Churchill often invoked the words “Christian civilization.” An earlier post of mine on Churchill and Religion was picked up (context albeit somewhat abbreviated) by Wallace Henley. In “The Global Tsunami on ‘Good'” Mr. Henley wrote:

I am not arguing for a Christian theocracy, 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.

Optimistic agnostic

This is fine as far as it goes, but it leaves out some of the essence. Churchill was, I wrote, an “optimistic agnostic.” Without being on conversational terms with the Almighty, he was quite willing to invoke the Deity when appropriate. As he wrote in his autobiography, My Early Life, “I did not hesitate to ask for special protection.” Andrew Roberts, author of the best single-volume Churchill biography, put this very neatly:

One of the primary duties of the Providential Being in whom Churchill did believe, but to whom he paid little overt obeisance, seems to have been to watch over the physical safety of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill. Few people in history could have brushed against the cloak of the Angel of Death as often as Churchill, yet he survived until his 91st year.

“Black velvet”

Churchill wasn’t sure about what existed after death. He once referred to it as “endless sleep…black velvet.”  Yet at another time he predicted that he would get to heaven and spend his first million years in heaven painting. Thus, he explained, would

“get to the bottom of the subject.”

He often quoted the King James Bible (more than any other book). He was impressed both by its beautiful words and its ethics—which he applied universally. You can be a Sikh, a Hindu, whatever, and still accept Churchill’s precepts of Christian civilization.

Churchill did not take the Bible literally, seeing no need. He said that if its message “cheers your heart and fortifies your soul…what need is there to ask whether the imagery of the ancients is exactly, scientifically feasible?”

What Churchill meant

It would be well to reprint here exactly what I wrote in that earlier post:

When Churchill referred to Chris­t­ian civil­i­za­tion (a phrase I have actu­ally seen edited out of cer­tain mod­ern ren­di­tions) he did not mean to exclude Jews or Bud­dhists or Mus­lims. He meant those words in a much broader sense. Just as, to Churchill, the word “man” meant human­ity, his allu­sions to Chris­tian­ity embod­ied prin­ci­ples he con­sid­ered uni­ver­sal. He meant the Ten Com­mand­ments (a “judg­men­tal” set of moral imper­a­tives now expunged from cer­tain pub­lic places). He meant the Ser­mon on the Mount and the Golden Rule. He meant char­ity, for­give­ness, courage.

It is important to understand this. Churchill’s words taken literally can be interpreted to mean he was a Christian evangelist. Not so. Nor did he mean to exclude other religions from the Commonwealth of Man. Quite the contrary. Churchill’s quarrel was with tyranny.

From the Book of Maccabees

On 19 May 1940, Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister, a speech which lifted the hearts even of former critics:

A tremendous battle is raging in France and Flanders. The Germans, by a remarkable combination of air bombing and heavily armoured tanks, have broken through the French defences north of the Maginot Line, and strong columns of their armoured vehicles are ravaging the open country, which for the first day or two was without defenders. They have penetrated deeply and spread alarm and confusion in their track. Behind them there are now appearing infantry in lorries, and behind them, again, the large masses are moving forward.[11]

In assuring his listeners that Britain would fight on, Churchill chose a majestic but obscure Biblical allusion. It was his first and only use of it. It proved to be exactly right for the occasion:

Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: “Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the Outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be.[12]

Origins: “Men of Valour”

Even some Biblical scholars were uncertain about the origins of this phrase, and with good reason. It is from the First Book of the Maccabees, a text missing in many Bibles. Also, Churchill altered the quotation. He either remembered badly, or the writer in him could not resist an editorial improvement. The original words were:

 58. And Judas said, Arm yourselves, and be valiant men, and see that ye be in readiness against the morning, that ye may fight with these nations, that are assembled together against us to destroy us and our sanctuary: 59. For it is better for us to die in battle, than to behold the calamities of our people and our sanctuary. 60. Nevertheless, as the will of God is in heaven, so let him do.[13]

There are two Books of the Maccabees, also spelled “Machabbes,” neither of which is in the Hebrew Bible but both of which appear in some manuscripts of the Septuagint and in the Vulgate, since they are canonical to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. They are also included in the King James Apocrypha, which is where Churchill read them.

