for somebody to buy their house, and somebody just comes knocking on the door and says, “Hey. You got a beautiful house. You’re not selling this by chance, are you?” And they’re like, “Well, as a matter of fact, I am.”
And it just so happens that they’re like, “Lord, just let us find somebody that wants this house. We didn’t even put it on the market yet,” and then somebody knocks on their door like an hour later. I mean, crazy stories, and they’re like, “Yeah. God just did it.” I’m like, “How? You don’t seem phased.”
TUCKER CARLSON: And to flip it over, they never seem shocked by how screwed up the world is. I’m shocked every single day. Like, I can’t believe they’re committing outside the DNC, or I can’t believe this, that, the other thing. I’m always like, I can’t believe the persecution of Christians. Why would you persecute Christians?
Like, they’ve never mugged anybody. You know, like, even if you think their religion’s silly, they’re like the most peaceful people in the world. Their religion commands them to be. Why are we hating on them and banning their apps in Europe or whatever we’re doing, putting them in jail for praying? But sincere Christians, well, yeah. I mean, what did you think was going to happen?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Because Jesus kind of set it up that way. He kind of told us two thousand years ago, “You’ll be hated because of me, persecuted because of me.” He even lays it all out two thousand years ago, but just know it’s okay. “I overcame the world. You’re good. Just remember that you’re good when things hit the fan. Just remember that.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Well, I still find it infuriating.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Sure. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m obviously not a good person.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: No. It’s a natural response. There’s a lot of persecution of Christians, and I’m really bothered by it.
Christian Persecution
TUCKER CARLSON: Your family, at least on one side, is Arab Christian.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Mhmm.
TUCKER CARLSON: Awful lot of Arab Christians get killed in a bunch of different countries all the time. And no one says a word about it. Notice this?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I do. Yeah. I do a lot. Christian persecution is something really close to my heart. In fact, I just executive produced an animated short film called “The Twenty-One,” which came out towards the end of February on the tenth anniversary of the martyrdom of the twenty-one martyrs in Libya who were all—well, twenty of them were Coptic Christians from Egypt. One of them was non-Christian initially from Ghana.
They just rounded up all these guys. ISIS came and rounded them up and tried to force them to deny their faith. They’re just migrant workers, just trying to make some money, and they got rounded up, just captured. And ISIS was like, “Yeah. Deny your faith, and we’ll let you go. Don’t deny it, we’ll kill you.”
And they tortured them for months. Even the guy from Ghana, they said to him, “You can go. You’re not Christian. You’re not one of these guys.” And he’s like, “No. Their god is my god.” And so they say he converted, and he died with them.
Six years ago, this producer, a friend of mine named Mark Rogers, was in Egypt, and he saw the image of one of these martyrs who had a lazy eye, and it reminded him of the image, which actually is on this little medallion of Christ, the Pantocrator. Basically, it’s that figure of Christ where one side of him represents the divinity of Christ, one side represents the humanity of Christ. And one side, his eye is kind of drooped, and it reminded him of this image of Christ.
And he got this idea to create this animated short film about the martyrs and their story, and it turned out to be stunning. TwentyOneFilm.com. People want to see it. It’s an extraordinary short film. Beautiful that implements Coptic iconography into the animation.
It was actually on the Oscar shortlist. It didn’t get nominated, but it found its way onto this shortlist of fifteen selections, and then they whittled it down to the top five. It had no marketing, had no advertisement, nothing, but somehow, I think enough people saw this and thought, “This is amazing.” And it tells their story and the mystical nature of their experience and of actually what their captors experienced with these guys while they had them in captivity—the divinely mystical experiences that they had.
TUCKER CARLSON: Their captors?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. Yeah. Are represented in the short film. It’s gorgeous. And at the end of the day, what people walk away with is that these guys had the opportunity to say, “No. I’m not Christian,” and then live. But none of them did it. They went to their graves, literally.
TUCKER CARLSON: And they were just random migrant workers?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Migrant workers. Not evangelists. Just people. Christian migrant workers, poor migrant workers, I think construction or farming or something, and they wouldn’t deny their faith.
And so I got a chance to screen this film for the first time with the families of the martyrs ten years later, which was—words fail me because it was such an overwhelmingly powerful experience to be there with them and kind of have them sort of reliving this experience. But when you talk to them, full of joy, full of joy. And more than one of them thanked their captors because they feel—and as Christians, we believe this—that because they died for their faith, they got a straight shot right to the divine, right to God. They’re like, “We thank them because they sent them right to heaven.”
