William Wilberforce

London, England     Visited November 1997

It is a privilege to post a blog on one of my heroes.  William Wilberforce – a man of humanitarian commitment, of political good, of resolute character and, most of all, of true Christian faith in all of life. 

Young Wilberforce

William Wilberforce was born in 1759 to an upper middle class family of Yorkshire, England.  With the early death of his father, young William was sent to London to live with relatives.  However, the relatives turned out to be evangelical Christians, which unnerved his mother and caused her to bring William back home until college.  Wilberforce attended Cambridge where he was a popular but somewhat indifferent student.  However, it was at Cambridge where he met William Pitt, son of the great Prime Minister and his future advocate and friend. 

Wilberforce boyhood home in Hull

Pitt persuaded William to run for Parliament, which he did upon graduation from University.  Wilberforce was elected to the seat from Hull in 1780 at the age of 21.  In his initial years in Parliament he was known for his oratory skills but not much else.  He primarily saw his position as a means of personal advancement and was a popular but largely irrelevant MP. 

In 1784, while on a grand tour of Europe he engaged in conversations with his traveling companions, who were evangelical Christians.  Somewhere on this trip Wilberforce was confronted with the wastefulness of his life in light of the claims of Christ and he believed the Gospel for salvation.  I was looking for a description of Wilberforce’s conversion and couldn’t find anything compelling.  However, that problem was solved earlier today, March 29, 2014 at the 2014 Verge Conference in Austin, Texas.  I was attending the last session of the conference and the speaker Bryan Lorritts unpacked the life and significance of the life of William Wilberforce in the cause of social justice.  I took some video where Lorritts beautifully describes Wilberforce’s encounter with “the train wreck of the Gospel".

Returning to England, William found himself in a dilemma of conscience.  He wanted to dedicate himself to the cause of Christ and began to wrestle with a call to the ministry.  It was around this time that he rekindled an old relationship with John Newton, who was pastoring in London at the time.  On December 7 1785 he met with the renowned pastor to seek his counsel.  Much to the young man’s surprise, Pastor Newton encouraged him to see his calling in the political arena.  Newton’s recollection of the meeting is recounted in a letter to William Cowper:   

We had much conversation.  I judge he is now decidedly on the right track.  His abilities are undoubtedly very considerable, and his situation and connections are likely to afford him ample scope for usefulness in public life.  I hope the Lord will make him a blessing, both as a Christian and as a statesman.  How seldom do these characters coincide!  But they are not incompatible. 

Wilberforce early years in Parliament

Wilberforce returned to Parliament committed to perform his duties in concert with his Christian values, giving political attention to a range of England’s social ills.  He also connected with a group of upper class Christians in London who formed a missional community that became known as the Clapham Sect.  It was through these relationships that William became sensitized to the evils of the slave trade.  While slaves were little seen in England, the Empire was expanding largely on the economic benefits of slave trading.  But as he became more and more aware of the horrors of the trade Wilberforce took this cause as the passion of his life and career.  




As he said, 

"So enormous, so dreadful, so irremediable did the [slave] trade's wickedness appear that my own mind was completely made up for abolition. Let the consequences be what they would: I from this time determined that I would never rest until I had effected its abolition."

 

Wilberforce in his prime

The story of Wilberforce’s herculean fight against the economic and political establishment to abolish the slave trade began in 1787 when Pitt asked him to head the parliamentary fight in the cause.  The young and still popular MP threw himself into the task confident in quick success.  It wasn’t to be.  By 1789 he had introduced twelve resolutions on the slave trade.  All were defeated by technical maneuvering without coming to a vote.  Over the next fifteen years he introduced eight bills, only to have each of them defeated; and each time it seemed more and more unlikely that he wouldn’t see victory in his greatest cause.  

