Amazing Grace, the Flick

My wife and I just saw the new Amazing Grace movie. We both thought it was quite good, though in my view, it could've been better in spots.

The film intends to be a story of William Wilberforce's decades-long effort to end the African slave trade in the British Empire. Wilberforce is one of those figures in history who effected enormous change. And students of history well know that individuals such as this often endure considerable personal cost as part of changing the world. Wilberforce was no exception. Throughout much of his life, he endured poor health, and it is hardly controversial to say that his own health was compromised in part by the savagery of the institution of slavery he was fighting against. It is often the case that when one immerses himself in a great cause to overthrow an entrenched and evil system, the personal cost is high as a result of having intimate familiarity with something he finds so completely vile.

The slave trade was not Wilberforce's only concern. In addition, he (like Kierkegaard) was heavily burdened about the nominal Christianity of his day. While Kierkegaard wrote a series of articles in the 1850s attacking lukewarm Christianity which later became consolidated as his 'Attack on Christendom', Wilberforce did much the same thing 50 years earlier when he published his Practical View of the Prevailing Religious Systems of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity (I would say that Wilby needed an editor, but it's hard to make this claim in light of his eloquence as an orator in the House of Commons). In this book, Wilberforce passionately argues that the bulk of the self-professed Christian masses are not authentically living out their faith. In today's terms, Wilberforce is attacking 'cultural Christians' who practice the outward rituals and routines of religion and feel good about themselves in the process, but have lost the core of the Christian faith in doing so. He notes:

Often has it filled him (Wilby) with deep concern, to observe in this description of persons, scarcely any distinct knowledge of the real nature and principles of the religion which they profess.

Repeatedly calling the code of Christian nominalism an "erroneous system" (this is an idea that, perhaps unwittingly, was resurrected by Machen over 100 years later in his Christianity and Liberalism), Wilberforce eloquently goes on:

The grand radical defect in the practical system of these nominal Christians, is their (willful) forgetfulness of all the peculiar doctrines of the Religion which they profess - the corruption of human nature - the atonement of the Savior - and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately, some things never change.

Wilberforce charges nominalism with being too comfortable in the gaities of everyday life. This manifests itself in the indulgence of natural appetites which results in 'living without God in the world'. According to Wilberforce, people like this (through sickness or the death of a loved one) get brief jolts of the temporal nature of everything they have lived for and trusted in, and this conjures up a need to find a more stable foundation than the world can offer. But for Wilberforce, the result is merely a man-made attempt at reformation. And...

Here it is that we shall recognize the fatal effects of the prevailing ignorance of the real nature of Christianity...These men wish to reform, but they know neither the real nature of their distempor nor its true remedy. They are aware, indeed, that they must cease to do evil, and learn to do well; that they must relinquish their habits of vice, and attend more or less to the duties of Religion; but having no conception of the actual malignancy of the disease under which they labour, or of the perfect cure which the Gospel has provided for it, or of the manner in which that cure is to be effected.

For Wilberforce, the result of nominalism is stagnancy, complacency, and ultimately lunacy passing as Christianity.

The film Amazing Grace does not directly touch on this aspect of Wilby's burden. It does, however, touch on it indirectly by periodically offering snippets about 'making the world better'. For Wilberforce, a dynamic, vital, and true Christianity will change the world rather than resembling the world. This film, I believe, prompts its audience to ask whether the exercise of its faith has truly changed anything for the better. Wilberforce is held up as an example of someone who, primarily through his religious beliefs, was the public face of a movement that altered history and fundamentally improved the state of humanity worldwide. Can we say the same for ourselves? Can we even come close to saying it? May I suggest that Wilberforce's devastating critique of nominalism rings true today because many of us can't. But the answer is not to sulk, but to follow the example of Wilberforce - to embrace the struggle of doing God's work in a resistant world, and rely on the Spirit to give us the perseverance to see it through. Because as Wilberforce said:

The subject is of infinite importance; let it not be driven out of our minds by the bustle or dissipations of life. This present scene, and all its cares and all its gaities, will soon be rolled away, and 'we must stand before the judgment seat of Christ.'

May the renewed interest in Wilberforce serve as a reminder not only of God's amazing grace, but also of God's determination to use people like us to expand his Kingdom to the ends of the earth. Will we embrace the work of the Kingdom like Wilberforce, or will we make the excuses of the nominalist to justify our own comfort, and lose the core of our faith in the process?