NT Wright and Michael Bird in their new book, Jesus and the Powers, deal with living out faith in government life as one aspect of faith and faithfulness to the Kingdom of God.

They tell a story of Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of Great Britain. In one interview, a journalist was asking Blair about his faith and before Blair could give an answer, a media aide to Blair blurted out: “Downing Street doesn’t do God.” (p. 74)

It’s been a failure of public life for centuries. We just don’t want politicians “doing God” in the political position… unless, of course, they’re holding our particular position.

Several years ago I was teaching a spiritual formation class at what was then my denominational college. One week there was a guest speaker on campus who was an influential pastor in that denomination and I was assigned to have him teach one of my class sessions. It was on personal holiness.

This was early in the George W Bush administration and it opened up an amazing discussion (later) on personal holiness and public life. The pastor’s claim was that our Pentecostal denomination had been built on personal holiness and faith really didn’t belong in the public square of politics. It was so personal to him he declared that he didn’t even want a souvenir of the Statue of Liberty in his office because it represented idolatry.

While I agree with him on the Statue of Liberty (at least when it comes to allegiances), I disagreed with his view on personal holiness not belonging in the public square. I challenged him in class on the topic because it was being worked out in real time in our denomination. We had a third generation denominational figure serving as Attorney General of the United States. My question was this: How do you keep faith “personal” and NOT bring it into that office when you are dealing with matters of justice? How could we have a seemingly robust theology of personal holiness and NOT consider public holiness as well?

His answer was that our doctrine simply didn’t allow for it. It only allowed for personal holiness and that was it.

The problem is this: the man was in the public square. He would have to go on and deal with 9/11 prosecutions, racial attacks on American Muslims, prosecution of soldiers who tortured prisoners of war, and SO much more! If that man felt that he couldn’t “do God” while serving in the Justice Department… what was his moral base?

We will always have debates on being the public square, withdrawing from the public debate, being shut out of the public debate, etc. But that is what we should have. We should have these discussions! We should understand the Kingdom of God matters when we talk about national responses to things like… well… Gaza… or Ukraine… or domestic terrorism.

But if our faith is reduced to, “Well, you need to get saved so you can go to heaven”… I need to ask this question: What on earth are we still here for?

And if your answer is: “So other people can go to heaven,” I say you have a very shriveled view of the power of the Gospel. And you have no view of the Kingdom of God.

We need a grander vision that the Gospels actually lay out for us. This is the whole point of the resurrected life! We live in this world and HOW we live in this world matters. It is time for us to live with a grander vision for life!