A satirical cartoon depicting what opponents of abolition said would happen in British society under Wilberforce

Barbara Spooner Wilberforce

In these years William suffered also from a number of ailments (likely including ulcerative colitis).  He resorted to the use of opium, which at the time was considered a wonder-medicine with little understanding of its addictive strength.  Tireless work on abolition interspersed with debilitating seasons of illness left little room in his life for consideration of marriage and family.  But in 1797, at the age of 38, he met twenty-year-old Barbara Spooner and soon married.  The marriage was lasting and deeply loving and ultimately resulted in a family of six children being born over the next ten years.

  

With the death of his lifelong friend William Pitt in 1806, Wilberforce renewed his efforts to rid the nation of slave trading with a new tactic.  Rather than attacking the trade directly he worked through the political maneuvering that had so long thwarted his efforts to limit the trade.  Capitalizing an already existing law involving trade with the French, he was able to get a bill passed that had the indirect effect of making about 75% of the economics of the trade against the law.  With the axe laid to the root, Parliament took rallied around the moral issue over the next year and the abolition of the slave trade was finally passed in England in 1807.  

The fight for abolition was movingly portrayed in the 2007 film "Amazing Grace".  Here is the  trailer for the film.

While a significant victory for justice, abolition did not end slavery in England.  Wilberforce spent the remainder of his life working to end slavery in the British Empire, as well as on other justice and morality causes.  He also worked through his office and contacts to advance the cause of Christian mission in England and all her colonies.  William’s health continued to deteriorate in the first decades of the 1800s.  By 1830 he was a powerful symbolic figure and writer for abolition but too frail of health to actively campaign.  Finally, on July 26, 1833 government concessions guaranteed the passage of the Bill to Abolish the Slave Trade. With the vote on the bill a month later 800,000 slaves throughout the world were legally freed from bondage.  Three days later, on July 29, 1833, William Wilberforce’s fight was over and he passed into glory.  

Unfinished portrait 1828

William Wilberforce had requested to be buried at his sister’s home but Parliament prevailed upon his  to have him buried with high honor at Westminster Abbey.  He was laid to rest near his friend William Pitt.

Queen Elizabeth at Wilberforce tomb - Westminster Abbey

I visited Westminster Abbey two times in the nineties – one time with my brother and a later time with guys from my pastoral team.  Neither time was I able to take pictures.  I’ll be back. 

           

Your blogger at Westminster Abbey

James Monroe

Richmond, VA          Visited September 1998

James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States and the last of the Founding Fathers to ascend to the nation’s highest office.  Revolutionary War veteran, Founding Father, senator, governor, diplomat, Secretary of State – there may have been no president in history better qualified to occupy the nation’s highest office.  

James Monroe was born into a wealthy Virginia plantation family in 1758.  His parents died when he was in his teens and he wound up enrolling at the College of William and Mary in 1774.  Williamsburg was a hotbed for revolutionary sentiment and Monroe found himself caught up in it.  James and some friends raided the Governor’s Palace and stole a cache of muskets and swords to the fledgling Virginia Militia.

"Washington Crossing the Delaware" by Emanuel Leutze - James Monroe is holding the flag.

 With the outbreak of the war James Monroe enlisted in the Continental Army, soon joining George Washington’s army in New York.  He proved himself an able soldier and was severely wounded leading a charge on a cannon in the Battle of Trenton (December 26, 1776).  Following his recovery Monroe was promoted to major, and he later served as a colonel in the Virginia Militia through the end of the war. 
  

James Monroe had developed a relationship with Thomas Jefferson during the war and after Independence joined Jefferson’s law practice.  He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1783.  During the Congress, he met his future wife Elizabeth and, a year later the 27-year-old James and the 17-year-old Elizabeth were married.  The couple moved to Fredericksburg, VA where James set up a law practice.  The Monroe’s ultimately had three children.

Inauguration of James Monroe

In 1788, Monroe was named as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.  He voted against ratification because the document lacked a Bill of Rights, which was, of course, later added.  He was appointed to the US Senate from Virginia, but in 1794 was sent by President Washington as Minister to France, only to be recalled in 1797.  He served three years as Governor of Virginia and then, in 1803, was sent back to France by President Jefferson to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase.  He later served as minister to England, returning to the States to run for president in the 1808 election.  He was easily defeated by James Madison, but was later asked by Madison to serve as secretary of state.  Monroe held this office during the War of 1812 and organized the evacuation of Washington prior to the British attack on the city.  After two terms, Madison declined to run again for the presidency and Monroe easily won election in 1816.

