How Guinness scratched-off the veil between heaven and earth
How Arthur Guinness’s faith motivated him to sign a 9,000-year lease, why monks and nuns viewed brewing beer as deeply missional, and how Guinness created a “thin place” between heaven and earth.
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[00:00:05] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren’t pastors, or religious professionals, but who work as chefs and welders, and managers. That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Stephen Mansfield, the New York Times best-selling of a number of terrific biographies, including one of my all-time favorite biographies, The Search for God and Guinness.
Stephen and I finally sat down to talk about how Arthur Guinness’s faith motivated him to sign a 9,000-year lease on the property that the Guinness Brewery is still sitting on today. We talked about why monks and nuns in the 1700s viewed brewing beer as deeply missional. And we talked about how Arthur Guinness created a thin place between heaven and earth. You are going to love this phenomenal episode with my new friend, Stephen Mansfield.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:20] JR: Stephen Mansfield, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:21] SM: It's great to be with you. Thank you so much.
[00:01:24] JR: Yeah. Hey, I'm curious, how did you get into this lane of writing biographies? How did that happen?
[00:01:29] SM: Well, it's interesting. I didn't do well in school as a young guy. When I became a Christian, obviously, I became more literary, as we have to, as we read Scripture and learn and what have you. But I was fascinated by great leaders. So, frankly, the spoken word sort of came to me and became a fascination for me before I began to write. I was intrigued by how Churchill shaped history by speaking and others. So, I studied great lives. I studied about how they use – martial the English language or whatever language they spoke and sent it into battle. And then in time, having become fascinated with that I began to – they moved into the written word and I had an opportunity. My first book, by the way, was about Winston Churchill. So, that's what really launched me.
[00:02:17] JR: I love watching Churchill on screen. I'm a huge Crown fan. I loved John Lithgow as Churchill. Who's your favorite Churchill on the big or small screen?
[00:02:28] SM: I'd have to say the recent one, Darkest Hour, the movie. I'm sorry, I forgotten the actor's name. My wife’s going to kill me.
[00:02:34] JR: He’s so good. He won an Oscar for it, right?
[00:02:38] SM: He won an Oscar for it. Yes. I thought that was brilliant. And the fact that he was wearing 60 pounds of prosthetics to look like Churchill when he's actually a skinny Brit himself.
[00:02:49] JR: Gary Oldman.
[00:02:49] SM: Gary Oldman. Yeah.
[00:02:50] JR: So good.
[00:02:52] SM: I thought that he was absolutely brilliant. Probably the best ever.
[00:02:54] JR: You’ve written a lot of biographies on what we in the podcast call mere Christians, right? Christians who weren’t pastors or priests, but were just doing regular jobs. You've written about Booker T. Washington, George W. Bush, and of course, Arthur Guinness, who we’ll spend a lot of time talking about today. Was it this intersection of faith and work that got you interested in these people? Because that seems like a throughline through a lot of your books.
[00:03:16] SM: Yes. I mean, I'm definitely a church guy. I live in two cities, attend two churches, I'm definitely going to heaven. But my point is that I'm fascinated by the impact of faith on the world outside the church. So, what impact did faith have on Churchill whom we've already mentioned? What impact does it have on a corporate leader? What does it do in the real world? What's it doing on the street? What's it doing in Walmart? What's it doing in the mud, the blood, the beer, as they say? So, that's what I care about it.
Again, it's not that I don't love the church. But the majority of us, I'm sure I'm singing your song here and I'm not doing it because it's your song. It's my song too. The majority of us are not called to be clergy. And the total percentage of people who are Christians, relatively small percent are going to stand on stage and teach and speak and educate. The majority of us are going to get up on Monday morning and go out into the world, into politics, into professions, et cetera. Both confronting darkness and having to use skills outside of what are normally used in the church. So, I'm fascinated with that arena, and in my particular arena, of course, it has to do with politics and national international leadership.
[00:04:23] JR: Yeah. What in your story, what in your backstory do you think allowed this topic to kind of strike a nerve?
[00:04:30] SM: Well, I have kind of an unusual upbringing. My father was a high-ranking army officer and we live largely in Europe. The majority of my years outside of the US were lived in Europe, and by the way, in Berlin during the Cold War. So, I was thrust into international affairs just in terms of where I lived as a teenager. I’m not saying I was responsible for anything. I was just watching. If Russia blinked, if the US blinked during the Cold War, it had implications for my German friends and what was going on in the streets and whether I would hear tanks going down the cobblestone roads of Berlin, et cetera. By the way, we were in Berlin and my father was a US intelligence officer during the ‘72 Munich Olympics when the Israeli wrestling team was killed by Palestinians, when the Baader-Meinhof Gang was blowing up American installations, et cetera.
