After any exam period, I usually like to take what I call a blow-off night, a night totally free from any seminary-related activities or studies. Even though I only had one midterm exam this semester, I decided why waste the tradition? So tonight my daughter Hannah and I finally went to see Amazing Grace.

A comedy or brainless action flick would probably be more appropriate to the spirit of a blow-off night, but this time I knew I needed something inspirational. Tonight I needed very badly to be reminded that the gospel has hands and feet and it changes people and it changes things. It changes things because it changes people.

I’ll confess I’ve been reeling a bit recently from encountering a perspective on the church that I though I’d left behind when I ditched dispensationalism. This perspective sees the church in this age as totally a heavenly entity with little or no involvement in the affairs of this world. It says that all the benefits of the gospel are contained in the inner life of individual believers, at least until Christ returns. The task of the church is to deliver good sermons, communion once a month, and a baptism as soon as the grandparents can make it out from Duluth. In this view it is not a bad thing for a Christian to be involved in society, but it has nothing to do with redemption, nothing to do with the kingdom inaugurated at the first coming of Jesus.

I knew tonight I needed to go sit at the feet of William Wilberforce.

Amazing Grace is not a perfect movie, but it is a very good one. At times it overreaches a bit for the melodrama, and dialog that sounds like everyone (even the butler!) spends every idle moment of the day delivering declamations written by teams of speech writers can become a little tedious. But then this movie is about a big subject; it involves the classic unstoppable force impacting the unmovable object. People who accomplish the kinds of things that Wilberforce and his friends did probably don’t spend a lot of time on cocktail party trivia.

The good news is that the film is on many levels a beautifully crafted work of art fitting as a tribute to the man it seeks to honor. The casting is brilliant. Ioan Gruffudd of the A&E Horatio Hornblower series is equally adept at both the fiery passion and deep humility of the title character. Newcomer Benedict Cumberbatch is brilliant as Wilberforce’s friend and co-conspirator William Pitt, and Illusionist star Rufus Sewell is alternately amusing and terrifying as liquor-swilling abolitionist preacher Thomas Clarkson. The settings, both indoors and out, are gorgeous. A highlight for me was the realistic depiction of Parliament in all its delicious raucousness.

One of the themes of Amazing Grace is finding a voice. How does one man speak out against injustice when nearly all the rich and powerful are determined to shout him down? The film uses the titular song–written by Wilberforce’s spiritual mentor, reformed slave trader John Newton–as a marker for the moments when the young politician finds that voice and uses it. For example, early in the story just after Wilberforce has stormed out of a room in humiliation, his friend William Pitt finds him and reminds him that in his school days he was known for his fine singing voice. Wilberforce returns to the room filled with his enemies, climbs atop a table, and begins to boom out “Amazing Grace.” The laughter and derision of his detractors turns to reverent silence. However, it won’t be the last time that Wilberforce has to find his voice and get back in the song.

Running the race to the end (and the occasional need of a “second wind” to go on) is another constant theme. Wilberforce is plagued by determined opposition, friends with shifting loyalties, setbacks and discouragements, his own poor health, and an apparent struggle with opium addiction. In a key scene he and Pitt are racing each other in bare feet across a broad lawn. Stopping to catch their breaths, Pitt wonders aloud why he only seems to feel the thorns on the ground when he stops running. Wilberforce accuses him of forcing a metaphor, and Pitt pleads guilty. But the point is made. Unlike Forest Gump, Wilberforce is not running for the sake of running; he has a finish line clearly in sight.

Most impacting to me, though, was the movie’s portrayal of friends as both a necessity and burden. As already mentioned above, many times it is Wilberforce’s friends who are critical in helping him get up off the ground and get back in the race. Pitt is the most steadfast of these, but it is Barbara Spooner, who will become Wiberforce’s wife, who puts crucial second wind in his sails that carries him on to victory after he had already committed himself to the dry dock for good. In the film’s version, she does this in a way instructive to many of us who aspire to be good friends. She simply encourages Wilberforce to tell his story and positions herself as the encouraging and attentive listener. Over the course of an entire night, he lays before her his whole saga with all of its joys and pains and ultimate defeat. But in retelling the story he regains the light he had lost and finds the courage to try again.

William Pitt’s relationship with Wilberforce is an example of friendship over the long haul. He is one of the first to realize his friend’s unique gifts and calling, and he becomes almost obsessed with seeing those brought to fruition. Sometimes Pitt even resorts to “tough love” to compel his reluctant companion into action. At one point he talks Wilberforce into inviting a group of his friends to a dinner party, only to have those friends turn out to be radical abolitionists who get in the young politicians face with the realities of the slave trade. It is a move that puts the friendship at risk, but it works. Wilberforce is opened to a whole new (awful) world, and he can never again be the same.

But friends can also be a burden–even a liability–and the movie does not shrink back from that reality. Nobody was more supportive to Wilberforce in his early years than the hyper-intense itinerant preacher Thomas Clarkson. Yet at the height of political tensions he pushes Wilberforce toward revolution, a move Wilberforce knows to be unwise. Sadly for a time he therefore has to distance himself from Clarkson. Even William Pitt adds to the stress upon Wilberforce when as prime minister he finds it necessary to temporarily jettison the abolition movement while his country is at war with France. But in the end it is clear that although British abolition could not have come about without William Wilberforce, Wilberforce could not have succeeded without his friends.

As I watched Amazing Grace I could not help but make comparisons in my mind to Chariots of Fire (1981). Both movies are based on true stories about British Christian men who persevere toward a goal despite heavy opposition and disapproval. Both are based in faith yet are done with excellence. The faith aspect is present in each, but never becomes preachy or forced. Moreover in both Chariots and Amazing Grace the main character must face the question of the nature of his calling. Because of his deep commitment to Christ, Olympic sprinter Eric Liddell is pulled toward “full time Christian service.” But in the end he says, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” His running leads him to a crisis where he must make a public stand for a Christian principle, with a result that his life has become a testimony to robust faith down to our day. Likewise, William Wilberforce at first believes that his love for Christ can only be expressed in a life lived apart in contemplation, a life “in the church.” Amazingly, it is his religious friends and his spiritual mentor Newton who convince him that serving in Parliament is serving God. And because he listened to them, the world was changed.

Chariots of Fire and Amazing Grace will always serve as testimonies to me that the saddest thing we could ever do would be to bottle up the kingdom of God inside the doors of our churches. That kingdom came with demons screaming and lame men leaping and Roman soldiers falling down as dead men. It saved souls and it conquered an empire, and it is still powerful enough to do both of those today.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 23rd, 2007 at 12:04 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Pop Culture, Reviews, Worldview. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.