#chaplainwilberforce

              Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing a series I called Chaplain Wilberforce. I call him “chaplain” because his life exemplified “workplace chaplaincy” in a marvelous way. I call him “chaplain” because he so perfectly illustrates the secular purpose of a chaplain. He lived in a culture very similar to ours, one in desperate need of change and yet deeply suspicious of religion. Yet, he was able to make huge changes to his cultural surroundings. I recommend you read the first three parts below…

               Well, Wilberforce lived almost three hundred years ago. Maybe that’s too far removed. Maybe you need a more recent example of successful cultural transformation. Possibly you think the way Wilberforce achieved success couldn’t be repeated today. Well….in this post I will introduce you to someone who has done just that.

               His name is Sunday Adelaja and he is a Nigerian missionary to the Ukraine. Yes, I really just said that. God is hilarious! You can read the full story in his book Church Shift, which I highly recommend. For now, let me tell you a little of his story. Sunday grew up as an orphan in Nigeria. Later raised by his grandmother, he was desperate to leave the poverty that permeated his life and country. He worked hard and put himself through school. As a teenager, he found Jesus. At the end of High School, he received a scholarship to attend university in Russia in 1986. He would have preferred to go to the U.S. or England, but only Russia offered him the scholarship. He had only just found Jesus, and here he was being sent to the Soviet Union to study; a place vehemently hostile to religious faith of any kind.  Sunday studied journalism and experienced severe persecution there. Other Christian friends were removed from the university, deported or placed in mental institutions for their faith. But God kept Sunday safe and showed him a picture of his future; that some day he would be the pastor of a large church in the Ukraine.

               In the mid ‘90’s God moved Sunday and his fiancé to Kyiv. Originally taking a journalism job, God kept pressing upon his heart that journalism wasn’t his calling; starting a church was. He obeyed but met incredible resistance. Here was a culture, like Wilberforce’s, that was incredibly suspicious and skeptical of religion. The only thing that was going to convince people was for them to see it; to see the gospel message lived out and offering solutions to the serious problems that plagued their communities. God spoke to Sunday and said, “Many people think that serving Me means preaching from the pulpit. That is not MY understanding if ministry. Preaching and church ministries are just tools and instruments you can use. But ministry is really about touching people. Get rid of your tie and jacket. Go out of your pulpit.”[1]

               Since then, two million people have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ at his church. His greatest discovery though was that a person doesn’t need to promote religion or church for people to want to come to Christ. Rather, kingdom principles will draw people. When God’s principles are taken out into culture, they simply work. People discover the kingdom within you, and they become convinced of its truth because they’ve seen it in action. Sunday’s church began this journey by launching a program to help drug addicts, alcoholics and the homeless. To get their message into the public school, hospitals, and governmental agencies they presented it in a way that emphasized the principles, not the God behind the principles. They would have never been allowed to enter the schools if they had been waving a bible and calling on the name of Jesus. One of their recovered addicts created a special program for the public schools to help prevent drug abuse from beginning. She did not preach, but simply taught principles like integrity, respect, honesty and so on. Her presentations were so successful that she was continually invited back. You see, like Wilberforce, she was willing to come from their perspective so that she could introduce kingdom principles into a setting where a church would never be welcome. She has since written over 30 curriculums that have been adopted by the public-school system in Kyiv and by the Ministry of Education.[2]

