Lectures
John Jay, America’s Wilberforce
Synopsis
Two of the world’s great statesmen, one an American and the other an Englishman, shared not only common interests, commitments and public goals, but an abiding friendship that traversed an ocean. John Jay, a principal American founder, was arguably the most conservative and religious of them all. For religious believers who are looking for saints to follow (particularly in the path of public life) Jay deserves adoration and emulation. Like his English counterpart William Wilberforce, the famed Member of Parliament and social reformer, Jay ranks in that hallowed company of Christian statesmen and social activists who labored tirelessly and tenaciously for the abolition of the slave trade and the moral reform of Anglo-American culture. In this essay I will argue that Jay is America’s Wilberforce.
