DAVID AIKMAN: Up From Slavery
Aitken, Jonathan
Up From Slavery THIS YEAR IS AN IMPORTANT ONE for anniversaries of Christian work. It marks the 200th anniversaryofthearrivalinCanton,China,of Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary...
...Bagpipes, to besure,arebynowsoinextricablylinkedto"Amazing Grace" that no public funeral or memorial service seems complete without them.IntheU.S., "Amazing Grace" is publiclyperformedan incredible 10 million times each year...
...But Europe has continued to show signs of life, creating seeming prosperity and welfare for all, plus six-week vacations...
...Newton'sinfluenceonthehistoryofChristianity in England was also profound...
...The captain, who only found out where Newton was by a series of providential coincidences (he had been intent on sailing straight back to England until he suddenlyspottedsmokefromafireonthebeach),was able to persuade Newton to accompany him back to hisshiponlybylyingthatagreatfinancialinheritance awaited him...
...The bare outlines of Newton's life, however, do not begin to convey the extraordinary drama that he packedwithinit.Anangry,rebelliousyoungmanwho was impressed into the navy while still a teenager, Newton was publicly flogged for desertion (he narrowly escaped being hanged from the yardarm), then transferredfromamanofwartoaslave-tradingmerchantman, then, after falling out with his employer, chained to the deck of a shallow-draft, inland-waterwayboatinthePlantaneIslands,offthecoastofmodern Sierra Leone...
...Newton firmly and clearly told Wilberforce he must remain in politics and use his skills and influencetoworkfortheabolitionoftheslavetrade.Until B O O K SI NR E V I E W O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 6 1 his death in 1807, months after the trade had actually been abolished, Newton was mentor, guide, and friendtoWilberforce.Itwasanextraordinarilyinfluential friendship...
...A charming raconteur--his most humorous story is witnessing Richard Nixon and former BritishPrimeMinisterHaroldWilsonsingingGilbert and Sullivan choruses in a London hotel private dining room--Aitken is diligent with his sources and careful in his analysis...
...More recently articles with titles like"TheEndofEurope"and "The Decline and Fall of Europe"haveappearedregularly in the U.S...
...John Newton, in his own words, was truly converted from "a great sinner" to the devoted servant of "a great Savior...
...Converted to Christianity in a moment of terrorduringanAtlanticstormin1748,Newtongroped his way through early struggles with the flesh--he remainedaslave-traderforfourmoretripsafterhisinitialconversion--untilaphysicalproblemforcedhimto give up sailing and take up a civilian job as Surveyor ofthe Tides (essentially a customs inspection job) in Liverpool.Newton'sfaiththendeepenedandmatured until, in 1763, after many rejections, he was finally allowedtobeordainedasanAnglicanclergymaninthe ruralparishofOlney,Buckinghamshire...
...He became close friends with leading Methodists and Baptists, including John Wesley, and for a time considered becoming a "dissenting" (i.e., non-Church of England) minister...
...Providentially, a visiting fellow whitetraderarrangedforNewtontobereleasedfrom his captivity and transferred to his employ...
...He demonstrated that a clergyman could be fundamentally Anglican, yet evangelical, he founded a discussion group of likemindedministerscalledtheEclecticSociety(laterreestablishedbythe20th-centuryevangelicalAnglican John Stott...
...He very nearly died of exposure, dysentery, and starvation...
...UNFORTUNATELY,LIFEASALAND-BASEDmerchant in the slave trade on the coast of Africa was toocomfortable.Henowlivedcomparatively well, enjoyed the easy promiscuity that came from a white man's access to local women, and might never have left West Africa but for another act of providence...
...His careful, precise testimony beforethePrivy Councilontheevilsoftheslavetrade was a powerful influence on public opinion...
...There have been more than 3,000 recordings of "Amazing Grace" made in the U.S...
...The Eclectic Society members later formed what was to become the Church Missionary Society, whose Anglican missionaries laid the seeds fortheemergenceofAfricatodayasthemostnumerous,conservative,andpowerfulprovinceoftheentire Anglican Communion...
...He was, ironically, for a few months one of the very few white slaves anywhere in black Africa...
...There is no question that he is profoundlysympathetictoNewton.That,however,is nofailing.JohnNewtoninmanywaysisthepersonal emblem of England's amazing spiritual rebirth in the 18thcenturyfromoneofEurope'smostdecadentand brutal societies to one of its most virtuous and humane a century later...
