From Time-When President Obama turned to the soaring lyrics of Amazing Grace to comfort the grieving families in Charleston, South Carolina this week, he was turning to a song that is almost as much of a staple of the U.S. Presidency as Hail to the Chief. Yet, as there is so often when race is the topic, the back story behind the hymn that is suddenly everywhere is not so simple.
Amazing Grace was written by an Englishman who in the early part of his life was an outspoken atheist, libertine, and slave trader. John Newton was born in London in 1725, the son of a Puritan mother and a stern ship commander father who took him to sea when he was 11 (“I am persuaded that he loved me but he seemed not willing that I should know it,” he later wrote).
More here-
http://time.com/3939193/amazing-grace-history-john-newton/
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