So, from the beginning of my life, our very dinnertime conversation was about terrorism. It was about international affairs, it was about the Vietnam War, it was about prominent individuals and how they led and during my later teen years, Watergate was unfolding. So, my father wasn't involved in that, of course. But my parents were intellectuals when we discussed all of that. So, it's very much true that growing up the way I did launched me into what I did. Then I went to a university where great statesmen and American leaders spoke and even had positions as professors. And then over time, of course, I just developed this fascination largely through reading, and then eventually, once my writing career took off, I had more exposure to those people. Time to sit with them, know them, interview them, be with them, serve with them. So, that's been the trajectory of my life and I'm very, very grateful for it.
[00:06:09] JR: You wrote what I think is the best biography on, one of my all-time favorite mere Christians, Arthur Guinness in your book, The Search for God and Guinness. Can you share – I don't think a lot of people know the origin story of the Guinness stout. Can you share with our listeners how Arthur's faith was part of the process of the creation of Guinness?
[00:06:29] SM: Oh, there's no question. I'll give you a flyover and then you just click on anything you want to talk about further. Arthur grew up on the estate of a bishop. He was mentored in Christian faith. His father was the estate manager. And his father was the –
[00:06:41] JR: What year was this? Remind me when Arthur was born.
[00:06:43] SM: This would have been early in the 1700s. So, you're talking 1740s, 1750s. And Arthur was, again, just the son of the estate manager, but then an estate manager who had a particular gift for brewing beer. You may recall that back then, Europeans were suspicious of water. They would not have gone down, they would not have pulled their water up from a well or from a river. They knew enough to know that people died from bad water. So, they wouldn't often drink it. As a result, they tend to want to prefer to drink alcoholic beverages, because even though they didn't know the science for it, they somehow knew it didn't kill you. It could get you drunk, but it didn't kill you.
Arthur's beer though, the beer though, was an answer to the drunkenness that resulted from what people call the gin craze at that time in European history, mainly in England, because beer was relatively light on alcohol and high in vitamins. So, as people began to drink beer, they found themselves healthier and stronger and more vital and less of the drunkenness that destroyed society.
So, Arthur's father became well known. In time Arthur left the estate and started his own brewery and did so at St. James’s Gate in Dublin, where Arthur eventually bought a large tract of land. Actually, he leased it, and this is part of the Guinness lore. He leased it, believe it or not, for 9,000 years.
[00:07:57] JR: I've stood at the site of the 9,000-year lease. It’s incredible.
[00:08:01] SM: Can you believe it? Think about that. Think about the foresight. 9,000 years.
[00:08:06] JR: What is the story behind the night? There has – I can't remember the details of this. How did the 9,000-year lease come about?
[00:08:12] SM: Well, it was a way of gaining this land that owners didn't want to sell. But it also was the product of a very long-term Christian vision. Even though Arthur was not the deep Christian, he would become eventually, at that moment. He was thinking in terms of his successors, he was thinking in terms of his heirs and the generations that would follow him. He fully expected that 9,000 years later, there will be Guinnesses on that site. I mean, you can actually buy a copy as you may know, of this 9,000-year lease at the gift store at the Guinness Storehouse there in Dublin, because it's such an unusual lease.
[00:08:47] JR: I did not know that. But I’m going to do it the next time I go.
[00:08:50] SM: You can actually get it and put it on your wall if you want to. But the unusual thing about the Guinness brewery was that it moved away from what some people call blond beers, and it brewed porter stout. It was called porter stout because the porters in the London train stations loved it. It was, to put it humorously, a beer milkshake, kind of like those who love Guinness today will know. Very rich and vitamins. Very frothy. If I use the word heavy, I mean that in a positive sense.
Well, people were crazy about it. By the way, at a time of questionable nutrition and diets, people knew that a couple of pints of Guinness a day and you were healthier. In fact, for a long time, Guinness was prescribed for pregnant mothers on the Irish national health system. It would actually be a part of the Irish National Health and women would drink it while they were pregnant, which is of course –
[00:09:39] JR: What a time to be alive.
[00:09:41] SM: It was pretty amazing. So, Guinness really began to prosper. He became part of the upper class in Dublin, and then I'll just take us to the turning point, and we can come back to anything you want to. But what happened was that John Wesley, whose ministry had begun in going to the poor and the needy in England, came to Dublin, he and Arthur Guinness met, and Guinness basically had – I'm sorry, or Wesley basically had a message that is so simple by today's standards. But at that time, it gave Arthur Guinness sort of a Christian vision for what he was doing.
Because Wesley went around saying to the wealthy, “Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can to the glory of God.” This was a famous Wesley statement. Well, prior to that, Arthur Guinness would have been a man who went to church and wanted to serve God and probably funded a few church projects. But nobody was proclaiming a vision for what a man would do, particularly brewing beer, or in secular work, so to speak. If you were going to be spiritual, you would be a clergy, outside of the church, this was “secular work”.
Well, Guinness, bombarded that wall of separation and said, “No, God has called you to this work, but use it for his glory.” Immediately, once Arthur was really impacted by Wesley's message, he began to do amazing things with the wealth that he had accrued from this Guinness Brewery. He built a hospital for the poor. He challenged dueling, which was a common practice among his ruling class. He began – he actually was the founder of the Sunday School movement in Ireland. Robert Raikes was the founder and England but he was the founder. I could go on and on and on.
