Amazing Grace

Charlotte Allen points out that the new movie, "Amazing Grace", downplays the pivotal role that Christianity played in the abolition of slavery.

A shame, really.

The entire review is in the extended entry.

Hollywood's 'Amazing' Glaze
What the new movie covers up about William Wilberforce.

BY CHARLOTTE ALLEN
Friday, February 23, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

It is rare that a Hollywood film takes up a subject like William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British parliamentarian who devoted nearly his entire 45-year political career to banning the British slave trade. Alas, a lot of people watching "Amazing Grace," Michael Apted's just-released film, may get the impression--perhaps deliberately fostered by Mr. Apted--that Wilberforce was a mostly secular humanitarian whose main passion was not Christian faith but politics and social justice. Along the way, they may also get the impression that the hymn "Amazing Grace" is no more than an uplifting piece of music that sounds especially rousing on the bagpipes.

In fact, William Wilberforce was driven by a version of Christianity that today would be derided as "fundamentalist." One of his sons, sharing his father's outlook, was the Anglican bishop Samuel Wilberforce, who wrote a passionate critique of "The Origin of the Species," arguing that Darwin's then-new theory could not fully account for the emergence of human beings. William Wilberforce himself, as a student at Cambridge University in the 1770s and as a young member of Parliament soon after, had no more than a nominal sense of faith. Then, in 1785, he began reading evangelical treatises and underwent what he called "the Great Change," almost dropping out of politics to study for the ministry until friends persuaded him that he could do more good where he was.

And he did a great deal of good, as Mr. Apted's movie shows. His relentless campaign eventually led Parliament to ban the slave trade, in 1807, and to pass a law shortly after his death in 1833, making the entire institution of slavery illegal. But it is impossible to understand Wilberforce's long antislavery campaign without seeing it as part of a larger Christian impulse. The man who prodded Parliament so famously also wrote theological tracts, sponsored missionary and charitable works, and fought for what he called the "reformation of manners," a campaign against vice. This is the Wilberforce that Mr. Apted has played down.

And little wonder. Even during the 18th century, evangelicals were derided as over-emotional "enthusiasts" by their Enlightenment-influenced contemporaries. By the time of Wilberforce's "great change," liberal 18th-century theologians had sought to make Christianity more "reasonable," de-emphasizing sin, salvation and Christ's divinity in favor of ethics, morality and a rather distant, deistic God. Relatedly, large numbers of ordinary English people, especially among the working classes, had begun drifting away from the tepid Christianity that seemed to prevail. Evangelicalism sought to counter such trends and to reinvigorate Christian belief.

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Perhaps the leading evangelical force of the day was the Methodism of John Wesley: It focused on preaching, the close study of the Bible, communal hymn-singing and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Central to the Methodist project was the notion that good works and charity were essential components of the Christian life. Methodism spawned a vast network of churches and ramified into the evangelical branches of Anglicanism. Nearly all the social-reform movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries--from temperance and soup kitchens to slum settlement houses and prison reform--owe something to Methodism and its related evangelical strains. The campaign against slavery was the most momentous of such reforms and, over time, the most successful.

It is thus fitting that John Wesley happened to write his last letter--sent in February 1791, days before his death--to William Wilberforce. Wesley urged Wilberforce to devote himself unstintingly to his antislavery campaign, a "glorious enterprise" that opposed "that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature." Wesley also urged him to "go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it."

Wesley had begun preaching against slavery 20 years before and in 1774 published an abolitionist tract, "Thoughts on Slavery." Wilberforce came into contact with the burgeoning antislavery movement in 1787, when he met Thomas Clarkson, an evangelical Anglican who had devoted his life to the abolitionist cause. Two years later, Wilberforce gave his first speech against the slave trade in Parliament.

