The lazy afternoon he spent at Hyde Park with Mary, thinking about God, the sky and colours, may have seemed trivial against the immense issues that would be the primary topic of his later conversation with Franklin Roosevelt. However, that moment with his daughter showed how Churchill’s mind expanded to the true scale of reality and found calmness there. In that frame, he was able to shoulder the nearly unbearable burden of giving leadership to his nation in a time of war and persevering until victory was achieved.
13
Churchill and the Character of Leadership
Now with the help of God, and with the conviction that we are the defenders of civilisation and freedom, we are going to persevere to the end.
WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1 OCTOBER 1939
IF WE SEE SIMILARITIES between Churchill’s times and our own, then we ought to be able to examine his leadership style for insights about the kind of leadership we need today.
The story of Churchill … is about the indomitability of the human spirit. He may seem horribly unfashionable in his views to us today, but in his essential character he is a source of eternal – and perhaps growing – inspiration.1
The character attributes that steadied and strengthened Churchill and enabled him to inspire his people to ‘keep calm and carry on’ were also central to his leadership style.
A Statesman in contact with the moving current of events and anxious to keep the ship of state on an even keel and steer a steady course may lean all his weight now on one side and now on the other… . A Statesman should always try to do what he believes is best in the long view for his country, and he should not be dissuaded from so acting by having to divorce himself from a great body of doctrine to which he formerly sincerely adhered.2
Now we examine how these elements of Churchill’s personality worked out practically as he led Britain and the Allies during the great battle for the survival of Christian civilization.
Churchill’s critics during his backbench period could never have envisioned him as prime minister. They considered him a joke. And indeed he was, but in a way they did not comprehend. As we examine how God may have raised up Winston Churchill for just such a time as the one he faced, it’s helpful to remember that God often confounds our greatest wisdom and uses the least likely person that we might choose.
We don’t often think of the Bible as a funny book, probably because it has for so long been read to us in such pompous, stentorian tones… . But if you read it with the eye of a comic, you will have to admit it is filled with some sublimely ridiculous moments… .
Think of Isaiah, who ran around naked in the desert for three years; Jeremiah, the grumpy potter … wearing an ox-yoke around his neck; Jonah, the reluctant prophet … in the belly of [the fish]… . Think of Peter, the bumbling, big-talking backwater fisherman … or Zacchaeus, the pint-sized tax collector… . If you were writing the script, are these the characters you would pick for heroes? …
There are three things that occasion humor: a sense of the incongruous, a relaxed, light-hearted attitude, and suddenness or surprise. Any God who chooses a carpenter from the one-horse town of Nazareth as his redeemer of the universe certainly has a sense of the incongruous.3
Winston Churchill falls into that ‘incongruous’ category – a perpetual reminder that God has a sense of humour and that his ways are not our ways. Indeed, ‘God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.’4
We have explored the incongruities of life that formed Churchill’s character and prepared him for his destiny. Leadership style cannot be separated from a person’s character. Essence precedes function; what we do arises from who we are. Maurice Hankey, Cabinet secretary during the First World War, remembered the impact of Churchill’s personality during that trying period.
We owed a good deal in those early days to the courage and inspiration of Winston Churchill who, undaunted by difficulties and losses, set an infectious example… . His stout attitude did something to hearten his colleagues.5
LEADERSHIP, CHURCHILL-STYLE
This brings us to a vital question: has God placed a ‘Churchill’ among us in our turbulent times, when once again the survival of Judeo-Christian civilization is at stake?
Those in Europe with sufficient historical perspective may lament the devastation of the cultures that sowed the world with high ideals. Americans with broad insight fret over the loss of fundamental liberties that were once a beacon to oppressed people everywhere. Moreover, the assaults on Western civilization now come not through conventional warfare with set fronts and boundaries and weapons that can be outclassed. The contemporary battle is spiritual, moral and philosophical. It is often a guerrilla war of intangibles. The front lines intrude into every institution. It is a battle that involves anarchy, terrorism, warped world views and twisted behaviours. Its storm troopers take no prisoners. There is a foreboding sense of cataclysm, an often-indefinable angst, and people are searching for leaders to show us the way through.
Such a state of affairs demands a certain quality of leadership. Churchill’s style provides examples of what is now needed across the globe.
We need leaders with a sense of destiny
‘I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from?’6 In his time of trouble, King David scanned the slopes of Mount Zion and the crest of Mount Moriah, drawing inspiration from the primary symbols of his nation’s heritage and destiny. Others would have lifted their eyes to the high places where idols had been erected. But whether it was Mount Zion or a pagan high place, the real locus of hope was in God himself.
The key to David’s effectiveness as a leader was not just in the seeing but in the very process of lifting up his eyes. Elevating our vision aligns our focus with transcendent meaning and purpose, without which a sense of destiny is impossible. Churchill had the vertical perspective that enabled him to see the lofty significance of the things he fought for on the horizontal plane.
