Stephen Mansfield is a New York Times bestselling author and popular speaker best known for his groundbreaking books on religion, history, and contemporary culture. He writes for several leading news organizations, appears regularly on television discussion programs and is an outspoken advocate for a number of social causes.
Mansfield 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, he was recruited to play college football but turned down the opportunity when a Christian conversion moved him to attend a leading Christian college.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in history and philosophy, he moved to Texas where he pastored a church, completed two master’s degrees, hosted a radio program and began acquiring a reputation as a popular speaker of both depth and humor. He moved to Tennessee in 1991 where he pastored what at that time was one of the nation’s leading mega-churches, worked among the Kurds of Kurdistan, completed a doctorate, and served as a political consultant.
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 highly regarded 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. Not long after, he wrote The Faith of George W. Bush, which spent many weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and won numerous national awards. The book was also a source for Oliver Stone’s acclaimed film, W, which chronicled Bush’s rise to the presidency.
This international bestseller led to a string of influential books over the following decade. Stephen wrote The Faith of the American Soldier after being embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq in 2005. He also wrote about the ascent of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy in Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission. His book The Faith of Barack Obama was another international bestseller and captured broad media attention in the U.S. during the presidential race of 2008. Disturbed by crumbling moral values in portions of American corporate culture, he wrote The Search for God and Guinness, which instantly placed him in demand for corporate gatherings around the world.
Stephen continues to write books about faith and culture—recently on figures as varied as Oprah Winfrey and Abraham Lincoln. His latest book, Killing Jesus, is typical of his approach to faith and history. It is a gritty portrayal of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, which has received praise for being thoroughly researched and movingly written.
Mansfield is the founder of The Mansfield Group, a successful consulting and communications firm that specializes in training leaders to communicate well. He is also the founder of Chartwell Literary Group, a firm that creates and manages literary projects.
In recent years, Stephen’s popularity as a speaker has nearly eclipsed his reputation as a bestselling author. He is known for blending humor, history and a hopeful approach to the challenges of the moment into speeches that entertain and inspire.
Mansfield lives in Nashville and Washington DC with his beloved wife, Beverly, who is an award-winning songwriter and producer.
Stephen Writes: “When this book first came out during the presidential race of 2008, it was controversial. An evangelical, politically conservative writer was saying that Obama had a serious religious faith. It was true but his political enemies didn’t like it and raged against what I wrote. Still, the book was an international bestseller. Now, in this updated, expanded edition, readers are going to find that the president has made a dramatic turn in his religious life while in office. I imagine this will be as controversial as the first edition to some. Still, it is the truth and we ought to know it since it will surely impact Mr. Obama’s second term in office.”
Stephen writes: “I discovered in the 1970’s that love for radio which an older generation of American’s had long before found. I lived in Berlin, Germany, in those years, the son of an Army officer during the Cold War. Satellite TV had yet to evolve into what we know now and so, while my friends back home in the states were basking in the joys of cable TV, I was often to be found pressed against a radio to hear Casey Kasem count down the hits and something called “Theatre of the Mind” on Armed Forces Radio. This is when I discovered Paul Harvey. His voice became America for me, as fun as old men telling jokes on a small town square and filled with the wisdom of ages gone by. And he did something I thought no one could do: he made me love the past. His Rest of the Story helped me see beyond the numbing dates and dead people of history class and to the dramatic nobility of generations before. In time, history became my mistress, too, and I live in the knowledge that it was Paul Harvey who first stirred this love. How very grateful I am.”
Stephen writes: “My co-author, David Holland, and I did not write this book because we are endorsing the political aspirations of Sarah Palin. Instead, we believe that Sarah Palin’s presence on the national stage has exposed some fault lines in American culture and that these fault lines are essential to understanding our society today. Whether she meant to or not, Palin has stepped onto fault lines between politically conservative and liberal Americans, of course, but also fault lines that have to do with a rural/urban divide in our land, with a secular/religious divide, with a new feminism/old feminism divide and even with an Eastern elite/man-on-the-street conservatism divide. Whatever her political future, her presence on our national stage today should be understood by those who want to know the direction of America. That is why we wrote this important book.”
Stephen writes: “Of all my books, this one is perhaps dearest to my heart. The reason is not only that I am an Army brat but also that I spent so many stirring days with the troops in Iraq to dig out the stories I recount here. My goal, though, was not just to tell exciting stories of heroism or faith, but to make the case for a faith-based warrior code. I probably wrote as an advocate for a position more in this book than I have in anything else I’ve written. I don’t apologize for it though. I believe in the nobility of the warrior’s call and I believe our nation owes its warriors that they are only deployed in morally clear circumstances with defined objectives, unflinching support and honorable welcome upon their return. I think faith plays a role in all this and I’m glad I had a chance to push that agenda forward a bit. On the personal side, nothing has moved me quite like the men and women who come up to me at my signings and speeches to tell me about their experiences in war. We have wept together and I have often thanked long-time veterans for serving only to have them tell me it is the first time they’ve ever been thanked. I can’t express how grateful I am to have been graced by these noble souls.”
