The Globe and Mail

Reviewed here: The Search For God And Guinness, by Stephen Mansfield; Cheers, by Nicholas Pashley

It's often said that, in North America, we have extreme attitudes toward drinking.

Obviously, this sort of thing is said, mostly, by those outside North America – primarily those in the United Kingdom, who have, shall we say, a more integrated view of drinking. Here, on the other hand, for about the past 150 years, there have been two camps: the total abstainers and ... well, the rest of us.

But even in the good-guy camp, there's a dichotomy. Some approach the matter with solemnity; others are committed to levity. And this division is borne out once again with the season's best new releases on a topic dear to my gullet: beer.

The titles in question here are The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World, by Stephen Mansfield, and Cheers! An Intemperate History of Beer in Canada, by Nicholas Pashley. We put these in alphabetical order, by author's last name to encourage impartiality even though – full disclosure – I am personally familiar with Pashley, what with Toronto being a small town, and the bar we both happen to frequent being even smaller.

These two books couldn't be more different in scope, region, tone or, for that matter, religiosity. Well, hold that thought for a second. I'm not trying to say that Pashley is irreligious, or even agnostic. He clearly prays at the altar of the cask. But Mansfield has a more explicit interest in capital-G god, which he explores in the seemingly unlikely story of Guinness beer.

God and Guinness, it turns out, go together like Corona and lime. Yeah, I know, that's not beer at all. Sorry to bring it up in the same sentence as the divine Guinness, which, it turns out, is closer to God than even its most devout followers might have imagined.

The bestselling author of several books about the intersection of faith and public life, Mansfield explains that the Guinness clan has, since the days of founder Arthur Guinness, not only excelled at brewing but also at performing charitable acts, working in the political sphere for reform and, as clergymen and missionaries, striving to educate and help the poor. In fact, Mansfield's claim that the Guinness family helped to change the world has less to do with its remarkable innovations in portable cans of stout, to be enjoyed at picnics and such, and more to do with the good works performed by the religious branches of the Guinness family.

Not that the ones who stuck around to brew the beer were in any way uncaring or miserly. Quite the opposite. It's a remarkable story of a company that was consistently committed to social justice, first by supporting Irish-Catholic rights (even though the Guinness family was Protestant), then by helping the poor through the potato famine and, later, through a dedication to the health and welfare of its employees.

The story is billed as an impressive one in our age of corporate irresponsibility and corruption, which it is. But the Guinness family's commitment to its workers and community was noteworthy at the time, too. When Guinness was at its most active in helping its employees to thrive in what was essentially a Dublin resembling today's Third World, there were a few other progressive company owners on both sides of the Atlantic. But the Guinness family avoided a lot of the paternalism that generally accompanied attempts to help employees. Often, in North America, helping the worker was shorthand for getting him to take the pledge.