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The confirmation process of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers took an unexpected turn as reporters began to question whether Focus on the Family founder James Dobson knows something he "probably shouldn't know" about the nominee. Dobson denies he has been given any insider information. Nevertheless, he is enthusiastic about Miers's candidacy, citing in particular her evangelical faith, strong church attendance, and pro-life political views. Thus, Dobson expects Miers's faith life to positively impact how she rules.

Dobson's comments are curious, since John Roberts's supporters continually asserted that his faith would not determine how he makes decisions. Roberts's backers worried about claims that his Catholics faith on pro-life issues would force him to recuse himself on such cases.

Gary Bauer, commenting on 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, noted with no small amount of irony: "When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech [in 1960] that the Vatican would not tell him what to do, evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today, evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do." That reversal took about 64 years. The Roberts/Miers reversal took about 64 days.

Clearly, evangelicals remain ambivalent about how faith should interact with politics. Few want to return to Constantine's age, when Christianity became an official state religion and fell under significant state control. But most evangelicals want to retain healthy space for Christians to participate in political life. Christianity Today clearly declares, "We Christians are citizens of two kingdoms and cannot free ourselves from responsibility to act in both."

CT envisions this role as prophetic—good citizens speaking out against evil or unjust laws. Similarly, Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission willingly criticizes U.S. policy, using religious language, when he thinks that policy promotes unjust practices. Evangelicals for Social Action president Ron Sider eagerly pits Christian social organizations against their secular counterparts. Following this view, it would seem proper for Christians to consider Miers's religious life a valuable addition to her resume and appropriate discussion topic.

But this view is not unopposed. Kenneth Craycraft Jr. argues that Christians inevitably conflict with their state, no matter the type of state, and criticizes what he calls "public theology." He cites the third-century tract Ad Diognetus (Letter to Diognetus), and argues, "What distinguished these Christians was precisely their understanding of the incompatibility of the principles of their faith with that of any political regime." Thus, Christians did not make themselves likable, nor attempt to improve or justify the present regime. In fact, aside from obeying basic laws, they seemed to ignore the state altogether. This contrasts with modern public theologians, who, Craycraft argues, must adopt language of the state in order to interact with it, thus subordinating the witness of the Church to the idol of relevance.

Craycraft—along with theologian Stanley Hauerwas and the Radical Orthodoxy movement—would not likely see the value for Christians to join the Supreme Court fight. From their perspective, it is not so scandalous that Christians might be excluded from government, but that we are so eager to get in. Worse, they say we have examples of Christians using government against other Christians. Christians should tend to their own house, such advocates say, and any work they do in the world should be with the church, not government agencies.

Of course, Christian advocates of vigorous political engagement, like James Skillen of the Center for Public Justice, have ready-made rebuttals for such arguments. But seasoned culture warriors like Charles Colson have spoken in very similar language at times, warning against allowing "the gospel to be taken hostage to any political ideology." Colson has not abandoned active involvement in political life, but his misgivings illustrate the subtle strength of Radical Orthodoxy's arguments.

Interestingly, supporters of both Radical Orthodoxy and civic engagement similarly emphasize the importance of establishing roots in a fixed community. Colson and former CT editor Kenneth Kanzer see rooted community as the starting point for forming a healthy civic and political life. (Caleb Stegall, by contrast, views it as a rejection of American liberalism and radical individualism.) All agree, however, that civil society is worth preserving.

The dispute, then, is over the nature of civil society. How rooted are we to a nation and its government? How does this loyalty, Skillen and others ask, differ from loyalty to family and friends? What is our obligation to the state, when our supreme authority is Jesus Christ?

These are the questions that determine how Christians should interact with government. Skillen, Colson, and Hauerwas all believe that government employees, like Chief Justice Roberts, should never suppress their Christian views and morality while serving in government office. But they would vigorously disagree about how whether it is possible to be an authentic Christian in government, and thus if Miers and Roberts have any choice but to deny their faith to some degree. Miers's confirmation hearings may help us understand which idea is closest to reality.

Will Reaves, a recent Wheaton College graduate, works as a freelancer for Christianity Today International and Tyndale House Publishers.