Faith in the Workplace

Jonathan Aitken has been called the British Chuck Colson, and the shorthand is helpful: like Colson, Mr. Aitken was a high-altitude political figure. In the 1990s, he was caught in national scandal and confined to prison. Later, he emerged with a surprisingly mature faith. In the case of Aitken, the fallen Chief Secretary to the Treasury went from prison cell to seminary, from seminary to speaking. He is the autobiographer of Pride and Perjury and its sequel, Porridge and Passion. He has also written Psalms for People Under Pressure. In 2006, Mr. Aitken released Charles Colson: A Life and became president of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a leading human rights organization.

TheHighCalling.org seized a moment with Mr. Aitken recently to broach subjects such as crime and punishment, grace, forgiveness, and prayer.

Mr. Aitken, in various interviews, you say you're proud to be a foxhole Christian. Explain what you mean—and now that you're out of the foxhole, I wonder, is it difficult to hold onto the relationship with God that flourished in prison?

Well, by foxhole Christian, I mean someone who came to faith in conditions of great adversity. The question is, when you come out of the foxhole, do you still hold fast to the faith—to the disciplines? One of my own greatest failings was the sin of pride. I certainly had vast quantities when I was a rising politician. But occasionally, it is also possible to be led astray by, some would say, spiritual pride. Fortunately, God helps you to keep humble.

For example, whenever I gave a really bad speech in politics, people booed or hissed or indicated their displeasure. In the spiritual form, I've noticed that some of the worst talks I ever gave sometimes are most effective because, really, my input is not important. God's input is all-important.

So, I think conversion—in a foxhole or anywhere else—is only the launch of a long unrelenting struggle. You are more alert to thoughts and feelings when you get out of the foxhole, if you've been genuinely converted. If you haven't been genuinely converted, you just go back to the old ways.

You work with Chuck Colson, who also had a dramatic and public fall and conversion. Plenty of other leaders have been caught up in negative publicity. When you read newspaper accounts of people like Jeffrey Skilling, or Tom DeLay, what would you say to those people?

I would probably say, "Hello, fellow sinners. How are you getting along?" One of the worst oxymorons in the world is celebrity Christian. And a celebrity Christian sinner is even worse. The only point of this notoriety, I think, is that God may use it to bring in people who otherwise would never come near a church event but do come in almost out of cynicism. They want to reassure themselves that all this Christian stuff is pretty good nonsense and I'm putting on an act.

I think people who have had spectacular falls from grace and then turned to Christ have to put on a double armor against pride—take a double dose of anti-pride or humility pills. Nothing is special about having a well-known fall from grace except that God, in mysterious ways, sometimes uses that. So I don't feel any kinship with Tom DeLay or Jeffrey Skilling.

Nothing is special about being a celebrity sinner; in fact, I actively dislike the term.

You're out of politics for good, now. But in retrospect, do you have advice for people trying to serve God in politics?

First of all, I do not draw a huge distinction between a servant of God in the ordained ministry and a servant of God in politics or business. I'm much encouraged in this view by the work I'm doing right this minute writing a biography of John Newton. One of his major contributions was when Wilberforce in effect said to him, "I'm thinking of coming out of politics and being an evangelical clergyman like you."

Newton effectively said, "No, my boy, you stay where you are and serve God in politics."

And look what Wilberforce did with that service! So I think the answer to the question is: you can serve God anywhere. I have a piece of new-biographer's gold, which I uncovered thanks to a talented researcher: Newton, before he was called to the ordained ministry, effectively withdrew for six weeks and kept a most detailed diary of prayer and Bible reading, testing his vocation. In politics, of course there were pressures between doing the right thing and staying in office—between upholding God's principles and being popular with the voters or less popular. But whether people are Christian or not Christian, they still respect somebody who has beliefs, principles, ideals, and sticks to them. So I think politics is a real good Christian vocation.

Was writing Chuck Colson's biography in any way cathartic for you?

Well, there were moments of catharsis. People occasionally call me the British Colson. And I always say, "Please don't talk nonsense."

Chuck is one thousand times a better man than I am, and with much deeper history. That said, of course, there are similarities. And we both think we're probably the only two people, at least in the Western world, who were in high positions of power, had dramatic falls because of our own stupidities and follies, went to jail, then were rescued by God's grace and went into—in his case, full-time, in my case, part-time prison ministry. I could see so well when writing the biography, almost intuitively, when Chuck was grappling, and sometimes still grapples, with his demons of pride and so on. But he's a wonderful man. Much more than feeling cathartic, I felt, well, tutored by him as I wrote the book.