February 19, 2007

Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce

It was the very first modern political campaign, even though it was 200 years ago. William Wilberforce was a member of the British Parliament and he worked hard in his 20s and 30s leading to the first law to ban slavery in 1807. William Wilberforce was also a Christian, led into faith by a minister friend John Newton, known for writing one of the most famous hymns in history. I’m Charles Morris and welcome to Haven Today, telling the great story that’s all about Jesus. This is a program called, “Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce”. In the next few minutes we’ll be joined by a noted scholar who will bring this point in history to a point of faith. It’s this weekend that a new movie opens called, “Amazing Grace”. Before we begin, I must mention that we have a special book by John Newton, telling his story in his own words as a former slave trader who met Christ and then became a key preacher in his day. Details on that later in the program, now let’s begin with the deep voice of African American singer Wintley Phipps.

Song: Amazing Grace
Performed by: Wintley Phipps

This is Haven Today and thank you for joining us for a program called, “Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce”. No, he didn’t write the hymn, but we actually have an “Amazing Grace” scholar with us today coming to us from Regent College where he’s a professor, Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh and Bruce, thank you so much for joining us.
BH: Good to be with you today Charles.
CM: You and I haven’t been with each other for a while but I should tell our listeners that you actually did your dissertation on the author of “Amazing Grace”, John Newton and William Wilberforce was a contemporary. You did your PhD at Oxford University. You are from the prairies in Canada, but you get into the United States and you live in Canada and you’re travelling back and forth all the time. Bruce who was William Wilberforce and how does he figure in with “Amazing Grace” with a movie by that name opening later this week?
BH: Well, William Wilberforce I think would be known today most prominently for his role in the abolition of the slave trade and it’s an anniversary in 2007 of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, so William Wilberforce is very much in the news. And this movie tells his story. And probably I would think the reason why they’ve used the hymn title, “Amazing Grace” for this movie, my guess is, they’ve used this in part because of some of John Newton’s influence on William Wilberforce as a kind of mentor. John Newton was the author of the hymn. But also just because Wilberforce’s story is one of grace, is one of him finding the grace of God for himself and then extending that grace through his own work and in his own public life.
CM: So what we’re talking about here is slavery was abolished by Great Britain many years, a few decades before the Civil War in the United States that was in part fought over slavery.
BH: It was first the abolition of the slave trade and then later the actual outlawing of slavery, but the first thing was the abolition of the slave trade. And William Wilberforce, he is one of those tenacious people who just worked at this and worked at this and worked at this and every year he’d bring the motion to Parliament, to the House of Commons and he’d get voted down but he just kept working at it. And it’s actually, he’s a wonderful model, I think, for us today of Christian’s in public life and what can be done. Coalition building, working with people even that don’t share all your beliefs but, but pulling them on board. He said he was happy to work with the Orator Sheraton whether drunk or sober as long as he came on side. And he’d build these coalitions. I did a little bit of study of Wilberforce and read his work and read some of the biographies and it’s obvious that he wasn’t one of these evangelicals, one of these religious people that when he came in the room everybody felt like they had to stop laughing and be very serious. It was the exact opposite. People felt like when he arrived, that’s when the party started.
CM: Wow
BH: He was convivial, he was friendly, he was outgoing. People loved to be with him. And he built friendships. People asked him to sing at their parties, at their dinner parties. So he really was a remarkable individual.
CM: Well, William Wilberforce is someone that probably many listeners to Haven Today don’t know about but he was very decidedly and up front about his Christian faith too, so why don’t you tell us just a little bit about that background of – and I’ve read your dissertation, so I know the connection there with Newton – just tell us a little bit about this man as a man of faith.
BH: Yeah, he had a fairly privileged background and he was sort of destined, in a sense, for public service and public office. He grew up in Yorkshire and he was a very young Parliamentarian, but not a particularly religious person. It’s interesting that as a young person there was sort of a family connection and there was an aunt who was a religious person, was a believer in Christ and she had William Wilberforce for a time as a young person, had made a connection with John Newton, this evangelical pastor in the English midlands and so as a young man Wilberforce had spent some time with Newton. But he grows up and sort of goes his own way –
CM: Now Newton was a little bit older then, obviously.
BH: That’s right. So they were contemporaries but Wilberforce was a little bit younger.
CM: OK
BH: Is younger. So Newton figures in Wilberforce’s life as what today we would call a mentor, as he is that kind of uncle figure, that father figure and there is some contact early on. But probably as a young person on the make, making his career, Wilberforce is a man of the world and he probably would have thought of somebody like Newton as a, as a bit of a religious fanatic, a bit too serious about –
CM: Yes, Newton had one thing on his mind, didn’t he, as a pastor after having started life as a slave trader before finding Christ.
BH: That’s right. He wanted to tell everybody about the grace that he’d experienced and that’s what he was all about.
CM: So Wilberforce then, at what point in his life did he become convinced or convicted that he needed a deeper relationship with God and then find a Savior through Jesus Christ?
BH: Well, I think you’ve got to be careful
CM: Oh, yes OK.
BH: what kind of friends you form.
CM: Yes
BH: if you want to be a convinced Agnostic, if you want to, you know, keep your distance from Christ. He made the mistake of becoming friends with a fellow named Isaac Milner who was a mathematician at Cambridge and a believer in Christ. And they kind of did the grand tour together, they spent time in Europe. And again, you’ve got to be careful who you travel with, because you end up spending a lot of time together, in a carriage, having conversations as you travel around Europe. And increasingly as he talked to Isaac Milner, I think he knew that Milner had something that he was lacking in his life. Milner talked to him about a personal faith in Christ and Wilberforce was also reading a work by a pastor named Philip Dawtridge and was, as they would say, becoming more serious, becoming a –
CM: That’s kind of a code word, isn’t it?
BH: It’s kind of a code word in the 18th century for, as we would say, he realized he needed to be a real Christian not just a Christian in name only. And this provoked a kind of crisis because, you know, he’s best friends with William Pitt, the Prime Minister. And he’s kind of wondering, if he, if he takes this seriously and becomes one of these serious Christians is he going to have to leave public life altogether? Because as a Christian maybe that means there’s some things you just can’t do, you know. There’s some professions you just can’t do and politics is too corrupting and too worldly and well, you just have to leave it. That’s where Newton comes into the story because when he came back to London, to England, he visited Newton. Newton, at this point had moved to a pastorate in London. And I’ve been to the area in London where Newton lived and have thought about William Wilberforce walking around the neighborhood there, unsure about whether to knock on the door of his childhood pastor, this fanatic, and whether anybody would see him and would his reputation be ruined because they would see him? And he plucked up his courage and knocked on the door. And I picture Newton inviting him in, making him a cup of tea and sitting and talking to him. And Newton became a counselor. And we have letters that Newton wrote to him, that he wrote to Newton where we can trace the way in which Newton was kind of a spiritual director to Wilberforce and encouraged him to go on in hi Parliamentary career –
