Dr. Stephen Mansfield
Stephen Mansfield is a New York Times bestselling author and a popular speaker who is becoming one of this generation’s most respected voices on religion and modern culture. He is also an advisor to leaders around the world, an activist in a variety of social causes and a regular commentator on the FOX and CNN news networks.
Stephen 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.
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 and won numerous national awards. The book also became 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 years. Stephen wrote The Faith of the American Soldier after being embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq. He also wrote about the new Pope in Benedict XVI: His Life and Mission. His book The Faith of Barack Obama was another international bestseller and was often a topic in major media during the presidential campaign of 2008. To answer the crumbling values of portions of American corporate culture, he wrote The Search for God and Guinness and soon found himself speaking to 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—but beyond his writing career he 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. Together with his wife, Beverly, Mansfield has also created The Global Leadership Development Fund, a foundation that sponsors leadership training and networking around the world.
In recent years, Stephen’s popularity as a speaker has nearly eclipsed his reputation as a bestselling author. He is often to be found addressing a university gathering, a corporate retreat or a fundraising banquet and stirring his audiences with the humor and cultural analysis that have become his trademark.
Mansfield lives both in Nashville and Washington DC with his beloved wife, Beverly, who is an award-winning songwriter and producer.
