God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed his Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours - Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley, 2015
With a few notable exceptions, the occupants of Ten Downing Street have not been famed for their religious zeal or piety. William Gladstone and Tony Blair both brought their faith into public affairs in a way that discomforted many of their colleagues, but these two men aside, the post of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury has mostly been filled by quiet Anglicans or cheerful agnostics. Sir Winston Churchill is probably the most famous, possibly the greatest, and certainly the most written-about prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom. He also appears to have been amongst the least religious. That claim, however, is scrutinised in this book by Jonathan Sandys, a great-grandson of the Great Man, and Wallace Henley a journalist and ardent admirer of Churchill.
The authors seek to show that Churchill was not the irreligious agnostic that many have put him down for. Indeed, they set out a case for considering Churchill as a man thoroughly grounded in Scripture and shaped by an evangelical piety, whilst not himself being exceptionally pious. It is fair to say that they have their work cut out. Churchill happily disavowed Christianity as a young man. Aside from state occasions he rarely attended church. One of his more famous aphorisms was that he supported the church as flying buttress on the outside rather than a pillar from within. He counted no churchmen amongst his closest friends and preferred to keep religion distant from politics - never more so than in the conduct of war. In all his copious and diverse writings, the name of Jesus Christ barely crops up.
The authors, to an extent, recognise this. They do not seek to make Churchill an exemplary Christian. Instead they look at how Churchill conformed to Christian principles in his leadership, and how God used Churchill to deliver the British people and save “Christian Civilisation”. The former is a historical question that can be addressed through judicious use of source material. The latter is a theological question that requires a rather different approach. To approach both questions in one book is a bold move, and, in my opinion, not one that pays off.
In addressing Churchill’s own spirituality, the authors make much of the influence of his low-church nanny, who had a far greater influence in his life than his disastrous parents. Churchill kept her picture by his bed for the whole of his life; how much her piety influenced him beyond his childhood is rather more debatable. What is certain is that Churchill considered himself a man destined for great things. Famously he predicted (prophesied?) to a schoolfellow that a time would come when England would be in grave peril, fighting off an invasion, and it would fall to him to save London. Throughout his life, even in his wilderness years, Churchill maintained a remarkable self-belief that his hour would come. On 10th May 1940 it duly did.
Churchill’s sense of destiny is well-documented, but he rarely spoke of it in terms other than Providence. His language gives little indication of a personal God guiding him. Sandys and Henley turn for inspiration to the Sermon on the Mount, finding ways in which Churchill’s character matches up to Jesus’ exacting standards. At times this feels too much like an exercise in shoe-horning. Did Churchill hunger and thirst for righteousness? Was he persecuted for righteousness’ sake? Was he a model of humility? The authors try to argue the point but it fails to convince. I question whether the attempt really needed to be made.
And this is the essential problem at the heart of the book. The enthusiasm and passion of the authors is understandable: Churchill was one of the most remarkable men in British, even world, history. He has become an icon of all that is admirable in the British character. Yet such is the hero-worship manifest in this book that reading it feels at times like wading through syrupy adulation. The best in Churchill’s character is inflated and held up as an example. The worst is barely acknowledged. ‘Rarely’, the book concludes, ‘have all the elements of greatness converged so quickly, and with such completeness in a crucial moment, as they did in Winston Churchill’.
The question of Churchill’s understanding of faith and religion is certainly an interesting one, but it needs to be put into context. Churchill loved the King James Version and derived some comfort from the faith into which he was born, but this was part of the cultural landscape in which the late Victorians strolled. Churchill may well have derived much of his rhetoric and self-belief from the words of Scripture, but Macaulay and Longfellow were just as influential and probably more so. Ironically the most religious statesman of his time was Neville Chamberlain’s foreign secretary, Lord Halifax - the man most people assumed would become prime minister in 1940.
For the authors, Churchill’s appointment in 1940 is nothing less than an astounding miracle that shows God’s hand in British history. It was not, they contend, the only miracle in Churchill’s life. He flirted with death at Omdurman, in the Boer War and in the trenches. On each occasion his life was spared. He certainly felt that something or one was watching over him and the authors are happy to name this as God preserving Churchill for the great hour of reckoning.
It is, of course, very difficult to argue for or against such an assertion. God’s ways are hidden from us and human history does not seem to me to be the best canvas on which to advertise God’s caring providence. Perhaps Churchill was under special divine protection, but if so, the question has to be asked as to why God left it until 1940 to bring Churchill to power, why Hitler also “miraculously” survived the various attempts on his life and why so many millions died. The authors know that they cannot answer these objections, but the argument that God works in his own ways and that Churchill was in some way a prefigurement of the Great Deliverer, Jesus Christ, fails to satisfy.
In the last section, the authors seek to apply Churchill’s example to our present situation. Western civilisation is unravelling, times are dark, and we need to keep calm and carry on like Churchill. There is an agenda here which isn’t difficult to spot. The enemies are Godless science (Richard Dawkins makes a cameo appearance), deconstructionist academics and militant atheism. Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron are both quoted with approval - the latter’s opinion on faith in society puzzlingly being described as having “Churchillian insight”. The final conclusion is that we need a latter day deliverer in the mould of Churchill and that as God provided one in 1940, so he will provide one today.
This is evangelical history written with a purpose. For those who like to see the hand of God in the rise and fall of nations, the case presented for Churchill as an instrument of divine salvation will seem compelling. For those for whom history is a messier business in which the purposes of God are but vaguely seen, this book may well be a source of some frustration and head-scratching.
Toby Hole is Vicar of St Chad, Woodseats.
God and Churchill: How the Great Leader’s Sense of Divine Destiny Changed his Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours by Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley is available from SPCK Publishing
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