Didn't Christianity Turn John Newton from a Slave Ship Captain into an Abolitionist--and Writer of "Amazing Grace" Besides?
Friday Freethought Perennial for 27 September 2024
About the Friday Freethought Perennials in general: This subset of my blog is to answer questions, nearly always already answered by me and by many others but posed again and again—over many years and in many places—on freethought, atheism, secular humanism, secularism/church-state/”This is a Christian Nation,” and similar topics. These answers are mostly not intended to be original analyses, breaths of fresh air, so much as just putting a whole series of things on the record (I’d say “forever,” except I know better). One source for many of these answers is the 2012 Prometheus Books book by me and my son (Michael E. Buckner), In Freedom We Trust: An Atheist Guide to Religious Liberty. It’s available in many libraries and pretty readily in the used book after-market. I’ll cite writings of others that answer these things in more depth if I’m aware of them when I post these.
John Newton, Slave Ship Captain, Writer of “Amazing Grace”—and Abolitionist?
John Newton (1725-1807)
John Newton (1725-1807) was the captain of a slave ship trading for and then carrying African slaves to the new world.
John Newton (1725-1807) had a born-again-like experience and repented of being an inadequate Christian.
John Newton (1725-1807) wrote the words to the world-famous hymn, “Amazing Grace.”
John Newton (1725-1807) became an abolitionist—opposing slavery and the slave trade.
1-4 above are all true statements—and all apply to the same person. But it’s worth knowing what Paul Harvey would have called “The Rest of the Story.”
The full story of Newton is inextricably intertwined with the story of the slave trade and the great moral intervention against slavery and the slave trade by many in Great Britain—most notably the Quakers and Thomas Clarkson.
Thomas Clarkson (1760-1856)
That story—including Newton’s but much more—is recounted in one of the most interesting, well written books I’ve ever read: Bury the Chains (2005) by Adam Hochschild.
As noted there:
For fifty years, activists in England worked to end slavery in the British Empire. None of them gained a penny by doing so, and their eventual success meant a huge loss to the imperial economy. Scholars estimate that abolishing the slave trade and then slavery cost the British people 1.8 percent of their annual national income over more than half a century, many times the percentage most wealthy countries today give in foreign aid. (p.5)
The book is well worth your time and covers far more than Newton (though the book is my primary source for Newton information).
I won’t give you the full bio of John Newton, but here are some relevant bits:
In just one year, as a young man, he fell in love, missed a chance to get rich and successful, was “kidnapped, chained, flogged, shot at in battle, and separated from the woman he loved” (p. 13) and then, at 19, got thoroughly involved in the slave trade.
He thought he nearly died in a raging storm and, grateful to have been spared, he rededicated himself to God and Christ. And repented then of and swore off of his shameful, terrible behavior—heavy cursing.
And then he became, in due course, the captain of a slave ship. He wrote of what a successful and respectable profession it was to be such a captain—and he finally gave it up primarily to quit being away from his love, Mary Catlett. He seems to have attributed every turn of fortune, including securing a shipload of good slaves, to the hand of God.
Newton witnessed slaves so desperate to avoid slavery that they jumped overboard to their certain death. He often witnessed female slaves casually raped.
And,
Yet during the better part of a decade in the slave trade, and for some thirty years afterwards, John Newton never seems to have heard God say to him a word against slavery. (p. 29)
Newton really did eventually seem, prodded by others like Thomas Clarkson, to reach the conclusion that slavery is obscenely immoral. And his Christian beliefs did seem to lead him to conclude that he was, as he wrote in “Amazing Grace,” a wretch.
But “Amazing Grace” was written in 1772. As Hochschild noted,
. . . for more than thirty years after he left the slave trade, during which time he preached thousands of sermons, published half a dozen books, and wrote “Amazing Grace” and 279 other hymns, John Newton said not a word against slavery. Moreover, for many of those years he had his savings invested in the slave ship business of his former employer—an investment that ended only when Manesty went bankrupt. . . . In 1781, more than a quarter century after he left the slave trade, Newton preached a sermon summing up all of Britain’s sins—for which, he believed, the American Revolution and a chain of hurricanes in the West Indies were God’s punishment. . . . Slavery did not make the list. (p. 77)
Timing matters.
For a misleading (I’d say “dishonest”) account of John Newton, slavery, and “Amazing Grace,” see—
https://www.museumofthebible.org/a-wretch-like-me
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Thanks for the rest of the story. Shar6to the Gulf Coast Freethinkers.
I am rereading Alan Morehead's The White Nile, which recounts the horrors of the slave trade which continued unabated in Africa right through most of the nineteenth century. David Livingstone (of "Dr, Livingstone, I presume" fame) witnessed a massacre of peaceful villagers by Arab slavers. His report of this incident incited great outrage in England, including Parliament. However ending the slave trade became an excuse for imperialist misadventure. Why was Britain grabbing the Sudan? To end the slave trade, of course. However, if it became convenient to make an alliance with the biggest moguls of the slave trade, they did so. The British Empire was unique in history. It was the only empire that justified its depredations by saying that it was for the good of their victims.