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2020, Light Magazine
John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, the world’s best-known song, believed in the transforming power of Grace. Being an only child, he was deeply loved by his godly mother Elizabeth who taught him the Holy scriptures. She longed for her son to one day be a pastor. His mother’s best friend was also named Elizabeth. They both agreed that their young children (John Newton and Mary Catlett) should marry each other one day. But sadly, Newton’s mother died of tuberculosis in 1732, leaving him motherless at age six. His stern, sea captain father at this time was often away at sea. Later, after his father remarried, Newton was sent away to an abusive boarding school in Essex. Because of his troubles at school at age 11, he went to sea with his father for six voyages. He soon became a teenage rebel, notorious for his headstrong disobedience and raging anger. When he was seventeen, he visited the Catlett family, falling deeply in love with Mary, nicknamed Polly by him. In his autobiography, he notably said: “Almost at the first sight of this girl (for she was then under fourteen), I felt an affection for her, which never abated or lost its influence a single moment in my heart. In degree, it equaled all that the writers of romance have imagined; in duration it was unalterable.”
The hymn Amazing Grace is likely the most beloved hymn in the world. For the Christian the hymn reveals the profound changes wrought in the human heart through the supernatural grace of God. The song has a wide appeal which breaks boundaries of class, race, and language as translations of the hymn allowed it to spread worldwide. The image of undeserved rescue appeals to others outside of Christianity.The hymn offers a glimpse into the life of the author who served as a slave ship captain only to experience a religious conversion which eventually took him to the Anglican priesthood. Before Newton entered the priesthood he served as a slave captain on a number of voyages. This paper examines his career as a slave ship capatin and the experiences which led to his conversion.
Slavery and Abolition
'I was an Eye-witness': John Newton, Anthony Benezet, and the Confession of a Liverpool Slave Trader2023 •
This article investigates a forgotten moment in the pre-history of British abolitionism: the publication of an anonymous ‘Relation’ written by a penitent Liverpool slave trader and printed in Anthony Benezet’s A Short Account (1762). The article suggests that the Philadelphia Quaker acquired the Liverpool ‘Relation’ via the London Dissenting publishers of Two Dialogues on the Man-Trade (1760). Identifying close parallels between events described in the ‘Relation’ and the voyage of the Brownlow in 1748-49, it builds a cumulative case argument that identifies the author as the Brownlow’s first mate, John Newton, subsequently famous as an Anglican divine, abolitionist, and author of ‘Amazing Grace’. The conclusion considers potential implications for our understanding of Newton’s career and the origins of British abolitionism.
Traditional Musics of Alabama, Volume 3, 2002 Sacred Harp
National Sacred Harp Convention ~ 23rd Session ~ June 13-15, 20022003 •
2018 •
In the third narrative of Crossing the River, which includes Captain Hamilton’s edited journal of his voyage to West Africa and correspondence to his wife, Caryl Phillips proposes both pastiche – through the imitation of the style of John Newton’s authentic logbook, Journal of a Slave Trader (1750-54), and of his letters to his wife – and a process of montage or collage through the inclusion of barely amended extracts from Newton’s original documents. Critics have disagreed about the proportion of appropriation and creation in that third section, with some of them insisting on the creative transformation and transposition of the historical documents, thus situating Phillips within a postcolonial and postmodernist tradition of reworking of past authoritative texts, while others – more specifically Marcus Wood in his detailed and incisive comparison of the various texts – have argued that Phillips excessively relies on the original text while simultaneously reducing its complexities. The aim of this paper is to compare Newton’s and Hamilton’s logbooks so as to assess the achievement of a twentieth-century Caribbean-English writer in his ventriloquism of an eighteenth-century slave captain within a historical narrative that is wedged between two fictional accounts by marginalized female characters.
ariel: A Review of International English Literature
Pastiche, Collage, and Bricolage: Caryl Phillips' Hybrid Journal and Letters of a Slave Trader in Crossing the RiverMany noble evangelical lights cast their Reformation illuminations across the landscape of late 18th century England. The Sun of Righteousness was burning brightly through the nascent faith in hearts once cold as hearth stones, leaving flickering fires of revival seen upon the hills and dales – appearing as harbingers of coming Dawn in the cities, towns, and shires. But perhaps there would be none quite so bright a starry fire on the horizon as that of William Wilberforce. Through his changed life, strong witness, and singular ‘nightingale’ voice, aided by his constellation of principle, faith, patience, and friends of means and high places, untold and unknown thousands of enslaved Africans on the slave ships and sugar plantations in old worlds and new would one day breathe the rarified aire of freedom.
THE TRIAL OF THE SLAVE TRAFFICKING
THE TRIAL OF THE SLAVE TRAFFICKING PART VI2022 •
2004 •
2002 •
Commonwealth Essays and Studies
'Silence louder than any noise': Caryl Phillips's "Crossing the River"and Steve McQueen's "12 Years a Slave".2018 •
Asian Theatre Journal
<i>Cry to Heaven</i>: A Play to Celebrate One Hundred Years of Chinese Spoken Drama by Nick Rongjun Yu2008 •
World of Theology Series
The Humanisation of Slavery in the Old Testament2015 •
2005 •
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities
Music as a Universal Bond and Bridge Between the Physical and the Divine: Transcultural and Medieval Perspectives2021 •
Journal of Early Modern History
The Binds of the Anxious Mariner: Patriarchy, Paternalism, and the Maritime Culture of Eighteenth-Century Bermuda2010 •
2011 •
World of Theology Series
William Carey: Theologian – Linguist – Social Reformer2013 •
2020 •
2022 •
2009 •
Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II: Establishment and Empire, edited by Jeremy Gregory
Anglican Evangelicalism2017 •
Journal of the West African Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies
The Trajectories of Bond-Servant and Slavery in Old Calabar: A Postcolonial reading of Jeta Amata's Amazing Grace and Etubom Effiwatt's Ofin Ekedi Eyen2020 •