Today we're going to be discussing Christian leadership lessons from the life of Winston Churchill. And we're joined by Wallace Henley, co-author of the new book, God in Churchill How the Great Leader's Sense of Divine Destiny Changed His Troubled World and Offers Hope for Ours. And this is a book that he co-authored with the great grandson of Winston Churchill, Jonathan Sandy. Wallace is a senior associate pastor of Houston's Second Baptist Church and is also the author of Globequake. And his insight and wisdom have come through a career of more than 40 years that's included service in the church, the White House, the U.S. Congress, and academia. Welcome to the Christianity and Business Podcast, Wallace.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Derek. It's a real pleasure to join you.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's an honor to have you. Well, as soon as I started reading your book, The God and Church, I was reminded of a couple of books that my dad gave to me as a young Christian, which actually wasn't too long ago, but I was just starting in the in the Air Force. I was in the ROTC program, and he gave me the books, The Light and the Glory, and From Sea to Shining Sea by Peter Marshall and David Manuel. And so, of course, you know, these are spiritual biographies of Christians who weren't necessarily pastors of churches, although there were many, you know, church leaders like uh Charles Finney and um and Asbury and others, but um, but it uh it reminded me of of those books and the way that they just inspired me to view these uh these culture-shaping leaders such as Winston Churchill and and to see them and how God was at work in their lives. You know, people that we don't often think about the spiritual life of Winston Churchill. You know, we we know that he used a lot of biblical references and rhetoric and his speeches and so forth, but but what you've done in this book, it's it's just an outstanding book, is help us to see how God was at work in his in his personal life and how, of course, that ultimately shaped history. So, so if you would tell us as we jump into this interview a bit more about yourself and what led you to write this book.
SPEAKER_01Well, first of all, I've I've read both of those books that you mentioned by Peter Marshall, and they are tremendous books, and the spiritual history of individuals is extremely important. That's really what the story is all about. Um I I I started out professionally as a as a journalist. I was working for the Birmingham News uh in Alabama in the uh mid to late 60s when the civil rights, uh Dr. Martin Luther King, the civil rights uh reformation there was really, really going strong and covered a lot of that, uh had direct interaction with it. Uh and then in 19 uh seventy I was invited to come to the White House to work on, interestingly enough, uh uh uh a school desergrogation, and uh went on from there to work on general domestic policy and political liaison uh in the White House, and I became fascinated uh in those years with the dynamics of power, and I realized that corporate power, whether it's in the church, uh an educational institution, or a company, small company, big company, uh mega big company, um the dynamics of power and authority are extremely important to recognize and to understand. And I I became fascinated. I was born December the 5th, 1941, which was two days before Pearl Harbor. So I grew up in the in the immediacy of World War II and the especially the aftermath of World War II. And I and and I would hear this raspy voice on the radio, and I would go to the what we called in those days the picture show, and they would show uh black and white newsreels, and this bald-headed man that looked like an infant uh was on there with that raspy voice named Winston Churchill. And I became fascinated with this man. And later, while I was in the White House, uh I I I went to England for the first time in 1971 to meet with a group of other leaders from other nations, and as I was walking around, I I think I'm about 30 years old at that point, I'm walking around, I'm looking at the monuments, I'm looking through the through the uh uh iron fence at uh Buckingham Palace, and I'm hearing down deep inside, there's more here than meets the eye. There's more here than meets the eye. And again, that just intensified my interest to try to understand Churchill. I went down in the water rooms, I went down in all kinds of places where he lived, um, just made a lot of pilgrimages that that just reinforced that. Finally, I started calling my home study the Churchill Room. And then in 2014, um the great-grandson of Churchill, who lives here in Houston now, um, asked me to meet with him, and he said, I want you to help me write a book, God in Churchill.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that sounds like another chapter of the providence of God in the life of Churchill.
SPEAKER_01And if we yield to that and if we see that and understand that life is extremely exciting. You never know what God is going to open next.
SPEAKER_00Right. Wow. Well, there's a statement that Churchill spoke of the need to preserve and to build a Christian civilization. What did what did he mean by that? Well, first of all, that's sort of a that would be kind of an inflammatory phrase to use today. I mean, if uh you know, as a politician gets up and says that we want to make, we want to preserve and establish and build a Christian civilization under my administration. I don't know how many extra votes he would get.
