The earth shall soon dissolve like snow

If you live in the British Commonwealth or have any inkling of Anglo history at all, you know that yesterday, March 25, was just not any other day: As any 10-year-old in the U.K. can tell you, yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade inside the British Empire, an historical turning point that might rightly be described as “the beginning of the end” of slavery. [The struggle to eliminate slavery in the Empire altogether, alas, continued for another 26 years -- and even longer, more than three decades more, in fact, here at home.]

Of course, there were ceremonies and pomp galore today to mark the occasion on the other side of the pond. [They are English, after all.] But with the pageantry, there was also an abundance of apology and contrition [see photo above], qualities, it is worth noting, that struggle mightily still to find their way into the conversation of American slavery. Perhaps by the time the United States is 200 years into her post-slave history, she too will recognize the error of her ways. Sooner would not be too soon, we think.

A lifelong Methodist, WWP is well acquainted with the players of history who forever altered Britain’s errorful ways and put into motion the acts that ended the commonwealth’s slave trade and, later, outright slave ownership itself. The major credit rightly goes to William Wilberforce, the politician and evangelical Anglican who over many years, decades even, prevailed upon Parliament to outlaw the evil of slavery. [Wilberforce is the subject of a current motion picture, which opened just this week in the U.K.; it's been playing stateside for the past two weeks or so, and it is very much worth seeing.] It is worth noting that Wilberforce’s friend and compatriot, another evangelical within the Anglican tradition, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, similarly and as vociferously denounced the practice of slavery, declaring it an “execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature.” Wesley saved his harshest words, though, for the slavery employed in the former colonies, adjudging it “the vilest that ever saw the sun.”

Choice words. But as good as Wesley and Wilberforce and their reasoning and rhetoric were, the triumph of the abolitionist movement actually belongs to another man, their contemporary, John Newton, the former slave trader whose life-altering change of heart not only reconnoitered history and indelibly imprinted itself upon the heart of freedom, but also provided the essential and eternal anthem of freedom and grace that forever changed hymnody.

Perhaps you know it.

[Much more about John Newton, here, and a wonderful new hymn for the occasion, here. Read the original words of the hymn, and the source of this post's headline, here.]

Comments

[adams]

"hymnody?" Now there's a word I never thought I'd see used in a sentence.

[Rev. Chuck Currie]

We noted "Amazing Grace Sunday" a few weeks back at our church. Click here if you're interested in the sermon. Good post.

[Tom Laws]

"I'm sorry"? Yes he is! The British should be proud, not groveling. Proud that at a time when the world seemed to put so little value on human life of any race, i.e. feudalism, indentured servitude, Ireland famine, plague and pestilence, and European warring, that they managed to find the humanity to demand freedom for all men. I imagine it was the first time in history that any population freed its slaves by choice rather than by slave insurrection. Bravo England, and Bravo infant America 60 years latter.