We just spent a week staying with Andrea’s brother Chris and his girlfriend Mel in Clapham, London. Clapham is famous for being the home to the ‘Clapham Sect’ which included William Wilberforce and some other extraordinary people. I love the idea that a group of friends could encourage each other to change history. Below is a summary from a message I did a while ago about the power of relationship with the example of the Clapham Sect.
William Wilberforce is of course renowned for his astounding efforts to see slavery abolished in the United Kingdom.
He was indeed gifted and deserving of admiration, but what is less known about him is that he probably could not have done what he did without his circle of friends. Wilberforce was part of a unique circle of friends that empowered him to accomplish what he did. One only needs to read the 400+ letters to and from Wilberforce located in the Duke University library to begin grasping this insight.
Wilberforce along with a group of friends would meet regularly together to discuss issues, support one another and pray for each other. When someone was away for a period of time this would continue in the form of letter writing.
The common bond that held this "Clapham Sect" together was the desire to apply their faith in Jesus Christ to personal, social, political, national and international matters. The group made no claim to be theologians, yet they were people who regarded prayer and Bible study as serious matters.
No indication of any desire to give themselves a name was reflected in the correspondence and literature of members of the group. They were simply a group of friends that met together. The term "Clapham Sect" was not used until later, when the phrase was coined in an 1844 essay by Sir James Stephen. The name originated from the London suburb, Clapham, where many of the group members chose to live.
A unique feature of the "Clapham Sect" was the desire to live with one another, or in proximity to each other. Always welcome in each other's homes, the Saints were known to be "good family people."
From this group of friends, as well as William Wilberforce, arose some of the most influential leaders in Great Britain at the time. There is incredible power in genuine friendship that encourages each person to be their best! Here are some of those known as ‘the Clapham Sect’ (all details taken from Wikipedia).
Charles Simeon (1759 - November 13, 1836), was an English evangelical clergyman.In 1782 he became fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and took orders, receiving the living of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, in the following year. He was at first so unpopular that services were frequently interrupted, and he was often insulted in the streets. Having overcome public prejudice, he subsequently gained a remarkable and lasting influence among the undergraduates of the university.
He became a leader among evangelical churchmen, was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society, and acted as adviser to the British East India Company in the choice of chaplains for India. His chief work is a commentary upon the whole Bible, entitled Horae homileticae (London, 1819-1820). The "Simeon Trustees" were instituted by him for the purpose of acquiring church patronage in the interests of his evangelical views.
William Smith was born on September 22, 1756 at Clapham (then a village to the south of London), the son of Samuel Smith. Brought up by parents who were Independents, he was educated at the dissenting academy at Daventry until 1772, where he began to come under the influence of Unitarians at an early age. He went into the family grocery business and by 1777 was a partner.
On September 12, 1781 he married Frances Coape (1758 – 1840), daughter of John and Hannah Coape, both dissenters. Their daughter, Frances Smith, became the mother of Florence Nightingale. Smith and his wife lived in the village of Clapham, just south of London, moving into the large and elegant Eagle House, Clapham Common. He was already known as a reformer joining the Society for Constitutional Information in 1782. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Sudbury in 1784.
Henry Thornton (1760 - 1815), economist, banker, philanthropist and MP for Southwark was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect and campaigner for the abolition of the slave trade. A close friend of William Wilberforce, he is credited with being the financial brain behind the many campaigns for social reform and philanthropic causes espoused by the group.
A highly successful merchant banker, as a monetary theorist he has been described as the father of the modern central bank. An opponent of the Real Bills doctrine, he was a defender of the Bullionist position and a significant figure in monetary theory, his process of monetary expansion anticipating the theories of Knut Wicksell regarding the "cumulative process which restates the Quantity Theory in a theoretically coherent form".
His work on 19th century monetary theory has won praise from present-day economists for his forward-thinking ideas, along the lines of those later developed by John Maynard Keynes
Henry Venn (1725 - 1797), English evangelical divine, was born at Barnes, Surrey, and educated at Cambridge. He was one of the founders of the Clapham Sect, a small but highly influential evangelical group within the Anglican Church.
He took orders in 1747, and was elected fellow of Queens College, Cambridge, in 1749. After holding a curacy at Barton, Cambridgeshire, he became curate of St Matthew, Friday Street, London, and of West Horsley, Surrey, in 1750, and then of Clapham in 1754. In the preceding year he was lecturer of St Swithins, Londod Stone. He was vicar of Huddersfield from 1759 to 1771, when he exchanged to the living of Yelling, Huntingdonshire.
Besides being a leader of the evangelical revival, he was well known as the author of The Compleat Duty of Man (London, 1763), a work in which he intended to supplement the teaching embodied in the anonymous Whole Duty of Man. A portrait of him, by John Russell, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
His son, John Venn (1750-1813), was one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society.
Hannah More (February 2, 1745 - September 7, 1833) was an English religious writer and philanthropist.
She was born at Stapleton, near Bristol, on the 2nd of February 1745. She may be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: first, as a clever verse-writer and witty talker in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick; next, as a writer on moral and religious subjects on the Puritanic side; and lastly, as a practical philanthropist.
John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth (5 October 1751 - 14 February 1834) was a British politician who served as Governor-General of India from 1793 to 1797. He was created Baron Teignmouth in the Peerage of Ireland in 1798.
James Stephen (30 June 1758 – 10 October 1832) was an English lawyer, associated with the abolitionist movement.
Stephen was born in Poole, Dorset, and began his career reporting on parliamentary proceedings. He held an official post in St. Kitts, at that time a British colony. His experiences in the West Indies turned him against the concept of slavery, and he joined the abolitionist movement, marrying the sister of William Wilberforce in 1800. In 1808 he became an MP and rose to the position of under-secretary in the Colonial Office. He was the grandfather of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen and Sir Leslie Stephen.