CM: to not leave, to not leave politics
BH: That’s right
CM: Yes
BH: to stay in and make an impact there and speak for Christ in that context. And that’s where William Wilberforce said that he discovered his vocation and he had 2 great aims. One was the abolition of the slave trade. That really, you know, became his idée fixe, his absolute fascination. And the other one he said, it’s sort of a quaint language today, but the reformation of manners, by which he didn’t mean that, you know, table manners.
CM: Right
BH: But as a way of saying he was really concerned about the ethics and the morals of the nation, so he wrote a book called, “Real Christianity”, an account of real Christianity. And this was, like C.S. Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity” in the 20th century. This was that kind of a book in the late 18th century. It was from somebody who was respected, how had a position in society, he was one of the “elites” in society. It was like he came out as a believer and said, “This is about what it means to be a real Christian, not just one of those Christians in name only.” He had two great aims, one was to see England itself kind of reformed in its moral character and he knew that only came ultimately through personal faith in Christ, and the other was to just keep working away through serious politics and coalition building and doing what he could in Parliament for the abolition of the slave trade. And you know, there were other people who, early on in the 18th century spoke out against slavery and the slave trade. The Quakers were some of the first to really have a real sense of conscience about this and in some ways some of the evangelicals get on board kind of late.
CM: Yes
BH: But what I think what sometimes we fail to appreciate maybe in North America is the importance of Parliament was. If this was really going to happen it had to happen through Parliament and it would take elites like Wilberforce. And so what we see is the Gospel penetrating the upper –
CM: The highest levels of the land.
BH: Yes, penetrating that upper level of society.
CM: Well let me just tell everybody, if you’ve just joined us you are listening to a fascinating time with Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh and he’s a professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver. And Bruce would never say this so I get to say it. I would say he is the “Amazing Grace” scholar alive today even though, Bruce you’re not that old, PhD Oxford, and you spent a few years just pouring through letters and papers and all the England and London and Cambridge and let’s talk a little bit more about William Wilberforce. We have a movie opening later this week called, “Amazing Grace” that will feature the life of William Wilberforce but also John Newton will figure heavily into that. I believe Albert Finney is playing Newton. Wilberforce was never, after he became serious about his faith, it was so integral it just flowed from him. He talked about it and let’s talk about a little too, of the spiritual impact that he had on his society of his day. He was able to abolish the slave trade and then slavery. I didn’t know that the two were not at the same time. How was he at work spiritually?
BH: I think the two are intimately connected because how do you keep going in a cause that seems, you know, almost – humanly speaking – destined for failure –
CM: Yes
BH: when you’ve got to go at this year after year and there’s set back after set back after set back, well I think what sustains William Wilberforce is a deep spirituality and a deep life of devotion. And one of the interesting things that I am fascinated by Charles, is the way in which the hidden secret of many great, public enterprises, the hidden, untold secret is often friendship. And there’s often a story of a group of friends. Like, just think of the impact of that group of friends at Oxford, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams and what kind of came out of that group of writers. And they were friends. And they’d meet together once or twice a week, but they were first of all friends. Well, William Wilberforce attracted a group of Christian friends around him. You know there was a 19th century journalist, a figure who knick named them the “Clapham Sect”. There was nothing about them that was sectarian at all, but they lived in a suburb on the outskirts of London called Clapham. It’s now very much part of London.
CM: Right
BH: They were neighbors. And they lived in terms of sort of easy exchange of friendship and could just run across the lawn to your friend’s house so you had Henry Thornton who is a key figure in the bank of England and you had other people there, even the local pastor there, John Venn and so on. And there was a group there that were first of all friends in Christ and they also had tremendous impact on their families in terms of family devotion. There’s actually a book been written about the family archives and the domestic piety and the prayers that they wrote for their own families and so on. It’s in the living rooms and the studies and the family rooms of this group of people that came the great enterprises. Their homes were the kind of “Mission Central” by which they planned their attack in Parliament.
CM: Yes, well there was also a sense of revival coming out of this Clapham group too, wasn’t there? I know I’ve heard that name before in that context, the pastor, Venn, that you mentioned. Their whole lives were dedicated, now the abolition of slavery was part of this but it was part of also bringing the Gospel into all of us and freedom that we have in Christ.
BH: Very much so. And they were active on so many different fronts, you know, and these days we tend sometimes to be anxious about the proclamation of the Gospel on the one hand
Cm: Yes, yes
BH: And social concern on the other.
CM: We separate the two.
BH: We separate them and they understood that both of these things are united in the one mission of God, the rescue that God brings to us. And so they’re active in spreading the Gospel in print and in local ministry and through friendship and in every way that they can they are proclaiming in word the Gospel that saves sinners, but they are also active in societies and organizations and initiatives that have to do with the care for the poor, that have to do with the abolition of slavery, that have to do with any number of other concerns. And high and low, and things that today we would, we would almost smile at. They were anxious for laws against dueling, you know
CM: Yes, yes
BH: to eliminate that, you know that kind of honor code where gentlemen might get involved in sword fights
CM: Yes
BH: And they have all sorts of causes. I mean I saw a list of them once and I mean, and it’s not just dozens, I mean it must have been hundreds of causes that they were involved in. Where does that energy come from? Well, it comes from their, their sense that God’s amazing grace had met them and they wanted to be therefore, a blessing to the world in which they found themselves.
CM: Yes, well, yes. Bruce Hindmarsh with us here on Haven Today. What I’m always amazed about when I’m around you is yes, you are a scholar, yes you’re an academic, but you have always made it alive for me, in writing as well as when I’ve heard you speak. And you’ve done that for us today and I just want to thank you for taking a few minutes to kind of give us a little more of the background that we won’t get all in the movie if we get to see it that opens this week, “Amazing Grace”. And we’re talking about William Wilberforce. Bruce, would you do something here before we leave? Would you mind just leading us in prayer that perhaps Christians today would understand, in light of William Wilberforce, in light of John Newton, that we would understand our role as believers in a society and that we would also have this amazing grace living in us? Would you mind leading us in prayer?
BH: I would love to.
And so Father, we do pray that you would inspire us in our generation to come to know your Gospel and its truth, to come to know how amazing it is that your grace reaches even us. And that experiencing that grace, you also would raise us up to be William Wilberforces for our generation. We pray that you would raise up many William Wilberforces, maybe even among the listeners to this broadcast, that you would raise up those who can in small ways and in large ways serve their generation, can bear witness to this Gospel and can be a blessing to our society today and to right some of the wrongs that we see around us, and to have the energy to persevere in those efforts because we have experienced your grace and your grace sustains us. So we pray that, and we pray that in Christ’s name, amen.

