Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery
Book Club, Guest Lecturer, and Movie
Date: Thursdays, April 6, 13, 20, 27, 2023
Time: 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM
Location: Anderson University Thrift Library CIDL Conference Room (Basement)
Park and ride to library available from Boulevard Baptist Church over-flow parking lot
Cost: $35.00 (Includes Book)
April 6, Book Discussion and electronic presentation by author, Eric Metaxas
April 13, Book Discussion
April 20, Movie viewing, Amazing Grace
April 27, Dr. Ryan J. Butler, Assistant Professor of History, Guest Lecturer
Eric Metaxas' Amazing Grace tells the story of the remarkable life of the British abolitionist William Wilberforce (1759-1833). This accessible biography chronicles Wilberforce's extraordinary role as a human rights activist, cultural reformer, and member of Parliament.
At the center of this heroic life was a passionate twenty-year fight to abolish the British slave trade, a battle Wilberforce won in 1807, as well as efforts to abolish slavery in the British colonies, a victory achieved just three days before his death in 1833.
Metaxas discovers in this unsung hero a man of whom it can truly be said: he changed the world. Before Wilberforce, few thought slavery was wrong. After Wilberforce, most societies saw it as a great moral wrong.
To mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British slave trade, HarperSanFrancisco and Bristol Bay Productions have joined together to commemorate the life of William Wilberforce with the feature-length film Amazing Grace and this companion biography, which provides a fuller account of the amazing life of this great man than can be captured on film.
This account of Wilberforce's life will help many become acquainted with an exceptional man who was a hero to Abraham Lincoln and an inspiration to the anti-slavery movement in America.
Guest Lecturer: Ryan Butler (Ph.D., Baylor University) is Assistant Professor of History at Anderson University. His scholarship focuses on slavery and abolition, Christianity, and the relationship between social reform and foreign policy in the 18th- and 19th-century Atlantic world.
He writes, “I am delighted that participants in AU’s Lifelong Learning program will become more acquainted with Wilberforce. He is such a historically and spiritually significant figure. I wrote my doctoral dissertation—now book manuscript—on the circle of reformers around Wilberforce. So, the topic is one that is very appealing to me. In the Lifelong Learning lecture, we will draw on this wider context to Wilberforce—how the community of the so-called Clapham Sect worked together to achieve a number of legal and social reforms, not to mention their activism in India and other parts of the British Empire.”
Amazing Grace Movie Trailer
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