               Pastor Adelaja believes that this in no way denies God. God is committed to His Word, which holds His principles. God is not committed to religion or any particular expression of it. Instead, Sunday argues that we can only enter the public sphere by bringing God’s principles in a secular package. We can wring our hands that prayer was taken out of public school, or we can offer programs that teach these students that God did not design the human body for things like fornication, envy, theft, indecent language, irritation, anger, and drug and alcohol addiction. God designed our minds and bodies to function by kingdom principles. To hate is to slowly self-destruct. To manipulate others is to invite death into your life. It’s against how your mind and body were made. Evil cannot overcome evil. Bodies, brains, and spirits were meant to function on kingdom principles. (Eph. 4:17-18). The main point being made here is not to divorce God from His principles, but to show the dying world that only God has principles that work. It’s ok to present the solution in the way we are allowed, which means emphasizing principles not spirituality. We are each God’s representative. Just by being in a place, God is there. It worked for Wilberforce, and it’s worked for Sunday Adelaja. Members of his church have started over three thousand nongovernmental charity organizations that deal with smoking, teen pregnancy, drinking and so much more. These organizations are addressing and offering practical solutions to every hopeless situation.[3] Members of his church have indirectly written one hundred and forty bills for parliament.

               What does that mean for you? In his book, Sunday teaches that, “You must speak for God in your place of influence…God has placed you there to be His spokesperson. Everyone on earth is called to be a deliverer in their sphere of authority or expertise.” Whether is be the PTA, or a bible study or as the manager at McDonalds, God has given YOU a sphere of influence. It may not seem like much, and it may not be the promised land He is training you for, but we must decide to stand where we are. The place where you are is given to you so that YOU can set the tone, so that YOU can change the atmosphere. You accomplish that when you live the gospel; when you are a man or woman of integrity, kindness, forgiveness, honesty and so forth. To what extent can the world look at you and see Jesus? Your entire life’s journey is meant to train you and lead you to the ultimate place of influence and authority that God has for you. Thankfully, we get lots of practice along the way. If you would like to learn more about discovering and reigning your promised land, I recommend Sunday’s book, Church Shift, a well as the DVD’s produced by Lance Wallnau concerning the 7 Mountain Mandate. I also hope to talk about these things in further blog posts. But I hope you can see how the same methods used by William Wilberforce in the late 1700’s are the very same methods being used by Sunday Adelaja in the Ukraine today. They work and they transform society for the glory of God.

[1] Sunday Adelaja, Church Shift (Florida: Charisma House, 2008), 96.

[2] Ibid, 134-5.

             This is part three in a series I’m doing on William Wilberforce. If you haven’t read the first two parts, I recommend you go back and read these first. They lay the foundation for what we’ll talk about today.

               Last week I left off with Wilberforce’s religious conversion. We’ve talked about his upbringing, his faith and the culture in which he lived. These lay the foundation for who he was and what he accomplished. Today, lets look at how God was able to use William to radically change culture without a single word of “religion”. That may sound sacrilegious, but Wilberforce lived in a culture much like their own. “Religion” and “faith” carried so much baggage that no one took either seriously. If the leaders he was trying to influence had ever associated his proposed changes with “religion”, they would never have supported him. He knew that…. 

                                            Culture Changers

             It’s very interesting to note how Wilberforce and his friends went about making the drastic cultural changes they did. His first idea came to him after reading the book History of the Society for the Reformation of Manners in the Year 1692. In it he learned about the royal proclamation issued by William and Mary when they ascended the throne in 1692. It was tradition that when new royalty ascended the English throne they put forth a royal proclamation. Most such proclamations only paid lip service to reform and were usually ignored by everyone. What made William and Mary’s special was the widespread and genuine effect it had on society. What made theirs different from all others both before and after were the formations of “proclamation societies”. These societies allowed the citizenry to take back control of their neighborhoods by ensuring that the laws were really being followed. Wilberforce knew that such “proclamation societies” could help clean up London. He now set out to get King George III to issue such a proclamation so that similar societies could be formed once again. He knew this was a process that “could make goodness fashionable.” So, how does one get the most powerful man in the country to get one board?

            The strategy William used was brilliant. He first approached the Bishop of London, who also served as personal chaplain to the King. The Bishop and Prime Minister Pitt then approached Queen Charlotte and got her on their side. With all their ducks in a row, they approached the King. On June 1, 1787, King George III issued his royal proclamation and “proclamation societies” were formed across the country with immediate results. What’s most noteworthy is that Wilberforce didn’t put his name anywhere on it. He kept to the background because he knew that if his name got associated with the endeavor that it would be seen as “Methodist” and thus would fail. He was humble enough to place reform above his pride. He also never presented the suggestion as “Christian” or “religious”.  

