The editor’s challenge seemed straightforward: explain what is meant today by “public.” So I turned to the dictionary and found the expected definitions: “concerning the people as a whole,” “existing in open view,” and, when used as a noun, “people in general; the community.” It all felt a little obvious, so I flipped to some fancier treatments, where I found curious etymological stories going back centuries, from folclic (ancestor of “folk”) to “public women” (an antiquated term for prostitutes). 

Interesting, perhaps, but not quite on point. After all, this is Comment, where our mandate is “public theology for the common good.” The word “public” carries weight; it’s embedded with responsibility. And so behind the editor’s question I sensed a concern: For a magazine created to do public theology, a task where the public space is both what we study and whom we address, just what is this space when the word “public” bears ever more dimensions of meaning? Can we still define clear boundaries between what belongs in the public sphere and what doesn’t? 

It’s tempting to reach here for the public-private binary, so familiar to we moderns who assume that “public” encompasses all that lies beyond our personal domain. But lived experience renders so-called autonomy a fiction. Rarely are our personal attributes expressed in isolation. Even the most reclusive introvert has to deal with the reality that part of every life is public. Take any virtue—love, courage, integrity, generosity—and you’ll find it meaningless without the context of a public dimension. Consider how expressing love for our neighbour demands that we first understand their circumstances and needs. While charitable donations can demonstrate care, their power emerges only when combined with personal engagement and an intentional journey taken to understand the needs of those on the receiving end. 

At Comment, we understand the essential public nature of our lives to be rooted in a Christian anthropology. As image bearers of a Triune God, whose three persons exist in relationship to each other and cannot be fully understood outside their inter-trinitarian relationships, so we are created for relationship with God and with one another. 

But there is more to relationships than individual person-to-person experiences. Relationships take place within and require structures. Some are formal, others informal. Take my closest lifelong friendship—while it appears to have no rules and we can say almost anything to each other, even this seeming lack of structure evolved over time. That “rule” of openness, authenticity, and mutual vulnerability developed gradually. When we zoom out to larger contexts—families, workplaces, churches, neighbourhoods, art groups, schools, stores—we encounter and experience community with others in settings that all have their own distinct rules and norms. Our public nature works itself out across a spectrum of human connection, one that shifts with context. 

It is this spectrum, however, that is being flattened today, most obviously by the privileging of the political. When we hear the phrase “public funds,” we think of tax dollars. When something is deemed a “public problem,” the default response begins with “Government should . . .” Even our “public consultations,” despite efforts to ensure diversity and inclusion, typically proceed under an assumption of government authority. 

My concern here does not stem from a libertarian impulse. I believe in the good of government as a public institution exercising power to serve public ends. Scripture, particularly Romans 13, establishes government’s legitimate authority to exercise judgment and maintain order, a mandate that includes both negative and positive dimensions. Government exists in a broken world to deal with injustice and to maintain order. But before the fall into sin and the curse that sin brought into creation, there was a positive command given to Adam and Eve to cultivate the earth. The creational task for humankind is to discover all that is in creation—to create a God-glorifying civilization that started in a garden and will end in a city. Carrying out that task is not a private mandate given to individuals but a public mandate that needs to be carried out in society. Even in a world without sin and brokenness, we would need communal structures to build the laboratories where researchers make discoveries, the workshops where craftsmen create, and the galleries where beauty finds expression. 

But the state is just one public institution among many. When it assumes responsibilities that properly belong to other spheres, it commits an injustice, even if such overreach appears more efficient in the short term. In liberal democracies, the state interacts with several other institutions (political parties, media, advocacy groups, etc.), each of which has distinct functions but overlaps in what we might describe as “the political process.” While every institution exercises authority in its sphere, political power is distinct in its ability to advocate for and use coercion backed by official position. 

While the specifics vary, the tribal lens through which an increasing proportion of the populace engages in the political sphere has resulted in a growing inability to distinguish between the meanings of “public” and “political.” The troubling conclusion is that the more public something is, the more legitimate coercive power becomes in managing it. The rich ecosystem of public institutions is essentially ignored in favour of a single (and psychologically threatening) potential state solution. The reality is that every institution of society has a public dimension. Not in identical ways, but every institution’s impact extends beyond its immediate members. Take marriage as an example: while fundamentally a bond between two people, it requires public recognition through ceremony and law. The state not only acknowledges marriages but also promotes them through tax benefits. Similarly, churches “belong” to their members in a civil sense, but they function as public institutions that shape the broader society. 

