What I Learned from Wilberforce
With today's DVD release of Amazing Grace, one of the film's producers says the film's protagonist taught him much about how to change the world.
by Dr. Bob Beltz | posted 11/13/2007
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Editor's note: Bob Beltz, an associate producer forAmazing Grace, is an executive and special adviser at Walden Media, which brought us Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabithia, and The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Beltz also edited a revised version of William Wilberforce'sReal Christianity, so, for the DVD release of Amazing Grace, we asked Beltz to write about what he's learned from Wilberforce.
February 23, 2007 marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the Slave Trade throughout the British Empire. On that day, in 1807, Parliament passed a bill that had been reintroduced nearly every year since 1791 by a young British parliamentarian named William Wilberforce.
Bob Beltz on the set of 'Amazing Grace'
Two hundred years to the day from the passage of that bill, the movie Amazing Grace opened in theaters. It was a landmark day for me personally, because over the preceding five years I had been part of the team that developed and produced the film. During those years, I learned some life-changing principles from William Wilberforce.
Wilberforce was a man who made his life count! Without question, he was a person who changed the world, one of few men and women who have had such a significant impact. It's common these days to hear people talk about changing the world, but it is estimated that 99 percent of the people who populate the planet live under conditions created by the other 1 percent. Most of us are not world changers, but Wilberforce was.
One day during the production of the film, I asked myself, "What was it in the life of Wilberforce that made him a world-changer?" I believe that as followers of Jesus Christ, God has chosen each of us to be a part of the 1 percent who make a difference. So how do we do it? How did Wilberforce do it?
As I studied his life, I found certain principles that seemed to shape him and the way he operated. As a hopeless, seminary trained, baby boomer, I can't help but think in outlines and alliteration. But here's what I discovered.
Pardon
Wilberforce had a deep relationship with Jesus Christ—the first element that ultimately made him a world-changer.
Born in Hull, England in 1759, William was the son of a wealthy merchant. His father died when William was only nine, and a year later, William was sent to live with his aunt and uncle. While living with them, he came under the influence of a young evangelical pastor by the name of John Newton, a former slave ship captain who had a profound influence on the young boy, ultimately leading him to faith in Christ. William's letters home so disturbed his mother who, fearing the boy would become a "Methodist" (a movement, not a denomination, in those days), brought William home and put him in a school where religion was approached less enthusiastically; one biographer notes that they "scrubbed his soul clear" of the influence of Newton. By the time William reached Cambridge University, at 17, he had become an agnostic.
Using his significant wealth and winsome personality, Wilberforce was elected to Parliament at the age of 21. He was joined there by his closest friend, William Pitt the Younger, who in two years would become England's youngest Prime Minister at the age of 23. Four years later, on a trip to the continent with his mother and sister, William began to re-examine the faith of his childhood.
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