“It was an effort to ameliorate social conditions, pure and simple. Wilberforce simply focused on reducing crime and on lifting the generally depressed and depressing social climate in which so many of the poor lived…He wished to bring civility and self-respect into a society that had long since spiraled down into vice and misery.” In his dairy he wrote, “God almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners.”[1]

             Do you see it? Wilberforce was able to use the social capital he had, and speak the language of the times, to initiate a meaningful change. Religious vocabulary would fail. Righteous indignation would fail. Shaming the “sinners” would fail. His goal: simply reach down into the lowest of society and give them a hand up.

            Of all the causes for Wilberforce to champion, slavery was one of the least visible. There were only about 14,000 slaves on the island of Britain. Most of the British slaves lived in the West Indies working the sugar plantations. As such, very few British people knew the conditions in which these slaves worked. Unlike American slave owners, plantation owners on the sugar plantations of the West Indies had no qualms working their slaves to death as they were so much easier to replace. Few female slaves had children as they were worked too hard to conceive. Oddly enough, the Church of England had a great deal of money invested into the East Indian sugar plantations. They saw no disconnect between the tenants of their faith and the hypocrisy of their actions.

              Over time Wilberforce came to be seen as the “conscience” of his nation. “A conscience reminds us of what we already know to be right. Wilberforce realized that Britain was a nation that had effectively lost its conscience or grown deaf to it; that claimed in every outward way to be a Christian nation, but that acted upon principles fundamentally at odds with the Christian view of human beings as immortal creatures, created in the image of God.”[2] In so many ways, we are repeating history. America claims to be a Christian nation, and yet so much of our behavior, politics and foreign policy suggest otherwise.

            What’s so informative for us is that Wilberforce made goodness fashionable without using references to God, faith or religion. I’m not suggesting that it’s always wrong to do so. But Wilberforce understood that he lived in a culture where such references carried tremendous baggage that muddied the waters. The excesses of the church in previous centuries had left people very skeptical of anything that smacked of “religion”. Sound familiar? Many Christians today believe we shouldn’t try to separate morality and virtue from God and faith because once untethered, culture tends to pollute and redefine. There is some truth to that.

            Consider this… would it be possible to keep morality and goodness tethered to the source of goodness, God, and yet not dress our actions in priests clothing? We’ve lost an understanding of values and morality that Wilberforce understood - that truth is truth wherever you find it. A clock that’s stuck at 12:00 is still right two times every day. He understood that his society’s skepticism toward religion didn’t prohibit the truth from being spoken and cultivated. He understood that there were “kingdom principles” that affect creation just as much as gravity. That all men are created in the image of God, and should then be treated with dignity and respect was and is true whether people live in accordance with it or not. It’s true whether people acknowledge it or not. This was just one kingdom principle that Wilberforce dedicated his life fighting for. Wilberforce went on to champion the cause of unfair and unsafe labor practices, child labor laws, prison reform, animal cruelty and so much more.

               What does this have to do with Chaplaincy? A chaplain is used right where he/she is. The place where God has set your feet is where you are called to make a difference. God had placed Wilberforce in a “secular” government position. Just like the good slave in the parable of the talents, Wilberforce used the authority that God had given him to make powerful changes in his society. The chaplains purpose is primarily a secular one. Yet so many would wring their hands in despair that God can’t solve problems unless the action is stamped as “Christian”. Wilberforce unequivocally proves otherwise. An action is Christian if its done in the love of Christ. I don’t need to tell my neighbor that I’m mowing their lawn because I hope someday it will get them to come to church. I mow their lawn because I see they are overwhelmed with a recent cancer diagnosis. I do it because showing the love of Jesus more fully introduces them to HIM.  I visit my dear veterans in their nursing home because they are lonely, and Jesus comforts them through me, even when the conversation never turns to faith. I step out of the way and act simply as a conduit. And what an honor, because God could have chosen anyone to take along on the adventure, yet he chose you and I.

