The Force of Wilberforce

When Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, declared his candidacy for president last month, he referenced the inspiration of a little-known British parliamentarian named William Wilberforce.

In 1787, Wilberforce, a committed Christian, presented a bill to Parliament to abolish the slave trade. He fought for 20 years in what seemed like an impossible battle. Finally in 1807, the slave trade was outlawed. Four days before his death in 1833, Parliament passed a bill emancipating the slaves in the British Empire and outlawing slavery.

If Wilberforce were a politician today, fighting to end abortion and renewing the family and culture would be on his to-do list, Mr. Brownback says.

“He was the best public-policy expression of the renewal of faith in their society,” Mr. Brownback says. “He did it in such a beautiful way on important topics that lined up with his faith. His faith drove him.”

Mr. Brownback apparently isn’t the only one taking notice of Wilberforce’s heroic efforts. On Friday, Walden Media releases “Amazing Grace,” a feature film directed by Michael Apted that chronicles Wilberforce’s campaign against the slave trade.

For much of his life, Wilberforce suffered from ulcerative colitis and often needed daily opium for the pain. Mr. Brownback is impressed by the abolitionist’s perseverance.

“While he was weak and sickly, he didn’t sit back, nor let that debilitate him,” Mr. Brownback says. “That determination comes from knowing your cause is right, and it’s important. Knowing if you don’t keep pushing on it, people will suffer and die. My guess is that his soul wouldn’t let him rest without addressing these topics.”

After Wilberforce’s conversion to Christianity in 1785, he thought that God placed before him two great callings: the abolition of the slave trade and the reformation of manners, Mr. Brownback says.

Wilberforce is an archetype of someone who served God while working in the political arena, says David Kuo, author of “Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction.” He is a former special assistant to President Bush and was deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Wilberforce “didn’t hold his power to hold power,” Mr. Kuo says. “He held it for a singular purpose. He was really willing to sacrifice his office and life to attain what he felt God called him to do. Today, it’s tempting for Christians to become professional politicians. We have the mind-set that ‘God wants me to be in office, so I’m going to be in office,’ and not necessarily for any particularly profound reason.”

The lack of support from Christians to abolish the slave trade shocked Wilberforce, says Bob Beltz, an associate producer of the feature film “Amazing Grace.” He recently updated Wilberforce’s 1797 book, “A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted With Real Christianity,” into contemporary language as “Real Christianity.”

Wilberforce expressed the view that Christians of the day were culturally deluded as to what it meant to be a Christian, Mr. Beltz says.

Similarly today, the average churchgoing person is biblically illiterate, Mr. Beltz says, whereas Wilberforce studied the Bible every day. Much like Oxford professor C.S. Lewis, Wilberforce was not a member of the clergy, but a lay member who could articulate his faith.

“There was a belief that if you were born in England and a member of the Church of England that you were a Christian, but they didn’t know the basic tenets of Christianity,” he says. “The people had Bibles in their houses, but they sat dusty on the shelf. The commitment of Christ in the Gospels was considered to be radical.”

Faith should lead to action, says Mark Rodgers, founder of the Clapham Group, a consulting firm based in Fairfax, who previously served as chief of staff for now former Sen. Rick Santorum, Pennsylvania Republican.

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