William Wilberforce has attracted an average of one new biography every year during the past decade. As a Member of the British Parliament, Wilberforce was instrumental in bringing an end to slavery in the early 19th century. His status as a role model for evangelicals gets renewed whenever Christians focus on Christ’s Lordship over issues of government, poverty, crime, prisons, and world missions.
Stephen Tomkins is associate editor of Third Way, a British magazine with some similarities to Christianity Today. The publication seeks a faith-based alternative between left and right. Tomkins wrote one of those Wilberforce biographies, in 2007. Now he has taken on the more complex task of writing about the Clapham Sect and how Wilberforce and his large circle of friends made a remarkable impact on their society.
The seeds of the Clapham Sect were planted in the Great Awakening. From that great time of revival, the Wilberforces and Stephens and Grants and Thorntons learned to share their faith; discipled one another in Bible study, prayer, fasting, and Scripture memory; started Sunday Schools; married one another; and brought children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Then they also became pastors of key churches; won elections for seats in Parliament; launched overseas missions; managed businesses and often gave away half or more of their incomes; wrote influential tracts and books; and researched and wrote commentaries on social issues like slavery and abusive prisons.
They did it all in the name of Jesus, with a quality and winsomeness that many unbelievers came to admire. They also lived close to each other, in Clapham, near London, and held one another accountable in the Lord, in the spirit of Proverbs 27:17.
Tomkins superbly organizes a history of three generations of interconnected friends and families. (He even includes a genealogical “dramatis personae” at the outset: this turns out to be indispensable for following the story.) Tomkins leads off with an introduction to key players—the Thorntons, the Venns, and, of course, William Wilberforce. The rest of the book is arranged by themes, such as the slave trade; Hannah More’s schools for poor children; the Sierra Leone colony; and world missions. This topical approach works very well; readers might easily have bogged down in a strict chronological narrative.
What distinguishes this book from other first-rate Wilberforce biographies is Tomkins’ sustained attention to relationships and friendships. This topic may sound nebulous. How can a historian or political scientist ever measure the impact of a friend or a mentor? Yet such relationships were crucial to the profound influence exercised by Wilberforce and his friends, and Tomkins treats this recurring theme with keen insight.
Consider the close friendship of Wilberforce and Hannah More, the playwright who dedicated her pen to Christ after her conversion and gave her life to helping needy children. More became a kind of ghost writer for Clapham’s Proclamation Society, which was a vehicle for the reformation of manners, an attempt to change the social consensus. “Hannah More could never have the political leverage of Wilberforce and his friends, nor did she want it. Instead she had the pen,” Tomkins writes. “Wilberforce had imagined the campaign for moral reform being waged in the courts and Parliament; More took it into the field of ideas, and immediately had greater success.”
Such friendships were typical for Clapham, which was never a formal organization. (The “Clapham Sect” name was not even used until 1844, in a magazine article.) These people focused on the family, in a time of deep brokenness in families due to drunkenness, adultery, and sin in general. “These were people for whom family and friendship were of the utmost importance,” Tomkins writes. “They lived in each other’s spare rooms, married each other’s brothers and sisters, prayed together, worked together, dreamed and schemed together, consoled each other, and criticized each other with ruthless honesty.”
Well-known names of the first generation include John Newton, the converted slave trader and pastor who advised Wilberforce to stay in Parliament even if it felt worldly, and Lady Selina Huntington, the wealthy aristocrat who gave major support to George Whitefield’s evangelistic ministry. Less well known is John Thornton, a businessman, influential supporter of evangelical clergy in the Church of England, and relative of Wilberforce.
Tomkins also reveals how the first generation was mostly modestly placed; its leaders were not vying for positions in Parliament or asserting themselves in high society. In social status and influence, this generation resembled American fundamentalists of the 1920s and 1930s. They kept pretty separate from a decadent mainstream culture, though not so much for separatist theological reasons but because they were not invited to join. They were busy enough building a foundation that prepared the next generation for more prominent leadership.
“The evangelical gospel had gained ground since the 1740s, and was no longer seen by the educated classes as a terrifying force to be fought with physical violence,” Tomkins writes with reference to John Thornton’s first-generation pioneering. “The next generation found themselves in a position to take his campaign onto a totally new scale and into the heart of the political nation.”
The second generation, in addition to Wilberforce and More, included Zachary Macaulay, editor of the Clapham publications, and Henry Thornton, a banker and Member of Parliament, son of John Thornton. The third generation included Thomas Babington Macaulay, Zachary’s son, the famous historian, also a Member of Parliament; and Robert Grant, Member of Parliament and governor of Bombay. “The sons and daughters of Clapham permeated the British establishment,” writes Tomkins. “The (third) generation of Marianne Thornton and George Thornton, including spouses, contained, as far as I have been able to trace (with overlaps): a bishop, two archdeacons, a canon, and thirteen other clergy; nine MPs; an earl, a Lord, two barons, two baronets, and three knights; the governor of Bombay, along with other civil servants and lawyers; a newspaper proprietor; and the writer of the hymn ‘O Worship the King.'”
Not all of them maintained the commitments of their parents and grandparents (Macaulay, for example, strongly rejected the faith in which he had been raised). But many did, and collectively they played a key role both in reforming Britain’s representative government and in the emerging world missions movement, especially through the Church Missionary Society.
Tomkins does not gloss over weaknesses. He reviews the Clapham failures, and notes especially the disappointments of the Sierra Leone colony. In Sierra Leone, Wilberforce and his friends were trying to create a home for freed slaves, fight the slave trade, and establish a business, all at once. Tomkins gives a balanced account of an idealistic attempt that was, he suggests, “a long way outside their competence.”
Whatever their shortcomings, Tomkins sums up, their fight against slavery was a very unusual sacrificial gift to the world: “It was costly for them. They gave it, in different ways and to different degrees, their lives, their money, their careers, their time, and their health. Few people can make a more persuasive claim to have been doing the work of God in the world.”
Russ Pulliam is a columnist for The Indianapolis Star and the director of the Pulliam Fellowship.
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