So, this is the way he began to do business as a brewer, and he passed this on to the next generations. And the story is absolutely fascinating.
[00:11:33] JR: Yeah, I want to get back in a minute to what he did with the wealth because it's pretty remarkable. But whether or not the first Arthur was aware of it. I think even the creation of the Guinness stout was redemptive. I mean, as you pointed out, the Guinness that was basically created in response to the gin craze, right? Gin was way higher in alcohol content. And the Guinness stout was very low in alcohol content. It still is relatively low in alcohol content today, but it was filling, and it was nutritious, right? It was an alternative. It’s a redemptive alternative to take these raw materials of creation, and offer something that would serve people well and not get them wasted in the streets, right?
[00:12:13] SM: Exactly. And by the way, there's a little bit of a political backstory here. Parliament had prohibited the importation of alcoholic beverages. So, as a result, people distilled them on their own. And at one point, a historian tells us that every sixth house in England was a gin house, and this is where they would distill gin. They would have signs that because people would pass out and get sick, and they need a place to – clean straw for so many pints, dirty straw for so many pints, the idea being go ahead and buy your straw or rent your straw in advance because you're about to get stoned and pass out.
It was devastating families. The gin was given to babies to make them sleep, so they wouldn't cry. I mean, people went nuts. So, in a sense, beer brewers became social do-gooders. They became people who were changing society. And there's a lot of art and a lot of writing about this from the time but a society was devastated by the gin craze. But one thing our listeners might want to remember is that often, if you walk by a bar, you're in a bar, you walk by a place where beer is being sold, you'll often see monks and nuns as the symbols of certain brands of beer. The reason is that they actually were at that time trying to answer the social crisis of society, and they knew that beer was a way to do it.
So, they were putting feet to their faith, they wanted to fix society, they wanted to help heal a disease, and part of the way they did it was through beer. Again, they didn't know the science, we wouldn't know about microorganisms really, until the early 1800s. They just knew their children were healthier, people were less drunk, there was less domestic violence, there was less crime, et cetera when people were drinking beer. So, the church got involved. People like Arthur Guinness got involved and began to heal society.
[00:14:02] JR: Yeah. And coming out at this, we got to remember the timeline here, right? We're coming out of the Protestant Reformation when there wasn't nearly as large of a disconnect between a Christian’s faith and their work. This is what Luther and Calvin were writing about, right? So, I think for a lot of Arthur's contemporaries, they just assumed that that vocation, whether they were a brewer, or a baker, or a monk, was just how one served God and his mission in the world, right?
[00:14:30] SM: That's true. They did believe that they served God, but it was a bit of a truncated vision. I'll have to say. The reason was that, yeah, you did what you did. This is what you were made for. His buddies would have said Arthur is made to brew beer. This is how he glorifies God. But they would have thought of that in terms of how he did what he did at his workbench, so to speak. Not so much in terms of how he used his wealth, or how he changed the lives of his employees. This is what Arthur innovated in.
[00:14:58] JR: Yeah. And Wesley, you think Wesley gave him that vision?
[00:15:01] SM: Yes. There's no question. That's what comes down through the company history and the family lore that Wesley, when he showed up at St. Patrick's Cathedral, by the way, a cathedral built where St. Patrick first baptized Christians in Ireland. When he preached there, that's when Arthur Guinness first heard this vision. And now, that changes it. That changes it from, “Hey, I can run a bowling alley to the glory of God just by running a good bowling alley.” Now it becomes, “Hey, I'll run a bowling alley, I'll make a profit and I'll use that money to change lives and I'll treat my employees well.” Who knows what? We'll have church bowling leagues, or whatever you do at the bowling alley. But this is what Arthur Guinness began to do. Again, he built hospitals, and he funded relief for the poor, and it was just stunning what happened down to the generations. But it was an enhanced vision, so to speak, that Wesley brought to Arthur Guinness.
[00:15:49] JR: I love it. I think a big part of that is you wrote about in the book was just how radically Guinness and his descendants treated their employees, right? You wrote, “The benefits the company gave its employees surpass those even envisioned by modern companies like Google.” List out some of those benefits, because it's pretty wild. What they did back in the 1700, 1800s.
[00:16:12] SM: It's just stunning. There were libraries, there were sports clubs. You had nurses that visited the homes to help the wives because it would have been all male workers at the Guinness brewery at that time. So, wives are home and nurses would show up to help them learn how to cook better and help them learn how to raise healthier children. You had a pension for everybody, you had retirement benefits. The company paid for the funeral when a worker died. It was stunning.
They even had – the single workers, they had a dating service and the company. And they would work in advance to find the worker a date because every year the company paid for every worker and his family or date to go out in the country and have a day in the country. And the company paid for all that because they were aware that these people were basically living in kind of a warehouse or industrial district. But they wanted to make sure that the single workers weren't left out, and they literally had a dating service to make sure an appropriate young lady was found.