...In the second half of the 18th century evangelical Christians were disparagingly referred to as "enthusiasts," a word that had even more derogatory conno-tations then than the term "fundamentalist" today...
...His gripping personal account of hismisspentyouthandprovidentialspiritualconversion, entitled, in the cumbersome 18th-century manner, An Authentic Narrative of Some Interesting Particulars in the Life of ***********--the entire title wasafictionthatananonymousvicarhadwrittenletters describing his adventure to friends--was a code that could be read by fellow evangelicals as a "testimony" story, but could also be accepted by a wider audience as a thrilling adventure yarn...
...Through friendship with Charles Colson,founderofPrisonFellowship,Aitkenexperiencedhis own Christian epiphany and emerged from prison a chastened,andindeedhumbledman.JohnNewtonis his newest biography after his narrative of Colson's own story...
...GRADUALLY, NEWTON ACQUIRED a reputation as a thoughtful, wise, and spiritually mature Anglican clergyman of the evangelical persuasion...
...Looking back at thespiritualconditionofEnglandin 1740 some 50 years later, Newton candidlyspeculatedthatnotasingle Anglican clergyman in any English parish at that time had been interested in preaching the Gospel to his flock...
...It was intended as a "people'shymn,"asortofdidacticdevicefordoctrinal instruction, in musical form, of spiritual truths that ordinary people could barely grasp if they relied on theBookofCommonPrayeralone.Newtoncouldnot possibly have foreseen the hymn's 20th and 21st century popularity, any more than fellow English hymncollectors, who basically ignored the hymn for the next 120 years...
...But the movie title Amazing Grace actually derives from what has become the most frequently sung and performed hymn in the entire world...
...Lord have mercy upon us," he exclaimed to a fellow sailor when it became clear how desperate 6 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 B O O K SI NR E V I E W David Aikman's books include Great Souls: Six Who ChangedaCentury(Lexington),JesusinBeijing(Regnery), and Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush (W Publishing...
...France in particular, bled white by Napoleon's wars, was considered down for the count followingitsdefeatbythePrussiansin1871,andagain afterthehumiliatingcapitulationof1940.Twentiethcentury European historians and philosophers from Oswald Spengler to Jean-Paul Sartre saw no future for it following the determined destruction and mass slaughter of that century's two European wars...
...He also corresponded with his family and with Polly, the woman with whom hisinfatuationhadcausedhimtodesert the navy some years earlier...
...A letter that Newton in his despairing captivity had smuggled out to England reached his father, a merchantman captain, who asked a fellow captain to locate Newton and bring him back to England...
...Newton, amazingly, could not swim...
...Bishop after bishop opposedNewton'sordinationbecausehewasconsidered either an "enthusiast," or, even worse, "a Methodist...
...For the next six years, Newton returned to slave trading, first as ship's mate, then on three occasions as a slave ship'scaptain.Itwastwodaysbeforewhatwouldhave been his fourth trip as a slave captain that a mysterious seizure or stroke incapacitated him and required him to cease all sea voyages for a while...
...All these "coincidences" of personal rescue provided food for serious meditation for Newton as he methodically turned his life around as a born-again Christian in the 1750s...
...He spent the remainder of the voyage, as the ship limped painfully into port in Ireland, thinking serious spiritual thoughts for the first time since his childhood...
...Once installed as a rural vicar, however, Newton's writing, as much as his preaching, brought him national fame...
...By the time he moved from a rural parish in Buckinghamshire to London in 1779, Newton was already a prominent figure, and not just in ecclesiasticalcircles.Hehadbeendangerouslysympatheticto the American Colonies when hostilities broke out in NewEnglandin1775.Hehadbeenturningagainstthe slavetradeincreasingly.Butthemostfatefulmoment of Newton's life was when he met with the young William Wilberforce in the fall of 1785...
...Around the world, it remains the most popular Christian hymn ever written, with an appeal, apparently, to followers of all world faiths...
...MARTIN'S PRESS, 243 PAGES, $25.95) Reviewed by Joseph A. Harriss Continued on page 64...
...Could the obvious exhaustion of Europe's creative juices--virtually all its popular culturetodaycomesfromAmerica--itssecond-rateuniversities, high unemployment, hand-out mentality, B O O K SI NR E V I E W 6 2 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7Joseph A. Harriss is a Paris-based American writer who has covered European affairs for many years, and whose latest book is About France.The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent By Walter Laqueur (THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS/ST...