SPEAKER_01Well, every culture, every nation functions functions around a consensus. And the consensus of Western society in general uh in the 1940s and 50s, uh I I really was nurtured in that, was that we are a Christian society as opposed to non-Christian societies. So Churchill said, first of all, he said, the highest level of ethics is found in the Sermon on the Mount. And secondly, he understood that his mission was to be the counterpoil to the anti-civilization which was represented in Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, that was opposed to everything in Christian civilization. And thirdly, Churchill said there is a certain way of life that is associated with this uh with this uh worldview and this civilization. He said, for example, the banks, and and and he talked in very practical terms, he said the banks in our civilization would not dare close um and and and keep out their investors and their savers and their depositors uh without some kind of action that would mitigate that on that the impact on those individuals. Whereas a totalitarian society uh would would manipulate and control everything, including the financial security of people. He said we would never deny people the right to trial by jury. Uh you you're innocent until proven guilty. And he said all of these things um are part of what makes up a Christian civilization. So he's very practical in his understanding.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So as we kind of really focus in on the Christian business leaders who are listening to this podcast, uh, what would you say uh would have been one of Churchill's uh biggest mistakes that uh these business leaders need to learn from as we seek to honor God through our businesses?
SPEAKER_01Well, running running a nation is very much like running a large, any any kind of large corporation. You're dealing with with institutional issues continually, and there were several mistakes that he made. His greatest mistake uh that history remembers is his mistake in the Dardanelles. Um the Dardanell is a passage uh from Turkey uh down into the Marmora and Aegean Seas and uh a very narrow passageway, and it was very important to um uh the uh interest of the British and the Allies in World War I to have that passageway open. And so Churchill uh entered into an agreement uh whereby that would be opened. It resulted in the deaths of about a half million men, uh soldiers, and Churchill largely was blamed for it. Now, we explain in our book that he probably was not the sole one to be blamed, but he took most of the responsibility because sometimes Churchill could be adventurous, and uh he could sometimes, especially in his early career, and this was way back in 1914, actually it was in 1911 when he became uh the first Lord of the Admiralty, and then it's during the war, 1914 to 18, that this mistake is made. But that adventurism would get him into trouble several times. It got him into trouble with his political party. Uh when he when he would uh move across the aisle, it got him into trouble with his with his dealings when he was home secretary uh with the with the Irish. So I would say the biggest mistake that Churchill made had to do with his adventurism, which was a passion to be edgy and to try the extremes and push the limits without giving careful consideration uh to the cost of that. Now, obviously, he learned a lot from that, and that helped shape him as a leader.
SPEAKER_00Wow, well, that's certainly a lesson that uh we all need to heed. And because there are many ways where we're, I mean, especially leaders are visionaries often and can easily start to make rash decisions based on uh maybe a feeling and not truly weigh the the potential consequences and make sure that we seek the necessary counsel before we make those decisions. Is that kind of here what I hear you saying?
SPEAKER_01Yes, exactly. And uh this was all part, he said when he became prime minister on May the 10th, 1940, all of my past life had been a preparation for this moment. And when he came into the prime minister's role, those lessons about adventurism and other issues uh had been learned early on, and he took them very seriously, and and the lessons equipped him to give the leadership he gave during the Second World War.
SPEAKER_00Well, his life certainly is an adventure. I mean, just reading about his prison escape, and I mean I I felt like I was watching Steve McQueen, you know, escaping out of out of prison, you know, just the stories that as I read the book, I was like, I've never I've never heard this about Winston Churchill. Uh yet another reason to go and pick up this book, God and Churchill. What would you say? So that's sort of on uh in a in a from a negative perspective, um, but what would you say is one of Churchill's best qualities that Christian business leaders should seek to emulate as marketplace leaders?
SPEAKER_01Most business leaders, and I've I've been a consultant of the businesses and corporations, different kinds of institutions, and what I discover over and over again is that most business leaders don't give proper heed to the development of corporate culture. And so the first issue, and and one of the most successful things that Churchill did, the first issue he faced uh 1938, 1939, uh then in 1940 when he becomes prime minister, is to create a new culture in Britain. Um the uh official establishment in Britain, 1938-39, uh thought that surely Britain would go down, that Britain would not be able to stand against the Nazis. So in a business environment, let's talk about the competition. Uh there was the mentality within this corporate thing called Great Britain that we cannot beat our competition. And so Churchill had to turn that around. In fact, uh the the uh uh king actually preferred another uh leader, British leader, for prime minister. But this British leader uh did not want to be prime minister because he said, I don't want to be the one who turns over the keys to great to London uh to the Nazis. And so they turned to Churchill. So Churchill has to create a new environment. And that new environment was expressed in his earliest speeches when he talked about the the sacrifice that was to come, but always creating in the minds of the people, we can beat this, we can beat this competitor, we can win. He was realistic on the one hand, he was very visionary on the other hand with his with his predictions of uh victory, and he created a cultural environment, a corporate cultural environment in Great Britain that rallied the people.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, one of the things that I think Churchill, at least uh from my perspective, is known for is somebody that was very tough and and somebody that just would not back down. And and yet he still had to deal with a lot of internal conflict. And and obviously uh the business leaders who are listening to this podcast episode today, probably maybe even today, are dealing with some very difficult conflicts in their workplace. Um, how did how did he handle internal conflict and how and what can we learn from that?
