Newton’s Grace is the true story of a real “Prodigal Son,” the story of miraculous forgiveness and change that lies behind the powerful words of one of the world’s most beloved hymns.
Alternate formats: Digital Video - $2.99
John Newton was a troubled young man with a violent temper and a penchant for vulgarity that literally made his fellow sailors blush. Whipped for desertion and sold into slavery, it seemed his life would end early in a West African grave…until he was rescued by a ship captain sent by his father.
Following a powerful conversion experience during a storm at sea, Newton would eventually become a pastor in the Church of England and the writer of several of the church’s most beloved hymns, including “Amazing Grace.”
But before that, Newton, the former slave, was appointed captain of a slave ship himself. In an age when human bondage was considered the norm, it would take time for Newton’s conscience to be thoroughly transformed. But Newton came to hate the slave trade, becoming a spiritual leader in the fight to end slavery.
Newton’s Grace is the true story of a real “Prodigal Son,” the story of miraculous forgiveness and change that lies behind the powerful words of one of the world’s most beloved hymns.
Newton's Grace tells the extraordinary and often hard-to-believe story of British poet and Anglican clergyman John Newton (1725-1807), whose life played like a novel full of desultory adventures. As an angry young man, Newton set out to sea, working on several commercial voyages before eventually setting his mind on proposing to a girl he had met during a rare period on land. But Newton was instead forcibly conscripted into service in the Royal Navy, and he initially resolved to make the most of a bad situation, rising to midshipman rank before deserting. Caught, Newton was eventually exiled to a slave-trading island where he endured new lows. Every chapter in Newton's life seems like the stuff of an author's romantic imagination, but it's true, ultimately leading to Newton's conversion to Christian living, rejection of the slave trade (for a while, he was a captain of a slave vessel), and subsequent authorship of the lyrics to Amazing Grace—a hymn that he certainly had the personal credibility to write. Writer-director John Jackman does a lot with a small budget to make a convincing, often exciting dramatic bio-pic, drawing cohesive performances out of variously-aged actors playing Newton. Recommended.
This product does not yet have any customer reviews