Amazing Grace

The movie Amazing Grace gave many religious folks another fleeting moment to celebrate a “godfather” of modern political activism. It depicts the historic story of William Wilberforce—in fictionalized dialog of course—about how the abolition of slavery took place in England. This achievement is what modern religious conservatives point to as a model of “faithful” people changing the world. Amazing Grace features first-class actors, an engaging script that was plausible while relating a historical story in an entertaining way. As in all historical movies, liberties were taken with actual historic facts but this is not unusual nor detractional to what the historical person stood for or attempted to do.

Cast:
John Newton – Albert Finney
William Wilberforce – Ioan Gruffudd (Fantastic Four)
Thomas Clarkson – Rufus Sewell (Zorro)
Lord Fox – Michael Gambon (Harry Potter)
William Pitt – Benedict Cumberbatch
Olaudah Equiano – Youssou N’Dour
Barbara Spooner – Romola Garai
Lord Tarleton – Ciaran Hinds (Persuassion)
Duke of Clarence – Toby Jones
Henry Thornton – Nicholas Farrell (Mansfield Park)
Marianne Thornton – Sylvestra Le Touzel (Mansfield Park)
Richard the Butler – Jeremy Swift
James Stephen – Stephen Campbell Moore
Lord Dundas – Bill Paterson
Sir William Dolben – Nicholas Day

In the Movie:
Wilberforce ponders what to do with a religious re-awakening depicted in the movie. He seeks out an old pastor friend John Newton, who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. Newton—accurately depicted as reactively affected by his own involvement in slavery—tells Wilberforce, “You have work to do.” The import: politics is only means to do anything about slavery. Both the moral concern of the “cause” and pursuing it through politics is has never been the way followers of Christ are to deal with social evils yet this has been the thinking of the church for centuries.

Wilberforce vacillates between a “public life in politics” or “private life of ministry.” Meanwhile, William Pitt, a close friend and future prime minister, seeks to pull Wilberforce out of his wavering. Thus, Pitt craftily plays a card that is sure to reel Wilberforce back into political action. For years Wilberforce had been the most outspoken member of the House of Commons concerning slavery. Pitt arranges for Wilberforce to meet elite abolitionists from around England.

WIlbeforce, presents signatures from around England protesting slavery.

Wilberforce is radicalized by the experience. No longer would he just present an annual bill in the House of Commons. Now, he joined forces with various people who would orchestrate clamor; creating a public groundswell. Abolition became an arresting cause for which Wilberforce felt selected by God to deal with. There is no way to authoritatively establish that God directed him this way. However, there is significant scriptural content in the New Testament [NT] to disprove it.

Perspective:

The old “sensitivity ploy” is used to introduce guests to a docked slaver ship in order to demonstrate conditions and cruelty.

Virtually every issue in modern society—from the concept of evolution to the cultural normalization of homosexuality and “new” morays concerning marriage—are in essence focused on proving God wrong.

Evolution attempts to “prove” God does not exist by intellectually unshackling mankind from an “imaginary” force so that he can be his good-self without the crutch of religion. Modern approaches concerning adult relationships attempt to “prove” God’s declared order as not only incorrect but that man can do quite well at doing it “other ways,” which include variations all of what God has declared wrong. Modern democracy is built on the notion that people, given education and information, will choose what is best for their country rather than personal selfish gain in the political process. This would “prove” that man can be “good” which is opposite of God’s declaration. These examples are not the few and only examples, rather they are a tip of the iceberg.

This onslaught did not start with the counter-culture of the 1960s or even gestations of Enlightenment thinking by late-1800s. Wilberforce’s story merely depicts another of the many situations where institutional church reasserts itself as moral shaman of society, taking what is thought to be the “moral side” of whatever issue is in play at the moment. In Wilberforce’s case he achieved success on abolition but it came at the cost of an utter loss of understanding of scripture and a tool that would show mankind how rotten he is.

Commentary:

Barbara Spooner, who becomes Wilberforce’s wife, encourages him to continue the political fight.

Amazing Grace depicts Wilberforce as quite humanistic. He served whoever sought a hand out where they clearly took advantage of him. He thought in terms of “changing the world” and animals as having a sort of higher place than just beast of the field.

Wilberforce and those who laud him cannot look at scripture to support the humanistic—man can be better than he has been—mindset. Humanism promotes not merely that man is capable to be better. It worships anything that could appear to make man better than he is. It is a form of narcissism.

