John Newton

John Newton (1725–1807) was an English evangelical Church of England clergyman, pastor, letter writer, and hymn author. Born in London on July 24, 1725, he went to sea while young and later became deeply involved in the transatlantic slave trade, first in West Africa and then aboard slave ships. A dangerous Atlantic storm in 1748 became an important point in his gradual return to Christian faith, but it did not immediately end his participation in slavery. His later autobiographical writings described this long spiritual development with unusual candor.

Newton was ordained in the Church of England and became curate-in-charge at Olney, Buckinghamshire, in 1764. There he developed a ministry of preaching, pastoral visits, meetings for children and adults, and extensive correspondence. His friendship with William Cowper led to Olney Hymns, published in 1779. The collection contains Newton texts such as “Amazing Grace,” “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken,” and “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds,” alongside Cowper’s hymns. Newton later served from 1780 at St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London and published influential pastoral letters, including Cardiphonia.

Newton’s public opposition to the slave trade came late in life. In 1788 he published Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade, acknowledging his own complicity and describing the trade’s brutality; abolitionists distributed the pamphlet widely. His legacy therefore includes both the grave reality of his earlier participation in slavery and his later pastoral, hymnological, and abolitionist witness. He died in London on December 21, 1807.