 

Official White House portrait by Samuel Morse

James Monroe entered the presidency at the time of greatest national stability and prosperity of any president up that time.  He was universally popular and, because of significant travel, was remarkably well known throughout the country.  The major event in his first term was the complicated political and constitutional arrangement that became known as the Missouri Compromise.  The Compromise was an attempt to resolve the first sectional dispute over slavery since the Constitution was ratified.  It was in essence a trade-off of the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state with an agreement to keep free/slave state balances in the years to come.  In the long term, the compromise didn’t resolve the slavery issue.  It took the Civil War to do that.    

James apparently selling his Monroe Doctrine

James Monroe has the distinction of being the only president to run un-opposed for the office (due to the lack of an organized opposition party) and he won what amounts to a second term by acclamation in 1820.  The biggest event of Monroe’s second term became known as the Monroe Doctrine.  Concerned with the threat of European countries (including Russia) re-colonizing the Western Hemisphere, President Monroe used his 1823 Congressional Address to declare that the United States would consider any invasive action by a European Power in the Western Hemisphere to be an attack on American interests.  The US government had no real means to enforce the doctrine, but it happened to coincide with British interests and the British Navy served as the practical enforcement agents of the policy.

A history of Monroe's presidency.  Also check out a Disney version of Monroe's life  here

Portrait of the President in retirement

Like his predecessors, James Monroe declined the opportunity to run for a third term as president.  He left office in 1824 with significant personal debt and retired to his home of Oak Hill, VA.  His wife Elizabeth passed away in 1830 and James moved to New York City to live with his children.  His health did not sustain and, on July 4, 1831, he died in New York at the age of 73.  James Monroe is the third of the first five presidents to die on Independence Day.  He was initially buried in New York City, but was later moved to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, VA. 

 

Gilbert Stuart Portrait of Second Term Presidency

James Monroe is usually ranked in the top ten presidents by those who do those sorts of things.  His presidency in many ways signaled the end of the colonial era of American history.  He was by all accounts a bright and capable leader who built consensus and worked often with the opposition in the pursuit of what he felt would be the national interest.  His mentor Thomas Jefferson said of his protégé,

'Monroe was so honest that if you turned his soul inside out there would not be a spot on it.'

 

I visited Hollywood Cemetery with my family as part of a two-day trip to Richmond on our way to a beach holiday.  I didn’t even know Monroe was buried in the Cemetery when I went.  I just saw an unusual wrought-iron crypt as I was driving through the cemetery and checked it out.  Hollywood Cemetery is a must see for anyone interested in Civil War history in the Richmond area.     

Wilson Pickett

Louisville, Kentucky.  Visited October 2011

 



There are times when I step back and consider this odd hobby I have and think, ‘are you nuts?’  This post comes from one of those times.  I didn’t think a visit to the final resting place of my favorite soul singer would be very unnerving.  I was wrong. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilson Pickett was born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama.  He was the fourth of eleven children.  In his later years, Pickett described a family home terrorized by an abusive mother.  Barely into his teenage years, he moved to Detroit to live with his father.  At age 14 in Detroit, Pickett began to sing in a Gospel choir.  Four years later, like many black singers of his era, he moved from traditional Gospel singing to a more commercial rhythm and blues style, which was the precursor of soul music.  In 1961, he signed on with a relatively successful R&B group, the Falconers. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early performances

Pickett began to distinguish himself as a soloist and a songwriter and within couple of years was trying to make it as a solo act.  He connected with Atlantic Records and pitched a song he co-wrote called “If You Need Me”.  However, without Pickett’s knowledge the song was passed along to the already established Solomon Burke.  It became one of Burke’s greatest hits and a soul standard.  However, on the strength of this song and his singing talent, Wilson Pickett signed with Atlantic in 1964. 