The ideal that we can make the world a better place, floated throughout the movie, remains to be supported in history not to mention scripture. The mere idea is another denial of what God said and is another attempt to prove God wrong, (cf. 1 Jn. 2:17, Jn. 3:19, Eph 5:15-16, 1 Jn. 5:19) Evil is natural to man not goodness and justice.

The movie depicts the typical dualistic notion that either one has to be reclusive to serve God or that one has to actively serve God purposes on a politic stage. The two are always pitted against one another in the logic of most church people I have ever met.

There is not much to disprove about recIusiveness. Christ was not so. We have few examples in scripture from which to base this ideal. On the other hand, scriptural support for political activeness has proven to be an easy prevarication. Yet, one text might reel us into reality.

For 40 years, Evangelicals have saddled themselves with the notion behind Wilberforce, political activism. It has become an arresting involvement for anyone who is honest, just as it was for Wilberforce. So, what about the text where Christ declares, “no one can serve two masters…” Evangelicals will say they serve God by their political action. In so doing, they call Christ a liar because he is not concerned about all issue politics uses as bait to gain a following. Instead he is doing things that distract from political interests.

Secondly, the polar opposite options [religious reclusiveness or total immersion in the political process] are the only options commonly offered. But what about a third option: the kingdom of God? Few teach credibly about this in America. However, the pendulum swings between these two extremes. Within 60 years, the opposite view comes to the forefront and thought inertia then moves in the opposite direction. The kingdom of God never is gotten around to in this scenario.

Christ seemed to upset the political order of his day. He constantly taught about the kingdom of God as a now-reality. Neither side, Pharisee or Sadducee, would claim him; nor he them. However, both sides were upstaged by his teaching and actions. Christ managed to significantly impact society and people yet he had nothing to do with the political order of his day.

Thirdly, where are the followers of Christ ever given the charge or even the latitude to think they should attempt to make the world a better place? This ideal cannot be found in scripture. We can say that people’s lives were made better in some aspects by Christ’s work but this was never an objective. When Christ said, “if they persecute me, they will persecute you” how could this statement be seen as making people’s world better, much less the everyday reality of the world entirely? No, this “better world” ideal stems from when Christianity married the social/political order of the world under Constantine. This is how the world’s thinking has molested the understandings and perspectives of those who read the bible.

Conclusion:
The point of commentary is not to find fault but identify error and learn from it. This movie stands on par with any historical Hollywood movie to date. However, this is not the full measure a movie or the story it represents; Amazing Grace while excellent on many levels, it simply put reinforces a religious sham.

The abolition of slavery no more represents God’s heart than do astronauts. Huh, you say? Let me explain. Abolition was not a big victory for the church as depicted in this movie. It has been the means of helping to dupe mankind about what he really is and removed some of the most key biblical understandings for anyone in western culture.

The church has seen abolition as helping to make the world a better place by getting mankind [even non-believers] to be more humane, which is a secular moral value not God’s. The world is made to think it has improved itself through abolition as well as many other meanderings of the institutional church. Therefore, the church is guilty of feeding the delusion in non-believers, atheist, “enlightened” types and agnostics who want nothing else than to push God out of the picture.

The second failure in the “success” of abolition was what this event did to the people in the pews… In the NT, Christ and all the authors of the NT used tremendous amounts of servile terminology to describe the follower Christ. One reason was to depict what the relationship of the believer to society, which should be parallel with the relationship of the slave to the society around him, e.g. not belonging to society. Therefore, what happens when slavery is done away with and everybody belongs to and is a benefactor of society? Further, what happens to the servile terminology Christ and the NT writer’s used to describe believers when society is made to feel embarrassment for what it had done for many millennia and the “church” counting itself as part of society?

Servile terminology in the NT is now moot for the highest percentage of church people specifically because of abolition. Today, Christians enthusiastically rid themselves of even allegorical usages of slavery Christ and Paul commonly used because of the stigma of the subject. Thus, the very terminology used in the NT to depict aspects of the followers of Christ has become invisible and non-understandable to church people, even the elect. Wilberforce and those who admire him today are duped and weakened in their understanding of what Christ wants for his followers, to be the servants of all. We cannot understand today the value of not-belonging to society to be more able to influence it by the ministry of service. Therefore, we are bound to it in everyway as the non-believer and we become as selfish for survivalistic for our piece of the pie. Our existence as followers of Christ is undermined from an eternal in-the-now of the kingdom of God to the temporal mindset of the kingdoms of men.

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