Title: Faces of Faith – William Wilberforce Text: Micah 6:6-8 Theme: William Wilberforce proves to each of us that our careers can also be our calling and that when our passion to serve God consumes us we can take on even the greatest evils in our world. – Rev. David Tinney Sunday, May 20, 2007 “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I am found, was blind but now I see.” How many times have you sung those words? For most of us in this room we don’t even have to look at the hymnal we are so familiar with them. But our familiarity may interfere with the release of their true power. Most of us do not feel the depth of the confession being made or the joy that comes in being rescued by God after the long journey into the darkness of sin. We sing without recognizing just how amazing God’s grace and plan really is. This morning I would like to tell you a story of God’s amazing grace. It is the story of the divine intersection of two lives – one the author of this hymn and the other a politician and activist. Their combined faith and passion took on one of the greatest social evils of the day and finally prevailed. I would like to begin this story with the politician. William Wilberforce was born in Hull, England, on August 24, 1759 into wealth and privilege. His father died when he was nine and he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle who were great friends of George Whitefield and other evangelical leaders of the day like John Newton the author of “Amazing Grace” and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Fearing that her son might be “infected by the poison of Methodism” his mother brought him back to Hull and finally educated him at St. John’s College at Cambridge.1 Fortunately the evangelical poison had already started infecting and William would never be the same. Even though he was sickly throughout his life everything seemed to come easy to young William. He was never a really great student and loved to play cards, sing, and debate. When he turned 21 he was elected to Parliament and there he met William Pitt, the future Prime Minister of England, who would become his lifelong friend. Later he recalled, “The first years in Parliament I did nothing—nothing to any purpose. My own distinction was my darling object.”2 In other words he was a self absorbed politician with no cause or purpose. All of that changed in 1785 when he had a religious conversion or as he called it his “great change” in his life. This great change created great problems for William. As a man of considerable wealth he felt uncomfortable when so many were so poor. So he opened his house to those who were homeless or in need of food. He gave away one quarter of his earnings to the poor and fought for their rights whenever possible. But there was more. Wilberforce wrestled with how to balance his call and with his career. He knew that God had called him to live boldly and righteously, to serve others, and to build the Kingdom but how could he do that as a politician? His question is similar to many of ours today. Is it not true that many of us have a hard time mixing the call God has placed upon our lives with our careers? As he struggled he went back to an old friend that he had met earlier in his life. He went to see John Newton, who at this time was a 60-year-old Evangelical priest who was not admired or esteemed by his fellow colleagues in Parliament. In his journal he wrote that he walked around the church two times before having the courage to knock on the door but to his amazement Newton urged him to take his holy passion into public life. Later Newton wrote, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation.”3 While he was wrestling with his call to serve God within politics his good friend William Pitt introduced him to some leading abolitionists of the day and Wilberforce’s heart was forever changed. He wrote that he had been called by God for two purposes in life – the abolition of slavery and the reformation of manners. When I speak of “manners” here it is not how you act around the dinner table, but how you take the principles of Christianity out into the world. In 1789, Wilberforce flushed with optimism and probably naiveté, brought his first resolution to abolish slave trading before the Parliament. He believed that when he presented his case and showed the evils of slave trade to his colleagues they would immediately vote for abolition. But that was not the case. He was so soundly defeated and his colleagues expected him to disappear in embarrassment. Wilberforce did not disappear. Every year he got stronger and so did his opposition. Every year he came back and his opposition used every trick they could to block passage of the anti-slave trading bill. At one particularly low moment when Wilberforce felt that he could not endure any more, he went back to see his friend John Newton. What I have yet to tell you about Newton is that he was not always a priest. In fact he was the face of the enemy Wilberforce was trying to destroy. Newton was a slave trader and estimated that during his time as captain he had carried as many as 20,000 slaves in the hull of his ship. Somewhere on the open seas he had heard the pain and suffering of his human cargo and Newton’s heart was broken. He could no longer traffic in humanity and spent the rest of his life in deep repentance and service to God. His hymn “Amazing Grace” was his cry of repentance but they served as a battle hymn for those who were abolitionists. I would like to show you a scene from the recent movie, “Amazing Grace,” of one of the encounters between William Wilberforce and John Newton. (Play video clip) If Hollywood were to write this actual story they would not have been able to do as good a job as what God did. God brought together a man who had been the worst of slavers full circle to the encourager of the one who would eventually end slave trade. John Newton did go blind before he died, but he was able to see a new kingdom breaking through where all men and women, regardless of their skin color were treated as equal. He was blind but now he saw a new world breaking through and would not let