Amazing Grace

Not sure if you noticed, but there was a movie that opened this past weekend that actually has a great message, as opposed to most of the movies that were celebrating at the Oscars last night. "Amazing Grace" is a movie you can take the kids to, a movie that will teach you some history, and a movie that is trying to make a change right now.

"Amazing Grace", by Walden Media, opened to just 791 screens, yet finished the weekend with the 3rd highest take per screen. On the Hugh Hewitt show, producer Ken Wales said that at a screening in Washington, D.C. on the National Day of Prayer, viewers were in tears at the end of the movie. Viewers at a screening in New York were moved to give a 4-minute standing ovation at the end.

Alex Field at Relevant Magazine has a great review of the movie. He also tells about a movement called The Amazing Change Campaign, which aims to fight against modern-day slavery. One interesting fact you might not know is that more people are in slavery today than at any other time in history. Field writes...

. . .less than two years ago the International Labor Organization, an agency charged by the United Nations to address labor standards and social protection, estimated that there were 12.3 million people enslaved through forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor, sexual servitude and other forms of involuntary servitude. The ILO also reported data showing that roughly 600,000 to 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year, 80 percent of whom are women and girls.

Even more recently, Kevin Bales, the president of an organization called Free the Slaves, conducted a study at the University of Roehampton, the findings of which say that there are actually about 27 million people enslaved around the world today.

This is a movie you can take your family or a friend to, with plenty of things to talk about afterward. And plenty of things to do to help fight slavery today.