Wilberforce: A Proponent of Education

My mom and dad both went to Wilberforce University, a historically Black college in southwestern Ohio. I grew up hearing about their beloved Wilberforce and how they became college sweethearts during their undergraduate years. Like most parents who have a fondness for their alma mater, they forced me and my brother to endure more than one family trip to the campus during our childhood. Mom and Dad regaled us with stories about favorite hangouts, roommate shenanigans, and how they managed to stitch together fun as young African American adults in 1960s rural Ohio (three words: get a car).

Hearing these stories throughout my youth, I didn’t fully make the connection between their small college and the famous British abolitionist William Wilberforce. I saw the 2006 film Amazing Grace, based on Eric Metaxas’s gripping book Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery.  I began to reflect on the connections between his amazing life story and my parents’ tiny college campus in rural Ohio.

As I read more about Wilberforce’s life, I was surprised to learn about his passion concerning a host of other social ills—including education reform. Wilberforce was a part of the Clapham Sect, a group of wealthy and influential evangelical Christians who committed their lives to improving conditions for England’s poor and disenfranchised.  The philanthropists, politicians, authors, and clergy who made up the group deeply believed that Christianity compelled its followers to make the world a better place. These core beliefs fueled Wilberforce’s faith-motivated campaign to ensure children in urban slums learned to read and write.

William Wilberforce and Hannah More, another Clapham member, began discussing how to improve nearby Cheddar, a community of people living in abject poverty. The residents lived in extremely challenging circumstances; most dwelled in hovels or caves. Wilberforce spent some time in the nearby village and resolved to take action to improve the living conditions and circumstances. The community was essentially illiterate, so the Clapham Sect decided to start a school. Over the next ten years Hannah More opened more than a dozen “Sunday schools” in Cheddar.   Where others overlooked these forgotten people, Wilberforce and More saw potential. Their Christian convictions propelled them to educate men, women, and children in Cheddar.

Wilberforce University was founded in 1856, thousands of miles from Cheddar, England. As my parents often remind me, it is the oldest private, historically Black college in the United States. How fitting that their college, which was founded to educate a racial group that many previously thought to be uneducable, was named after a man who educated thousands of poor and disenfranchised people in England.

But Wilberforce’s pioneering work on education is not yet done. While Wilberforce is largely known for abolitionism and the model he provides for the amazing work that many are doing to eliminate modern day slavery and sex trafficking, I also believe his legacy continues to inspire communities of faith to ensure disenfranchised children receive an excellent education. 

There is plenty of room for Christians, and all people of faith, to join the movement to eliminate educational inequity right here in the United States.  Just like impoverished children in Wilberforce’s era, poor and minority students in many of our nation’s schools do not receive the education they deserve.  America has a wide chasm between those living in wealth and poverty – and educational attainment is deeply correlated to a child’s socio-economic background.  Only about half of the children living in poverty will every graduate from high school and only about 1 in 14 will graduate from college.  Children in low-income communities are already three grade levels behind their peers in wealthier communities.  These educational disparities have real and lasting consequences that often perpetuate cycles of generational poverty.

As Christians, we believe in the idea of human potential – and that we’re made in God’s image and likeness.  We certainly don’t serve a God that would only give intellectual potential to wealthier children or kids from certain ethnic backgrounds.  So we can conclude that our schools need more support to ensure all children achieve their best. 

If we believe, as Wilberforce seemed to suggest, that all children deserve to be literate, educated and prepared to contribute to society, how can faith communities collectively make that a reality?  We need to build support in our faith communities at the highest levels of leadership and within our pews. We need prophetic Christian leaders to prick our local and national consciousness about the inequities in our nation’s schools. We need highly qualified teachers to commit to teach in low-income communities where children face some of the biggest challenges.  We need churches to support public schools and public school teachers.  And we need a movement of people advocating for systemic transformational education change. 

Clearly there are a lot of needs in our nation’s schools.  Let’s remember Wilberforce’s example and allow our faith to propel us to take action on behalf of God’s children.