A Wretch Like Me, and You

by Bob Millard

I’ve written about “Amazing Grace” before, and doubtless will again. There’s much to say about the hymnist, John Newton, and the hymn, written at the vicarage of a small working-class English village in 1773.

Newton’s life is well documented yet few people know anything about him. The true circumstances of Newton’s life that inspired this moving Calvinistic song of deep religious conversion are almost forgotten. Those circumstances are worth recounting; perhaps some of you will identify with their essence, if not the drama of 18th century sea life that frames the details.

“Amazing Grace” is as simple, direct and emotionally powerful as any of Hank Williams’ own heartfelt poor man’s gospel compositions. (More about Williams another time.) It was a favorite of America’s Second Great Revival that began in frontier Kentucky and Tennessee in 1805, just 27 years after Newton penned it. The hymn was often abridged and adapted to the call and response form of singing common in those deep meadows where weeklong brush arbor meetings sealed innumerable pioneer families in a fundamentalist Methodism.

The hymn was written in a common hymn meter, without melody. The Church of England didn’t allow congregational singing in worship. “Amazing Grace” tried on a number of traditional melodies at meetings Newton held in the churchyard or in a house provided for informal religious gatherings specifically organized to get around the strictures of the established church.

With the 1854 publication of the vastly popular and influential songbook The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion, “Amazing Grace” was pretty well married to the traditional Scottish bagpipe melody “New Britain.” In 1970, already a venerable gospel song, “Amazing Grace” became a chart-topping pop hit for Judy Collins. It knocked ex-Beatle George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” aside to get there.

Interest in the hymn’s origins was fed with a short, pervasive myth: that “Amazing Grace” was written about Newton’s rejection of the slave trade, in which he worked for most of his young adult life.

It was not.

Myth—religious and otherwise— is far less complicated and untidy than fact. Fact in this case is too much like Fibber McGee’s over stuffed hall closet to open up here. I’ll do my best to compress Newton’s story.

John Newton rarely saw his father, a ship’s captain who went to sea for two to three years at a stretch. Newton’s mother died when he was still a boy, his father quickly remarried and shipped John off for a few years’ at boarding school.

Through his father’s good offices Newton had numerous chances to start near the top in the trading business or in merchant marine life. Some opportunities he rejected outright, but Newton, indolent, anti-social and undisciplined, squandered most of them.

After failing his way through a few voluntary years at sea he was press ganged into the Royal Navy. Newton, true to form, was soon demoted from a ship’s steward to common sailor, flogged for going AWOL, and finally swapped for a seaman on a slave ship at sea. That sort of exchange was reserved for the most troublesome sailors.

Newton wound up on Plantation Island, assisting an English-speaking slave trader and his African wife, daughter of an important slave supplier. He enjoyed his new situation until he got malaria. Weak and wracked with fever he was near death for months.

Newton’s father offered a reward for the person who found his son and returned him home. The tiny coastal trader, the Greyhound, picked him up in autumn, 1747.

In January 1748 the Greyhound left the African coast, crossing the Atlantic westward to catch the strong trade winds and northern current that would eventually take them home by way of Newfoundland.

As the ship turned at last toward England, Newton found a tattered copy of Imitations of Christ by Thomas á Kempis. The night he began reading a violent storm hit the Greyhound. Ships built for the African trade were not meant to withstand such a storm.

The storm continued for days. Facing likely death at sea Newton took an 11-hour turn at the helm, alone, and reflected on his life. He felt lost. He’d made a lot of poor decisions, blown chances, felt lost to salvation, and it was his own fault. Was there a God of sufficient mercy to save his soul should the ship break up?

They survived the storm, barely, and Newton spent the next few weeks drifting toward the coast of England, thinking about life. That was a long, painful period of helplessness, ponderous uncertainty and reflection.

Newton became a successful captain of slave ships only after his conversion experience. He evolved into an outspoken and effective opponent to slavery in England and retired from the sea. But “Amazing Grace” was about his conversion, not the slave trade.

Newton joined the ministry in the Church of England. Serving at Olney, a parish of illiterate laborers and tradesmen, he wrote hymn lyrics to illustrate a gospel of a loving God of grace and forgiveness, and his ministry grew.

Like Newtonian prodigal sons and daughters many of us have lost or will lose love, status, fortunes, or families. Many of us end up in that leaking boat with John Newton, looking for meaning in disaster. The storm and drift can be long and painful. Hitting bottom hurts. But Newton’s mostfamous hymn reminds us life needn’t end there.

My home church, Second of Nashville, is rebuilding after a devastating fire more than two years ago. For weeks I watched earthmoving and excavation. One day it dawned on me that a sound foundation finds footing below ground — at the bottom of a pit. It became my metaphor.

We try to bargain with God in denial—one of the stages of grief—but when we can fight no more on our own, we’re in the boat with Newton, dependent on grace. There and then, amidst the humbling wreckage of ship or life, renewal can begin.