John Newton

Life

Newton was born in London in 1725. His father was a merchant ship captain, and his mother was a Dissenter (a Protestant who did not conform to the Church of England). He lost his mother to tuberculosis shortly before his seventh birthday, and from the age of eleven he went to sea with his father. At eighteen he was pressed into service on a Royal Navy warship, and he later became involved in the slave trade.

He is said to have undergone a conversion (repentance of sin and turning to faith) after surviving a violent storm at sea in 1748. Even after his conversion, however, he continued for several years to sail on slave ships transporting Africans, and the logbooks he kept from 1750 to 1754 survive. After leaving the sea he sought to become a clergyman, but in 1758 he was refused ordination because of his former dissolute life. Influenced by John Wesley and George Whitefield, he was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and began his first ministry at Olney, Buckinghamshire. In 1780 he moved to St Mary Woolnoth in London, where he ministered until his death in 1807 at the age of eighty-two. In his final years he became blind and his health declined, but he reportedly continued to preach.

Ministry and Achievements

• Hymns: At Olney, Newton and the poet William Cowper wrote hymns for poor and poorly educated parishioners. These hymns were collected and published in 1779 as the Olney Hymns. "Amazing Grace" was written to accompany his sermon on the morning of New Year's Day, January 1, 1773.
• Pastoral ministry and writing: The letters and hymns he published during his Olney years earned him a reputation as an evangelical writer. By the time of his London ministry, his writings were also widely read beyond Britain.
• Movement to abolish the slave trade: In 1785 he met William Wilberforce and became his spiritual adviser. In 1788 he published the pamphlet Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, in which he bore witness to the horrors aboard slave ships and expressed repentance for his own participation in the trade. That same year he also testified before the Privy Council (the sovereign's advisory body). In 1807, the year of his death, the British Parliament passed an act prohibiting the slave trade.

Influence on the Korean Church

"Amazing Grace" appears in the Korean hymnal under the title "Na gateun joein sallisin" ("Who Saved a Sinner Like Me"). It is sung in worship services and gatherings across denominational lines, including Presbyterian, Methodist, Holiness, Baptist, and Full Gospel churches. Newton's story of a slave trader who became a minister is frequently cited in sermons and devotional books as an illustration of grace and conversion.

Assessment

Evangelicals regard Newton as a prime example of a life transformed by grace. They also esteem him highly as a faithful pastor who diligently cared for his parish and as a figure who supported Wilberforce and contributed to the abolition of the slave trade.

Newton has also been criticized. Some scholars point out that he continued in the slave trade after his conversion. Noting as well that he did not publicly oppose the trade until 1788, more than thirty years after leaving slave ships, they regard the popular account that "his conversion in the storm led him to quit the slave trade immediately" as an oversimplification. In Britain there has also been discussion, under the heading of "contested heritage," of the view that church memorials honoring him should be presented together with an account of his involvement in the slave trade.