Nearly 200 years after William Wilberforce brought an end to England's slave trade, a wide audience will have a chance to see his story told on film.
But the producers of Amazing Grace—and a wide coalition of Christian and other groups—hope the legendary reformer's inspiring tale will focus the West's attention on a more disturbing story: the modern-day slave trade.
The feature-length film, set for release in the United States Feb. 23, uses the beloved hymn for its title and organizing theme in telling Wilberforce's story. After rediscovering his Christian faith in his 20s, the member of Parliament struggled for nearly three decades in the 18th and 19th centuries to abolish England's trade in African slaves.
The hymn's text was one of many written by Wilberforce's spiritual mentor and fellow abolitionist, Anglican priest John Newton. Newton had been converted to Christianity as a young man after a harrowing experience piloting a slave ship during a storm.
RNS PHOTO COURTESY SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS
Ioan Gruffudd plays evangelical abolitionist in Amazing Grace.
The movie, released by Samuel Goldwyn Films and Roadside Attractions, was directed by Michael Apted, whose directing credits include Coal Miner's Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist and Nell. It features an all-star cast of British and other international actors, including the Welsh thespian Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce and Albert Finney as Newton.
Potential for the spotlight
According to one of the film's producers, the makers of Amazing Grace realized its potential to spotlight both the historic and the modern-day evil of slavery.
Human trafficking is “probably the biggest human-rights problem in the world today,” said Bob Beltz, a former pastor who now oversees film production for the Anschutz Film Group.
Early on, Beltz said, the film's producers and marketers decided it would be both financially and socially responsible to join the film with a social-justice campaign against modern-day slavery.
“It's a great use of media,” Beltz said. “I haven't seen anything quite like it either. I think the subject matter of who [Wilberforce] was and what he accomplished just cuts across so many boundaries and lines. If you are a conservative Christian, you will love it because of his deep faith. If you are just a secular person who has compassion, the slavery story resonates with them too.”
One person
Director Apted, in press notes for the film, said Wilberforce's story inspired him to remember that one person really can change the world.
“He had a very strong moral drive, based on his religious beliefs, but Wilberforce moved in the real world and could form alliances with people he didn't totally approve of in order to get closer to his goal,” he said. “He proved that although he was driven by a divine purpose to rid the world of this iniquitous slave trade, to execute this mission he needed to be strong, worldly, smart and political.”
In an echo of Wilberforce's pragmatism, a wide variety of religious and human-rights groups—from the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and Focus on the Family to the National Council of Churches—have joined with the film's producers in supporting the Amazing Change campaign (www.theamazingchange.com). The campaign aims to use various grassroots groups to raise awareness of the historical and modern slave problems.
In addition, the Christian groups involved in the campaign encouraged churches to participate in Amazing Grace Sunday on Feb. 18 —the Sunday before the film's debut (www.amazinggracesunday.com). The effort encourages churches to sing Amazing Grace in worship services that day and spend time calling attention to modern-day slavery.
According to the U.S. State Department, somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked—by force or coercion—across international borders every year. Between 14,500 and 17,500 of those people are sold into the United States.
“The thing about trafficking is that it can occur in the biggest city or in a rural environment—and it is a hidden phenomenon,” said Martha Newton, director of the office of refugee resettlement at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Her agency deals with refugees from the slave trade.
Newton noted that there are many different kinds of human trafficking —forced servitude, labor coercion and fraud, sexual slavery and child slavery. The majority of the captives are women and children, although adult men are forced or coerced into labor as well.
For example, some illegal immigrants are forced into de facto slavery by organizations that smuggle them into the United States, promising higher wages. But then the workers are trapped when their captors force them to work off the fee for their importation but make it impossible to do so with bogus fees and fines.
Many such indentured servants work as migrant farm laborers in rural areas.
Newton's agency coordinates with other governmental and private organizations to uncover the victims of human trafficking, remove them from bondage and help them rebuild their lives in the United States.
She noted that legislation—first passed in 2000—makes it easier for trafficking victims to get protection instead of worrying about deportation. “We realized we needed to stop treating the victim like the criminal,” Newton said.
The legislation provides special visas for victims of trafficking to gain the legal security they need to begin rebuilding their lives. Such visas can also be used for family members, whose safety Newton said traffickers may use as part of their coercive tactics.
“Their captors might not only be threatening them, but also threatening family members who are back in other countries,” she said.
Churches identify victims
Newton's agency works with secular and faith-based groups in helping to rescue trafficking victims. One of the ways churches have proven most useful, she noted, was by helping government agencies identify victims in the first place.
“Oftentimes some of the instances of being able to identify victims isn't from the victims themselves; it's from somebody who saw something,” she said.
She gave the example of a Long Island church that alerted her agency to a possible problem with some Peruvian laborers whose captors allowed them to attend Sunday worship services. “The church members didn't think something was right because the laborers seemed very fearful and didn't want to talk to anyone,” she noted.
Newton also cited a large Texas church that hosted a boys' choir from Zambia. After going home with their host families for the night, she said, “the boys were tired. They told the people who were hosting them that they couldn't make phone calls …. It ended up that these students were being trafficked. They were being held and forced to perform in churches.”
To call attention to such facts, the websites for Amazing Grace Sunday, the Amazing Change and the film itself (www.amazinggracemovie.com) offer educational resources for churches, schools and other groups teaching about Wilberforce and modern-day slavery.
Beltz—who is a Wilberforce scholar and said he was consulted on the film's script development—has also offered a paraphrase of the reformer's treatise on Christianity and culture. Wilberforce's A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Century, Contrasted with Real Christianity was written in 1797, in the midst of his struggle against the powerful pro-slavery interests.
“He writes this book right about halfway through his battle for the abolition of the slave trade—at a time he was getting pretty discouraged.” Beltz said. “And the Church of England didn't really support him. The church had aligned itself with the king and the slave traders and the planters.”
Beltz has modernized the language and shortened the title to Real Christianity.
He said Wilberforce's book railed against the soulless “cultural Christianity” of many of his peers. “Really, the behavior of what it means to be a Christian in England was really shaped by this cultural Christianity more so than any of the commands of Christ.”
But Wilberforce won his battle. In 1807, Parliament finally outlawed the slave trade in England. The reformer—who had many health problems and dealt with a long-standing opium addiction—lived long enough to learn, in 1833, that Parliament would extend the ban to all of England's colonies.
Two hundred years later, Wilberforce's struggle continues.