They also did two pints of Guinness a day for every worker. Imagine that now, that shows you how safe this is. The company is not saying, “Hey, go get toasted.” The company is saying, “Hey, you'll actually be better workers and we want to say thank you. So, here's two pints of the good stuff every day.” I could go on and on and on. And this, by the way, continued down through the generations and Irish women were told by their mothers, marry a Guinness man, because it was the best situation for the family, the most rapid trajectory upwards for our family if the man was a Guinness man, because the company invested so much in their employees.
[00:17:46] JR: I recall the story – I’m not going to remember the exact details. Hopefully, you do. When you were researching the book, and kind of driving around Dublin and there was a conversation with a taxi driver whose family is – tell that story real quick.
[00:18:03] SM: Well, let me give the background just very, very quickly before I get to that actual taxi driver. The Guinnesses actually created the Irish version of the Red Cross. The way they did that was they wanted to prevent corporate accidents that would damage people and cause injuries. So, they created kind of an informal in-house Red Cross on the factory floor. And a Dr. Lumsden, I've met his descendants by the way, a Dr. Lumsden innovated, taught people how to do things we would know now, like suppressing a wound to prevent blood and how to tie it off, and how to do this and how to do that, basic first aid things which were new at the time.
Well, it saved lives and it actually ended up becoming the St. John's Cross, which is the Irish version of the Red Cross. Well, all that to say, or St. John’s ambulance is actually what they would have called it. So, we're driving around in a taxi in Dublin, my wife, and some others. And we were describing what we were doing. And we were doing research on Guinness, and the guy just went nuts and said, “You know, I'm alive because of the Guinnesses.” And we said, “How?” He said, “My grandfather was wounded and had an artery severed on the factory floor. But because they had innovated in these first aid”, they wouldn't have called it that. “But first aid responses, they saved his life and his arm. And therefore, my grandfather lived, my father then was born, and now here I am.”
He was in tears. I mean, imagine a family at that time now, this would have been, given the age of this man, this would have been in the early 1900s. Had that man died. I mean, who knows what it would have happened, and Guinness would have helped with some pensions and things like that, but the family could have been impoverished in the next generation. But instead, this taxi driver, by the way, owned a number of taxis and said we've ascended because of those Guinness values and again, saving my grandfather's life.
[00:19:57] JR: It's one tiny little example of how the first Arthur's work was, as Paul says in first Corinthians 15:58, not in vain, right? But what's remarkable to me about the Guinness story, you alluded to this before, Stephen, is how many generations of Guinness leadership operated the business in this redemptive way. What do you think Arthur did? Maybe the first couple of generations did right to set up the business in a way that would honor God for so long?
[00:20:28] SM: I think he actually discipled his sons and grandsons. I think that's really critical. They were wealthy, they looked around, they saw what they would have called a wastrel people who were the wealthy and aristocratic in Ireland, the Irish upper class, getting drunk and having excessive parties and engaging in duels, and their children being lost any meaningful life.
So here, Arthur Guinness discipled his sons, those men discipled their sons. So, they built a vision that continued, and the Guinnesses, it's stunning what they did. When they went public in the 1880s, they really increased in wealth, because now of course, stock is being sold. And they actually decided to invest in Ireland. They rebuilt Irish historic sites, they rebuilt St. Patrick's Cathedral, so now it's one of the great cathedrals of the world. They invested in the poor. The aristocratic name was the Lord's Iveagh, and they built the Iveagh Trust. There have been some years and Irish history when the Iveagh Trust has given more to take care of the poor than the Irish welfare system.
Because of the economy would be challenged, the Guinnesses we'd be doing find, the government would not have that much to spend on the poor and its welfare system. Literally, the Guinness Foundation would give more to the poor than the Irish national government.
Here's one quick story, I can tell you an example of how this worked. Right around 1900, Guinness got married. This would have been a great-grandson of Arthur. His father gave to this young married man and his new bride, what would have been 5,000 pounds. Well, now that's in the many millions now. Convert the currency over many millions. But this young man took his bride and went and lived what we would call today, a ghetto, a tenement, to draw national attention to the plight of the poor.
So here is basically, a wealthy person's Bezos. Let's say Bezos has his son, and he inherits hundreds of millions today. The guy who owns Amazon and the Washington Post. But his son says, “No, I'm going to take that gift. Thank you, dad. But I'm going to live my first six months in a New York ghetto to draw attention to the plight of the poor.” That's what was happening and it was happening in 1900. That's how committed they were to the poor.
[00:22:42] JR: That's incredible. But this wasn't inevitable, right? I'm reading a great book right now. The first real biography written about LEGO. I had never heard this, that the founder of LEGO was a very serious Christ follower. Very, very, very serious, very committed. But it's very clear that that lineage of running that business in a truly God-honoring way is broken, two or three generations in, right? It didn't transition. He wasn't – we got to assume he wasn't discipling his sons. It's fascinating. But it goes back to Arthur's vision for a business that would outlive him. It goes back to the 9,000-year lease, this vision for work that doesn't end when we die, right? That's going to continue on for the next generation. It's really, really beautiful.
