Wilberforce and the Roots of Freedom (Movie)
William Wilberforce is one of the great forgotten men of history. That will change, and Wilberforce will be simply one of the great men of history, when the remarkable new film Amazing Grace opens nationwide this weekend.
Amazing Grace commemorates the bicentennial of the British ban on the slave trade (1807), an antislavery movement led by Wilberforce. Without him, there would have been no end to the slave trade, certainly not in his time. And, without his conversion to Christianity, Wilberforce might have lived a forgettable life as a rich man’s son. Instead, he helped give birth to new freedom in the British Empire, hope in America, and inspiration to abolitionists everywhere. Today, with slavery spreading in Africa and Asia, and an estimated 27 million in slavery worldwide, Amazing Grace is more than a period piece: It is a timely and enduring lesson on what one man can do to stop the spread of evil.
“Religion in politics” is a topic hot enough to spark a barroom brawl—or, at least, an inter-cubicle dispute. Yet there is no getting around the religious passion that fed abolitionism, or, for that matter, the later civil-rights movements. Slavery mocked the rhetoric of our Declaration of Independence, as abolitionists made clear. Yet many abolitionists in both Britain and America were also inspired to fight passionately against this injustice by the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. The fervor of abolitionism came from the New Testament, a body of literature providing the universal principles of natural law with which to attack slavery.
The story of the abolitionist movement really begins in Britain, where an unlikely Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, courageously took up the cause of human emancipation, despite virtually universal opposition. The son of a wealthy merchant, young Wilberforce led the typically hedonistic lifestyle of a college student at Cambridge. Bored with his father’s business, he entered Parliament at age 21 and made friends easily. Five years later, he had a conversion experience leading him to devote his life to freeing those in bondage. In 1791, his bill to abolish the slave trade failed by a wide margin, but he persisted. In 1807, Wilberforce released A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade on the eve of Parliament’s overwhelming vote to end the trade in human beings—a remarkable change in 15 years. ...
Read entire article at Jonathan Bean in National Review Online
Amazing Grace commemorates the bicentennial of the British ban on the slave trade (1807), an antislavery movement led by Wilberforce. Without him, there would have been no end to the slave trade, certainly not in his time. And, without his conversion to Christianity, Wilberforce might have lived a forgettable life as a rich man’s son. Instead, he helped give birth to new freedom in the British Empire, hope in America, and inspiration to abolitionists everywhere. Today, with slavery spreading in Africa and Asia, and an estimated 27 million in slavery worldwide, Amazing Grace is more than a period piece: It is a timely and enduring lesson on what one man can do to stop the spread of evil.
“Religion in politics” is a topic hot enough to spark a barroom brawl—or, at least, an inter-cubicle dispute. Yet there is no getting around the religious passion that fed abolitionism, or, for that matter, the later civil-rights movements. Slavery mocked the rhetoric of our Declaration of Independence, as abolitionists made clear. Yet many abolitionists in both Britain and America were also inspired to fight passionately against this injustice by the moral teachings of Jesus Christ. The fervor of abolitionism came from the New Testament, a body of literature providing the universal principles of natural law with which to attack slavery.
The story of the abolitionist movement really begins in Britain, where an unlikely Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce, courageously took up the cause of human emancipation, despite virtually universal opposition. The son of a wealthy merchant, young Wilberforce led the typically hedonistic lifestyle of a college student at Cambridge. Bored with his father’s business, he entered Parliament at age 21 and made friends easily. Five years later, he had a conversion experience leading him to devote his life to freeing those in bondage. In 1791, his bill to abolish the slave trade failed by a wide margin, but he persisted. In 1807, Wilberforce released A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade on the eve of Parliament’s overwhelming vote to end the trade in human beings—a remarkable change in 15 years. ...