 “Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me.’ Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry, and feed You, or thirsty, and give You something to drink? And when did we see You a stranger, and invite You in, or naked, and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me.’ Matt. 25:34-40

[1] Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace (Harper: San Francisco, 2007), 84-85.

         Last week I introduced a series I’m doing on William Wilberforce. I believe his life and success can inform our own chaplaincy and cultural impact for today. We left off with his early life. At twenty-four years old Wilberforce had won the most coveted seat in all of Parliament. He was on top of the world, he just didn’t know yet who had placed him there (God) or why. Today we’ll look at his conversion and the religious world he lived in.  

Conversion 

       Shortly after the monumental victory of his professional life, Wilberforce and his friend Isaac Milner traveled to France for a holiday. They would spend the better part of the next month traveling via stagecoach. Wilberforce’s cousin, Bessie Smith had loaned him a book called The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul by Philip Doddridge. During the long journey the two men spoke at great length about faith and God that had been spurred on by the loan of this book. This book would serve as the catalyst to get William to think seriously for the first time about faith. Wilberforce’s conversion was not immediate, but a gradual change was happening as something wrestled deep within him. He was too level-headed and analytical to rush headlong into any belief system.   

“He knew that if he held a belief he would be obliged to act upon it, and not just in small and isolated instances, but in all his life. He knew that the tinniest mustard seed can grow and grow and become a tree in which the birds of the air make their nests. Ideas have far-reaching consequences, and one must be ever so careful about what one allows to lodge in one’s brain.”[1]

          He later wrote in his diary, “What madness is the course I am pursuing. I believe all the great truths of the Christian religion, but I am not acting as though I did.”[2] What powerful, and far too infrequently spoken words! The scales had fallen from his eyes and he came to understand that faith was more than a set of ideologies to agree upon, though he was unsure how to proceed on this new course. Wilberforce began to experience deep internal turmoil with the thought that to be obedient to God would mean leaving his political post and pursuing a career in the church. Thankfully, more level heads persisted. William’s best friend Pitt, and his newly renewed mentor, John Newton, both urged him to stay where God had placed him. In a letter Newton wrote, he said, “It is hoped and believed that the Lord has raised you up for the good of His church and for the good of the nation.” Pitt wrote Wilberforce saying, “Surely the principles as well as the practices of Christianity are simple and lead not to meditation only, but to action.”[3] How wonderful it is that they both recognized an opportunity for God to use him right where he was. Wilberforce came to realize that obedience to God did not mean the retreat to within the four walls of a church.

       This “conversion” moment forced Wilberforce to now see his entire life, including the culture he lived in, through new lenses. Eighteenth-century England has been described as “brutal, decadent, violent and vulgar…The social evils of his day included epidemic alcoholism, child prostitution, child labor, frequent public executions for petty crimes, public dissections, burnings of executed criminals, and unspeakable public cruelty to animals.”[4] The number of crimes punishable by death was astounding. Approximately 25% of unmarried women in London were prostitutes and the average age for prostitution was sixteen years old. Of the first two bills that Wilberforce championed in Parliament, one regarded parliamentary reform and the other addressed the two morally corrupt practices of burning female prisoners at the stake and the selling of the dead bodies of criminals who had been hanged. (Think Charles Dickens…) This was the morally bankrupt society in which he lived.

         Where was the church in all of this? The answer bears a shocking and poignant resemblance to the church today. British society had retreated from the faith it had once embraced, and so the previous practices of helping the poor and less fortunate in society had all but disappeared. Culture retained the outward trappings of religion- which kept the lower classes in line- but it denied religion any actual power. “Religion had quietly been defanged and declawed.”[5] Wilberforce’s morality wasn’t just suggesting a complete paradigm shift regarding religion, he was also proposing such a shift for the wealthy elites. It had never crossed their minds that their enormous blessings should be used to help those less fortunate. This was the age of Marie Antionette, and the elites figured the poor were akin to wild beasts and should be treated as such. 

