King James Bible Archives | Richard M. Langworth

Churchill’s Term “Christian Civilization”

15 September 2014 Comments 0 Comments

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.…

Churchill’s Religion: “Optimistic Agnostic”

28 May 2012 Comments 1 Comment

Although he had some very religious friends, like Lord Hugh Cecil, Winston Churchill was not a religious man. Introduced to religious diversity early, he was brought up “High Church,” but had a nanny “who enjoyed a very Low Church form of piety.” When in rebellious mood he would tell Nanny Everest “the worst thing that he could think of…that he would go out and ‘worship idols.’”

After his self-education as a young officer in India, when he read all the popular challenges to orthodox religion, like Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species and William Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, Churchill evolved into what we might term an “optimistic agnostic.” He spoke jocularly of the Almighty, suggesting that as a boy,

I accumulated…so fine a surplus in the Bank of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.…

The Biblical Churchill, Part 3

4 May 2012 Comments 3 Comments

“Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour…”

Continued from Part 2…

On 19 May 1940, Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister, a speech which lifted the hearts even of his former and current critics. “A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders,” he said, adding forthrightly that the Germans, “by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defences.”

In assuring his listeners that Britain would fight on, Churchill chose a majestic coda, an obscure Biblical allusion, for the first and only time in all his writings and speeches.…