Instrumental: Amazing Grace

“Amazing Grace with William Wilberforce” here on Haven Today. A special thanks to Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh for leading us from this point in history to a point of faith. I hope you can see the movie, “Amazing Grace” that opens this weekend in North America. I’d like to suggest that you learn more about how the Lord was working in the heart of John Newton. We have available the book, “Life and Spirituality of John Newton” this is the words of Newton, by Newton. It’s highly readable and this short book is a series of letters written on how he came to faith after living the life of a slave trading ship’s captain to become one of England’s most famous ministers. It ends with three letters written to a business man in England on how to grow in grace. I’d like you to have “Life and Spirituality of John Newton” as our thank you for your gift to Haven Today. We’re on the air because of friends like you. Along with this book I want to send you the full time that we’re spending with Dr. Bruce Hindmarsh in which he talks about John Newton, William Wilberforce and gives us a history of the famous hymn, “Amazing Grace”. You can contact us by calling us at 1-800-654-2836, that’s 1-800-654-2836 or you can go to our website, haventoday.org, that’s haventoday.org. Let us know the station you’re listening to when you get in touch. If you also want to join me in reading the Bible in 90 days be sure and check out our website as well for that, haventoday.org or call 1-800-65-HAVEN. I’m Charles Morris. Thank you for joining me with Bruce Hindmarsh. Come back again tomorrow won’t you? We’ll be talking again about amazing grace, the amazing grace that comes from Jesus Christ, the great story and we’ll do it together here on Haven Today