Canceling the Amazing Grace of John Newton
Western culture is canceling Amazing Grace. Not because its author was a slave trader, but because Grace itself is now offensive.
Civil rights icon John Lewis was publicly eulogized and laid to rest on July 30th, 2020. Mourners paid their respects the month before to George Floyd. Both funerals included rousing renditions of the classic hymn, Amazing Grace. The inclusion of the hymn however, immediately provoked a controversy over its connection to its author, slave trader turned preacher, John Newton. Ironically, the controversy demonstrated Cancel Culture’s inability to grasp the central theme of Amazing Grace. The canceling of grace leads to the canceling of Amazing Grace.
Forgiveness and grace are the very core message of the Gospel. This Truth, of mercy and forgiveness requires Christ followers to do the exact opposite of what Cancel Culture calls for. Jesus asks commands his followers to offer not only mercy, but social reinstatement to liars, murders, thieves, racists, and even slave traders.
Amazing Grace, were it to be written today, would never be tolerated, much less beloved. In a society that tears down its monuments to the very man who ended slavery, and even to Fredrick Douglas, the former slave turned abolitionist, the continued popularity of an evangelical hymn written by a reformed slave trader can only be described as poetic irony.
The Sins of Slave Trader John Newton
The horrific exploits of young Newton were published posthumously in his own memoir in 1813. In his own words he tells of chaining the legs of enslaved women to the beams of his ship to assist him in raping and abuse them.
He held no qualms about throwing human cargo, men, women, and children, overboard when his ship encountered a violent storm. To classify Newton simply as a “slave captain,” is to grossly misrepresent the heinousness of his crimes.
What’s more, many evangelicals quietly, even if unintentionally, over simplify his redemption. The common narrative is the one where Newton lives like the devil, encounters God’s mercy and forgiveness, and is called to a life of ministry, all while crusading against the evils of the slave trade.
The reformation of John Newton is not so cut and dry. Newton himself couldn’t put an exact day and time on the moment of his conversion. Though he called out to God for deliverance from a storm, and by all accounts had a religious experience, Newton himself claims he couldn’t call himself a believer until many years after the first time he threw himself on God’s mercy.
God’s Grace On a Work In Progress
This all leads to the uncomfortable fact that Newton did not give up a career of human trafficking’s immediately upon conversion. In fact, he stayed active in the business for some years afterward.
Even when his health required him to give up sea voyages, (Well after conversion,) he became an investor, laying down his own money to finance trips to the African coast to procure slaves destined for Jamaica. It wasn’t until later on in his ministry years that the ghosts of his past came back to haunt him.
This display of a seared conscience is a difficult fact for those of us who think highly of the man who received so much of God’s grace.
Canceling Amazing Grace
At some point in the future, western culture narrative will catch up and Amazing Grace will be canceled. It won’t be just because of its author’s very real history. The hymn will be canceled because many find grace itself offensive.
The thought of forgiveness is abhorrent today. This is why an accidental word by a newscaster, an immature comment written in a high school yearbook, or an ill-advised social media post are always grounds for the loss of career, livelihood and human dignity, regardless of repentance and contrition. These conditions will inevitably lead to canceling the Amazing Grace of slave trader John Newton
So how is it then that Amazing Grace should be in our hymnals and on projector screens? It is only by recalling that the subject of the hymn is not John Newton. The hymn is not even about Grace. Amazing Grace is centered on the patient and merciful God who extended grace to such as sinner like him.
We do a disservice when we interpret the text in a way that centers on the reformation of a man, rather than on the character of the God who does the reforming.
The full story of Amazing Grace is not just the forgiveness of John Newton the sinner, but the gracious God who pursued him and renewed him long after conversion. God extends His grace not only to give sight to the spiritually blind, but to preserve his children as they gradually transform into the image of His Son.
The world cannot understand and cannot tolerate this real forgiveness. This lack of grace leads to canceling not just a hymn, but of canceling Amazing Grace itself.