God and Churchill HB Read online

  ‘A fascinating and well-argued book that adds a vital, missing component to understanding Churchill. As a lifelong admirer, who as a boy met Churchill and who has read widely on his life, I was curious to know what Sandys and Henley would present as evidence. I was not only convinced but delighted at the realism and relevance of their portrayal of Churchill. He emerges as anything but ardently religious, but he was more personally aware of his destiny and more biblically literate and attuned to the Christian world view and Christian civilization than many Christians today.’

  OS GUINNESS

  Author of A Free People’s Suicide

  ‘I have known four generations of the Churchill family. Jonathan Sandys has both the vision and the voice to carry forth the legacy of his great-grandfather and is well worthy to offer this account of Churchill’s life and faith. God and Churchill has earned a place next to the greatest of books ever written on the master statesman.’

  JAMES C. HUMES

  Author and former presidential speech writer

  ‘What a wonderfully enthusiastic book, written with the insights of a great-grandson of Winston Churchill who understands his great ancestor in unique and special ways. Jonathan grasps the spiritual dimensions of Churchill’s life and the struggle against the pure evil of Nazi tyranny. And there is no doubt: it was Churchill as prime minister in 1940 who not only saved Britain from defeat but saved Christian civilization itself, as Jonathan and Wallace make so very clear. This is a book for Christians as well as for Churchill enthusiasts.’

  DR CHRISTOPHER CATHERWOOD

  Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Churchill Archives By-Fellow Emeritus, historian of twentieth-century history, and evangelical writer

  ‘A graphic portrayal of the life and legacy of Winston Churchill, with emphasis on his guiding belief in divine providence. Long before “the clash of civilizations” had become a common term, Churchill knew what it meant and spent his life defending the civilization so decisively shaped by the Christian faith. A fascinating study!’

  TIMOTHY GEORGE

  Founding Dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University and General Editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture

  ‘Having witnessed first-hand how God moves to influence major events in the world for the good of his people, I cannot imagine anyone better suited to tell the story of God’s work in the life and times of Churchill than Churchill’s own flesh and blood. Jonathan Sandys brings an unparalleled vibrancy and perspective on the great man and his times. He and Wallace Henley have artfully woven together the best-known and most obscure pieces of history to present the beautiful and compelling tapestry that is God and Churchill. An absolute must-read.’

  JOANNE KING HERRING

  Diplomat, author and President/CEO of the Marshall Plan Charities

  ‘Great leaders, and the times and circumstances in which they served, have long fascinated me. Winston Churchill has been of special interest to me for many years. I have read books about the British wartime leader, but they always seem to leave out a critical element. But Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley have captured it in this book. At last we have a detailed presentation not only of Churchill’s legendary exploits but also of the inner dynamic that compelled him with a vision for “Christian civilization” and an iron will to defend it at all costs. Sandys and Henley, to use a Churchillian idea, have brought the inspiration and lessons of the past into our present for the sake of the future. This is a must-read for our critical times.’

  ED YOUNG

  Senior pastor, Second Baptist Church, Houston

  Published in the United States of America in 2015 by Tyndale Momentum, an imprint of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois, and WordServe Literary Group

  First published in Great Britain in 2015

  Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

  36 Causton Street

  London SW1P 4ST

  www.spck.org.uk

  Copyright © Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

  The authors and publishers have made every effort to ensure that the external website and email addresses included in this book are correct and up to date at the time of going to press. The authors and publishers are not responsible for the content, quality or continuing accessibility of the sites.

  All the photographs included in this book are the property of their respective copyright holders, and all rights are reserved:

  Blenheim Palace © Jason Salmon/Shutterstock; Churchill, age seven, 1881, ZZZ 7555D by the British Government from the collection of the Imperial War Museums; Churchill and his mother Jenny and brother John in 1889 © Bridgeman Images; Schoolboy Winston © Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Elizabeth Ann Everest (d. 1895) (b/w photo) © Private Collection/Bridgeman Images; Churchill on horseback in Bangalore India in 1897, from A Roving Commission by Winston S. Churchill, published by Scribners 1930 © Universal Images Group/SuperStock; A group of prisoners, with Churchill on the right © IWM; Churchill standing at the opening of his tent, South Africa, 1900 © Universal History Archive/UIG/Bridgeman Images; Lloyd George and Winston Churchill © SuperStock; Bricklaying Winston © Keystone/Getty Images; Churchill visits the ruins of Coventry Cathedral, September 1941 © Prisma/SuperStock; St Paul’s Cathedral, 29 December 1940 (b/w photo), Mason, Herbert (1891–1960) © Galerie Bilderwelt/Bridgeman Images; Churchill on the deck of the HMS Prince of Wales during the Atlantic Conference, 1941 © Universal History Archive/UIG/Bridgeman Images; Churchill and the War Cabinet, October 1941 © Bridgeman Images; Churchill giving the ‘V’ sign in Downing Street, 1943 © IWM; Churchill and the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day, 1945 © IWM; Churchill delivering his speech ‘The Sinews of Peace’ at Fulton, Missouri, USA, March 1946 © Popperfoto/Getty Images; Churchill’s funeral procession, 30 January 1965 © Keystone Archives/Heritage-Images/Heritage/SuperStock; grandson’s christening, the return from Tehran conference, and Churchill at Chartwell are from the personal collection of the author and are used with permission.

  Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Authorized Version of the Bible (The King James Bible), the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press.

  Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

  Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version (Anglicized edition). Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Publishers, an Hachette UK company. All rights reserved. ‘NIV’ is a registered trademark of Biblica (formerly International Bible Society). UK trademark number 1448790.

  Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, cop
yright © 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978–0–281–07527–0

  eBook ISBN 978–0–281–07528–7

  Typeset and eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

  Manufacture managed by Jellyfish

  Soli Deo Gloria

  FROM JONATHAN SANDYS

  To my darling wife, Sara, without whose tireless help and encouragement during my own ‘Black Dog’ times this project wouldn’t have been possible.

  To our beautiful son, Jesse, who despite kicking and screaming throughout the editing process, gave smiles and cooings that brought humour and welcomed respites.

  To Sir Martin Gilbert, my great-grandfather’s official biographer, whose incredible life’s work on Churchill has always provided me with an accurate and in-depth map to follow.

  FROM WALLACE HENLEY

  To Irene, after fifty-three years, still my golden princess and destiny-sharer.

  To our dynamic, engaging, adventurous, never-dull, ever-expanding family.

  To the pastors and teachers who, many years ago, helped me appreciate history and look for the hand of God guiding it to its purpose.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword by James A. Baker III

  Preface by Cal Thomas

  Introduction

  Part I: The Remarkable Preparation

  1: A Vision of Destiny

  2: Surviving Destiny’s Perilous Paths

  3: From the Admiralty to the Trenches

  Part II: Destiny

  4: Hitler’s Vision

  5: Prime Minister at Last

  Part III: Saving ‘Christian Civilization’

  6: Churchill and the Sermon on the Mount

  7: Preserving a ‘Certain Way of Life’

  8: Hitler and ‘Perverted Science’

  9: Hitler and the Corruption of the Church

  10: Nazism and the German Disaster

  11: Churchill’s Urgent Concern – and Ours

  Part IV: Hope for Our Time

  12: How Churchill Kept Calm and Carried On

  13: Churchill and the Character of Leadership

  14: Help and Hope for Our Times

  Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Search items

  About the Authors

  But thou knowest it is difficult, things pressing upon every sense, to believe that the informing power of them is the unseen; that out of it they come; that, where we can descry no hand directing, a will, nearer than any hand, is moving from within, causing them to fulfil his word.

  GEORGE MACDONALD, UNSPOKEN SERMONS

  FOREWORD

  By James A. Baker III

  ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2010, I was honoured to speak at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where, sixty-four years earlier, Winston Churchill delivered the ‘Iron Curtain’ speech that did so much to define American diplomacy for most of the second half of the twentieth century. The great question of Churchill’s period focused on how the Cold War, and the ominous arms race between the West and the Communist bloc, would eventually end.

  At Fulton in 1946, Churchill described the dangers ahead. ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the [European] Continent,’ he said. As he contemplated the new military threats and oppressive Communist regimes, Churchill lamented that ‘this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought [the Second World War] to build up.’

  History, as we know, has a way of repeating itself. As I write this Foreword in 2015, we are again on the precipice of crisis as international terror threatens civilization. Once again, we are asking: How will it all end? As Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley detail in these pages, we have much to learn from Churchill’s leadership in his chaotic times.

  As I noted in my Westminster speech in 2010, the Cold War ended – after forty-four years of tension, stress, and terrifying moments at the brink – with a whimper rather than the nuclear bang that so many had feared. I was in my teens in 1946 and could not have imagined then that I would be directly involved in the process that brought the conflict to resolution.