As for the hymn "Amazing Grace," from which the film takes its name, it is the work of a friend of Wilberforce's named John Newton (played in the movie by Albert Finney). Newton had spent a dissolute youth as a seaman and eventually became a slave-ship captain. In his 20s he underwent a kind of spiritual crisis, reading the Bible and Thomas à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." A decade later, having heard Wesley preach, he fell in with England's evangelical movement and left sea-faring and slave-trading behind. Years later, under the influence of Wilberforce's admonitions, he joined the antislavery campaign. The famous hymn amounted to an autobiography of his conversion: "Amazing grace . . . that saved a wretch like me." In the most moving moment of the film--and one of the few that addresses a Christian theme directly--the aged and now-blind Newton declares to Wilberforce: "I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great savior."

This idea of slaving as sin is key. As sociologist Rodney Stark noted in "For the Glory of God" (2003), the abolition of slavery in the West during the 19th century was a uniquely Christian endeavor. When chattel slavery, long absent from Europe, reappeared in imperial form in the 16th and 17th centuries--mostly in response to the need for cheap labor in the New World--the first calls to end the practice came from pious Christians, notably the Quakers. Evangelicals, not least Methodists, quickly joined the cause, and a movement was born.

Thanks to Wilberforce, the movement's most visible champion, Britain ended slavery well before America, but the abolitionist cause in America, too, was driven by Christian churches more than is often acknowledged. Steven Spielberg's 1997 "Amistad," about the fate of blacks on a mutinous slave ship, also obscured the Christian zeal of the abolitionists.

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Nowadays it is all too common--and not only in Hollywood--to assume that conservative Christian belief and a commitment to social justice are incompatible. Wilberforce's embrace of both suggests that this divide is a creation of our own time and, so to speak, sinfully wrong-headed. Unfortunately director Apted, as he recently told Christianity Today magazine, decided to play down Wilberforce's religious convictions--that would be too "preachy," he said--and instead turned his story into a yarn of political triumph. The film's original screenwriter, Colin Welland, who wrote the screenplay for the acclaimed and unabashedly Christian "Chariots of Fire," was replaced.

The movie "Amazing Grace" nods occasionally in the direction of granting a role to faith in social reform, but it would do us all well to supplement our time in the movie theater by doing some reading about the heroic and amazing Christian who was the real William Wilberforce.

Ms. Allen is an editor for Beliefnet.com, and author of "The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus."

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Must read

Author, professor, and Iraq veteran, Austin Bay, has compiled a must-read list of books concerning foreign policy, national defense, military history, and more.

It's well worth a look . . .

Civil war in America?

Perhaps not entirely out of the question.

Glenn Reynolds discusses a new book:

Is America in danger of civil war? Not immediately, perhaps, but famed science fiction writer Orson Scott Card thinks that we're in enough danger that he's authored a cautionary tale entitled Empire that's set in more-or-less present times.

In Card's novel, which is straight thriller fiction a la Jack Bauer rather than the science fiction for which Card is generally known, shadowy forces use terror and assassination to trigger a civil war in an America sharply divided along Red/Blue lines. In the Afterword, Card writes:

"Rarely do people set out to start a civil war. Invariably, when such wars break out both sides consider themselves to be the aggrieved ones."

Go read the rest.

So this is journalism?

National security correspondent for ABC News, Jonathan Karl reviews Bob Woodward's new book -- he describes Woodward's 'novel' approach.

What does the author's faux-realism add up to this time around? His two previous books on the administration--"Bush at War" (2002) and "Plan of Attack" (2004)--were criticized for lavishing too much praise on President Bush and his national security team, who were portrayed, for the most part, as steadfast, competent leaders in the face of an implacable enemy. No more. Now Mr. Woodward portrays the president and his team as incompetent, out of touch and dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years and Mr. Woodward with it.

I've reprinted the whole thing in the extended entry.

So This Is Journalism?
Bob Woodward takes a novel approach in his new book on the Bush administration.

BY JONATHAN KARL
Wednesday, October 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

It may seem like another lifetime, but just over five years ago China forced down an American EP-3 spy plane for venturing into Chinese airspace and held its 24-member crew hostage for 11 days. It was the Bush administration's first international crisis, and it was a big one. So how did the president's national security team deal with it? They called Prince Bandar.

