You are listening to Profess, the official podcast of TheChristianManifesto.com. This edition of the Profess Interview Series brings to you an exclusive conversation between C.E. Moore and New York Times Best Selling author, Stephen Mansfield. In our interview Stephen talks about his newest book, ‘In Search of God and Guinness,’ how the Guinness family was moved by faith to bring about social change, how various Christians approach the topic of alcohol, and why he has chosen to write about history as a profession.
You can listen to (or download) the interview here.
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On why he choose to write about Guinness: “I write books about the intersection of faith and culture. I like to write about the faith underpinning of stories people already know….I wanted to do a history of a company that had done well in the world as a business, but also had done good in the world in terms of taking care of the poor, serving their employees, making a difference in society.”
On the question of drinking: “It is intriguing, isn’t it, that only in recent history have we had the abstinence movement—talking about alcohol, of course—and the prohibitions. However, there is no question that throughout history the Christian view, which I believe to be the Biblical view, is that alcohol in moderation is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it’s even encouraged by God. But, that drunkenness is the sin.”
On feeling pressured to write history a certain way: “By taking faith seriously as a motive force in history, whether you’re talking about the faith of a Christopher Columbus or the faith of Barack Obama, you automatically break out of the liberal mode. I defy those categories. I’m the guy who wrote a book on both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, taking the faith of both of them seriously.”
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: Stephen Mansfield is a New York Times bestselling author and a popular speaker who is becoming one of the nation’s most respected voices on religion and American culture.
Stephen was born in 1958 and grew up largely in Europe due to his father’s career as an officer in the United States Army. After a youth filled with sports, travel, and mischief, Stephen was recruited to play college football but turned down the opportunity when a religious conversion moved him to attend a Christian college.
He earned a Bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy and then moved to Texas where he pastored a church, completed two Master’s degrees, hosted a radio show and began acquiring a reputation as a popular speaker of both depth and humor. He moved to Tennessee in 1991 where he again pastored a church, did relief work among the Kurds in Northern Iraq, served as a political consultant, and completed a doctorate.
It was during this time that he also launched the writing career for which he has become internationally known. His first book on Winston Churchill was a Gold Medallion Award Finalist. He also wrote widely-acclaimed biographies of Booker T. Washington and George Whitefield as well as a number of other books on history and leadership. In 1997, the Governor of Tennessee commissioned Mansfield to write the official history of religion in Tennessee for that state’s bicentennial.
In 2002, Stephen left the pastorate after twenty fruitful years to write and lecture full-time. Not long afterward, he wrote The Faith of George W. Bush, which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Beyond his writing career, Stephen has founded The Mansfield Group, a successful consulting and communications firm, as well as Chartwell Literary Group, a firm that creates and manages literary projects. In recent years, Stephen has also become a widely-popular speaker, known for his rowdy humor, his deep faith and his ability to inspire audiences with tales from great lives of the past.
He lives in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, with his beloved wife, Beverly, just blocks from the beautiful Nashville library and the state capitol.
To follow Stephen Mansfield on Twitter: @MansfieldWrites
To find out more about Stephen Mansfield go to www.mansfieldgroup.com.
We’d like to thank the Stephen Mansfield for answering some of our burning questions. A very special thank you Curt Harding of Thomas Nelson Publishers for setting up the interview for us.
