The opening scenes catch Wilberforce in 1797, when the cause is at a low ebb.
His family history is fascinating, going back to the Wilberforce who campaigned against slavery.
Panels around the entrance walls commemorate former worshipers, including the antislavery crusaders William Wilberforce and John Newton.
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Sam Brownback, a Republican senator from Kansas, says his life was changed by a biography of Wilberforce.
So I will use the words of one of my heroes, William Wilberforce.
Wilberforce may have thought that God was punishing him for his failure to end the slave trade: his shame is right there in his gut.
William was a parliamentary opponent of William Wilberforce, a leading abolitionist.
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In an early scene, Pitt, suppressing a grin, advises Wilberforce of his intention to become Prime Minister immediately, which he does, at the age of twenty-four, in 1783.
Whereas Americans used to look upon Wilberforce, in a fuzzy way, as an equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, the British abolitionist has now acquired fans on the religious right.
But nobody should be surprised if some stern form of conservative Christianity, claiming the legacy of Wilberforce, emerges in one small corner, at least, of the politico-religious spectrum.
Others on America's right link Wilberforce with opposition to abortion.
On the eve of that historic event, the Center for Security Policy and the Wilberforce Forum this morning co-sponsored a Capitol Hill press conference that forcefully urged Mr. Bolton's confirmation.
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As the picture goes backward in time and then forward again, there are eloquent debates, much moral and physical anguish from Wilberforce, and a spirit of Christian resolve, attended, fortunately, by wit.
If Americans recognize the name Wilberforce at all, they are probably thinking of Samuel Wilberforce, the bishop who was on the wrong side of the greatest intellectual issue of the nineteenth century.
His anti-slavery bill, introduced every year, is easily defeated, and Wilberforce is getting rained on stinging cold downpours, of the type much favored by movie directors, douse his suffering body whenever he goes out.
The expedition started on Thursday morning after the Bishop of Hull anointed the marchers with water from the font where William Wilberforce, who was elected as MP for the city in 1780, was baptised.
He sometimes claimed, for instance, to have left Wilberforce University over rows about the college's compulsory military training and at other times that he was expelled for organising a student strike against poor food.
Francess' work is currently on show the University of Hull, sponsored by WISE (Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation) University of Hull, Women with Cameras and the Black History Partnership.
Wilberforce had colitis, and, as played by the excellent Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, he is forever clutching his midsection and grimacing, or falling to the floor in agony, only to rise to his feet and bash the M.
William Wilberforce (Ioan Gruffudd), upon entering Parliament in 1780 at the age of twenty-one, resolved, with the aid of his friend William Pitt (Benedict Cumberbatch), soon to be Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, to end the slave trade in the British Empire.
It seems almost bizarre to imagine William Wilberforce, the high-minded anti-slavery campaigner, indulging in friendly social chit-chat with the Prince Regent (a typical conversation with the prince, as recorded by an amazed Persian diplomat, encompassed such topics as the large size of his brother's penis, revealed as he relieved himself out of a carriage window).
Wilberforce may attack the complacency of the rich who refuse to hear about the suffering of the slaves, but Apted is candid enough to demonstrate that the privileges of wealth can be delightful: now and then, Wilberforce retreats to an estate in Yorkshire, where he lies on the grass in ecstatic communion with nature, and entertains the local poor in his fancy dining room.
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