[00:23:29] SM: Well, it's also interesting the way that they split off. There are a number of different lines of the Guinness family. You have the brewing Guinnesses who have – now, the company is not owned by the Guinnesses. So, they've largely gone elsewhere.
[00:23:43] JR: What is the business now? Is it InBev?
[00:23:46] SM: It's an Italian alcohol firm. And by the way, still, within that family of companies, Guinness worldwide, they still say that the Irish company in Dublin maintains the old ways and is amongst the most prosperous because they maintain on a voluntary basis, the old ways. It's Diageo, by the way, the Italian alcohol firm.
[00:24:03] JR: Anyways, I interrupted. You said there's these lines of Guinnesses. You have bankers –
[00:24:06] SM: Yeah. So, you have brewing Guinnesses, who have sort of faded out because the company is not owned by them anymore. But then by the way, the Guinness is intermarried with Hudson Taylor, famous missionary statesman to China. You have a huge number of clergy and preachers and ministers and so on, who are Guinnesses. In fact, we know of Os Guinness, as a Christian speaker in America Today.
[00:24:26] JR: Yeah. He's been on this podcast.
[00:24:27] SM: Well, he’s a direct descendant of the Guinnesses. And then you'll have other, the banking Guinnesses and some of them have gone into fashion. One of the most famous fashionistas in England today is a Guinness, et cetera. So, you have a number of lines and they have broken off, and not and not all of them, I should say, are devoted Christians. But the fact is that what Arthur Guinness really did was, he assured about 150 years of deep Guinness commitment to the poor and the lost, by discipling his heirs and that's a critical part of the entire plan.
[00:24:56] JR: Yeah, you talk about in the book, the banking Guinnesses, the brewing Guinnesses, and the “Guinnesses for God”, the clergy, the missionaries. But you point out that the Guinness family really viewed all three of those strands as Guinnesses for God. They had a strong theology of work, and understood that each of those lines could be equally honoring to the Lord and advancing his purposes in the world, correct?
[00:25:19] SM: No, that's exactly. That's what's beautiful about this story. I mean, we in American history have had our prohibition discussions, and is alcohol even an evil thing? Some people have concluded. But here is a man. That's why I wrote the book and titled it the way that I did. I knew by the way that The Search for God and Guinness would pick up some ears and – the book.
[00:25:38] JR: It's a great title.
[00:25:40] SM: But the point is that they believe they came from a Wesleyan reformed, historic, I would even say Celtic perspective, that what a man does day in and day out, what a woman does day in and day out, this is the altar on which they are offering their lives. This is something that God blesses. I'm a student of Celtic code, history in Celtic theology. One of the beautiful things of Celtic theology is that it drew from Hebrew lore, in dedicating every act to God. Therefore, there were songs for milking a cow, songs of worship and praise, and inviting God to be part. Songs for birthing a baby. Songs for preparing a meal. Songs at the heart. Often family saying their blessing in Irish families rather than just the father, praying a blessing.
In other words, all of life was offered to God. And this, of course, came from a theology to get a little technical about it. It's not the Platonic idea that we are in the secular and the spiritual, is in another realm. But all that we are involved in, you and I are doing this broadcast right now. This is an offering to God. This is a spiritual moment. We are both offering our gifts on an altar to God. He's involved. The Holy Spirit is involved. Jesus is involved. We're in Him, we live and move and have our being. So, this is what the Guinnesses would have understood, and it just so happens by God's grace, that they were using beer as the mechanism. And I think that challenges a lot of our modern thinking, in a good way.
[00:27:05] JR: Yeah, amen. Are you familiar with this Celtic idea of thin places?
[00:27:09] SM: Yes, I love it.
[00:27:10] JR: Explain this to our listeners who haven't heard this term.
[00:27:12] SM: Celtic Christians believed in the idea that there were places where, to put it frankly, God chose to meet with people or the spiritual, it was easier to be in tune with the spiritual. Now, we all believe this, whether we have a form of theology or not. That's why we go to a chapel to pray. Or we might go to the ocean, or we might go to a mountaintop, or we might go to a retreat center that's by a lake or something. We believe that these locations are, to use the Celtic term, a thin place. Meaning that the separation between the natural and the spiritual is thinner than other places.
So, we all believe this. I mean, I'm in my office right now and this is a thin place. I meet with God here. This is where I pray. This is where I hammer out and get on my face. This is where I read scriptures and I do theology. This is a thin place. And the Celts believed that even to the point that some Celts believed that all bridges symbolize something vital. So, they would pray on bridges. They believed that thresholds to houses were places that were thin. They didn't get weird with it. But what they believed was that we're not moving in a natural world that’s far removed from the spiritual, but instead the two intersect.
[00:28:21] JR: Yeah, and I think this is exactly what we see –
[00:28:23] SM: – is biblical.
[00:28:23] JR: This exactly what we see in Scripture. Mark 1:10. Jesus saw heaven being torn open at His baptism. Stephen and Acts chapter 7. So, I'll have an open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. Second King 6, Elisha opens up his eyes and sees the hills full of horses and chariots of fire, as God temporarily lifts the veil between heaven and earth. And to write the great theologian, to find thin places this way. He says, “Where the curtain between Heaven and Earth seems almost transparent.” I bring this up, Stephen, because man, I think the Guinness factory was a thin place for centuries, right?