At least that's what Bob Woodward tells us in one of the non-Iraq revelations in his latest blockbuster, "State of Denial." In Mr. Woodward's account of that tense stand-off with China, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Prince Bandar bin Sultan, then the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., for help. Prince Bandar, Mr. Woodward tells us, "had special relations with the Chinese through various deals to purchase arms and missiles" and, of course, oil. With a few calls to the Chinese, which were monitored by the National Security Agency, Mr. Woodward says, "Bandar eventually got the Chinese to release the 24 hostages." He goes on: "Never modest about his influence, Bandar considered it almost a personal favor to him."

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The story is classic Bob Woodward: fly-on-the-wall descriptions of super-secret discussions, details missed by every other reporter, a juicy scoop. But the account leaves lingering questions: Did Prince Bandar really get the Chinese to release the hostages? Was that the whole story? How does Mr. Woodward "know" all this? Could it be that Prince Bandar himself is making the claim? Your guess is as good as mine. Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us.

"State of Denial" is replete with similar Woodwardian reporting: secret meetings recounted in vivid detail, complete with lengthy, verbatim quotations of what key players said to each other as the story unfolded. Once again, it all reads as if Bob Woodward was lurking in the background as the meetings happened, taking exceptionally detailed notes. But of course he was not there. We learn not only what the president and all his men said but also what unspoken thoughts raced through their minds. But Mr. Woodward wasn't inside their heads either, it is safe to say.

Mr. Woodward attempts to write like a novelist, not a journalist: His books are scenic and dramatic and dialogue-driven, more sensationalism than history. Take, for example, this description of a conversation in May 2003 (two months after the Iraq invasion) between Gen. John Abizaid, then deputy military commander in the Middle East, and Gen. Jay Garner, the official briefly responsible for the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq:

"Garner told Abizaid, 'John, I'm telling you. If you do this it's going to be ugly. It'll take 10 years to fix this country, and for three years you'll be sending kids home in body bags.'

"Abizaid didn't disagree. 'I hear you, I hear you,' he said."

Mr. Woodward doesn't tell us where he got this verbatim account of a meeting that took place more than three years ago; he writes as if it is a simple fact that it unfolded as told, not someone's recollection. We cannot gauge whether the source, whoever it was, might have had a motive to put a certain spin on facts. The discussion neatly makes Gen. Garner look like the truth-teller who foresaw precisely what would happen and tried to do something about it. Maybe it's true or maybe it's the way Gen. Garner would like to remember it, but he said no such thing publicly at the time.

As more than a few people have noted over the course of Mr. Woodward's long career, his narratives are propelled in part by who talks to him and, just as important, who gives him the best, most detailed and colorful descriptions of what went on in all those secret meetings. And that brings us back to Prince Bandar.

Apparently Prince Bandar is an excellent source for Mr. Woodward, somebody willing to give blow-by-blow accounts of virtually every encounter he has had with top Bush administration officials, including the president and his family. In this book, Prince Bandar seems to be everywhere. He persuades President Bush to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state, he educates President Bush on the ways of the Middle East, he warns against the invasion of Iraq. In Mr. Woodward's account Bandar is a central player, mentioned almost as often as Vice President Cheney and more often than British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Gen. George W. Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Consider this typical anecdote:

"The elder George Bush was concerned about his son after 9/11 and he called Prince Bandar. 'He's having a bad time,' Bush told Bandar.

" 'Help him out.' "

Perhaps President Bush's father is the source of this nifty exchange. If so, it's an amazing revelation that he was so worried about his son that he tapped the Saudi ambassador for a personal intervention so soon after the attack on America carried out largely by Saudi citizens. Or maybe the source is somebody who says he was told about the conversation by either the elder Bush or Prince Bandar, in which case it's basically hearsay. Or maybe, just maybe, the source is Prince Bandar himself. Again, Mr. Woodward gives us no clue, instead describing the conversation as if he were there.

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What does the author's faux-realism add up to this time around? His two previous books on the administration--"Bush at War" (2002) and "Plan of Attack" (2004)--were criticized for lavishing too much praise on President Bush and his national security team, who were portrayed, for the most part, as steadfast, competent leaders in the face of an implacable enemy. No more. Now Mr. Woodward portrays the president and his team as incompetent, out of touch and dysfunctional. The conventional wisdom has shifted dramatically in the past couple of years and Mr. Woodward with it.

