Occasionally, I have been asked about my religious ideals and how they inform me on the campaign trail. Since it is Sunday and I am doing an event at a church later today, I thought I might write about it.

Before I decided to run for office, I prayed about it for a long time.

I was very close to my mother, my grandparents, and an uncle, all of whom have passed. While I was working through the decision, I felt their presence. That was comforting and clarifying. I think God brings you to decisions, the way He brought Jonah to one, and you choose. I chose.

I don’t usually write about faith. Presbyterians don’t tend to wear it on our sleeves, and the people who know me best know what I believe without me announcing it. But it’s Sunday.

I was raised Presbyterian. I baptized my kids in the Presbyterian Church. In the 2000s, like a lot of mainline churches, mine moved in a direction I couldn’t follow. It became less about my relationship with Christ and more about the political fights of the moment. I stopped going. I never stopped believing.

What I believe is simple: Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, and the denominations are different rooms in the same house. My kids will raise their kids in different traditions. One Catholic, the other probably Lutheran. My wife was a Missouri Synod Lutheran growing up. I’m fine with all of it. Our belief in Christ holds.

My faith has deepened most through people. I have a group of friends I’ve known since elementary school. Catholics, a Lutheran, a few born-again Christians, and we text constantly. One of them lost his wife and wrote a book about how that loss brought him back to Christ. Hallmark made it into a movie. Watching him walk through that and come out of it the way he did deepened my own faith more than any sermon I’ve heard.

My wife’s sorority sister, Michelle, and her husband, Jeff, found Christ later in life and now run a ministry in Colorado. Last time I saw them, I asked who they’d be if they were a person in the Bible. Jeff said John the Baptist. Perfect for him. If you asked me,

I have many Jewish friends, and I admire the Jewish faith deeply. Without Judaism, there is no Christianity. The resilience of the Jewish people through history, who were persecuted, exiled, murdered, and still here, still trying to make the world better despite what it has done to them, has shaped how I think about resilience, endurance, and purpose.

There’s an old story about a man who dies and asks Christ why, looking back on his life, there was only one set of footprints during the hardest stretches. Christ says, “That’s where I carried you.”

Everyone has hard stretches. I have had plenty of them in my life. If you don’t have adversity and breakpoints in your life, you aren’t trying. I know for sure that in my life, there are two sets of footprints and times when there is only one set of footprints.

Politics is one of mine right now. I don’t expect divine intervention in a primary, and I don’t think God cares whether I win. But I do think He cares whether I run the race honestly, treat people decently, and remember why I started.

That’s enough faith for any campaign trail.