There’s a magnetic force inherent in liberal democracy that defaults to an unhelpful private-public binary. You don’t have to be a Rousseau scholar steeped in the nuances of social-contract theory to understand that liberal democracy sources power in individual autonomy, with the state getting legitimacy through collective delegation. From the perspective of Christian social thought, that’s a foundational problem. Christianity may overlap with liberalism in focusing on individual dignity and agency, but there is a profound difference as to how we get there. From a Christian perspective, the source of power isn’t the individual; it’s the creator. The source of our agency is our being image bearers of a sovereign God. And the source of state power isn’t mediated through the individual but comes directly from God, just as the source and legitimacy of other institutions come from God and not from the state or individuals. 

While Calvinist political theorists in the sixteenth century found this to be in useful alignment with their concerns about depravity and how it inevitably corrupts the use of power (advocating various forms of federalism and accountability to check the potential for that abuse), the Christian understanding of power and agency is rooted in creation, not the fall. It recognizes that power takes various forms, not just political, and that the artist has a different but no less meaningful power than does the statesman, the craftsman also being differently equipped but no less powerful than the caregiver. 

This understanding of power has profound practical implications, particularly in our current context. As traditional institutions undergo radical rethinking and the premises of democratic liberalism face unprecedented questioning, many Christians have tried to translate their convictions into political imperatives—only to find themselves divided. Let me suggest two implications that flow from a conscious insistence that the public and political have much less Venn overlap than most have seemed to assume in recent times. 

First, this distinction broadens our horizons beyond purely political engagement. While political witness remains important, it should never define Christian orthodoxy. When fellow believers reach different political conclusions, we must remember that Scripture nowhere lists voting patterns as marks of grace. As God reminded Zechariah after the Babylonian exile, kingdom work proceeds “not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit.” The Spirit may convince me to vote in a certain way, but I cannot judge my neighbour’s spiritual state based on how—or whether—they vote. 

Second, this broader understanding of “public” opens new avenues for Christian engagement. Even as political divisions deepen, we’re seeing renewed appreciation for Christianity’s cultural contributions. Authors like Tom Holland and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, among others who until recently were making arguments associated with atheism, are now touting the “cultural benefits of Christianity.” There’s lots of nuance to be unpacked in these arguments, but as the co-founder of an explicitly Christian think tank who’s spent a few decades collecting data in order to support public arguments that Christian social principles contribute to social flourishing, let me highlight the larger point. It is the public good of Christianity, often expressed in spheres other than the political, that makes a compelling case for our neighbours to consider the Christian faith. 

Perhaps a final “P” word is helpful here—personal. Christianity is certainly public, and the public intellectuals promoting cultural Christianity these days are doing mostly good work in highlighting the social implications of the Christian faith in the face of a culture that not only has amnesia but is also dealing with forces that actively marginalize faith-motivated public engagements as not in the public interest. But to come full circle, Christianity isn’t ultimately about being public; it is about relationships. If my opening salvo was that relationships (for which humans are created) are inherently public, my closing point is this: let’s not let the public nature of and public arguments about Christianity strip away her essence. The Christian faith is nothing if it is not rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ and our personal relationships to him. 

That sounds pietistic and personal, and it is. But it has profound public implications. Focusing on the public dimensions of Christianity is like admiring cut flowers. They can be bundled in a manner that displays their beauty even more gloriously than when each is on its natural stem, rooted in the soil. But cut flowers have a short lifespan. We need the roots in order to keep producing fruits. Promoting a public Christianity as if it were possible without personal faith is equally short-sighted, and inevitably diminishes rather than promotes social flourishing. 

The question, What does “public” mean today? requires more than simply asserting Christ’s sovereignty over every square inch of creation. It demands careful attention to distinctions—between public and private, between public and political, between various forms of public power. This attention to nuance isn’t mere semantic exercise but essential groundwork for faithful public theology in our time.