Duty and Destiny by Gary Scott Smith

Duty and Destiny by Gary Scott Smith

A nuanced portrait of a great historical figure considered everything from a God-haunted man to a stalwart nonbeliever

What did faith mean to Winston Churchill?

Churchill was far from transparent about his religious beliefs and never regularly attended church services as an adult, even considering himself not a pillar of the church but a buttress, in the sense that he supported it from the outside. But Gary Scott Smith assembles pieces of Churchill's life and words to convey the profound sense of duty and destiny, partly inspired by his religious convictions, that undergirded his outlook. Reflecting on becoming prime minister in 1940, he wrote, It felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial. In a similarly grand fashion, he described opposing the Nazis--and later the Soviets--as a struggle between light and darkness, driven by the duty to preserve humane, enlightened, Christian society.

Though Churchill harbored intellectual doubts about Christianity throughout his life, he nevertheless valued it greatly and drew on its resources, especially in the crucible of war. In Duty and Destiny, Smith unpacks Churchill's paradoxical religious views and carefully analyzes the complexities of his legacy. This thorough examination of Churchill's religious life provides a new narrative structure to make sense of one of the most important figures of the twentieth century.

Smith, Gary Scott: - For thirty-nine years, Gary Scott Smith taught at Grove City College, where he chaired the History Department and coordinated the Humanities Core. He earned his MDiv at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and his PhD in history at Johns Hopkins University. He received Grove City College's inaugural Professor of the Year award in 2000, and the next year, he was named Pennsylvania Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including Faith and the Presidency: From George Washington to George W. Bush (Oxford University Press, 2006), Heaven in the American Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2011), Religion in the Oval Office: The Religious Lives of American Presidents (Oxford University Press, 2015) and Suffer the Children: What We Can Do to Improve the Lives of the World's Impoverished Children (Cascade Books, 2017). Smith is also an ordained minister in the PCUSA and currently is the co-director of the mission program and a parish associate at Saint Andrews-Covenant Presbyterian Church in Wilmington.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780802877000
ISBN 10	0802877001
Title	Duty and Destiny
Author	Gary Scott Smith
Series	Library Of Religious Biography
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	William B Eerdmans Publishing Co
Year published	2021-01-19
Number of pages	255
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.