They generally found the script preachy and moralizing, the sets and staging
stunning, and the overall message transformational. The soulful hymn,
Amazing Grace, is saved for the climactic ending, with all of the cast belting it
out and audience members rising to their feet to join in. Tears flow. So does
hope.
That is the power of Amazing Grace – almost 250 years later. And to think
that at least some of these seeds were sown 10 years ago, during lonely patrols
of Bryn Athyn roads late into the night.
Divine providence, indeed.
(BMH)
the glencairn connection
Brian Henderson, Director of the Glencairn Museum, remembers Chris
Smith talking about his dream for Amazing Grace while he was working on
the Glencairn video. Brian also knows all about New Church connections to
the abolitionist movement in England that pre-dated the end of slavery in
America.
He lectured on all this as a history professor at Bryn Athyn College,
enthralled an Eldergarten audience in Boynton Beach several years ago with
the dramatic history, and also presented a paper at the 2011 conference in
Bryn Athyn on Swedenborg and the Last Judgment: From Thought to Action:
The Last Judgment, Swedenborg and the Antislavery Movement.
He says he played a small role with Curator Ed Gyllenhaal and Chris
Smith in making the Glencairn video and remembers Chris talking even then
about his dream for Amazing Grace.
“As for Newton himself,” Brian writes, “I am not aware of any specific
New Church connections. Newton may well have been familiar with Carl
Wadstrom (the New Churchman) through both of their work with William
Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson in 1788-89. By this point Newton (34 to 35
years past his slave-trading days) was an ally of Wilberforce in his attempts to
get Parliament to end the slave trade. There is evidence that Wadstrom testified
in 1788 and 1789, I believe, but as far as I can remember or am aware, there
was no direct connection between Newton and the New Church.”
Ed Gyllenhaal writes: “I first became aware of the musical, Amazing Grace,
in 2007, when Chris Smith and I were working together on a documentary
film (Embracing the Sacred: The Story of Glencairn Museum). One day Chris
suggested that we go out to lunch together because he wanted to tell me about
another, much bigger project he was working on.
“What followed was a scene-by-scene description of a two-act musical
about the spiritual awakening of slave-trader-turned-hymnist John Newton.
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