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American evangelicals continue to fret over their political engagement—with good reason. Our core commitments focus on church, family, and evangelization, while the political process often produces polarization and nastiness that can drown out the fundamental message of salvation in Jesus.

Yet we have no doubt that moral crises call not only for conversions, but also for legal restraints to evil. So we engage politically, not primarily because we want to form a voting bloc, but because we know that if we ignore politics, we imperil the wellbeing of millions of people.

The February bicentennial of the British parliament's vote to abolish the slave trade has drawn attention to evangelical pioneers in political engagement. The new film Amazing Grace is introducing millions of moviegoers to the story of William Wilberforce and the remarkable campaign to ban the slave trade. In churches across the land, Christians have been commemorating this great activist and others.

Wilberforce should not just be honored, but also his example heeded. What lessons do he and his circle have for us?

First, we should not feel foolish for our ambivalence about politics. William Wilberforce and the playwright and poet Hannah More were both prominent public figures when they experienced crisis conversions. After their conversions, both considered retiring from public life in order to engage fully in the spiritual life. Even though Great Britain thought of itself as a Christian nation, political and cultural elites had little tolerance for the kind of religion that called for total immersion in the life of faith, with a deep personal piety, a morally reformed life, and an eagerness to share the faith with the great unwashed, and without regard for existing church structures. As they faced potential scorn, withdrawal into quietism was tempting.

But the venerable John Newton (author of the hymn "Amazing Grace") helped them understand that an awakened faith did not necessitate flight from society. Hannah More came to understand that "the mischief arises not from our living in the world, but from the world living in us. … Action is the life of virtue, and the world is the theatre of action."

Second, we should not worry about "diluting" any political clout we might have by engaging a variety of issues. Wilberforce and his circle did not conceive their political duty narrowly. They eagerly sought to reform society on a number of fronts. They are remembered best for their antislavery work, but they also founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Church Missionary Society, promoted prison reform, and sponsored charity schools, while encouraging George III to step up enforcement of existing laws against vagrancy, blasphemy, drunkenness, and profaning the Sabbath.

Third, political effectiveness requires moral capital. Rutgers University historian Christopher Brown chronicles how Wilberforce and friends leveraged that in Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. "William Wilberforce and Hannah More … understood that their leadership in the abolition movement would bring credit to other projects that lacked the same moral prestige," writes Brown.

In our own time, evangelicals have compounded moral capital by engaging a range of causes—religious freedom, genocide in Darfur, fighting AIDS in Africa, and sexual trafficking. But Brown warns that moral capital must be carefully managed so that it sustains the moral prestige of the actor. Arrogance and silliness can easily undermine a noble cause.

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March 2007, Vol. 51, No. 3