Churchill’s Term “Christian Civilization”
An earlier post here on Churchill and Religion has been picked up (in context albeit somewhat abbreviated) by Wallace Henley in “The Global Tsunami on ‘Good'” in CP News. “I am not arguing for a Christian theocracy,” Mr. Henley writes,
but for adherence to the basic doctrines of life, love and care described in Scripture. Winston Churchill argued that the great goal of the Second World War was the survival of what he called repeatedly “Christian civilization.” Richard Langworth, a Churchill scholar, says that by “Christian civilization” Churchill thought that Christianity’s “principles applied broadly to all of mankind regardless of religion.” Just as, to Churchill, the word “man” meant humankind, his allusions to Christianity embodied principles he considered “universal” and that “applied broadly to all mankind regardless of religion.”
This is all right as far as it goes, but it leaves out some of the essence.…