[00:29:04] SM: There’s just no question. Yeah. There's no question. That's a lot of what we ought to be doing with our businesses and with our earthly ventures, is modeling the kingdom of God. That doesn't mean we walk around in robes and we float six inches above the ground. But it means that people see relationships, they see care, they see excellence in what we do. They see the redemptive use of wealth.
I'm very moved by the scriptures you've just cited. One of my favorite themes in Scripture is when someone says to someone who's living just a natural life, “Lord, open their eyes.” And what is not said is, “Lord, take them into heaven so they can see.”
[00:29:37] JR: Amen.
[00:29:38] SM: Now, right here in the desert, right at this mountain, right at this McDonald's, right at the Starbucks, open their eyes, so they can see the angelic, they can see the spiritual, they can see what's actually happening because it's going on around us. I'm holding my right hand right near my face and I'm saying the spiritual is right here. So, when we do our business ventures, when we do what we do in the “natural world” every day, whether it's politics or education, or broadcasting or building roads, the spiritual is involved. And that's what it means to be a Christian in this world.
[00:30:08] JR: Yes. When we do those things with excellence and love and in accordance with God's commands, in distinctive ways, to which just beg the questions to which Christ is the only answer, that's when we're creating thin places.
[00:30:24] SM: No question.
[00:30:25] JR: I think one of the best examples of this, in the Guinness story you touched on it before with Dr. Lumsden, was what happened in the 1800s in the Dublin slums, and how Guinness stepped up here. Can you share that story with our listeners? I just think this is such a beautiful testimony to what this looks like, to create thin places in our businesses.
[00:30:44] SM: Sure. The quick backstory is that there had been the Irish Potato Famine, and people had been dying of starvation. As a result, Irish from the rural areas had been flooding into the cities. So, there was great disease and problems in a place like Dublin. The Guinnesses, obviously, thinking the way they did wanted to make a difference. They wanted to help heal society. Again, they turned to Dr. Lumsden, who was a real hero in Irish history. And they said, “What do we need to do?”
[00:31:11] JR: This guy was on staff, right? At Guinness?
[00:31:13] SM: No, he was the Guinness doctor. He practiced in other ways and hospitals like doctors do these days in the modern world. But he was largely their medical advisor. So, he said, “Well, what really needs to happen, the real problem here has to do with housing and overcrowding.” So, they commissioned him to do a study. “Go get the research, tell us what's going on.” When he came back and reported over time, eventually, the Guinnesses decided that they would tear down a thing called the Liberties. This was the name of the housing right near the Guinness brewery, which was many, many large buildings.
The problem was, you'd often have 11 people crammed into one room. Three or four families crammed into a one-room house, and so on. So, the Guinesses said, “Look, we can fix this, if we'll rebuild housing.” So, they took their massive wealth, they moved all the people out of the slums called the Liberties, and they rebuilt the entire – this wasn't just a neighborhood. This was a whole region of the city. And then they moved people back in there, and of course, got their medical people training the mothers and so on. Here's how to cook. Here's how to clean. Here's what our fledgling understanding of microorganisms are and so on.
Well, here's what's interesting. They didn't just do it shoddily. They didn't just do it with lean-tos and tents, they build strong, powerful, very cutting-edge kinds of homes, so much so that right now in Dublin, every yuppie would like to own one of the Liberties. They are actually, a hot real estate buy in Dublin. Now, of course, they don't house Guinness workers, but people would just buy them as they wish and it is a hot thing. I mean, you've probably can see the pictures in the book, and they're certainly available online.
Go look up the Liberties in Dublin right near the Guinness brewery. And I'm telling you, every real estate investor in Ireland would like to own one of those. They're still standing, they still work beautifully. I live in Old Town, Alexandria, and in the same way that these beautiful colonial homes are being preserved here. People living in them. That's what's going on in the Liberties in Dublin. And it's because the Guinnesses built with excellence to the glory of God.
[00:33:15] JR: Yeah. Here's what really blows our mind, they did not have to do this. This went way beyond – I think a lot of Christians run their business ethically. But very few run their businesses redemptively. Seeking how can we bless the city? Because I'm sure not all of these people were Guinness employees, right? I mean, they were, as Jeremiah 29 says, “Seeking the prosperity of the city.”
[00:33:40] SM: Of the city. Sure. Well, you’re exactly right. It would have been easy for the Guinnesses just to take care of their employees. They could have simply gone to everyone's house, move them somewhere, funded it. That would have been easy. They decided to fix the city. They decided to change the society, and they did. By the way, everything that they learned all the research they did, all the scientists they hired, the facts that they unearthed, they shared with the city as a whole. And bear in mind, the whole time that they're doing this, they are increasingly understanding the health benefits of Guinness beer, and they're increasingly understanding how alcohol answers the problem of microorganisms, which by the 1900s, by the way, they're now understanding. So, amazing what it was accomplished and the way it continues down through the generations.
