Amazing Grace and the Process of Conversion

Much is being said these days about William Wilberforce and his spiritual mentor, John Newton, and their opposition to the slave trade, which Wilberforce's determination helped end in England.

Giles Fraser reminds us in a short piece on the Ekklesia web site that Newton's conversion didn't immediately end his slave trading -- it took 6 years before he realized the error of his ways.

Yet what is gob-smacking about Newton is what a nasty piece of work he once was. The idea that the author of “Amazing Grace” raped his slaves has been a conceptual Ohrwurm [Ger. Ear worm] for me ever since I found it out. Indeed, Newton’s conversion might have stopped him from swearing and drinking, but he continued to trade in slaves for six more years.

As Stephen Tomkins puts it in his new biography of Wilberforce, who was inspired by Newton, he “would read the Bible and pray for an hour or two, leading services for the crew, while his human cargo lay or sat hunched and chained under their feet”. It is astonishing to us, but the truth is that many Christians supported slavery because it was there in the plain meaning of scripture.

How often we defend immoral practices on the biblical precedents. The hope is that in the end we will see a conversion from such bad theology.