'Amazing Grace,' a journey to redemption
NEW YORK - When the hymn "Amazing Grace" gets to the line about saving "a wretch like me," it's not routine self-flagellation. The author of the song was a wretch indeed, a slave trader who sent some of his nearest and dearest off to be worked to death, as dramatized in the new Broadway musical Amazing Grace about John Newton, who wrote the song's lyrics as the capstone of his redemption.