[00:34:25] JR: It's almost like God meant what he said in Jeremiah 29, when we seek the prosperity of the city, we too will be prosperous. We too will be blessed, right? It's exactly what we see there. Hey, I got to ask you this because I asked Os Guinness, maybe a year ago when he was on the podcast. Did Arthur Guinness, and one of my other great heroes, William Wilberforce ever cross paths?
[00:34:44] SM: Not to my knowledge. Not to my knowledge.
[00:34:46] JR: Because these guys were contemporaries, right?
[00:34:49] SM: Yeah. I'm sure they knew of each other. Of course, in fact, I'm sure Wilberforce drank his beer. The fact is, that we just don't have a record of it, that I know of. So yeah, I would love to have that painting on my wall, the two of them meeting.
[00:35:05] JR: Well, I'll tell you what, how about this, on the New Earth, first episode of the Mere Christians podcast will be you, me, William Wilberforce, and Arthur Guinness over –
[00:35:14] SM: I am in. I am in on that one.
[00:35:15] JR: – pints of Guinness beer, the glory of the nations. Let’s do it. Hey, Stephen, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending or gifting most frequently to others?
[00:35:28] SM: Great question. We've been talking about Celtic things. And there's a book called The Celtic Way of Evangelism by George Hunter that I really believe in. It's all about using the way that St. Patrick reached the Irish, interesting that you were talking about that today. And the unique Celtic way of doing evangelism that is not the open air, Billy Graham kind of meeting we have these days where we think in terms of these days. It was actually moving communities in and showing the kingdom of God, displaying the kingdom of God among these pagan Irish tribes.
So, I recommend that book and give it away a lot. The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer. I recommend a great deal. And then this is going to sound self-serving, but I'm sure you agree with me that nobody's going to heaven who hasn't read a Stephen Mansfield book. I'm going to tell you honestly, probably the book I've given away the most in my life, and I don't mean to sell books here. But it's one of my books for men, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men. I just believe in men, meet a lot of men, see a lot of guys who are both thriving and also challenged. So, this is an easy thing for me to give away. So that's probably the book I've given away most of my life.
[00:36:30] JR: It's one of the few books that years I actually haven't read, but it's been on my list for a long time. So, knowing that, it's going to move to the top of my reading list.
[00:36:36] SM: When you get to heaven. St. Peter's going to ask you, “Have you read this?” He's going to turn you round, send you back to earth. That’s all there is to it.
[00:36:40] JR: That’s right. Hey, what's the best biography – I don't ask this to every guest. But I'm just really interested. What's the best biography you've read but didn’t write on a mere Christian? On a believer that's working outside the four walls of the church?
[00:36:53] SM: Interesting. Interesting. That's a good question.
[00:36:57] JR: Who do you want to read a biography about? Maybe that's better.
[00:36:59] SM: I'd like to read a biography about Alfred the Great. I think Alfred the Great was an amazing figure. I'd like to read a great book for the Western world about Iona, the island of Iona. It's not a biography. I know, you've asked me about a biography. But I'm fascinated with the Celtic saints and real versions. They're not mythological versions of them. So, St. Brendan and St. Columba, and others are who centered around Iona. And by the way, you we've all probably heard of the book how the Irish saved civilization. That's the Irish – what happened at Iona, what happened with Christianity and the Celtic lands actually preserved Christianity for Europe, and thus preserved it for what became the United States. So yeah, any of those biographies would be fascinating.
[00:37:41] JR: That’s good. All right, let's move to modern day. Who would you like to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith shapes their work?
[00:37:49] SM: Well, this would be a weird one, probably for you and some others. But I'm fascinated with statesmen and stateswomen, and how they use their gifts. That's the world I work in. I know you have too. I'm here in DC right now as we speak.
So, one of the people I'm most interested in is Angela Merkel, who's the former head, lead Germany for so many years. A strong Christian, daughter of a pastor. I have a close connection to Germany. I think I've already said I was raised in Germany. Plus, I have a German daughter-in-law, which means that I have a German grandson, and I speak German badly, they tell me. But anyway, we are close to. And when people were complaining about immigration in Germany, and saying we're going to lose our heritage, she stood up and said, “If you want to preserve your heritage, teach your children what the day of Pentecost means. Teach them the teachings of Jesus, teach them about our Christian heritage. Don't assume that because we let a few Muslims into our country that we're losing our heritage. We're trying to help them at a time of crisis. You've got to teach them in your home what Pentecost means and what the teachings of Jesus are.”
I got to tell you, I think she would be absolutely fascinating. Obviously, she's getting older, and she's no longer leading Germany, but I think she's a fascinating lady. And there are others like that.
Two months ago, I would have said Queen Elizabeth, because I deeply, deeply admire her. In fact, here in my office wall, I often get teased for this. I'm looking at it right now, is a portrait of Queen Elizabeth. I have one in both – I have an office in Nashville in DC. And both of those offices, there's a portrait of Queen Elizabeth on the wall. So, obviously, it's too late for that now, but I would have said that a few months ago to you.
