News

A Better Documentary
2008 01 31

Had enough William Wilberforce yet?

A year ago, February 23, 2007, marked the 200th anniversary of the short Parliamentarian’s tall triumph, with the passage of a bill banning the slave trade. That same day, the film Amazing Grace released to theaters, and there has been no shortage of Wilberforce-ian resources in the past year.

What has been missing is that middle-ground vehicle: the public television documentary. A biopic like Amazing Grace is an excellent medium to give audiences access to the emotions of great people and the most dramatic moments of their history. That particular film allowed Ioann Gruffud to stretch his acting powers beyond the limits of Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic and show what he could do without special effects. But such films almost demand that the filmmakers play down the complexity of the history and rearrange the details in order to maximize the drama.

For those not yet ready to invest their time in reading a full-length biography, an hour-long documentary, airing throughout February on public television, is just the right bridge to better understanding.

The Better Hour: The Legacy of William Wilberforce does well what television documentaries do. It presents the basic facts of Wilberforce’s dramatic life in a calm and orderly fashion, illustrates them with historical images, fleshes out the story with interviews with experts, and grounds it with a basso profundo narration (provided by Avery Brooks, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Captain Benjamin Sisko).

The interviews feature the authors of popular Wilberforce biographies—Kevin Belmonte, Eric Metaxas, John Pollock—and other founts of Wilberforce lore, including Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and David Isherwood, rector of the church in Clapham where Wilberforce and his friends found spiritual sustenance.

Wilberforce’s network of friends illustrates the complexity of his story. When people speak reverently of Wilberforce’s legendary persistence, they create an image of a solitary hero standing against insuperable odds. But WW’s perseverance and his multitude of other achievements were due in large part to his circle of intimates. The Better Hour points out his particular talent was for networking, an ability commonly found in effective politicians. Wilberforce’s theater was the House of Commons, where he provided leadership to a group of about 30 members. There he acted his very public part in the drama of suppressing the slave trade. His friends were no less gifted, but many displayed their talents on other stages: Hannah More, the gifted playwright and poet, being a prime example.

The Wilberforce story is also complicated by the vast array of projects the man undertook. According to The Better Hour, Wilberforce was involved in founding or funding more than 60 organizations for the betterment of society. These included the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (which helps to explain why there were rabbits hopping freely about the Wilberforce home in Amazing Grace). Other efforts included the Bettering Society (for the poor), the National Gallery, and financial sponsorship of Edward Jenner’s research into small pox inoculations.

Yet Wilberforce did not throw himself at causes indiscriminately. Rather, he had two great goals. Here is Wilberforce’s vision, which The Better Hour calls “one of the greatest personal mission statements of all time”: “God Almighty has placed before me two great objects: The suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”

Manners means not etiquette but the prevailing customs and behavior of a society. And the prevailing customs of 19th-century England, with its bear-baiting, cheap gin, and rampant adultery needed such a reformation.

The goal of both the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners was “national righteousness.” That phrase appears at the center of a monument (glimpsed briefly in The Better Hour) at Holy Trinity Church in Clapham where the Wilberforce circle worshiped. National righteousness has a quaint sound. But before our present pluralistic age, it was possible to think in such terms, and to appeal as Abraham Lincoln did to the idea of a national character ("the angels of our better nature"). Wilberforce and his friends achieved many of their goals precisely by appealing to Britons’ sense of their national character. Surely many of the worst features of their society were beneath them.

Contemporary historians have argued that this appeal blinded Britain to the excesses perpetrated under its colonial aegis and slowed further reform. (We British are certainly too noble be exploiting the natives.) But without that sense of character, little reform would have happened at all.

Likewise, little reform would have happened without faith in God. The Better Hour makes this clear in many ways, from the role faith played in launching Wilberforce into the long struggle, to the supportive role it played for him and his network of friends, to the sustaining power of faith for the slaves themselves. This is one story in which religion—Christian faith—plays a natural and positive role throughout.
Read Original Article

Wilberforce Documentary Airing On PBS In February
2008 01 31

In a moment of shameless self-promotion, a new TV documentary I produced and directed about William Wilberforce will air on public television beginning in February, 2008. DVD is available for ordering now. THE BETTER HOUR: The Legacy of William Wilberforce’ contains inspiring content and commentary about the character, faith, and leadership of William Wilberforce—the British Parliamentarian who fought for 20 years to end the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and help establish 69 philanthropies for the betterment of society.

“Our world needs a new generation of people like Wilberforce,” writes Rick Warren in the foreword to a related study guide for small groups, ‘CREATING THE BETTER HOUR: Lessons from William Wilberforce’. “I hope Wilberforce’s example will compel you to work together with others to defeat the evil giants that loom over the twenty-first century,” writes Warren. This book, edited by Chuck Stetson, is available at http://www.thebetterhour.com.

“Now a new book and television documentary aspire to use the example of Wilberforce and his Clapham Circle to ignite a new generation of social activism!”
‘Publishers Weekly,’ Jan. 2, 2008.

Learn how to create a BETTER HOUR GATHERING, get discussion questions to host a screening, plus other resources at www.betterhourgatherings.org
For times and air dates, check your newspaper for public television listings; or go to http://www.pbs.org/tvschedules. insert your zip code and search for THE BETTER HOUR.