“Imperishable resolve.”

Churchill’s first broadcast as Prime Minister caught the imagination of millions. Sir Martin Gilbert has collected some of those reactions that very evening, Trinity Sunday, 19 May, 1940,

Anthony Eden wrote: “You have never done anything as good or as great. Thank you, and thank God for you.” Lord Halifax, who nine days later would urge approaching the Germans for an armistice, was momentarily bowled over: “It was worth a lot,” he wrote from the Foreign Office, “and we owe you much for that, as for a great deal else, in these dark days.” The Evening Standard declared the broadcast a speech of “imperishable resolve.”[14]

The most unexpected was a note from Churchill’s old chief and sometime nemesis Stanley Baldwin, who had done more than any other British leader to put the country in so perilous a state of readiness, but who on 19 May was moved more perhaps than any other:

My dear PM, I listened to your well known voice last night and I should have liked to have shaken your hand for a brief moment and to tell you that from the bottom of my heart I wish you all that is good—health and strength of mind and body—for the intolerable burden that now lies on you. Yours always sincerely, SB [15]

“A house of many mansions”

The New Testament Gospel according to St. John, Chapter 14, contains an inspiring passage that Winston Churchill absorbed as a boy:

1. Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.

Churchill particularly liked verse 2, “a house of many mansions,” and quoted it during five important moments in his career. The first apparent instance was in Dundee, Scotland in May 1908, a Parliamentary seat he won and would hold for 14 years. Here he spoke of the broadness and diversity of the British Empire:

Cologne Cathedral took 600 years to build. Generations of architects and builders lived and died while the work was in progress….So let it be with the British Commonwealth. Let us build wisely, let us build surely, let us build faithfully, let us build, not for the moment but for future years, seeking to establish here below what we hope to find above—a house of many mansions, where there shall be room for all.[5]

The thought remained with him three years later, when as Home Secretary he said in London:

The British Empire must be a house of many mansions, in which there shall be room for each and all to develop to the fullest his personal or national contribution to the common united welfare and to the strength of the indivisible whole.[6]

Thirty years on

“Many mansions” lodged comfortably in his commodious memory for almost 30 years before Churchill found need of it again. This time it was to assure peoples under the Nazi boot that their ultimate liberation was sure:

The day will come when the joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes, but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom, a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.[7]

He certainly thought this a serviceable line, because he invoked it to President Roosevelt in 1943. He mentioned only chapter and verse, since he knew FDR kept a Bible handy. The President had cabled that Cairo, their proposed meeting place before the Teheran Conference with Stalin, was vulnerable to German air attack. Should they  rendezvous elsewhere? Churchill replied: “See St. John, chapter 14, verses 1 to 4.”[8]

The text of those verses was typed on the message by his Map Room staff. “On reading this through more carefully after it had gone,” Churchill reflected, “I was a little concerned lest, apart from a shadow of unintended profanity, it should be thought I was taking too much upon myself and thus giving offence. However, the President brushed all objections aside and our plans were continued, unchanged.”[9]

Again at Fulton in 1946, in perhaps his most crucial speech of the postwar years, Churchill argued for a continuation of the Anglo-American “special relationship” born in World War II. There was nothing in the United Nations Charter, he said, that precluded any special arrangements between countries:

None of these clash with the general interest of a world agreement, or a world organisation; on the contrary they help it. ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions.’ Special associations between members of the United Nations which have no aggressive point against any other country, which harbour no design incompatible with the Charter of the United Nations, far from being harmful, are beneficial and, as I believe, indispensable.[10]

Endnotes

Churchill’s Biblical storehouse

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” —St. John 14:2 [1]

