Two hundred and fifty years ago, Christianity’s most beloved song was sung publicly for the first time on New Year’s Day, and its echoes are still reverberating around the world.

For believers, and even many skeptics, Amazing Grace resonates with its message of redemption, hope, and transformation. But the song’s main theme is not what many people think.

The misconception comes from the common knowledge the hymn was written by John Newton (1725-1807), who spent much of his life in the slave trade, trafficking kidnapped Africans between Liverpool and the West Indies.

What’s not as well known is that Newton was pressed into service on his first slave ship, for deserting the Navy to see a girl he’d fallen in love with.

Aboard the vessel, he was so foul-mouthed, crude, and argumentative that he was put ashore in Sierra Leone where he was briefly enslaved by a tribe and forced to work on a plantation, until another ship came by.

But in March 1748, Newton was commanding a ship that got caught in a violent storm off Ireland. The vessel almost broke apart and people died, but he was rescued.

The near-death experience made Newton reexamine his life, and he slowly got back in touch with his childhood faith. Still, he kept slaving for the next seven years.

By 1764 — 16 years later after the life-changing storm — he was ordained in the Anglican faith and sent to Olney, a southeast English market town whose only other........

© Sarnia Observer