So the Coptic church declared them saints, and then very recently, the Catholic church—it’s the first time it’s happened—Catholic church also considered them saints because they died for the faith in the way that they died. It’s so inspirational. It’s unbelievable.
And so right now, I’m trying to get the film out for more people to see and get it out there so people are aware that these stories exist. Like, this is a reality for people, for Christians in the Middle East. This is a reality that their lives are on the line for their beliefs. That’s for sure.
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Playing Jesus
TUCKER CARLSON: You must learn a lot from playing this role.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I have. Yeah. I’ve learned how much I have to learn.
TUCKER CARLSON: I don’t know how often we think of Jesus as fully a man, though as you pointed out, he was. What’s that like trying to get inside the head of Jesus?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Well, I don’t think I can ever do it successfully, like, completely. The only thing that I can do, believing Jesus was fully God and fully man, but sinless in his humanity—the only thing that I can relate to is the humanity part, and my own flawed humanity at that, deeply flawed, deeply, deeply flawed humanity.
But luckily, I don’t have to rely on me. I don’t rely on me. I rely on him. And so my job is to simply show up, come with an open heart. I do a lot of praying and fasting before every season. I pray before every scene and then do the best that I can to simply be, for lack of a better term, a mirror of the divine.
So I just show up, and I’m just trying to mirror the divine, reading the words that I have, being a vessel for which the Holy Spirit can use me to reach the truth of the gospel to the people that watch this show. And if it goes beyond entertainment for some people, awesome.
Jonathan Roumie on The Chosen’s Impact
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I mean, between the show and between the Halo app, the amount of feedback and changed lives that have occurred. The stories that we get about people who were atheists all their life, and somebody gave them the show, and all of a sudden, something tweaked in their heart, and they’re like, “Why do I feel this way about this guy? I want to know this guy.” Or people who haven’t been to church in thirty years, lapsed Catholics saying, “I haven’t been to church in thirty years. I started going back to church.”
“Went to my first confession in thirty years. Went to my first confession in fifteen years.” I’ve heard all of these things. I even was in confession once myself when a guy came out of the confessional, and he recognized me. He’s like, “Oh, yeah.” And so he starts talking to me, and then he starts to tell me what he was telling the priest in the confession.
I said, “No. No. No. You keep it in there,” and I wouldn’t let him get that far. I said, “That’s not for my ears. Save it for the confessor.”
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not Catholic, but I’ve always thought that confession is the coolest thing they do.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: It’s a gift, man. It’s a lifesaver.
TUCKER CARLSON: Of course. When it became psychotherapy and you put, like, an atheist with bad judgment on the couch across from you, I don’t think we lost something. Do you know what I mean?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: But the human need to connect, to unburden yourself… you know what’s wrong, by the way. Most people know. You don’t need to be a Christian to know what’s wrong. Everyone knows inside you, you know when you’re doing something wrong.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: And to say it out loud, to articulate it in words is to rid yourself of it to some extent, I think.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And then for the sacramental part of it, that’s where the healing comes in. That’s where the spiritual healing comes in. So it’s like if you’re a cheesecloth full of holes. Right? And you go into confession, and you receive the sacrament of reconciliation from the priest. Now the priest, we believe he’s been given divine authority that has a not visible, but a tangible physical metaphysical effect on the casing of your soul.
And it’s like mending the little holes. Every confession is like you’re closing up those holes and restoring that connection with God in a way that is essentially repairing your soul. That’s what the sacramental part of confession is for us, which is usually comforting and also physically tangible. For me, I feel just chemically slightly different after every confession that I go through in a way that’s like, “Okay. I can breathe a little easier.”
TUCKER CARLSON: I believe that completely. I’ve never experienced it, but I believe that.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: It’s like nothing else.
Playing Jesus and Being Recognized
TUCKER CARLSON: What’s it like for you to be recognized on the street for playing Jesus? I know just from having dinner with you last night and telling people you were coming here, there’s a lot of intensity. I’ve been on television for thirty years. I’ve never experienced anything like what you experienced, for example, in my house last night. People are very intense when they see you. It’s bound up in their feelings for you, but also their feelings for Jesus. What’s that like?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I give God all the credit. I give Jesus the credit. And, you know, I’m like our buddy Russell Brand. I was once his stand-in. I feel like I’m Jesus’ stand-in. Jesus is the star, and I’m his stand-in.