...Evangelical Christians have long been familiar with the basic outlines of the "Amazing Grace" story...
...As for the hymn "Amazing Grace," it was penned by Newton, along with other old-timers like "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds," when he was a parish vicar at Olney in 1773...
...Europe Was Yesterday OFTEN DECLARED IN ITS DEATH THROES over the last 200 years, Europe has been a long time dying...
...Jonathan Aitken's biography of John Newton is meticulously researched (only one glaring error struckthisreviewer:MadeiraisnotpartoftheCanary Islands) and skillfully wrought...
...Newton was almost alone in recommending that an evangelical chaplain be sent along with the first shipment of convicts to Botany Bay,inAustralia,in1787.HewasfriendswithWilliam Carey (1761-1834), the Baptist missionary whose prodigious labors in India produced the Bible in Sanskrit, Bengali, and numerous other Indian languages...
...Still, what if an insidious cancer, long ignored, coveredbytaboos,toolatedetected,reallydidthreaten the Old World...
...She agreed to marry him and her family consented, on condition that he acquire command of a ship in due course...
...It also marks the 200th anniversary of another great event in British history, the abolition of the slave trade by the British parliament...
...Newton had encountered the misfortune of dangerously irritating his employer's blackmistress(whowasinexplicablynamedPeeEye, spelled simply P-I...
...not being swept overboard during the life-changing storm because the captain ordered him tofetchsomethingfrombelow,asitwashissubstitute who caught the wave that swept him overboard to his death;beingsavedfromcertaindeathduringadrinking bout while anchored only because at the last minute a drinking companion clutched his clothing and prevented him from jumping overboard in harbor...
...It marks the 200th anniversaryofthearrivalinCanton,China,of Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to the Middle Kingdom...
...The man who wrote the words, John Newton (17251807), was an Anglican clergyman at the time--the 1770s--whoinfamouslyhadbeenaslaveshipcaptainin his youth...
...That event has been commemorated by a wellcrafted, full-length feature movie portraying the struggle of aristocratic MP William Wilberforce againstslavery,andbytheactualreconstructionofan 18th-century slave ship in England...
...The uncharacteristically pious expression seemed to have stirred something in Newton's conscience as soon as it was uttered...
...Newtonwasstilllessthan30yearsold,buthehad enoughnarrowescapesfromdeathtofillalifetime.In fact, looking back at his life when older, he continued to be astonished at how he had been saved multiple times by inexplicable, providential decisions by others: a captain's orders to him not to go with a victualing long-boat during a coastal call in West Africa and thelossofthesameboat--anditsreplacementmate-with all hands...
...Oddly, that band's haunting bagpipe rendition reached No...
...The author is peculiarlywellsuitedtohavewrittenit.Afast-trackjunior minister in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, Aitken seemed headed for political prominence...
...alone, with versions ranging fromMahaliaJacksonandJudyCollinstoaperformance by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards...
...media...
...Newton was eventually admitted to ordination in the Church of England through the intercession of Lord Dartmouth, an aristocrat who was himself an evangelical and thus wielded some clout in the House of Lords, where Church of England bishops were allowed to sit...
...His wellbeing immediately improved...
...John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace By Jonathan Aitken (CROSSWAY BOOKS, 400 PAGES, $21.99) Reviewed by David Aikman their situation was...
...Newton at this time was violently profane in his language, a frequent drunkard, and a resentful passengeronhisrescuer'sshipifevertherewereone.But whenafierceAtlanticstormcausedTheGreyhoundto take on so much water that it almost sank, Newton underwent what is typically called a "foxhole conversion...
...1 in Britain's pop charts and No...
...While vicar at Olney, he had saved the prominent British poet William Cowper from death by suicide...
...Wilberforce, hitherto a wealthy, trendy, card-playing young buck MP, had experienced an evangelical conversion a few monthsearlierandwantedtoaskNewtonwhetherhe should give up politics and withdraw from worldly life...
...11 in the U.S...
...Not bad for a foul-mouthed, blaspheming lecher...
...While The Greyhound was being refitted in Ireland, Newton stopped swearing and went to church regularly...
...But then he stumbled badly, being caught out as a perjurer in a newspaper libel case and having to go to prison for 18 months...
Vol. 40 • October 2007 • No. 8
