Clapham Sect

The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the established (and dominant) Church of England, which was highly interwoven with offices of state. However, its successors were in many cases outside of the established Anglican Church. The Clapham movement grew from 18th-century evangelical trends in the Church of England (the Anglican Church) and started to coalesce around residents of Clapham, especially during the rectorship there of John Venn (in office: 1792-1813) and came to engage in systematically advocating social reform. In the course of time the growth of evangelical Christian revivalism in England and the movement for Catholic emancipation fed into a waning of the old precept that every Englishman automatically counted as an Anglican. Some new Christian groups (such as the Methodists and the Plymouth Brethren) moved away from Anglicanism, and the Christian social reformers who succeeded the Claphamites from about the 1830s often exemplified Nonconformist conscience and identified with groups functioning outside the established Anglican Church. These were reformists and abolitionists, being contemporary terms as the 'Sect' was – until 1844 – unnamed. They figured and heard readings, sermons and lessons from prominent and wealthy Evangelical Anglicans who called for the liberation of slaves, abolition of the slave trade and the reform of the penal system, and recognised and advocated other cornerstone civil-political rights and socio-economic rights. Defying the status quo of labour exploitation and consequent vested interests in the legislature was laborious and was motivated by their Christian faith and concern for social justice and fairness for all human beings. Their most famous member was William Wilberforce, widely commemorated in monuments and credited with hastening the end of the slave trade.

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