 

It was a recording session at the legendary Stax Recording Studio in Memphis that really launched Wilson Pickett’s career.  Jamming with the studio band (the equally legendary “MG”s including Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper); the singer and musicians came up with the groove and structure of “In the Midnight Hour”.  It became Pickett’s first No. 1 R&B single and peaked at 21 on the pop charts.  Over time, the song has settled into the pantheon of all-time hits. 

Wilson Pickett backed up by Jimi Hendrix

 

Most of Wilson Pickett’s best-known hits come from his Stax period. It was also at Stax that he acquired his nickname “Wicked Pickett”.  While the record company most likely gave it to him for marketing purposes, the name unfortunately tended to describe the singer’s private life.  Throughout his career, Wilson Pickett battled alcohol and drug issues and was arrested at various times for violence-related offenses.  As a performer, however, he became one of the iconic soul/R&B artists of his era.  While most of his success came in the Sixties and early Seventies, Pickett create music and perform into the early 2000s, with several minor hits even in his later years.

 

Pickett and Duane Allman

 

While he has not attained the status of some of his contemporaries who worked with Motown, Wilson Pickett’s signature vocal style, dynamic live performances and ability to write many of his biggest hits have given him a prominent place in pop music history.  In 1999, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  He continued to perform through the 90’s, retiring due to health concerns in 2004.  Wilson Pickett died of a heart attack in Reston, Virginia on January 19, 2006.  He was laid to rest in a mausoleum at Evergreen Cemetery in Louisville, KY, where he had family in the later part of his life.



 

Seventies Pickett

Here are my five favorite Wilson Pickett songs

FIVE:   Hey Jude (1968)’.  It’s pretty gutsy to record an iconic Beatles song but Pickett pulls of a nice R&B groove.  And the song has great guitar work by Duane Allman. 

FOUR:  Land of 1000 Dances (1966).  This is just full tilt Sixties dance/party music.  The clip here is a great G concert version from a 1971 show in Africa. 

THREE:  Mustang Sally (1966).  Killer groove.  This live version shows you how good R&B can flat out rock. 

TWO:   Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You (1971).  Pickett recorded this at TSOP in Philly.  It was the first Wilson Pickett song I remember ever hearing.  Caught a sixth grader’s attention and stayed with him.

ONE:   In the Midnight Hour (1965).  Wicked Pickett’s signature song.  An all-time great.  He did a duet of this song at his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction with Bruce Springsteen.  The version here is done with the Blues Brothers Band in the 1980’s featuring Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper.  Also check out this revved up take from a live seventies vintage show . 

 

 

Wicked Pickett and the Boss at the 1999
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert

 

So where does the freak-out come in?  Here’s my story.  It was a bleak stormy afternoon.  I was driving in a rental car back to the Louisville airport but had about 20 minutes to kill.  I knew Wilson Pickett was buried at a cemetery near the airport so I thought I’d make a quick stop.  I asked a woman at the Evergreen Cemetery office where I could find Wilson Pickett and she said, ‘he’s in the mausoleum at the other end of the cemetery.  It’s open, just go in and look for his crypt at the back of the mausoleum’.  So, he’s at the back of a mausoleum at the back of a cemetery.  Not good.  I get in my car and drive – a long way.  I finally arrive at this big square building made entirely of marble and glass.  There is no one else anywhere around.

 

Mausoleum at Evergreen Cemetery.  My experience wasn't
quite so bucolic
 

 

 

 

 

I open the glass door and step inside a large atrium like area with stacks of wall crypts two stories high all around.  The wind and rain are howling outside.  I begin to walk to the back of the room.  Every noise, every step, echoes off the marble walls.  Glass windows and doors shudder against the wind.  I find Pickett’s vault and start to take a picture, but realize I don’t have any way to verify I was there.  I take off my Phillies cap to put it near (as my blog protocol requires) but there’s no place to lay it.  A few feet away there is an ornate podium.  I go over to get it and realize its solid bronze.  So, of course, I have to drag it across the room.  The ear-burning screech as I pull the podium across a marble floor reverberates around the room like a ghoulish shriek.  At this point, I am verifiably freaking out.  I take a picture, maybe three (to get good light).  I grab my hat and literally run back through the mausoleum and out the door.  I jump in my car and, punching the gas, careen out of the cemetery as fast as I can drive.  Once I made it back to the main road, I stopped and took a breath.  I think my first one since I started the mad dash from the mausoleum. 