We have often said of our own British Empire: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” So in this far greater world structure, which we shall surely raise out of the ruins of desolating war, there will be room for all generous, free associations of a special character, so long as they are not disloyal to the world cause nor seek to bar the forward march of mankind. —WSC, House of Commons, 21 April 1944

* * * *

“Arm yourselves, and be valiant men, and see that ye be in readiness against the morning…For it is better for us to die in battle, than to behold the calamities of our people and our sanctuary. Nevertheless, as the will of God is in heaven, so let him do.” —I Maccabees 3:58-60 [2]

Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be. —WSC, Broadcast, 19 May 1940

Frequent Biblical allusions

“More than to any other book or group of books, Churchill alludes to the King James Bible,” wrote Darrell Holley in Churchill’s Literary Allusions:

It is for him the primary source of interesting illustrations, descriptive images, and stirring phrases. His knowledge of the Bible manifests itself in direct quotations, in paraphrased retellings of Biblical stories, and in his frequent, perhaps even unconscious, use of Biblical terms and phrases. The Tower of Babel, Belshazzar’s feast…the millstone around the neck, the “great gulf fixed” between Paradise and Hell [from Luke 16:26] the last great Battle of Armageddon—these occur often in Churchill’s writing.”[3]

Yet Churchill was not a religious man. Having read the leading anti-religious tracts of the late 19th century, weighing them against the Anglican teachings of his boyhood, he held a pragmatic attitude toward spiritual questions:

I adopted quite early in life a system of believing what I wanted to believe, while at the same time leaving reason to pursue unfettered whatever paths she was capable of treading.Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. The whole creation is but a dream; all phenomena are imaginary. You create your own universe as you go along.[4]

What moved Churchill was the Biblical beauty of King James English, badly mutilated by “new revised” Bibles ostensibly designed to make them more “relevant.” He had an ear for the memorable phrase, and he never hesitated to deploy Biblical allusions both famous and obscure. One of each is sufficient to demonstrate his expertise.

Continued in Part 2.

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. Weddings, christenings, and funerals have brought in a steady annual income, and I have never made too close enquiries about the state of my account. It might well even be that I should find an overdraft.

Visiting President Truman just before Truman left office in 1953, Churchill quipped,

Mr. President, I hope you have your answer ready for that hour when you and I stand before St. Peter and he says, “I understand you two are responsible for putting off those atomic bombs.”

Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Lovett responded: “Are you sure, Prime Minister, that you are going to be in the same place as the President for that interrogation?” Churchill’s reply was quick:

Lovett, my vast respect for the Creator of this universe and countless others gives me assurance that He would not condemn a man without a hearing….wherever it is, it will be in accordance with the principles of English Common Law.…

Why did Churchill refer so frequently to “Christian civilisation”? First because alongside Darwin, he had absorbed the King James Bible, impressed by its beautiful phraseology and the ethics it expounded; and second because he believed its principles applied broadly to all of mankind regardless of religion. Unlike Christian fundamentalists, he did not accept the Bible as rote. He saw no need to resolve its stories with modern science. Why bother? he asked:

If you are the recipient of a message which cheers your heart and fortifies your soul, what need is there to ask whether the imagery of the ancients is exactly, scientifically, feasible?

When Churchill in speeches referred to “Christian civilisation” (a phrase I have actually seen edited out of certain modern renditions) he did not mean to exclude Jews or Buddhists or Muslims. He meant those words in a much broader sense. Just as, to Churchill, the word “man” meant humanity, his allusions to Christianity embodied principles he considered universal: the Ten Commandments (a “judgmental” set of moral imperatives now expunged from certain public places); the Sermon on the Mount; the Golden Rule; charity; forgiveness; courage.

Times change. If a President or Prime Minister went round discussing “Christian civilisation” today, ten thousand Thought Police would descend screeching out of the sky to proclaim excommunication from the Church of the Politically Correct.

It is not my brief to suggest how Churchill would react to modern situations, but surely he would be mystified by this—as indeed would the Jews, Buddhists and Muslims of his time who wholeheartedly endorsed what he said about the war they were in together. Yet we consider these to be more enlightened times.