My good friend Paul Cowan sent me a long email with some important reflections about the film “Amazing Grace” and the example of William Wilberforce and the “Clapham Society”. He’s graciously allowed me to post his thoughts in four blog entries. This is the first. I’d be very interested in your thoughts and comments.

After seeing “Amazing Grace” and reflecting on the story of how Wilberforce and his friends fought slavery in the British Empire, I wondered how in the pluralistic society of today such a thing could take place.

We now have more slavery in the world than before - and now it’s girls & women and children, as well as many men. We also have newer forms of slavery, like drugs, that crisscross around the globe via networks that make the British Empire’s “systems” look like child’s play - both in terms of the numbers of people enslaved, and in the sophistication of the networks. This prevents them from being dismantled by a political vote in some Parliament.

It was amazing to see that it was pirates’ boats, egged on by the change of ship flags that in fact, if I understand correctly, really began to undo the British system of slavery. What possibly could be an equivalent today?

This does not discount the “victory” of Wilberforce and the Clapham Society with Pitt’s and John Newton’s help … but in having them as our heroes we must avoid any triumphalism; that has no place this side of heaven.

Frances Schaffer said abortion was THE issue for evangelicals in the 21st century, along with all the related ills it reflects (inward soft worldviews) and ills it spawns such as new moralities, like homosexuality, that care less for children.

Well, we are not doing very well on that one. I’m beginning to doubt that a broad STRONG consensus on anything could built among believers - and then, second, from believers across society - largely because broad cultural and societal networks and solidarities of any kind hardly exist any longer. Our society is characterized by more individual freedoms and less “co-dependency” - at least in the mind and heart. These things work AGAINST social reforms and social revivals. Without these cultural solidarities and strong social “peer-driven” networks, how could movements such as happened in Wilberforce’s and Wesley’s times take place at all, even over a 20 year period?