There are three critical points for us to recognize here. 

1. Though William had been deeply touched and moved by God, though he now wanted to give his whole life to God, it was obvious that God meant to use him right where he was. If ever there was a picture of “workplace chaplaincy” here it is. He could have retreated to what was easy- a “ministry”. He could have taken the path of least resistance -  a life in the church, and doubtless he would have joined Whitfield and the Wesley brothers as a powerful evangelist. But in the end, he did more good in his “secular” workplace. The church didn’t need another Wesley, the world needed a Wilberforce! 

2. In William’s day, religion was nothing more than outward tradition and ceremony. No one believed Christianity offered solutions to the day-to-day problems tormenting society. Culture was wallowing in a putrid mess and denied faith any real power to fix it. The fact that Jesus came feeding the hungry and healing the actual sick was a detail lost on them. To what extent is it lost to us as well? Do I really believe that Jesus has the solution to the homelessness problem that’s overwhelming my city? Do you believe that Jesus, the living Messiah, has a solution to the heroin epidemic overwhelming your neighborhood? Is there actual power, or just empty talk? Wilberforce’s faith was overwhelmingly practical. Is ours?  

3. There were some true believers, but they had retreated to the church to let the world take care of itself. As Christians today, have we retreated within the four walls of our church, hoping Jesus hurries up and returns? We’ve resigned ourselves that in the last days its going to be bad, so lets just grin and bear it until it’s over or until I die. Isn’t that really what we’re doing? You know, the ancient heresy of Gnosticism believed that the world was evil and to be holy one needed to separate oneself as much as possible from anything earthly. The ancient heresy of Gnosticism drew an imaginary line between “sacred” and “secular”. Today, we just separate ourselves from anything “secular”. We keep our religion in a box to open up on Sunday, then put it nicely on a shelf all the other days of the week. That’s what we’ve been told. The world doesn’t want your religion, so keep it to yourself. Wilberforce was hearing the same message, yet it didn’t stop him. It needn’t stop us either.  

Wilberforce lived a culture hostile to religion. Wilberforce lived in a culture in desperate need for a return to morality and goodness. Next week I’m going to show how Wilberforce was able to radically change culture without a single mention of “religion”. There are too many parallels between his times and ours to ignore how he was able to accomplish wonderful success. 

[1] Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace (Harper: San Francisco, 2007), 51. 

[2] Ibid, 53.

[3] Ibid, 68.

[4] Ibid, 67.

              I was recently listening to the Christian speaker, Lance Wallnau, talk about how Christians can effectively engage culture. When he mentioned William Wilberforce, I became intrigued. I teach a high school American History class, and this year in class the question came up as to how the British were able to abolish slavery without a single drop of blood and yet it took the lives of 700,000 American men to abolish slavery here. Why the difference? For the purpose of my history class, I couldn’t answer it; though I searched through many books looking for one! Then I listened to Lance. He had found the answer, and one that I really think can inform our own cultural engagement and ministries today.

               I believe we have a lot to learn from William Wilberforce about how to engage culture in a meaningful and impactful way and about the secular purpose of chaplaincy. So, if you’ll stick around for the next couple weeks I think you’ll be pleased you did! Today, I’m just going to give you a little background of William’s life. It may seem tedious, but it lays an important foundation. In a few weeks we’ll get into the meat of it….

