Winston Churchill (Christian Encounter Series) by John Perry

So recently I signed up with "BookSneeze" which is Thomas Nelson Publishers' way of using social media to get the word out about their new books. You get to pick a book, they send it to you (for free!), you read it, then you review it on your blog and on a consumer blog (like Amazon).

I just finished reading it, so here's my review of Winston Churchill: Christian Encounter Series by John Perry:


This is your basic biography of Winston Churchill. It covers his entire life, giving roughly equal treatment to every time period. The author tells about all of his various adventures, both good and bad, and throughout maintains a theme of Churchill's spirituality.

One reason that I selected this book was because the subject surprised me. With a series title like "Christian Encounters," one assumes that the subject in question is, in fact, a Christian. Since I'd not heard before that Churchill was a believer, this intrigued me. It was frustrating then to find that not only was Churchill not necessarily a Christian, but his beliefs basically didn't change throughout his life. He apparently saw religion only as a useful tool in giving people hope (i.e., "the opiate of the masses"). While he saw himself as being protected throughout his life by some force, he gave as much credit to destiny as he did God. If there had been some development in his spiritual beliefs (even if they never came to match my own), it would have at least been interesting, but there was no development. As biographies go, I suppose it was a fair one. It seemed odd to me that there was no more time given to WWII than there was his childhood, but otherwise it was informative. I think my biggest problem with it is including Sir Winston in a series entitled "Christian Encounters."

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”