TUCKER CARLSON: You’re Russell Brand’s stand-in?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I was Russell Brand’s stand-in.
TUCKER CARLSON: Looking at you, I’m not that surprised. If I was casting a stand-in for Russell Brand, I think it would be you.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Not too bad. It’s alright. And so we had a good time with him.
TUCKER CARLSON: He’s a good man.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: He’s a good mate. He’s a good guy. I love that man. I love him so much.
TUCKER CARLSON: I totally agree. But, I mean, without getting too personal, it’s going to affect your life.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: Like, maybe not all positive. Like, what’s Whole Foods like for you?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Depends on what part of town. It would depend on the grocery store. I mean, let’s take Whole Foods. In some parts of the country, I gotta go in with a hood and glasses. And in other parts, especially the coastal cities like New York and LA, it’s just another day.
TUCKER CARLSON: They can just take you for a bike messenger, but in Michigan, they know.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: That’s very appropriate. It can be interesting. I think because of who I’m playing and because there is this oftentimes this front-loaded relationship that they already have with Jesus, and then I become the stand-in like the face of that relationship. When they read the Bible, I’ve been told this, my face pops into their minds.
They’re hearing scriptures or they’re seeing… I mean, even for myself when I’m at mass and the priest is reading the gospel and he’s talking about Peter, I’m thinking of Shahar Isaac who plays Peter in our show. And I’m like, “Okay. Yeah. I can’t get him out of my head.” I love Shahar. He’s great as Peter.
TUCKER CARLSON: So, yeah, it’s just you try even as an artist, you still suffer that. You can’t quite make the separation.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. Because you’ve now have this relationship with these people and these characters. And so to be the face of what is often the most important relationship in a person’s life, I mean, even beyond their family, it’s like God first and then family and then everything else. To be the face of that for people, I try not to think about that.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s more than being a sidekick on Seinfeld.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. And I think God’s given me the gift and the grace of kind of being somewhat blinded to the magnitude of it and the weight of it.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s good.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Sometimes I can feel it. Most of the time, I think I’m shielded from it because I think if I was aware of exactly what that implication was even for a single person, it would crush me.
TUCKER CARLSON: Self-awareness is a burden. I would not recommend it at all. I don’t have any, so it’s never bothered me. But I know people who are highly self-aware, and they’re, like, in agony all day.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: I mean, I have a lot of that in other areas, but when it comes to playing this character, I’m glad I don’t have it.
TUCKER CARLSON: Now that is a blessing.
The Halo Prayer App
TUCKER CARLSON: What is Halo, and how’d you hook up with us?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Halo is the world’s largest, and for my money, the greatest prayer and meditation app a person can ever find, like, ever. There are thousands and thousands of ways, prayers and challenges and meditations that people can use in their daily life to the point of automation. They just set it up and you get reminders where you can just connect with God in the most creative ways.
For me, it has been a way to keep me completely focused on God when I’m in the middle of life. It’s an opportunity for me to access my faith in a consistent way and to get through life’s biggest challenges. There’s so many prayers on this app that I use daily, like, daily.
For instance, there’s a prayer called the surrender novena. Novena just is a Latin word. Just means nine days. So it’s a prayer you say for nine days. And this particular prayer has been so valuable to so many people. Basically, it’s very simple, but you repeat it, like, ten times. And in the app, it walks you through it. But the essence of it is this prayer where you simply say, “Oh, Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything. Oh, Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything.”
Can you repeat that, like, ten times? And the number of people that have experienced profound grace and just ease of the burden, the lightness of the weight in their life has been… I’ve never heard of a prayer that’s had such a profound effect. Like, the rosary is another one.
So there was this couple. They were trying to have their first baby. They had a miscarriage. They were in a pretty severe state, crisis, depression, everything that comes with that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yes.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: They see an ad for Hallow. They download the app. They start praying. Specifically, they start praying the surrender prayer that I was telling you about, the surrender novena and the rosary. And they were Catholic as well, so they’re familiar with them. So they prayed the rosary, super powerful weapon, and the surrender novena. And they get pregnant again, and their relationship is really growing together in faith and in God. It’s the strongest that it’s ever been.
