Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery

Reviewed By Robin Caldwell

Author: Eric Metaxas

John Russell, an artist commissioned to paint abolitionist and politician William Wilberforce as a child, commented that Wilberforce “had the appearance of conversion upon his soul.” Russell apparently saw what would ultimately motivate William Wilberforce to expend energy – spiritual, emotional, and physical – to lobby for and gain the abolishment of slavery in Great Britain, the country that initiated the African slave trade.

Eric Metaxas’ Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery (Harper, SF) is a loving and poetic tribute to a man who has been honored and exploited, yet rarely understood – William Wilberforce. Aptly, Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake, president of Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio, writes Amazing Grace’s foreword. Some will remember Rev. Flake as a member of the United States Congress, representing New York, and an original member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Apart from the name Wilberforce on the traditionally and historically black university, few Americans of any hue know about or understand the significance of William Wilberforce’s role in inspiring and fighting for an end to the African slave trade – globally. It would be Wilberforce’s model of fighting injustice that would inspire abolitionists in the United States and in other slave trading countries to end the peculiar institution that spawned many battles.

Amazing Grace is the companion biography to the film of the same name. A first thought about the book, the film and the title, Amazing Grace: Smart move. If either the book or movie was named after Wilberforce, then surely few would pay attention. Most people are familiar with John Newton’s hymn, Amazing Grace, and the connection between Newton, the hymn and Wilberforce is very close – too close to dispute the use of the title.

John Newton, a family friend of William Wilberforce’s, was a former unapologetic slave trader turned repentant Christian, who would continually support Wilberforce’s efforts to end the slave trade in Great Britain. Inherent in the use of Newton’s hymn, Amazing Grace is the teaching of grace as God’s gift – a gift we are to extend to other human beings, which absolutely explains Wilberforce’s fervor to end something that few thought was wrong.

Reading Metaxas’ Amazing Grace presents a couple of challenges. The first challenge is devoting the time and mental space to wrap your brain around Wilberforce’s story, which cannot be told outside of a historical context. Amazing Grace is a historical book, and it presents fact and detail after detail, much of which will be hard to retain. The second challenge is simple enough: Amazing Grace is an important book but education through a book and a movie is not enough. More people should understand and know the impact of Wilberforce’s influence on a movement that continues to this day. (See Not for Sale review.)

Polite Christians do not like to discuss the impoliteness of slavery and the slave trade. Why dredge up something so ugly – it’s in the past; right? Well, an overused, yet wise cliché states that those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Good for Metaxas for reminding us that we are currently reliving the mistakes of the past in Darfur and other parts of the globe, because human trafficking is very much a part of our present. And bless God for the William Wilberforces of the world, because without them, we have little hope for ending that peculiar institution.