Wilberforce give up. That next session and the next and the next Wilberforce kept coming back. Each year he got smarter. Each year he presented a new case. Each year he found new ways to demonstrate the atrocities of slave trade and each year the opposition dug in more deeply. They threatened his life, accused him of being a seditionist, out maneuvered him in parliamentary procedure, and used the fears of the public to stop the bill. One by one Wilberforce got his point across. For twenty years he tried every tactic he could think of. In fact I would like to show you one of his better ploys. Let me set this video clip up with some context. Many of the members of Parliament had never seen a slave ship and so they knew nothing of its evil. So Wilberforce conspired with another member of Parliament to bring some of the influential leaders and their wives on an afternoon excursion in the harbor. Look at what happened. (Play second video) Twenty years after he began Wilberforce was finally victorious. On February 23, 1807 the bill to abolish slave trade in the British Empire was passed. During the final emotional debate Sir Samuel Romilly spoke in favor of the bill and then concluded his speech with a long and emotional tribute to Wilberforce. He contrasted his long awaited victory with the victories of Napoleon. The latter would spend the rest of his life tormented with sleeplessness while Wilberforce with spend his remaining days in peaceful happiness. Tears streamed down Wilberforce’s face and even his political adversaries applauded him.4 When Wilberforce regained his composure he turned to his loyal colleague Henry Thornton standing beside him and asked, “Well Henry, what shall we abolish now?” Thornton replied, “The Lottery.”5 Sure enough they went after the national lottery and abolished it later. Now you would think that after a twenty year battle you would want to rest. I would. But Wilberforce would not. His divine call was not yet complete. He championed 69 philanthropic and social justice causes ranging from proper treatment of chimney sweeps and for single mothers, welfare for orphans, to the prevention of cruelty to animals. At one point he was dubbed, “the prime minister of a cabinet of philanthropists.”6 Even though he had won the battle against slave trading the war against slavery was not done. He spent the rest of his life both in and out of Parliament fighting for that cause. In 1833 as he was on death’s door, he received the word that Parliament had just passed the Slavery Abolition Act and on that day 800,000 slaves across the British Empire were set free. Three days later he died. When he died his biographers described him as “more soul than body,” for he was a small man with a big heart for God. One writer said he was the “shrimp who took on the world.” James Boswell, a biographer of that day wrote, “I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but as I listened, he grew, and grew, until the shrimp became a whale.”7 That shrimp of a man with a heart as big as a whale changed history forever. This past week I finally had a chance to watch the movie about his life. Two hundred years ago to the date of the signing of the Slave Trade Abolition Act the movie “Amazing Grace” was released. If you have not seen it I believe you should. It was not one of your glitzy Hollywood productions but a movie that really showed Wilberforce’s character and struggles, challenges and defeats, but most of all how hard he wrestled with his calling or God given purpose in life. When the movie drew to a close I wondered to myself what would our world be like without the brave and courageous witnesses of men and women like William Wilberforce? How are they different than you or I? What spark do they have that I don’t have? What conviction or calling do they possess that would allow them to put everything on the line for God’s justice. How do people of conscience and conviction keep their passion? How is it possible for those of us who call ourselves Christian today to live bold and courageous lives where we name the evils of the day and expose the power, greed, and arrogance that enable them to thrive? I believe it comes from the connection with God and the encouragement of others. Wilberforce was deeply involved in a small Christ-centered group known as the Clapham Sect, a group of devout Christians of influence in government and business. They gathered often to study scripture and allow that scripture to transform their lives. Religion for Wilberforce was not what you do on Sundays it was how you live your life every hour of every day. He believed that God had called him to reform his community in the name of Jesus Christ and so he courageously took on every issue of social justice that stood in the way of Kingdom living. He was a modern day prophet who put his life in God’s hands and changed history. You and I are called to be like William Wilberforce. We are called to expose the injustices of our day, of our community, of our country. We are called to stand up for Kingdom principles and condemn evil. We are called to live by the words that so motivated this man, “What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our Lord.”8 If we just do that and we do it with passion and perseverance you and I will change our world. 1 http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/features/131christians.html 2 Ibid 3 John Piper, “Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare Reflections on the Life and Labor of William Wilberforce,” 2002 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, February 5, 2002. 4 http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/wilberforce.htm © Brycchan Carey 2000-2002 Carey, Brycchan, 'William Wilberforce's Sentimental Rhetoric: Parliamentary Reportage and the Abolition Speech of 1789', The Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual, 14 (2003), 281-305 5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce 6 Ibid 7 http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/features/131christians.html 8 Micah 6:8 --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Faces of Faith: William Wilberforce Page 1