Five months in, they lose the baby. And they’re holding their son who had passed away. And the words that come to mind for this woman is the surrender prayer. “Oh, Jesus. I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything.” It’s the first words that come to her mind.
And they told us they said that if they hadn’t gotten into this consistent routine of communicating with God through prayer, if their faith hadn’t been strengthened, that second miscarriage would have destroyed their marriage, but it didn’t. And they kept going. A year later, they had a healthy baby boy. And the first words that came out of her mouth that time was the prayer from Numbers: “Lord bless you and keep you. Lord shine his face upon you. Be gracious to you. The Lord look kindly upon you and give you peace.” I think his son’s name is Jack.
And so the power of having that relationship, the power of prayer, the power of being in a constant dialogue with God, it’s what we were made for. We were designed to worship. We were designed for that relationship. It’s in our DNA.
And the more we try to ignore it or squash it or bury it or ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist or that it’s not there or replace it with something else, the more we just run in circles, the more we try to fill that hole with something else, with some other vice, some other endeavors, some other righteous indignation of something, some other effort that will never substitute, never replace our need for God.
Being a “Media Apostle”
It’ll never replace it. And so for me, it’s like playing Jesus in The Chosen. It’s one of the most important things that I’ve ever done artistically. I mean, all of this for me feels like an apostolate. It feels like I’m a media apostle.
I feel like that’s what I was sent here to do. Like, at this time and place to kind of be a part of this, what I see is this growing movement in film and television, in the culture that is truly counterculture to the current culture.
TUCKER CARLSON: That’s for sure.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And to be a part of the ushering in of this opportunity of expression that supersedes the previous iterations of what this looked like because it’s so attentive to quality. Like, Chosen aims to be a great TV show first. And because the people making it are really invested in the subject matter, it makes it that much more powerful. And then from a very myotically human level. And then God sees that, and he takes it, and he multiplies it. He multiplies the magnitude of it.
The efficacy of it is then energized and multiplied globally. But even just reaching one person and changing one person’s life, Dallas will tell you this as well. It’s worth it just for one person.
All the discomfort or whatever I may or may not feel in the world as people approach me wanting to take a selfie in the gym or in the supermarket when I’m clearly trying to, like, get in and out. I mean, all of that discomfort for me personally, and I’ve been through worse. Like, I’ve been through real discomfort that it’s nothing. Something, but it’s relative. You know what I’m saying?
So all of it’s worth it because one person decided to go get baptized. And now they have a whole new life. They have a spiritual awakening.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s amazing to me how successful it’s been, and it’s amazing to me the reaction to it. Banned in China.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s not calling for the overthrow of the CCP.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Hallow App’s banned in China.
TUCKER CARLSON: Hallow App is banned in China. It’s also effectively banned in Europe, in effect, because Mark Zuckerberg’s company Meta has shut down all advertising for religious-oriented faith-based advertising.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: So it can’t operate in Europe.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: That was a tough one. They had just launched in Polish and Italian and, I think, German and, like, all these languages, and now people can’t know about the app.
TUCKER CARLSON: But why is that a threat? I mean, it just does tell you everything. Right? I mean, it’s like understanding things in reverse. It’s like, why would they be upset with that? That’s, like, the kindest, least threatening… you know, only want to help people. Like, why is that bad?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah. Exactly.
Jonathan Roumie on Faith and Persecution
TUCKER CARLSON: I’d be curious to hear the EU’s answer for that or Mehta’s answer for that. Mark Zuckerberg’s answer for that. And China’s answer for that. Like, what’s wrong with that?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Yeah.
TUCKER CARLSON: It tells you a lot, but you don’t seem shocked by that at all.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: No. No. You’re not. I mean, when you read of the stories for decades of people smuggling Bibles into countries, underground churches, even in our story that we cover in the pray forty challenge for Hallow, it’s a story of this guy, the Takashi Nagai.
I mean, he was living in Nagasaki, Japan right around the time of the Second World War when the bomb was dropped on his town, on Nagasaki. And Japan had just come out of three hundred years, basically, of Christian persecution. Like, they had gotten rid of any Christian presence. I mean, I think in the late sixteenth century, they were crucifying people.
TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, yeah.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And then three hundred plus years later, Nagasaki is now the largest Christian hub in all of Japan.
TUCKER CARLSON: Mhmm.