                           Early Life 

            William Wilberforce was born on Aug. 24, 1759. His name came from his grandfather, William. He also had an uncle named William. William means “valiant protector” and what a prophetic name it proved to be! Williams oldest sister and father both died the same year, when William was only eight years old. His mother became ill shortly after and young William was sent to London to live with his Uncle William and Aunt Hannah. They had no children of their own and very much cherished the few years they had with young William. His aunt and uncle were very wealthy and successful; they were also Methodist- which was very unpopular in England at the time. William and Hannah had become friends with George Whitfield, the champion of the Great Awakening. While living with them, William was introduced not only to evangelicalism, but also to many well-connected and powerful men. Though William (the younger) never met Whitfield personally, he did make his first acquaintance with John Newton, the former slave ship captain who would later write “Amazing Grace.”

               The Church of England at this point in history had turned its back on all outward expressions of what we would call serious faith. “Religion was now on full-scale retreat…and the church preached a tepid kind of moralism… and the preservation of the status quo…and so people looked less and less to the church for the ultimate answers to their questions as hopelessness crept over the land.”[1] George Whitfield and the brothers Charles and John Wesley had entered this religious world and shaken it to its core. These three men believed that the bible taught that man can’t become morally perfect on his own, no matter how hard he tries. They instead believed that Jesus was the only answer and that we weren’t supposed to save ourselves but instead rely on Jesus to save us. Sounds about right to us, but no one had ever heard anything like it and crowds as large as 30,000 came to hear Whitfield speak. All three men brought revival to the Unites States; Whitfield alone made thirteen trips and preached over 18,000 sermons.

             But in England, Methodists/evangelicals were despised by the Church of England. Their teachings were challenging the status quo and the elites hated them for it. When William’s grandfather and mother heard of the influences playing in William’s young life they quickly snatched him back home to the port city of Hull. They spent the rest of Williams childhood undoing the Methodism that he had picked up from his aunt and uncle. There he lived until attending Cambridge in 1776. At Cambridge he made many friends that would last throughout his life, many of them sons of influential men. One such friend was William Pitt, whose father (William Pitt the elder) had served as British Prime Minister.

             After Cambridge, Pitt played a substantial role in influencing Wilberforce to run for a seat in Parliament in 1780. Elections in England were easily bought, and with his money Wilberforce purchased more votes than his two opponents combined. Overnight he found himself a member of Parliament and the member of London’s most exclusive clubs; thus rubbing shoulders with the most powerful men of his time. Wilberforce belonged to the Torie party, which opposed war with the American colonies.

            Though slight in stature, Wilberforce was a man who made friends quickly and easily. It is said that he was “incredibly witty and quickly able to lay waste to his opponents through his sarcastic wit and extremely agile repartee.”[2] His true gift though wasn’t in just what he said, but how he said it. He spent much of his young life with friends at the clubs he belonged to, playing cards until early into the morning. With his access to power and wealth, and at such a young age, it easily could have led William deeply astray. But even before his “conversion”, Wilberforce was admired by his peers for his “goodness”. Gerard Edwards said of Wilberforce, “I thank God I live in the age of Wilberforce and that I know one man who is both moral and entertaining.”[3]

               In 1783, King George III appointed William Pitt, then only twenty-four years old, as the youngest prime minister in English history. Wilberforce’s best friend was now one of the most powerful men in England. No one knows why, but the crazy idea then entered Wilberforce’s head to run for the Yorkshire County seat for Parliament, the most powerful seat in all of England. It had always been held by landed gentry, never by the grandson of a shipping merchant. Wilberforce could never really explain it himself, but he took the risk and ran. And then the unthinkable happened, at twenty-four years old Wilberforce won the most coveted seat in all of Parliament.  

           This is just a brief background of Wilberforce’s early life. What I want you to note though was how God was supernaturally lining Wilberforce up to be in a position to make the cultural changes necessary for his country. He had been raised as a middle-class nobody. His uncle, in London, had paved the way through his own success and wealth to be well respected, but social class and pedigree were still a requirement for success in their world- things Wilberforce didn’t have. Next week I’ll talk about his conversion and how faith finally found William Wilberforce.

[1] Eric Metaxas, Amazing Grace (Harper: San Francisco, 2007), 7.

[2] Ibid, 30.