At a time when nearly everyone seems to be blaming Iraq's problem on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld--too few troops, not enough planning, too much arrogance--"State of Denial" presents him in an unflattering light, to say the least: demanding power over Iraq's reconstruction and deftly avoiding responsibility when things go badly. When Mr. Woodward goes mano-a-mano with Mr. Rumsfeld in an on-the-record interview, he puts himself into the narrative. He prods Mr. Rumsfeld and expresses exasperation and disbelief at some of the defense secretary's answers.

Yet it may be the best interview that Mr. Rumsfeld has given as defense secretary. He is combative and defensive but makes news. For instance, Mr. Rumsfeld tells Mr. Woodward that the phrase "mission accomplished" was in the original draft of the now infamous speech President Bush gave on the USS Lincoln after the fall of Saddam Hussein and he asked that it be taken out. The White House has always claimed that "mission accomplished" was coined by sailors who wanted to give the president a warm welcome on their aircraft carrier. More significantly, Mr. Rumsfeld says that he disagreed when the president, in a major speech on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, described U.S. strategy as "clear, hold, and build." Mr. Rumsfeld felt that "hold" and "build" were not for the Americans to do but for Iraqis: "I wanted them clearing. And then holding." It is a remarkable admission: the defense secretary and the president unable to agree on how to define U.S. strategy three years into the war.

Mr. Woodward also describes an interview with Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that shows how Mr. Woodward's legendary commitment to protecting his sources has evolved over the years. In the interview, which took place earlier this year, Gen. Pace stumbles when he describes the insurgency. Here is the book's version, beginning with Gen. Pace's words:

" 'They're on the ropes . . .if this parliament continues to function and this prime minister continues to function.' "

"'Okay,' I said, 'but are they on the ropes?'

"'Wrong word,' Pace said.

"'You're going to sound like Cheney,' I said. 'You want to retract that?'

" 'I do,' he said. 'I would like to retract that. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate the courtesy.' "

Courtesy? Mr. Woodward recounts the whole thing, right there on page 475. Apparently for Bob Woodward, Peter Pace is no Mark Felt. Maybe Gen. Pace would have fared better with Mr. Woodward if he had given him a good scoop during a parking-garage rendezvous.

Mr. Karl is senior national security correspondent for ABC News.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Book Review: "The Right War?"

David Frum, over at OpinionJournal, reviewing Gary Rosen's "The Right War?".

It's no secret that conservatives have divided ferociously over the decision to go to war to topple Saddam. The dispute was evident early on, when the national security adviser to the first President Bush, Adm. Brent Scowcroft, published an article in The Wall Street Journal attacking the foreign policy of his former boss's son, the second President Bush--and also of his own favorite protégée, Condoleezza Rice.

The divisions haven't healed since. Lining up behind Gen. Scowcroft is a battalion of former ambassadors and uniformed military men, of Republican lobbyists and business executives. And cheering them on is a small but noisy coterie of neoisolationist writers who have effectively depicted George W. Bush's foreign policy as the work of a cabal of secretive "neoconservatives."

To illuminate this debate Gary Rosen has gathered articles from conservative magazines and journals, some fully approving of the war and its execution, some mildly critical, some harshly so. Among the volume's two-dozen commentators are Robert Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, Eliot Cohen, Andrew Basevich, George Will, Andrew Sullivan, Dimitri Simes and Patrick Buchanan. For continuity and timeliness Mr. Rosen has limited his selection to writings from 2004-05, after the "initial volleys of opinion" had ended and the war was well under way.

Without a doubt "The Right War?" makes a valuable contribution both to intellectual history and to the battle of ideas that is still raging in the nation's op-ed pages. But the book is a much more ambitious project than it might immediately appear. The debate over the Iraq War is not ultimately a debate over Iraq. It is a debate over the whole shape and content of American policy in the Middle East.

The review is worth reading, even if you're not interested in the book.