The Bombing of Nagasaki
JONATHAN ROUMIE: And it wasn’t the first target for the bomb.
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: They tried to drop the bomb somewhere else. This is all in the story that people hear about this Lent. It’s an amazing story. This man’s story is amazing. The guy, he’s a radiologist doctor. They tried to drop the bomb at the first target, and it was too cloudy. They couldn’t see, and they didn’t have the conditions appropriate to drop an atomic bomb.
So their second target was Nagasaki, oddly enough, right above a cathedral. And it blew up, detonated right over the cathedral and wiped out everything. And he survived. Nobody else, his family, everybody died. Killed the majority of the Christians in Nagasaki, which was the Christian capital of Japan.
TUCKER CARLSON: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And I mean, we kill… Well, to hear an answer for why people are very enthusiastic about that and think it’s great. I don’t think it’s great. And I think there should be a law that American armaments can’t be used to murder Christians abroad. That’s pretty simple.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: But I agree. There is a thing that I wanted to read that he said right after the bombing, which he had converted from atheism. He was Shinto, and then he was atheist, and then he converted to Christianity and Catholicism. And he was influenced by the writings of Blaise Pascal.
So he gave a speech to his community. He was one of the very few survivors in his community. And this just goes to show you the resilience and the mindset of him and how having faith can completely change the perspective, especially when you’re effectively living in hell on Earth, which is what Nagasaki was after the dropping of the bomb. People were walking around asking for water while their skin is melting off. Like, it’s literal hell on Earth.
Takashi Nagai’s Profound Faith
JONATHAN ROUMIE: He said, “I have heard that the atom bomb was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right above the cathedral. It was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. God’s providence chose Urakami, the suburb, and carried the bomb right above our homes. Is there not a profound relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War Two? Happy are those who weep. They shall be comforted.
We must walk the way of reparation, but we can turn our minds’ eyes to Jesus carrying his cross up the hill of Calvary. The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice. Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the world and religious freedom to Japan.”
TUCKER CARLSON: Wow. Is that not a profound perspective?
JONATHAN ROUMIE: That is not a normal secular perspective, I would say.
TUCKER CARLSON: No.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: That’s amazing. That is the power of a relationship with Christ. That’s what that does.
Jonathan’s Work with Hallow
TUCKER CARLSON: So for people who haven’t heard it, tell us what you do for Hallow.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: So I am one of the main voices on Hallow for prayers. So if you want to pray a specific prayer, chances are I’ve recorded it, and you can hear me pray it. Or for any of the challenges like the pray forty challenge, I will be guiding people through this challenge, telling people about Takashi Nagai’s story. And I’m also kind of a creative adviser as well and come to them with ideas and work with them on different things that they’re doing.
And, yeah, I love working with them. They’ve been such great partners, and I think the reason is that they’re believers themselves. You know? They’re doing this—I mean, you had Alex on the show, and you heard his story. I mean, he originally created the app for himself. And, you know, God took that desire and that intention in his heart and then amplified it. And now it’s the largest prayer app in the world.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s a frequent conversation in my house. I told you yesterday, my wife’s very kind, never scolds me for anything. But when she saw my schedule and saw you were coming and that we hadn’t invited you for dinner, she actually did bark at me because she’s, like, your biggest fan.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: What? What?
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m pretty detached from my schedule, but yeah.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: So yes. I thank God for your wife.
TUCKER CARLSON: Thank God for my wife. Not the first time I’ve thought that. Thank you.
It has really been wonderful the last twenty-four hours to talk to you, and it’s been my honor. Thank you very much.
JONATHAN ROUMIE: Thanks, Tucker.
Closing Message
TUCKER CARLSON: So it turns out that YouTube is suppressing this show. On one level, that’s not surprising. That’s what they do. But on another level, it’s shocking. With everything that’s going on in the world right now, all the change taking place in our economy and our politics with the wars we’re on the cusp of fighting right now, Google has decided you should have less information rather than more, and that is totally wrong. It’s immoral.
What can you do about it? Well, we could whine about it. That’s a waste of time. We’re not in charge of Google, or we could find a way around it, a way that you could actually get information that is true, not intentionally deceptive. The way to do that on YouTube, we think, is to subscribe to our channel. Subscribe. Hit the little bell icon to be notified when we upload and share this video. That way, you’ll have a much higher chance of hearing actual news and information. So we hope that you’ll do that.
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