Thus, Churchill believed in the destiny of his nation and of Christian civilization before he believed in his own destiny. He knew that his personal horizons were set within the context of a greater goal: the preservation of a civilization that had already given much to the world. This vision of his own destiny in the context of a larger purpose was what kept him from becoming a tyrant when he was granted unprecedented powers as Britain’s wartime leader.
In the present multicultural fervour of Western society, emerging voices have begun to question whether Judeo-Christian civilization deserves to have a future. Others have already declared it null and void. According to the doctrine of equivalency, every society is of equal value and benefit, simply by virtue of being (or by numbers of population), and no single civilization can dare assert itself as superior at any point.
We understand the concerns that have arisen from the age of manifest destiny that propelled British imperialism and American hemispheric and global hegemony. But now we live in an age of overcorrection; equivalency is as distorted a view as the worst of the imperialistic impulses. The hard fact of life in our fallen, dangerous world is that there will always be dominant powers. Our times are no different from all previous history, except in one respect: the capacities for enslavement and destruction are much greater today in our Internet-woven, atomic world. Therefore, the critical determinant is the quality of the nation – its world view and values – that becomes a global hegemon. Will its immense powers be used for destructive purposes or to help secure peace and prosperity and preserve the best values for all cultures?
Britain, the United States and other nations that have long been repositories of values that enhance civilization must have leaders who believe in the merits of Western/Christian culture and its destiny.
We need leaders who recognize the Destiny-Giver as bigger than themselves
A sense of accountability to God prevents national destiny from deteriorating into raw imperialism.
Churchill was a God
-conscious man who believed that Providence had assigned him his destiny. And Churchill felt himself accountable to God for the execution of that role. As powerful as he was in the realm of human affairs, the sense that he was accountable to someone greater than himself – greater, even, than the British monarchy – was a major factor in his basic humility.
We need leaders with a long-range focus
Churchill led from the rare equipoise between grim reality on one hand and confident hope on the other. He demonstrated how visionary leaders can gauge their present sufferings by the value of the outcomes they desire for the future.
Jesus displayed this same balance in the days and hours leading up to his crucifixion. When he told his disciples that the time had come for him to go to Jerusalem and ‘suffer many terrible things’, Peter ‘began to reprimand him for saying such things’.7 But Jesus immediately rebuked Peter’s short-sightedness. Jesus saw the cross and its horror; but he also saw beyond it to his resurrection and ascension, and he declared that the sacrifice was worth it all.8
Whenever Churchill had to put the hard facts before the British people, he also continually held out hope. People learned that they could trust him to tell them the truth while at the same time directing their eyes upward to the hope of victory. They grew in their confidence that Churchill could lead them all the way home because that was his focus.
On 13 May 1940, in his first address to Parliament after becoming prime minister, Churchill uttered the famous line, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.’ Then came the inspiring counterbalance: ‘But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men.’9
Roger Parrott, president of Belhaven University, describes the perspective needed by transformational leaders:
The short view doesn’t work, but it will continue to permeate our society, direct our actions, and be the gold standard for ‘success’ until purposeful, visionary, and determined leaders pull us back to a longview outlook that seeks lasting value.10
In talking to the US embassy staff in Ethiopia about ‘a number of different cross-currents of modernity that are coming together to make things even more challenging’ in Africa, John Kerry, Secretary of State during President Barack Obama’s second term, said, ‘Some people believe that people ought to be able to … live by their interpretation of something that was written down a thousand plus, two thousand years ago. That’s not the way I think most people want to live.’11
In Kerry’s remarks, he essentially dismisses the long view – that which values the lessons of history and the richness of culture arising from religious faith and long-standing sacred values – as ‘not the way most people want to live’. But if we throw those things away, all we have left is the ‘short view’ – which, as Parrott notes, is lacking in ‘lasting value’.
The ‘short view’ in Britain in the 1930s failed to take seriously Churchill’s warnings about Hitler’s ultimate intentions. Churchill emerged as the ‘purposeful, visionary, and determined’ leader who sometimes had to pull others back to see the long view, with all its terrors and challenges.
We need leaders who can link the future with the past and present
One characteristic of our current age is a disregard or disdain for history. Deconstructionist academics, infused with principles of existentialism – or, worse, nihilism – have trained the upcoming generation to see history as either meaningless or unimportant. For others, it is a past easily rewritten and squeezed into the mould of modern times.
Churchill, however, was a true historian. He was not content with a view of history as nothing more than an assemblage of dates, places and names. He understood history as a repository of treasures. As he contemplated London during the Blitz, he called it ‘this strong City of Refuge which enshrines the title-deeds of human progress and is of deep consequence to Christian civilization’.12
Winning the battle for our civilization requires leaders who know and respect the best of their historical heritage and believe it is worth saving.
