by Rick Railsback, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies

rick_railsback@cornerstone.edu

The year just concluded was the 200th anniversary of the enactment of the bill abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. This led, eventually, to the end of slavery itself in 1833, freeing some 800,000 persons.

The name associated more than any other with this project was William Wilberforce. Last spring a film came out, entitled “Amazing Grace,” after the hymn  written by John Newton — a former slave-trader who became an abolitionist —  which showcased Wilberforce and the project to eradicate the  slave trade in the British Empire. Despite a few historical inaccuracies, the film was well done. It shows how a group of Christian friends and colleagues can change the world.

The purpose of this column is not to survey the abolition project, but to examine a couple of aspects of the late 18th- and early 19th-century evangelical sub-culture that were great elements of its power to change the world.

First, the “amazing grace” of God was often mediated to them through friends that we might today call “accountability partners.”

In roughly 2,000 hours of working through the manuscript collections of these evangelical families, I found over and again in their letters to one another, “tell me my faults.”

Wilberforce, for example, in a typical note after a speech given in Parliament against the slave trade, wrote to his friend and fellow M.P., Henry Thornton, “Was there too much of self in the speech?” Wilberforce wanted to know whether, as he served God in Parliament, there was anything in his behavior that could bring discredit on Christianity. Wilberforce and his friends knew that others could see in them things to which they were themselves blind, and they regularly called upon trusted godly friends and spouses to play the role of mirrors into their souls. To be “useful” in the hands of the Master was a key goal, and spiritually-minded friends whom they could trust — who “had their back”— played a key role.

Second, in their various philanthropic projects, which included not only anti-slavery labor, but projects of every humanitarian stripe, they were heavily influenced by the moral law of God, as indeed has been the case of every Christian-inspired moral crusade I can think of throughout history.

In the current American religious scene, the Old Testament has been largely discarded as irrelevant, with a few favorite verses and principles — too often taken out of context — to take the place of the Scriptures known and followed by Jesus, by the apostles and by godly believers throughout the ages.

In times past, great Christian leaders understood that the God of the Old Testament is the same as He who is revealed in Christ in the New, and the Old Testament lays the groundwork for our understanding of the heart of God.

So it was that Wilberforce and other members of the Clapham Sect had lives permeated with the Word of God. Wilberforce, for example, noted in his diary that he was delighted, when he moved from Clapham to his house in the West End of London, that the walk to the House of Parliament took just enough time for him to recite the 119th Psalm. These Christians knew from their study of the law of God that the slavery practiced in the British Empire involved violation of a number of moral principles, including laws against man-stealing, rapine, theft, murder, etc. And they understood that “It is required of stewards that one be faithful” (I Corinthians 4:2). The “required” is what struck them. They understood that the requirements of God don’t negate grace; they make it ever more necessary. The Claphamites could have rationalized, as did others of their class in England, that the grace of God allowed them to violate O.T.  Principles, as long as they felt in their hearts their choices were OK. Or they could, as did others who claimed to be Christians, rip verses out of context to create justifications for their actions. Arguments were made that the slave trade helped Britain have a strong navy, that the trade played a central role in the economic health of the nation as well as of individual investors. Whatever evils there might be in the trade, surely God would forgive the planters in the Caribbean, for the sugar they produced with slave labor was a great blessing from God.

But Wilberforce and his friends recognized such rationalization for what it was and knew that holiness trumped prosperity or even happiness. Indeed, happiness at the expense of others’ pain could never be justified. So what can we learn from this brief look at Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect? First, if we are to grow and be useful, we need eyes other than our own to view us; we need voices other than our own to say who we are. In short, we need those who care enough about us to speak the truth in love to us; and we need to be those not only who can receive such counsel, but who seek it out. There is great peril in lack of accountability.

We all, since the fall, have a strongly rebellious side to ourselves. It takes a measure of humility to receive even the loving rebukes of a friend. But if we can find, as did Wilberforce, mature Christian friends to whom we give permission to “tell it to us straight,” there is the potential of much growth in effectiveness. Perhaps one of the reasons why Christian faith seems to have such a marginal impact on American culture is the intense individualism that evangelicals have breathed in with the American air. We want no one —not even God — to tell us anything about how to think or act. Where else in the world is there so much concern about being “controlled” than in the U.S.?

Second, if we are to learn how to live in a way that is pleasing to God, if we are to live in a way that will have an impact on the culture for God, we must begin where all the great men and women of faith throughout history have begun, that is, with learning what the Scriptures teach.

A passage that is mentioned in the letters and diaries of the members of the Clapham Sect is II Timothy 3:16.  “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

The Scripture, of course, to which Paul was referring, is what we call the Old Testament. We neglect it at our peril. We learn much about the heart of God in his law. We are instructed to meditate on the law day and night (Joshua 1:8), to delight in the law (Psalm 1:2), to be not just hearers but doers of the law (James 1:22).

Believers whose self-understanding is sharpened by the true observations of godly friends and who know god’s law are those who can, through god’s grace, apply its unchanging principles to change the world.