Chairman's Message

Present Chairman

Former Chairman    John E Langlois*

The turning points of history have usually turned around just a few individuals. Where changes have been for the better we usually see just a few people who were committed to noble ideals and a just cause, often burdened with much abuse and discouragement for many years.

John Newton was such a person. He laboured long and hard towards the abolition of the slave trade, which was such a blight on “Christian” Europe and America. As he mentored William Wilberforce, William took up the cause with renewed passion and struggled and struggled until he had overcome huge vested interests, armed solely with the weapons of truth and determination. His complete reliance on God as His sustainer was the rock on which victory was assured.

John Newton’s legacy has never been needed more than at the beginning of the 21st Century when moral decadence has sapped Europe and North America of the ethical base which is necessary to sustain just societies.

In the John Newton Project we do not seek to recreate Newton’s ways of reforming the nation or simply perpetuate his memory.

What we seek to do is to remind all that the principles on which Newton sought to reform his generation are the same enduring principles - and indeed the only principles - on which a just and caring society can be based.




*John Langlois was a Deputy in the Parliament on the Island of Guernsey, Channel Islands, and a prominent member of the government. He retired as Senior Partner in the largest law firm in Guernsey in 2007 and serves on the board of directors of a number of commercial and charitable companies. As well as being a leading lawyer in Guernsey he is a Chartered Arbitrator in the United Kingdom. He is Chairman of the Religious Liberty Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, which has affiliates in 115 nations and over 150 million constituents. He is a member of and served as Chairman/Director of the Board of Advocates International, an association of lawyers based near Washington DC which works on human rights and religious freedom issues in many countries around the world.