We need leaders who will tell the truth, no matter how ridiculous they may appear
‘The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes’, said Churchill.13 He had learned this lesson the hard way.
By 1938, his persistent warnings about the German threat had led others in the government to attack and ridicule him. By this point, Prime Minister Chamberlain had tired of Churchill’s voice and was weary of Churchill’s constant criticism of the government’s inaction. Yet within two years Churchill’s foresight and wisdom would be amply vindicated.
We need leaders who have the courage to pay a hard price for the greater good
On 25 March 1938, Churchill rose in Parliament to challenge the disarmament policy the British government had followed since the end of the First World War. He saw clearly through Hitler’s veiled intentions and realized Britain’s vulnerability. The only result of the disarmament policy had been that one nation – Germany – had built up its arsenals while Britain had steadily disarmed. Rearmament was one of Churchill’s many talking points that lodged themselves in Neville Chamberlain’s craw. Chamberlain was convinced that Churchill’s persistent calls for military strength would only intensify Hitler’s desire to make war.
It was well known that Churchill was not wealthy and that he relied on an income from his books and his column in the Evening Standard. However, the day after Churchill’s 25 March speech, he received a letter from R. J. Thompson, the editor of the Evening Standard: ‘It has been evident that your views on foreign affairs and the part which this country should play are entirely opposed to those held by us.’14 Thompson summarily fired Churchill from his column, which was a tremendous blow to Churchill personally and to his finances.
Churchill was financially broken and forced into a corner. Profits from his books and speeches had been invested in American stocks and lost in the 1929 Wall Street crash. The income from the Evening Standard had enabled him to remain in Parliament, lower his debts and sustain him while he completed his books on the Marlborough family. Now faced with certain bankruptcy, Churchill had to make a choice: either to stay in Parliament and continue to speak out, which would cause continuing financial hardship for his family, or to leave the centre of action in Parliament and seek a position as a journalist – as an observer rather than a shaper of events. The situation sickened him.
Eventually, however, he began writing for the Daily Telegraph on a six-month trial, which became an ongoing engagement. In the pages of the Telegraph, which had a predominantly Conservative readership, Churchill continued to fight against the government. It soon became clear that the only people who disagreed with Churchill were those in government. His readers loved him. Fourteen months later, Churchill was offered better terms with the Daily Mirror, and he began to write a larger, more prominent column.
The newspaper column secured an income for Churchill, but he still faced mounting debt. His only asset was the family home at Chartwell, and he knew its sale would enable him to continue his fight against the government without fear of financial reprisals. Heartbroken at the prospect, Churchill paid for a full page in The Times, offering Chartwell for sale. Knowing how much I (Jonathan) love Chartwell, I can only imagine the pain my great-grandfather must have felt to see the advertisement. Selling Chartwell would have been to him the ultimate sacrifice for king and country.
Churchill believed that selling his home ‘might merit a discreet paragraph in The Times’ “Londoner’s Diary”’.15 What happened instead was a vile example of those who use the media to peddle their own agendas. Lord Beaverbrook, who owned both the Evening Standard and the Daily Express and who was also aligned with Chamberlain in the appeasement camp, ran a story that ‘managed to insinuate that Churchill was irresponsible’ and was ‘auctioning off his home while attempting to sabotage Chamberlain’s thrifty budgets’.16 The Times was even crueller. As it took Churchill’s money for th
e advertisement, the paper simultaneously published a full article on the first news page, informing the world that Churchill was selling his home. The article included sensationalized personal information, which upset Churchill.
Embarrassed, Churchill approached Brendan Bracken, one of his staunchest allies. Churchill knew little about finance, but Bracken did; he helped to resolve Churchill’s embarrassing debt crisis, which had become a hot gossip item. Churchill proposed that he would leave Parliament while he focused on generating a better income, but Bracken was horrified at the idea that Churchill would not be able to continue his fight in Parliament – especially since Austria had recently fallen to Germany. Bracken immediately approached Sir Henry Strakosch, who was happy to loan Churchill the money he needed, on the repayment terms that Churchill had proposed. Strakosch would have happily given Churchill the money, but Churchill was an honourable man and would have felt it wrong to accept such a large sum with no return for the donor.
Strakosch managed the securities purchased from Churchill for three years, and made investments to repay the debt on Churchill’s behalf. Churchill’s only stipulation was that he accumulate no further debts. Strakosch honoured the agreement, and it brought great relief to Churchill, enabling him to continue his stance in Parliament against Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. Although it came at great personal cost, Churchill was dogged in his determination to see Britain take the right course of action in response to German rearmament.
We need leaders who see threats realistically but not hysterically
Churchill, as we have seen, understood the threat of Nazi Germany because he stoked himself with information. He was armed with statistical data when he sought to raise Parliament’s awareness of the growing peril. Yet, even though he intensely felt the urgency of the situation, Churchill carefully measured his words.
God and Churchill HB Page 22