  When discussions between President George H. W. Bush, under whom I served as secretary of state at the time, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and German chancellor Helmut Kohl focused on the alignments of the new, unified Germany, there were seemingly unbridgeable disagreements, even as an accord seemed tantalizingly close.

  Years later, in September 2009, I described the situation for the German magazine Der Spiegel. I told their two reporters how Kohl, Bush and I had met at Camp David in February 1990 to talk specifically about German unification and the implications for NATO.

  ‘Germany doesn’t want neutrality in any way,’ Chancellor Kohl had told us. ‘A united Germany will be a member of NATO.’

  With that, he gave us a binding commitment.

  The concern of many was that Gorbachev would insist on German neutrality, not wanting the new Germany to be aligned with the West, especially in a military alliance. Already the British and French were concerned about the unification of Communist East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR) with free West Germany, and neutrality might have stymied the negotiations. Gorbachev, however, had committed from the outset not to use military force. Because the East German population would not have accepted the survival of the GDR, Gorbachev could only have stopped the course of events by force of arms. So he had little choice.

  As I described this situation to Der Spiegel, one of the interviewers said, ‘This retreat of the Soviets, who had for decades tried to hold the West in check with proxy wars and sharp rhetoric, even now seems like a miracle.’

  A miracle? The reporter probably had no spiritual implications in mind in choosing that term. Yet perhaps he was more insightful than he realized. I recalled a visit by Gorbachev to the White House in May 1990. We were in the Cabinet Room when he acknowledged that any country should have the right to choose any alliance it wanted to join.

  When he said that, it was done.

  Sitting there, I thought, Wow! What had seemed impossible had become a reality with Gorbachev’s words.

  Though Winston Churchill was not alive to see it, he may not have been surprised that the Cold War ended in what some would regard as a miraculous fashion. After all, as Sandys and Henley note in this book, Churchill’s entire life and destiny seemed to have been miraculous. Though not a religious man, he nevertheless had a sense of divine destiny. As you will read in God and Churchill, his very survival sometimes was nothing short of miraculous. Likewise, both Britain’s survival during the horrid summer of the 1940 Blitz and the near-impossible evacuation at Dunkirk have been characterized by some as miraculous.

  But were these marvellous outcomes the result of divine intervention? The authors, and I, leave that to the reader’s own conclusion. Such a question, however, raises the possibility of God’s intervention in history and the interaction between the spiritual and material realms.

  There was a time in my own life when there seemed to be no need for spiritual intervention. I thought that a successful professional never admitted to pain or problems. Then I walked through a personal crisis. My wife, Susan, helped me pray through it and understand that I really needed to stop trying to play God. Instead, I needed to turn the matter over to him.

  We all have those critical moments when we are tempted to cry out to God – or actually do, as Churchill did one night while hiding in a ditch in South Africa as the enemy pursued him. As you will read, though he was struggling with his own faith, he prayed earnestly in that moment for God’s help.

  During my own years in Washington, DC, prayer became an important part of my routine. I met on Wednesdays to pray with a small group of very normal guys who
just happened to hold positions of power and influence, as I phrased it in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1990. My prayer partners came from both major political parties and different religious traditions. But we all shared an understanding that I had come to recognize: inner security and true fulfilment come by faith, not by wielding power in a town where power is king. Such fulfilment and inner security come only by developing a personal relationship with God, a relationship that for me is made possible by Jesus Christ.

  In fact, there were three things that kept me grounded during my years under the searing national spotlight: my family, my friends and my faith. Many people believe that faith is more difficult for those in public life. For me, at least – and apparently for Winston Churchill – the opposite was true. Living in the centrifuge of politics encouraged – even demanded – spiritual growth.

  I concur with Lech Wałęsa, the great Polish leader who played a vital role in helping end the Cold War, who said: ‘Sooner or later we will have to go back to our fundamental values, back to God, the truth, the truth which is in God.’

  Winston Churchill saw this in his own times, and such vision compelled his great concern for what he repeatedly called Christian civilization. I hope God and Churchill will inspire such a perspective and urgency in all who read it.

  James A. Baker III was White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan, and White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush. He is now Honorary Chair of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University.

  PREFACE

  By Cal Thomas

  WHAT MADE WINSTON CHURCHILL?

  Both Churchill’s great-grandson Jonathan Sandys and Wallace Henley – a veteran of politics, journalism and the church – have dug deeply to find the less exposed answers to this question. In a sense, they provide what may be the first ‘spiritual biography’ of Winston Churchill.

  The quest to understand the lives and motives of those who affect our times usually hinges on an old debating point: Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times?