Tomorrow night, Feb. 23, I plan to see the movie Amazing Grace on its opening night. It tells the story of William Wilberforce, an English Christian and politician who worked 20 years in this dual position to stop transatlantic slavery.
Many modernday pro-lifers have developed strategies based on Wilberforce's success, or at least gained encouragement.
Read World magazine's review of Amazing Grace here. Go to the official website here for information on theatres and showtimes.
This is another of those movies, like The Passion of the Christ, we would help most by seeing on its opening weekend. Here is the trailer:
You know what's really bizarre? When I see the trailers on TV, I get really angry. I feel as if a society that embraces abortion has no right to pretend that they have anything at all in common with Wilberforce. That for abortion supporters to identify with him -- even attempt to idenfity with him -- is the hight of self-delusion.
I know I ought to be glad people are learning about him, and I need to be praying that people's eyes will be opened, but all the same I think, "You dehumanize your own children, then think that had you lived then, you'd have been one of those who recognized how wrong it was to dehumanize the Black man?"
Odd reaction, no?
Christina: It had occurred to me that both the left and right might like this movie. I hadn't taken it as far in my mind as you did, but I don't think it's an odd reaction at all. We do need to pray for eyes to be opened. There will surely be analogies in this movie to the pro-life movement.
Jill, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Left will embrace it, and talk about how they're freeing Women from the Slavery of Forced Maternity.
They'll continue to dehumanize and to kill, but now they'll be educated enough to consider themselves to be walking in the shoes of William Wilberforce while they're doing it.
The old "A little learning is a dangerous thing."
We need to be praying that the producer (Mr. A?) will do a sequel
illustrating the parallels between abortion and slavery.
It is a real natural!!
Christina, after having seen the movie last night, I don't think that is going to happen. For starters, conservatives have already championed Amazing Grace as their own. They have taken ownership.
Secondly, the correlations between slavery and the pro-life movement are too great to be ignored. There is no part of Wilberforce's battle pro-aborts can massage to their ends. Let them try. It would open a welcome debate.
Jill, I see it your way, I kept saying to myself during the movie, look at the odds Wilberforce faced at the outset, the MPs were stacked 300 to 2, and yet they began with the grassroots campaign to change the minds and hearts of the British public, something which had NEVER even been tried before. And, twenty years of hard battle later, they succeeded.
We are the third wave in the pro-life movement. We follow in the auspicious footsteps of the abolitionist, and civil rights movements, which both won victory by perseverance, and they didn't have the internet! Do you know what these three movements have in common?
They were all products of Christian faith.Take courage, Christian pro-life activists, push
onward to victory!!