Amazing Grace
The film Amazing Grace, which hits the high street on March 23, depicts the tireless work of William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect to bring an end to the slave trade. It ought to carry the caveat 'Warning: May Encourage Radical Christian Activism!'
It's stirring stuff, with a fine script, excellent direction and a cast list that reads like a Who's Who of British cinema. And its producers' zeal for the abolitionist cause is evident off-screen as well as on it - all sorts of resources will be available on its release to encourage the public to take action on behalf of the 27 million people still, in effect, enslaved today.
But the principal reason this movie can be expected to mobilise Christians is its timing. It's not just that 2007 is the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, but that in recent years there has been a groundswell of social activism in the church.
The Body of Christ has always had more than its fair share of political agitators, but (as the author of Faith and Politics after Christendom, Jonathan Bartley, pointed out in a recent LICC lecture) it seems that in the 1990s the campaign against world poverty largely driven by Christians, Jubilee 2000, marked a tipping point.
Since then, we've seen believers in the forefront of campaigns for trade justice, an archbishop camping out in his own cathedral in a week-long vigil for peace in the Middle East, tens of thousands of young disciples devoting their summers to urban renewal in festivals such as Soul in the City - and Christian Peacemakers taken hostage in Baghdad.
As Bartley says, one possible explanation for this incursion into politics is that the church is feeling increasingly marginalised. Whereas once society tried to uphold 'Christian' values, today we have to shout louder to make our voice heard.
Does that mean that if we no longer feel that to be British means to be Christian, we are readier to identify ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God and embrace its political agenda?
No doubt such questions will be discussed endlessly in the years ahead - but it's safe at least to say that our true motivation to fight tirelessly on behalf of the marginalised, the hungry and the enslaved is a heartfelt response to the amazing grace we've already been shown.
Jason Gardner
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