Chains Are Gone

The reading below comes from “Church History in Plain Language” by Bruce L. Shelley.

At the opening of the Age of Progress, the greatest power in English religious life was the evangelical movement, sparked and spread by John Wesley and George Whitefield. The chief marks of the movement were its intense personal piety, usually springing from a conversion experience, and its aggressive concern for Christian service in the world.

Both of these were nourished by devotion to the Bible, and both were directed by the central themes of the eighteenth-century revival: God’s love revealed in Christ, the necessity of salvation through faith, and the new birth experience wrought by the Holy Spirit. This evangelical message echoed from a significant minority of pulpits in the Anglican Church and from a majority in the nonconforming denominations.

The Evangelicals were thoroughly loyal to their church and approved of its episcopal government. But they were willing to work with nonconformist ministers and churches because their chief interest was not the church and its rites. They considered the preaching of the gospel more important than the performance of sacraments or the styles of ritual. Such a position was called “Low Church.” These Evangelicals viewed the social ills of British society as a call to dedicated service. They threw themselves into reform causes for the neglected and the oppressed.

THE CLAPHAM COMMUNITY

The general headquarters for Evangelical crusades was a hamlet then three miles from London called Clapham. The village was the country residence of a group of wealthy and ardent Evangelicals who knew what it was to practice “saintliness in daily life” and to live with eternity in view. A number of them owned their own magnificent houses in the village, while others in the group visited Clapham often and lived with their co-laborers. Historians have come to speak of them as the “Clapham Sect,” but they were no sect; they were more like a closely-knit family.

The group found a spiritual guide in the minister of the parish church, John Venn, a man of culture and sanctified good sense. They often met for Bible study, conversation, and prayer in the oval library of a wealthy banker, Henry Thornton.

The unquestioned leader of the Sect was William Wilberforce (175918 33), the parliamentary statesman. But Wilberforce found a galaxy of talent for Evangelical causes in his circle of friends: John Shore (Lord Teignmouth), the Governor-General of India; Charles Grant, Chairman of the East India Company; James Stephens, Sr., Under-Secretary for the Colonies; Zachary Macauley, editor of the Christian Observer; Thomas Clarkson, an abolitionist leader, and others.

At twenty-five, Wilberforce had experienced a striking conversion after reading Philip Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul; but he also possessed all the natural qualities for outstanding leadership: ample wealth, a liberal education, and unusual talents. Prime Minister William Pitt once said he had the greatest natural eloquence he had ever known. Some called him “the nightingale of the House of Commons.” Many testified to his overflowing capacity for friendship and his high moral principles. For many reasons, Wilberforce seemed providentially prepared for the task and the time.

“My walk,” he once said, “is a public one: my business is in the world, and I must mix in the assemblies of men or quit the part which Providence seems to have assigned me.” Under Wilberforce’s leadership, the Clapham friends were gradually knit together in intimacy and solidarity. At the Clapham mansions, they held what they chose to call their “Cabinet Councils.” They discussed the wrongs and injustices of their country, and the battles they would need to fight to establish righteousness. And thereafter, in Parliament and out, they moved as one body, delegating to each man the work he could do best to accomplish their common purposes.

“It was a remarkable fraternity,” says Reginald Coupland, the biographer of Wilberforce. “There has never been anything like it since in British public life.”

EVANGELICALS AND SOCIAL ISSUES

A host of evangelical causes sallied forth from quiet little Clapham: The Church Missionary Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), The Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor (1796), The Society for the Reformation of Prison Discipline and many more. The greatest labor of all, however, centered on the campaign against slavery. The first battle was for the abolition of the slave trade, that is, the capturing of Negroes in Africa, and shipping them for sale to the West Indies.

The English had entered this trade in 1562 when Sir John Hawkins took a cargo of slaves from Sierra Leone and sold them in St. Doffilngo. Then, after the monarchy was restored in 1660, King Charles II gave a charter to a company that took 3,000 slaves a year to the West Indies. From that time, the trade grew to enormous proportions. In 1770, out of a total of 100,000 slaves a year from West Africa, British ships transported more than half. Many Englishmen considered the slave trade inseparably linked with the commerce and national security of Great Britain.

In 1789, Wilberforce made his first speech in the House of Commons on the traffic in slaves. He recognized immediately that eloquence alone would never overthrow the commercial interests in the sale of human beings. He needed reliable information, so he called upon his Clapham colleagues for
assistance.

Two years later, after exhaustive preparation, Wilberforce delivered another speech to Commons seeking to introduce a bill to prevent further importing of slaves into the West Indies. “Never, never,” he said, “will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic.”

Once again oratory was inadequate, but support was growing. The workers for abolition came to see that hopes of success lay in appealing not only to Parliament but to the English people. “It is on the feeling of the nation we must rely,” said Wilberforce. “So let the flame be fanned.”

Stage by stage the Clapham Sect learned two basics of politics in a democracy: first, how to create public opinion; and, second, how to bring the pressure of that opinion on the government.

The Evangelicals secured petitions; they published quality abolitionist literature; they lectured on public platforms; they campaigned on billboards. They used all the modern means of publicity. Nonconformists rallied in support, and for the first time in history women participated in a political contest. The Evangelicals “fanned the flame,” then they carried the fire to Parliament where Wilberforce and four colleagues from Clapham – the “Saints” in Commons – tried to arouse complacent leaders to put a stop to the inhumane slave trade.

THE END OF SLAVE TRADE

Finally, victory crowned their labors. On 23 February 1807, the back of the opposition was broken. Enthusiasm in the House mounted with the impassioned speeches of supporters of abolition. When one member reached a brilliant contrast of Wilberforce and Napoleon, the staid old House cast off its traditional conventions, rose to its feet, burst into cheers, and made the roof echo to an ovation seldom heard in Parliament. Wilberforce, overcome with emotion, sat bent in his chair, his head in his hands, and the tears streaming down his face.

That halted the legal traffic in human lives, but the slaves were still in chains. Wilberforce continued the battle for complete emancipation until age and poor health forced him from Parliament. However, on July 25, 1833, just four days before Wilberforce died, slavery was completely outlawed and slaves were freed throughout the sprawling British Empire.

The Clapham Sect, and specifically Wiliam Wilberforce, remains a shining example of how a society – perhaps the world itself – can be influenced by a few men of ability and devotion.

Please share your thoughts on the beliefs and actions of William Wilberforce and of the Clapham Sect below.