Was it worth it?  Maybe. Maybe not. 

 

 

 

Lorenzo de Medici

Florence, Italy   Visited July 2011

 

For a change of pace this post goes back a-ways in time to consider one of the great figures of the fifteenth century – Lorenzo de Medici.  Also known in his time by the less than humble nickname ‘Lorenzo the Magnificent’, this banker, statesman and patron of the arts was the quintessential ‘Renaissance Man’.  In fact, Lorenzo the Magnificent straddles the intersection of the Italian Renaissance, the dawn of the Age of Exploration and the Protestant Reformation in a remarkably unique way. 

 

 

 

 

By the time Lorenzo de Medici was born in January 1449, the Medici’s were already the dominant family in the Tuscan region of central Italy.  Under the Medici clan, Florence became one of the great cultural and economic centers in Europe, rivaling Rome for power and influence.  The Medici family dynasty had begun under Lorenzo’s grandfather Cosimo, who parlayed a banking fortune into political influence and governing control.  The Italian peninsula of the Middle Ages was divided into regional feudal states vying for economic power.  Under Cosimo ‘The Great’, Florence gained ascendency through trade, amassing great wealth in the process.  The Medici were essentially the personal bankers for the Pope, which gave them outsized influence in and beyond their region. 

 

 
 
 
 

Lorenzo’s father, Piero ‘the Gouty’, parlayed the family fortunes into an investment in the arts at just about the same time that a great renewal of interest in classical arts and literature was taking place.  This investment established Florence as a creative center for the emerging Renaissance that would eventually sweep across Europe.  Lorenzo was the gifted son of five children and took over primary control of the family concerns at age 20 upon the death of his father. 

 

Me and my daughter Kelsey overlooking Florence

 

Lorenzo had a long and eventful ride as head of the Medici empire.  As effective Lord over Florence, he ruled the city in his early years with strong arm.  These early years were also characterized by international political intrigue and civil war as Lorenzo sought to consolidate his power over other clans and expand his influence beyond his region.  The darkest period of Lorenzo’s career occurred in the 1480’s when a falling out with the Vatican led to his excommunication from the church and a siege of Florence by Papal forces.  Lorenzo was able to extract his city from the crisis through negotiation, which led to his return to the church and relative security for Florence.  The latter years of Lorenzo’s political career were a marked contrast to his aggressive youth, where he used his influence relationships to maintain stability and rebuild the economic prominence of the Florentine regime. 

Basilica of San Lorenzo

 

As remarkable as his political career was, it was through his patronage of the arts that he made his true mark.  As naturally adept in politics as his career displays, Lorenzo also had an artistic side.  He dabbled in painting but became somewhat known for his poetry.  His devotion to the contemplative arts led to his nickname ‘Lorenzo the Thoughtful’.  Lorenzo took personal interest in promoting the careers of Botticelli, Da Vinci, Donatello and numerous other artists – even having Michelangelo living with him for five years.  Lorenzo was primarily responsible for getting Michelangelo the commission to paint the Sistine Chapel.  He also used is resources to collect books and manuscripts which in time were collected in the Laurentian Library of the Church of San Lorenzo (designed by Michelangelo) which is one of the world’s great libraries not only for its architecture but for its collection of classical and early Christian literature.     It can fairly be said there is no Italian Renaissance without the intentional vision, underwriting and encouragement of Lorenzo the Magnificent. 

Painting by Ghirlandaio depicting the Confirmation of the Rule of St Francis, (1485)
 at Santa Trinita Sassetti Chapel in  Florence. The Medici family
are prominent in the painting - Lorenzo to the far right.  