SPEAKER_01Let's let's compare the British War Cabinet to a corporate board. Every CEO and certainly every chairman has to understand the dynamics of dealing with a board of directors. Churchill had to deal with a war cabinet. Under under the constraints of that time, he he had to rally the people, so he had to bring in every facet of British political life into that war cabinet. It had to be a cabinet that represented all of the positions of the people, and all the positions of the political parties. So it was a very diverse group of people, just as in a board of directors. In fact, there might be a little more unity in a board of directors because everybody is focused uh on that particular corporate entity, but not everybody will have the same vision of how to accomplish uh the strategic plan. So Churchill had to bring everybody into harmony in this in this uh very strange arrangement of individuals. I mean, Chamberlain, uh whom he replaced as prime minister, was still on that on that panel. And one of the great marks of Churchill was that he would not, uh as tough as he was, he would always, his first priority was always to win over and to build bridges between those people with whom he differed. He learned that in his early life when he made some of those mistakes. But he built bridges because his goal was to get everybody on the s to focus on the same vision. There would be differences of opinion on mission and on strategy. And but he would he would unify them around that vision, he would give them a very distinct role to play in the achievement of that vision, he would he would applaud them uh when when they uh played a very significant role in helping that come about, and he would speak honestly with them when they were not, but always it was based on these relationships and friendships.
SPEAKER_00Wow, powerful insights. I'm curious, Wallace, on a personal level, as we're wrapping it down here, on a very personal level, what what was one of the most important things or the most surprising things that you learned during the process of researching and co-authoring this book?
SPEAKER_01I would say it was the way Winston Churchill treasured Elizabeth Everest. Uh Churchill, Churchill's parents were typical aristocrats. Uh they were Downton Abbey on steroids. They uh they put him out when he was just a kid, they sent him away to school uh to get him out of their hair. Uh his father was a derelict, although he was high in politics, he was nevertheless a derelict, a sexual uh predator, and all kinds of things, uh, you might call him. And his mother also had numerous affairs, although he loved his parents very much, and he really respected his father's political career. But nevertheless, they sent him off to school, and by the grace of God, this is a Romans 8.28, God works all things together for good, to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. By the grace of God, the person who formed his early life was Elizabeth Everest, his nanny. And she was a very deeply committed Christian who loved the Bible, loved the word of God, who just infused that child with the King James Bible. The impact was so powerful that when he died at 90 years of age, her picture was still on uh on his bed table. So I would say that the thing that surprised me was the impact, and this was probably the most powerful woman of modern times, because she was the one who put that fart in Winston Churchill.
SPEAKER_00Wow. And this was the uh Everest, she was uh not uh a high church person, right? If from what I remember you writing, was that she was, I mean, just very down-to-earth and I mean just just very um just very meek. What what would what would you say to kind of describe the kind of person that she was?
SPEAKER_01She was a very humble person. She was a very non-self-focused individual, and and uh and that low church mentality or worldview um was what poured into Churchill to become a man of the people. I mean, Churchill was a descendant of Marlborough. Churchill was a descendant of the aristocracy, and yet Churchill was very much a man of the people. He was a he he saw himself as an as an average guy, even though he was very much above average, but he had the capacity to speak to the to the people in the lowest levels, and they called him Winnie, and and they loved it, and and they marched with him, and I think a lot of that came from Elizabeth Ebrus.
SPEAKER_00Wow. So many incredible insights in this book. Wallace, where can people get the book and where can they learn more about you?
SPEAKER_01Well, the book is available all over the place. It's on Amazon, it's on Christianbooks.com, it's on Barnes and Noble, it's in bookstores everywhere. And uh there's a website, www.godandchurchill.com. www.godandchurchill.com. And to learn more about me, they can look at wallacehenley.com, www.wallacehinley.com.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful. Well, we'll have those links in the show notes for this episode. Wallace, thank you so much for taking the time to share your expertise and your research and your passion with us today. Keep uh doing great things for God in the marketplace and and through your ministry.
SPEAKER_01My very great pleasure. God bless you, buddy.