Read Original Article

World Evangelical Alliance Announces Partnership with ‘THE BETTER HOUR’ to Launch Worldwide Movement
2008 01 31

VANCOUVER, Canada, Jan. 31 /Christian Newswire/—The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) will partner with the co-sponsor of a new television documentary “THE BETTER HOUR: The Legacy of William Wilberforce”, to launch a worldwide movement of faith and societal transformation, announced WEA International Director Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe and Chuck Stetson, chairman of THE BETTER HOUR, a division of Essentials in Education.

The inspiring, new one-hour television documentary, “THE BETTER HOUR: The Legacy of William Wilberforce,” will appear nationwide on American public television beginning in February, 2008. The film was produced to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the 1807 abolition of British and American slave trade in a 20-year heroic effort led by British Parliamentarian William Wilberforce. (Effective date of U.S. legislation was January, 1808.)

“THE BETTER HOUR offers an irresistible call to action for building a better world,” said Tunnicliffe. “THE BETTER HOUR documentary film, study guide, and BETTER HOUR Gatherings will help us fulfill one of our top priorities--to engage the culture with a message that can bring together both Christians and non-believers to create better communities around the world,” continued Tunnicliffe, whose World Evangelical Alliance includes churches in 128 nations and more than 100 organizations, representing some 420 million evangelicals around the world.

“We encourage everyone to host a film screening in your community, followed by audience discussion. This can lead to small group commitments, and inspire collaborative efforts to launch new service projects for meeting today’s cultural and social needs,” added Tunnicliffe. (The DVD is for sale at http://www.shopPBS.org.)

“THE BETTER HOUR: The Legacy of William Wilberforce”, funded by the John Templeton Foundation is an engaging documentary, rich with content and commentary, that can inspire people with the remarkable story of William Wilberforce who used his position as a British parliamentarian to launch 69 organizations for the betterment of society and end the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The film focuses on a politician who developed strength of character in the service of high and seemingly unattainable goals. This film highlights William Wilberforce’s drive and love for humanity and how his character and a sense of justice join together to bring what the English poet William Cowper described as “the better hour.”

“Today, the world needs a new generation of people like Wilberforce,” writes Rick Warren in the foreword of the related book and study guide, “CREATING THE BETTER HOUR: Lessons from William Wilberforce,” which includes chapters by Os Guinness, Chuck Colson, Baroness Caroline Cox, among others, and edited by Chuck Stetson.

On February 22, 2008, the Church Communications Network (CCN) will broadcast via satellite a one-hour show about the BETTER HOUR Gatherings and feature both Tunnicliffe and Stetson, who share insight and ideas for how to engage the culture using THE BETTER HOUR services and products.

All resources are at http://www.thebetterhour.com. 
Read Original Article

Required Reading: Creating a Better Hour
2008 01 28

I recently began reading “Creating the Better Hour: Lessons from William Wilberforce” (Stroud & Hall Publishers) and am finding it “required reading” for movement builders. Wilberforce exhibited a wonderful balance between “passionate commitment to Jesus Christ and to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity” and “compassionate commitment to correcting the major injustices of his generation.” As I’ve been reading thru this edited work, I’m finding application after application to our task of building movements everywhere. I’ll probably dedicate numerous posts to my reflections, but I wanted to put up a quick recommendation.

The book opens with a tribute to Wilberforce, written by his friend and contemporary, the poet William Cowper (1731-1800).

Thy country, Wilberforce, with just disdain,
Hears thee, by cruel men and impious, call’d
Fanatic, for thy zeal to loose th’ enthrall’d
From exile, public sale, and slav’ry’s chain.
Friend of the poor, the wrong’d, the fetter-gall’d,
Fear not lest labour such as thine be vain!
Thou hast achiev’d a part; hast gain’d the ear
Of Britain’s senate to thy glorious cause;
Hope smiles, joy springs, and tho’ cold caution pause
And weave delay, the better hour is near,
That shall remunerate thy toils severe
By peace for Afric, fenc’d with British laws.
Enjoy what thou hast won, esteem and love
From all the just on earth, and all the blest above!

Read Original Article

Perry vs. Romney
2008 01 25

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, has written a book about the Boy Scouts, and he includes a less-than-flattering story about Mitt Romney, suggesting that the Republican presidential hopeful bowed to the homosexual rights lobby during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Here is a portion of what Mr. Perry had to say about Mr. Romney in the new book, “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For,” due out in February from Stroud & Hall Publishers:

“The ACLU’s ‘fingerprints’ aren’t on every effort to deny the Boy Scouts access to public facilities and events, though chances are they cheer when kindred groups initiate such efforts. Take the case of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. In the planning stages, when it was faltering financially, Mitt Romney stepped in as president and chief executive officer. He soon straightened things out and set plans in motion to make it a success.

“In 2000 he put out a published call for volunteers ... The Great Salt Lake Council of the BSA, the largest in the nation, with some 80,000 Scouts and 35,000 adult leaders, answered Romney’s call for volunteers.”

“Some time that fall, however, the Scouts were advised that they were no longer welcome to participate. Chief Scout Executive for the Council, Marty Latimer said, ‘We don’t understand what’s wrong. They just don’t want us and won’t talk to us.’ He said that Romney had not returned calls from several Scout executives seeking an explanation. The Council’s President R. Lawry Hunsaker expressed surprise that Romney had ignored Scout leaders for he had once been a Scout and a Scout leader himself. ‘We can’t get him to return our calls.’ “
Original Article