A Practical View of Real Christianity

By William Wilberforce
Foreword by Chuck Stetson
(2007)

Discussion Guide Included

This Reading is an Executive Summary of A Practical View of Real Christianity by William Wilberforce with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson.

William Wilberforce is justly honored for his work to end the Atlantic slave trade. Less well known is the second of his “great objects”—the transformation of culture, which Wilberforce knew was a prerequisite for abolition.

With the summer 2007 Trinity Forum Reading, we join the celebration of the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade with an executive summary of Wilberforce’s electrifying 1797 manifesto on the Christian life and its role in society.

A Practical View of Real Christianity (to use its short title) was a best-seller for fifty years and contributed directly to the Second Great Awakening. Our edition is abridged and with a Foreword by Chuck Stetson, who is, among other things, a Manhattan investment banker, chair of the Wilberforce Central alliance, chair of the Bible Literacy Project, and producer of the upcoming documentary film on Wilberforce, The Better Hour.

The Reading focuses on the chapters Wilberforce himself emphasized as particularly critical for leaders. In a letter to his friend, Prime Minister William Pitt, Wilberforce wrote,

I am not unreasonable enough to ask you to read my book: but as it is more likely that when you are extremely busy than at any other time you may take it up for ten minutes, let me recommend it to you in that case to open on the last section of the fourth chapter, wherein you will see wherein the religion which I espouse differs practically from the common orthodox system. Also the sixth chapter has almost a right to a perusal, being the basis of all politics, and particularly addressed to such as you.

Stetson’s Foreword gives us an overview of the book in its historic setting, addressing its themes, influence, and the personal habits and faith of Wilberforce that made it such a powerful force for cultural transformation in his day—and in ours.

Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning, or arts, or power, or wealth, or military glory, without vigorous resolution, and strenuous diligence, and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labor, study, or inquiry. This is the more preposterous, because Christianity, being a revelation from God, and not the invention of man, discovering to us new relations, with their correspondent duties; containing also doctrines, and motives, and practical principles, and rules, peculiar to itself, and almost as new in their nature as supreme in their excellence, we cannot reasonably expect to become proficients in it by the accidental intercourses of life, as one might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy, or a scheme of mere morals.

—William Wilberforce, chapter one

The book's powerful influence on readers may be explained by Wilberforce’s strategic approach, social standing, and careful preparation, and perhaps by the receptivity of the audience. But it also carries authority because of its spiritual depth and the consistency between the author’s expressed opinions and his daily life. His personal integrity gave it credibility. It also offers an answer to the question that inevitably arises when we consider Wilberforce’s accomplishments: How did he manage to persevere through decades of political infighting and personal attacks?

—Chuck Stetson, from the Foreword

Category: Readings (No. 46)