 - On business, church hurts, The Faith of Barack Obama and faith in politics
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- You have two books that you're currently working for two publishers and one is a profile of the Guinness company?
- Yes. I had been coming out of the political season and a lot of debates, thinking about the founding fathers vision of society and so I began to think a lot about what was in society, like corporate scandals, the election. I have always been intrigued by the Guinness family, which was a strongly Christian family, (they) funded the gospel around the world. I don't know if you know that in the old city of Jerusalem, there's only one Protestant church, it's called Christ Church and it's Episcopal. Guinness money built it. I could go on and on and on.
- The other thing is Guinness as a company is unbelievable in taking care of its people. For example, just an aside here, I have a book from the 1920s where they describe the fact that they had doctors on call 24 hours a day for their employees and dentists and clinics. Massages, every other kind of thing. This is in the 1920s, now, in the time of the Great Depression.
- What I thought I would do is to write a very unusual history, not even a history but a meditation, a look at Guinness and its heritage and going through three or four themes at once. One is the values of a Christian company. How really do you build a company on a faith basis? Second of all, the transmission of that down through the generations. We all know that you can have a strong family of faith in one generation and the next generation, some of them are living like devils. How does that happen? Then I wanted to talk about the beer, but not so much as 'hey, let's all go have a drink.' I don't even drink beer. But more from the standpoint of how it's powered civilization. There's a whole theory out there now that beer may have actually been behind a lot of the early innovations, once people developed the idea of beer. There are three or four things – faith, faith undergirding a company, faith transmitted down through a corporate line and of course, I also wanted it to be a book about business – how a company takes care of its employees and prospers as a result. That's why I'm writing that book. It's part of Thomas Nelson business line.
- What's the other book?
- The one that's distinctly Christian book is one I'm doing for Tyndale House. That book is about believers getting over their hurt and offense with the church. I pastored for 20 years, had a great experience and for some reason, I've been called into help with all types of situations where there have been church splits and Ted Haggard-type situations. And I've had years and years of experience watching people or the church have to fire the pastor who had an affair, how to bring the new guy in, how do they be gracious, or whatever. The humorous title is Aint No Church Like a Church Hurt? But that's not going to be the actual title. I'm writing from the perspective of - we're losing a lot of great people with their offense with the church, their painful and hurtful wounding experiences in church – we need these people back more than ever, so let me talk bluntly to them about how they can be restored. And also some wisdom for the church as to how not to be an abuse factory. Gritty, down and dirty, hard-hitting, kind of a Blue Like Jazz approach. It's obviously something very needed. There's a lot of anti-church, 'we don't need religion' kind of thing, especially among the young. Maybe my perspective is skewed because I work in Washington and Nashville, but I see a lot of floating mass of wounded humanity out there that we need to get plugged back in and help us change this culture that's in crisis. So that's what I'm writing about.
- And you're writing both at the same time?
- I'm writing both at the same time. They're not due until the middle of the year. The Guinness I'll write a little later and the other I'm writing now.
- Can you share some of your observations that came as a result of the release of The Faith of Barack Obama?
 - It was a very interesting thing. When the press first began to talk about the book before it was even released, I had some very violent and angry reactions from those on the right, the political right. I even had some death threats. Of course, nobody had read the book yet, they were all speculating, but since I'd written The Faith of George W. Bush, they figured I'd turned tail and gone the opposite direction. When the book came out, it was cited by both sides of the aisle as an objective treatment. If you read the book, you'll conclude Obama is not an evangelical, that he's got some liberal version of Christianity and you'll still be mad at him if you want to be.
- The two most intriguing things that came to me was – number one, the surprise of the mainstream media that an evangelical could write an objective book about religion. They constantly expressed that perspective: 'Wow, I know you're not going to vote for him but thanks for just trying to telling the truth about him.' It's not just that they were complimenting me but I think they think Evangelicalism is a brain bypass and we can't just think rational thoughts in the real world without coming at it with what they perceive to be our bias.
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- The second thing to me was the anger in the church about politics and the government. Rush Limbaugh is a friend of mine. I like him, but he's entertainment. He's not really modeling for us the Christian perspective on politics, that we should be angry, attacking these people, that we should be speaking of liberals as though they are the Antichrist. One of the things that amazed me is how much anger and rage there is in the church about politics and, of course, Obama. While I'm not an Obama supporter, whatever your response is to be should be based on Scripture to any politician. You certainly are not supposed to hate them, rage against them and tell nasty jokes about them, that sort of thing. I ran into that time and time again. Those things surprised me and it was a real interesting 4-5 months to be at the forefront of that.
- Another interesting thing is that I've done a lot of U.S. Media, but the amount of media I've done internationally is unbelievable because they're not used to talking about their politicians from a faith perspective. Obama has been so forthcoming about his faith that it forces the BBC, the Chilean paper or the French magazines to deal with his faith, because he's so upfront about it. I've done a lot of interviews where I had to get an interpreter on the line so we could do the interview. France, African countries, South American countries, Asian countries. I've probably done 7-8 BBC interviews now. That's astonishing. I did a lot with Bush but I think it was 3-4. I just think that Obama is forcing normally secular media in other countries to talk about this issue.
- Did you have reaction from the Obama campaign?
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- Yes, they actually were in contact with me. They were grateful that I tried to do an objective job. Obviously they didn't like everything but then, the Bush family didn't like everything I said in The Faith of George W. Bush and that means I'm doing the right thing. In fact, the day I knew I had hit the mark with the Bush book is when Al Jazeera and the Bush family cited the book on the same day. That's when I knew I had nailed it and that's how it was with the Obama book. They thanked me for it, they actually put it on their website as the book to tell the truth about Obama's faith. When they put it on the site, they specifically said 'Mansfield is not an Obama supporter but he's told the truth.' That, to me, is a real compliment. That's what I want to accomplish.
- How did the idea come about? Did you propose it?
- We had been dancing around, looking for some vehicle. I had proposed a book on faith in that election because I could see the storm clouds gathering and it was going to be a very faith-based election. They said 'why don't we just do it on Obama?' I had actually thought of that but didn't think they would go for it quite frankly. I knew I could write an objective book about Obama's faith and we would still land in a solidly good Christian analysis of his faith but I didn't think they would want to do it. I was thrilled. So we did it. His story is really the best prism at which to look at faith and the culture and the election.
- But faith in politics isn't going away anytime soon?
- No, I think what this election has taught us that faith is forefront and politicians who are going to win national office and in some cases local office are going to have to be more articulate about these things. The likelihood is for example that McCain is the conservative evangelical but he so offended evangelicals in his approach to things that Obama won a larger percentage of evangelicals than anyone guessed. It's not just who you are but how you handle it.
- The fact is McCain is probably closer to the average evangelical in America than Obama but his campaign and he so mishandled the “faith vote” that it didn't much matter, Obama won the day. For example, he went out and sought Rod Parsley and John Hagee's endorsement and within a matter of days rejected those endorsements. That's not good staff work. That doesn't make folks happy. That's embarrassing to these guys and puts a bad taste in their mouths. Of course, there's James Dobson, the last of the religious right lions and he did more attacking than he did endorsing. That may have been justified. I'm just saying the inability of the conservative candidate to capture the evangelical vote is one of the stories of this election.
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