 

 

One of the more fascinating aspects of Lorenzo’s later years was his dealing with the Italian religious reformer Savonarola.  Even though the message of this self-proclaimed prophet attacked the types of autocratic rule that the Medici’s had developed into an art form, Lorenzo sought spiritual counsel from Savonarola throughout the latter part of his life.  Savonarola was with Lorenzo at the time of his death.  However, he fell out of favor with Lorenzo’s son and heir Piero (‘the Unfortunate’) and was eventually branded at heretic of the church and burned in the Florence Square. 

 

 

Savonarola preaching

 

Lorenzo died in Florence at the age of 43 on April 9, 1492, just four months prior to the date when Columbus set sail for his first voyage of exploration.  He was buried in a chapel in the Church of San Lorenzo (a different Lorenzo) designed by Michelangelo in Florence.  Both his tomb and that of his brother were carved by Michelangelo as well. 

Lorenzo's crypt in Basilica San Lorenzo.  Photos
are not allowed so this is a stock image.

 



 



Michelangelo's statue of Lorenzo 'the Thoughtful'
on his crypt

As we’ve seen, Lorenzo de Medici was at the center of the Renaissance.  His passing coincided with the beginning of the Age of Exploration that led to a radical redefinition of the political and economic landscape of Europe.  And his ties to the Reformation are also intriguing.  In addition to his association with the proto-reformer Savonarola, Lorenzo indirectly contributed to the emergence of Protestantism.  Through political intrigue, his son Giovanni was elevated to the papacy in 1513 and is generally considered to have been a disastrous and corrupt pope.  In his devotion to artistic splendor and extravagance, he pressed forward the grand design of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.  However, being short of funds for the work he decreed the sale of indulgences by which people could buy themselves and others out of purgatory for a price paid to Rome.  It was this practice of purchasing salvation that so troubled a devote monk in Germany that he began a campaign to reform it.  The 95 Theses nailed to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral by Martin Luther began as a protest and ended as the Reformation. 

 

View of the Medici Chapel from our hotel
in Florence

My encounter with Lorenzo’s tomb was somewhat unexpected.  On a trip to Florence with my daughter Kelsey, her friend, and my brother we stayed at a little hotel not too far from the Duomo.  Outside our window was a multi-story octagonal structure connected to a large but not particularly ornate Basilica.  It was somewhat underwhelming by Florentine standards.  On the second of two days of touring we decided to try to get in and see what was there.  We walked around the entire building until we finally found an entrance to what looked like a small museum.  Paying a small fee, we went in to check it out and were mildly impressed by some of the artifacts from the Medici family.   

Interior of the Medici Chapel

We were about to leave when I noticed a sign that pointed the direction to the ‘chapel’.  Out of curiosity, we followed the sign and found ourselves in the octagonal structure we’d seen outside our window.  Inside it was a breathtakingly magnificent chapel (the Chapel of the Princes) adorned with semi-precious stones inlaid in marble of various colors.  Full-scale statuary by Michelangelo and others fill every wall but the entrance and the altar area.  Reading about the chapel later it turns out that original plan was to buy or steal the Holy Sepulcher from Jerusalem and put it in the center of the floor, but that plan never worked.  Leaving this beautiful space, we discovered another small hallway that led unexpectedly to the ‘New Sacristy’.  It is here where Lorenzo and his brother Guiliano are buried in marble crypts designed and carved by Michelangelo.  It truly is a must see on any tour of Florence. 

 

In recent times there has been considerable talk about the ‘Medici Effect’ based on the popular business and leadership book, The Medici Effect by Frans Johanssen.  The book’s title derives from Lorenzo’s gift for creating an environment multi-disciplinary creativity for the flourishing of innovation in arts and sciences. 





Lorenzo (left) in virtual combat in the video game 'Assassin's Creed'. 
For a nice graphic depiction of Lorenzo's world check out this
short video from the game dealing with the Medici Cape