Stephen Timms MP has said he would love to see more Christian students entering into politics after university.
The Labour MP for East Ham, who is also a committed Christian, said it was great to see lots of Christians serving their communities in practical ways during the pandemic but that he would also love to see more get involved in politics.
"What I'm looking for is the transformation of our politics because trust in politics is at a pretty low ebb at the moment and where are we going to find the resources and the vision to renew politics and rebuild confidence in politics?" he told students at an online event organised by the Just Love network.
"If you look back at our history, the initial confidence in parliament and democracy in Britain really came out of the evangelical awakening 200 to 250 years ago, when lots of Christians got involved and gave a vision to politics, like we saw through the eradication of slavery and those great campaigns," he said.
"That was the starting point for effective democratic politics in Britain and we need that today."
The event was organised to help Christian students think about the role they can play in building a more just world.
Mr Timms said: "We have to do politics if we're going to pursue justice, there's no way out from that."
He went on to say that two of the biggest justice issues at the moment were the five-week wait for Universal Credit and the lack of recourse to public funds for migrant families because of their immigration status.
But he added that there had been some positive developments during the pandemic, with churches in many places partnering with their local councils to serve their communities through the crisis.
"It's really striking that during the pandemic all across the country lots and lots of councils have depended on local churches for really basic things, like getting food out to people, partnering with foodbanks, getting information to people they otherwise wouldn't be able to reach," he said.
"A lot of people still believe that churches are on the way out and yet suddenly in 2020 and 2021 it's turned out that the churches, uniquely, have had not only the motivation but the resources to take on these jobs.
"I've been involved in a bit of research around this and local councils around the country have been really, really appreciative of the way that the churches have stepped up and I think that's really shown something very important about where the potential to change things for the better in Britain today can actually be found."
The MP said that prayer had been a "lifeline" to him during his time in politics and that he meets with members of his church each week to pray for his work.
"The prayer support I've had from that church has really been the basis for everything I've done," he said.
"When I became a local councillor, first a group in the church offered to meet with me once a month to pray. Then I became the leader of the local council and they said 'we've got to pray for you once a week'.
"And we do meet pretty much every week before church and that's really been a kind of lifeline for everything I've done in politics."
Just Love is a network of 25 student groups that meet together to pray, fundraise and take practical action to address social justice issues in their communities and further afield. At the same time, the students are mentored and trained by seasoned campaigners.
Just Love CEO Josh Smedley said the movement began because a lot of student discipleship was "out of joint".
"There was plenty of Christian stuff going on but almost none of it concerned justice. At best, justice was treated as an optional extra, at worst it was treated as a distraction from the Gospel," he said.
He said the vision was to inspire and release every Christian student to pursue the biblical call to justice, and move them from a place of "disengagement to awakening".
"This can't just be some of us and some of the time," he said.
"We serve a God who is not OK that there are more slaves in the world right now than there ever have been; a God who's not OK that we have brought our planet to the point of ecological disaster; a God who's not OK that in Europe we spend about eight times more on alcohol than it would cost to provide basic health and nutrition for all," he said.
"We follow a God who's not OK or apathetic about all that and therefore we shouldn't be either."
He ended by praising Christian students for their ongoing commitment to justice despite the pandemic, with the student groups raising an impressive £41,000 for charities between Easter and Christmas 2020.
"This is a tough time to be a student, especially for Freshers, but the message we've been giving our students over this last year has been simple: this pandemic will change us. What matters is how it changes us," he said.
"Our students could have been forgiven this year for opting out of it, for finding ways to distract themselves and escape from reality. But so many of them have made space for God, showing up to reality, embracing suffering and contending in prayer for the community."
