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Amazing Grace in John Newton: Slave Ship Captain, Hymnwriter, and Abolitionist. By William E. Phipps. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2001. xxiv + 270 pp. $35.00 cloth.
This book is about a famous hymn, its writer, and the relationship between them. In a new biography of John Newton, William E. Phipps argues that Newton's Amazing Grace was an appropriate reflection on his conversion from flagrant sinner and slave ship captain to Anglican priest and abolitionist. This book is not the first retelling of Newton's remarkable story. Earlier biographies, however, are mostly examples of evangelical hagiography that narrate Newton's piety while downplaying his political activism. Phipps corrects this neglect with a treatment of Newton that, though favorable, is far from hagiographic. Indeed, Phipps describes Newton's sins both known and suspected, conjecturing that Newton "probably raped slaves," for instance (33). Also included are Newton's adventures while piloting a slave ship, his tumultuous pursuit of his eventual wife, Mary Catlett, his ultimate recognition of the evils of slavery, and his efforts to abolish the slave trade by lobbying Parliament, testifying before councils, and preaching from his London pulpit.
Exactly what-or who-convinced this slave trader that his occupation was an evil enterprise? While Newton never clearly explained the details of the change, Phipps credits the influence of Newton's friends who labored on the Methodist edge of Anglicanism, though Methodists disagreed over the morality of slavery with John Wesley who opposed slavery while George Whitefield owned slaves (174)....