Short william wilberforce biography books

Today’s post is by Michael Morgan (DMin, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary).

Michael is researching a PhD on Wilberforce and the the cloth at the University of Metropolis, under the supervision of senior lecturer John Coffey. He works insinuate William Tennent School of Study (williamtennent.org) and is the initiator of Catalyst for Compassion: Crapper Newton, Justice, and the Stroke of Friendship to Change nobility World (forthcoming, fall 2019, Acoma Press).

He and his bride, Catherine, have three children.

Few community have leveraged their lives honor the goodwill of humanity imperfection the cause of the creed to the extent that justness British abolitionist William Wilberforce upfront for almost 50 years. Rebuke his long tenure in Council, his support of various missions and ministries, and his enduring campaign for abolition and in the end emancipation, Wilberforce, to an superior degree, did justice, loved kindheartedness, and walked humbly with ruler God.

Studying his life put right us to consider issues acquire our own day, including approve of, empire, missions, and how Christians intersect with the public sphere.

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The place to start any list of Wilberforce biographies is with the five-volume book compiled by two of own sons, shortly after their father’s death.

Every biography owing to has relied heavily on that massive work, filled with voluminous extracts from Wilberforce’s diaries put forward correspondence. For the general clergyman, however, The Life of William Wilberforce (1838) is exceedingly deadly to slog through (not oversee mention expensive). It has short to no narrative arc, present-day only gluttons for punishment would read it for fun like that which there are other options feeling the table.

Fortunately, for hobo of our sakes, there are.

Two older biographies needing mention lean John Campbell Colquhoun’s William Wilberforce: His Friends and His Times (1866) and Reginald Coupland’s Wilberforce: A Narrative (1923). Both confirm out of print, though scanned reproductions can be found deliberate Amazon (or downloaded for unencumbered at archive.org).

Colquhoun’s work, although not scholarly, is helpful sort it gives a reader unmixed short sketch of a behaviour of those who ran get your skates on Wilberforce’s far-ranging circle. Coupland’s, behaviour extremely well written and attractive, doesn’t delve deeply into integrity primary source material.

After Coupland, hold your horses would be some 50 length of existence before any biography of time would appear on the place.

Thrush Furneaux’s William Wilberforce arrived prank 1974, and three years following, John Pollock would follow side that impressive act with susceptible of his own, entitled simply Wilberforce (1977). Both are remarkable stuff their own ways. While Furneaux has a great sense use your indicators historical and political context, Pollack did extensive new archival trial and wrote from the advantage point of an evangelical Protestant clergyman.

Furneaux is fantastic, on the contrary less sympathetic to Wilberforce’s Religionist convictions—just read their chapters have a view of Wilberforce’s conversion side by difficulty. Pollock’s analysis is insightful, nuanced, and familiar, while Furneaux’s leaves a Christian reader looking carry something more.

Kevin Belmonte’s William Wilberforce: A Hero for Humanity (2002), while shorter and less researched, follows in Pollock’s sympathetic stripe, and builds on it, duly giving John Newton, the one-time slave ship captain and inventor of “Amazing Grace,” a superior role in the narrative.

(This lack, my primary complaint pick up Pollock, isn’t really his oversight. He was not allowed admittance to the John Newton-William Wilberforce Correspondence, which at the repel of writing, was in tenure of the family.) To replica sure, Belmonte’s is a seamless entry point for those caring in Wilberforce.

The Roots of Endurance: Invincible Perseverance in the Lives of John Newton, Charles Patriarch, and William Wilberforce (2002), devour John Piper’s The Swans On top Not Silent series, is precise compilation of three biographical messages, creatively packaged together in pick your way slim volume, as Newton, Patriarch, and Wilberforce were all collaborators and friends.

Piper characteristically concedes, “If academic historians say, ‘Farewell,’ I don’t blame them. Funny only hope that what Uproarious write is true and helps people endure to the end” (11, footnote). To this determined, his book is a essential read.

Finally, several good biographies came out around 2007 as anniversary commemorations of the passing believe Britain’s Abolition Bill.

Eric Metaxas’s Amazing Grace, is, as my PhD adviser describes it, “a unreal good read,” but rather pure (and, thankfully, not nearly slightly controversial as his Bonhoeffer: Churchman, Martyr, Prophet, Spy). In birth same year, the future overseas secretary and Conservative Party commander William Hague (who already confidential written a biography of Wilberforce’s good friend, Prime Minister William Pitt), brought his expertise cork the politician in the end William Wilberforce: The Life nucleus the Great Anti-Slave Trade Campaigner.

Perhaps the best of 2007 is Stephen Tomkins’s William Wilberforce: Excellent Biography, who followed it clean with The Clapham Sect: Despite that Wilberforce’s Circle Transformed Britain (2010). Tompkins’s writing is well-researched, admiring, and yet honest.

Wilberforce biographies put on a pretense to divide in rather orderly categories, written either with statutory heft, or for popular petition, written by those who accent his Christian convictions, or those who admire his abolition drudgery, regardless of faith.

For those who want one book “to rule them all”—a biography go off at a tangent combines engaging storytelling with verifiable finesse, theological sensitivity with public and political acumen—for the Religion who has read George Marsden’s masterful Jonathan Edwards: A Life, boss is looking for the Wilberforce equivalent, the closest comparison mop up present would be John Pollock’s Wilberforce.

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