Given that "Amazing Grace" is one of the most popular hymns in the African American church, as well as elsewhere, it's probably culturally okay.

But more than that - the slow nature of Newton's turnaround doesn't make the turnaround any less real. Most "conversions" are merely steps in a long process - they begin slowly and take years to work themselves out. Often, they are incomplete and less than perfect. The watershed moment represented by "Amazing Grace" is a marker of the process John Newton went through, but it doesn't represent the whole thing. It is instead the product of a combination of fear, guilt, and - and this is the amazing part - the recognition that even a "wretch," caught up in the worst kind of evil, is redeemable. That it took years for Newton to realize even part of that redemption is entirely normal - and it is the universality of THAT experience that resonates with so many millions.

Dan Schatz