The Clapham Sect
An tale of meaningful change sparked by loving one another deeply
Hello Salt and Light subscribers! Happy Friday — I hope you’ve had a good week.
This week we saw that Hannah More and William Wilberforce met each other in Bath in 1787. This meeting would be the beginning of a lifelong and very fruitful friendship. They would remain friends and labor together for important causes the rest of their lives, dying within mere weeks of each other, although More was 14 years his senior.
In 1776 Holy Trinity Church opened in the historic Clapham district, then a slightly rural village just outside London, now a part of greater London. In 1792 Wilberforce’s cousin, Henry Thorton (also a member of Parliament like Wilberforce), purchased Battersea Rise. Thornton’s estate held the parish land on which Holy Trinity Church was built, and so it was that Thornton came to offer the curate’s position to John Venn, a fellow evangelical. From these beginnings a close-knit group of Christians grew up around the idea that they could actually make a difference in the world.
Various lodgings were built up on the grounds of Thornton’s Battersea Rise, where some of the Clapham community’s members — including More and Wilberforce — stayed for certain lengths of time. Thornton said, “I am in hopes some good may come of our Clapham system,” and he described Wilberforce in particular as, “a candle that should not be hid under a bushel.” As we will see in the second installment of our More and Wilberforce comic series (coming early 2025), Wilberforce did indeed exemplify the light that we Christians are to shine to a lost and increasingly dark world.
But Wilberforce did not work alone; he and More worked closely with each other and the many other faithful members of the Clapham community over the years.
As the psalmist says in Psalm 133,
Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.
In order to achieve the common good that God has called us to, we, as Christians, must learn to work well together, to live together in unity. Then God will bless our efforts, if we are striving together to achieve his will for our own lives, the lives of each other, and the good of the world around us.
And as Jesus told his disciples shortly before he died, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)
No matter what we are doing for Christ to further his Kingdom, the Church, it must be done with and out of love, otherwise we are no different than the world around us.
As St. Paul taught us, “ If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
If you feel like your contribution isn’t much, remember what Mother Teresa taught us: “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”
Emily Mitchell