Stephen writes: “I wrote this book because I believe that George W. Bush’s journey to faith is one of the defining stories of our time. Not only is he typical of his generation, in that he found faith after surfing the spiritual and sensual currents of his age, but he is symbolic of the religious fascination of our times. His emphasis on faith in the White House is forcing a reconsideration of the First Amendment, the theological basis of law, and the myth of our secular society. Beyond this, though, his story is just amazing: a prince of power who failed to achieve until faith gave him a sense of destiny. The fact that this book has become a New York Times bestseller means that Bush’s tale of faith hits a responsive chord in the American soul.”
Stephen writes: “I am not Roman Catholic in faith but my life has been profoundly shaped by Roman Catholics. Catholic nuns prayed for my mother’s troubled pregnancy when she carried me, Roman Catholics were among my first spiritual influences once I became a Christian, Roman Catholics have stood with me most courageously in protecting the unborn and it is Roman Catholics like Pat Buchanan and Michael Novak who have inspired much of my worldview. I have written this book on Benedict XVI because I am fascinated with the influence of the papacy in our world and because I wanted to say “thank you.” Though I am an unapologetic Protestant, I drink deeply from the Catholic stream in church history. How grateful I am for the refreshing I have found in that stream, as I hope this book will show.”
Stephen writes: “Church historians and missiologists call the twentieth century the “Century of the Holy Spirit.” This is largely because of the transforming series of spiritual renewals that occurred throughout the century. First, there were the Pentecostal revivals in the early part of the century, followed by the “Latter Rain” renewals just after World War II, and, finally, the Charismatic Renewal which began in the early 1960′s. These renewals combined formed the largest single movement in the history of the Church.
Stephen writes: “The last hundred years of black history in America have been bound up with the story of civil rights. Thank God, but there is more to the story. Booker T. Washington, the founder of Tuskegee Institute who was born a slave, pressed the question of what kind of people blacks ought to be once they had their freedom, once their rights were assured. He said that character, industry, and faith would win what civil rights alone could not give. He was right, and I wrote this book to inspire a new generation of blacks to reach for the higher prize.”
Stephen writes: “Of all my books, this is my favorite. The reason is that so few people know about George Whitefield. He came to faith under the tutelage of the Wesleys at Oxford in the early 1700′s and then became one of the greatest preachers in Church history. Beyond his preaching, he built schools, publishing houses, orphanages, and universities that survive today. What amazes me about him most is his forgotten role in American history. He was the first “intercolonial event.” He not only unified the colonies with his crusades but he called them both to faith and to a reclaiming of their destiny when that destiny was in question. Then, he warned the colonial leaders of King George III’s intentions to control their religious lives. This fed the fires of revolution. I think it is pure anti-religious bias that writes him out of our textbooks and thus out of the American memory. I wrote this book to make him live in our hearts again.”
Stephen writes: “I have a bias. I hate it when famous men and women are remembered only for their achievements without any reference to the dark hours and private pain that made those achievements possible. Everyone knows the story of Winston Churchill. They remember the jaunty cigar, bowler hat, inspiring speeches and sense of humor. But do they know that Churchill’s father hated him? Do they know that he was a sickly stutterer who did horribly in school and suffered such deep depression during his life that he never wanted to stay in a room with a balcony because he was afraid he might throw himself off? And this was while he was Prime Minister of England rallying the western democracies to defeat Nazism! I wrote this book because I wanted people with failures in their lives to know that those failures are never final, that suffering becomes the soil from which greatness grows.”
Stephen writes, “I wish I could say that this book was my idea. Instead, the inspiration came from Governor Don Sundquist, who decided that Tennessee’s bicentennial celebration would not be complete without a tribute to the religious heritage of the state. Fortunately, he gave me the privilege of telling that story of faith, along with my dear friend George Grant.
Stephen writes: “I hated history, I hated history class, I hated history teachers, and I hated those ninety pound history textbooks they made us carry around. I wasn’t alone. Survey’s show that most people hated history class only slightly less than they hated their school lunch. That’s bad. The truth is, though, that once people get liberated from the classroom version of history, they love the real stuff. Think of it: historical films, historical novels, historical PBS specials, historical theme parks-all of these are more popular than ever. So, I wrote this book to heal the historically abused and to show how a Christian approach to history makes the past a thrilling, inspiring tool in our lives.”