[00:39:14] JR: What do you admire most about Elizabeth?
[00:39:17] SM: It's going to surprise people because they don't know a lot about her life, but the courage. Just the sheer courage of the woman. Yes, she reigned a long time and yes, she was a strong Christian. You can go on YouTube and watch her annual Christian messages, and she always slammed home the gospel and talked about how Jesus was her example. But there was a parade in London, in which gunshots rang out and she was on a horse alone, quite removed from her bodyguards, and she did not jump down. She did not spur her horse away. She calmed the horse and stopped him and stayed right there. And she said later, “I have always believed that if the time came for me to give my life for my God in my nation, that I would do it. So, by calming my horse, I believed I could calm him the nation at that moment.”
I mean, she was right. People, with all the talk recently about the royal family being racist. The fact is that Queen Elizabeth early in her life, that may not sound like a lot to us now, but you don't know that I’ve got half a dozen African Americans in my family. So, I'm sensitive to these issues. But the fact is that Queen Elizabeth and her father would go on tours of Africa and would disobey the instructions they had been given not to touch the Africans when they gave them awards. Queen Elizabeth was known to even hug them. This was in the ‘50s. She wasn't Queen, she was Princess. But in the late ‘40s, early ‘50s, when she wasn't Queen yet, she would touch them, she would hug them, she would hold their babies.
This was radical, especially for the British Royal Family. So, she's always been a courageous woman. I know that her legacy gets tied up with all the craziness with Harry and Megan, and all that stuff, and I can't speak to all that right now. But the fact is, she was a courageous lady, a Christian lady, and she held firm, despite the fact that you know, both England and her family moved away from the gospel.
[00:41:07] JR: Yeah, I love The Crown, which gets a lot of controversy. But there's a particular episode where she meets Billy Graham, and it like really digs into her faith at a deeper level that I thought was extraordinary. Have you seen the show?
[00:41:22] SM: I have. By the way, let me tell you something about that scene you may not know this. The is the kind of stuff that I dig into real geeky like, the fact is that Queen Elizabeth at that meeting with Billy Graham asked him. He said, “How can I help you?” She said, “Would you pray for my family?” And according to Billy Graham's family and his aides, he prayed for her every day of his life.
In fact, when he was suffering from Alzheimer's, and a near-death at the end of his life, Franklin Graham has attested to the fact that his father still, from his deathbed, was praying for Queen Elizabeth and her family every single day.
[00:41:59] JR: Wow. That’s pretty amazing.
[00:42:01] SM: It is pretty amazing. And by the way, I don't know that the story is written yet on the British royal family. Who knows what God might be doing in William’s life, or Kate's life, or Charles the third's life. I believe in those things. I pray for them daily as I do for American leaders. So, may the Lord work.
[00:42:16] JR: Hey, Stephen, last question. You're talking to an audience of mere Christians, very diverse vocationally, a lot of them entrepreneurs, but some of them not. Some of them are bakers and accountants and baristas. What they share is a desire to do their work in redemptive God-glorifying ways. What's one thing you want to leave them with before we sign off?
[00:42:35] SM: There are many excerpts I could give them to work hard and use their gifts for the glory of God. But I'll tell you, one of the things that I'm aware is a bit of a cancer to people like those in your audience, and I share that love of that tribe and believed myself to be among them, even though I've been – I was a pastor for 20 years before I did what I do now.
But one of the things I really want to say to them is that God is always doing more than you know. A cancer on that group, a cancer in the heart, is the disillusionment and the despair, and watching CNN and Fox and MSNBC and hearing the negative reports and seeing what's going on in Washington. I live here in Washington, and I've worked in a lot of the capitals of the world. And I want you to know that God is doing more than you know. Things of the kingdom of God, the progress of the kingdom of God is not being reported on those network shows. People who you think hate each other are actually praying together. Good things are happening. I'm not saying that the negative news is false. I'm simply saying that behind the scenes, God is at work, be encouraged, and do good work yourself.
[00:43:40] JR: Amen. What a great word to end on. Stephen, I want to commend you for the extraordinary work you do every day for the glory of God and the good of others. Thank you for doing the hard work of telling the Guinnesses’ remarkable story, and giving us a vision of what it can look like to do our work for and with God as mere Christians. Guys, I cannot recommend Stephen’s book highly enough. It's called The Search for God and Guinness. Stephen, thanks again for joining me today.
[00:44:06] SM: Man, what a privilege. Thank you so much.
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[00:44:10] JR: Man, I can't wait for that episode with Stephen, Arthur Guinness, and William Wilberforce on the New Earth. You guys think I'm joking. Lord, this is one of my prayers that we get to keep doing this podcast is celebrating what God's done through the work of mere Christians even in eternity.
Guys, thank you so much for tuning in. If you're loving the podcast, please go leave a rating on Apple podcasts or Spotify. You have no idea how helpful those ratings are in helping other people find the show. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. I'll see you next week.
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