Where Salon Culture and Reform Align
Mark Rodgers and award winning author Kevin Belmonte reflect on the power of creativity and storytelling in abolishing the slave trade.
Now this week with the fifth page of our newest comic, “Wilberforce’s Two Great Objects” we saw more of Hannah More’s prolific and persuasive writings for the anti-slavery cause. In this excerpt from the interview between Mark Rodgers and Kevin Belmonte, we’re continuing last week’s conversation as we explore further how Wilberforce and More used creativity to drive social reform.
Mark Rodgers
It is remarkable. I know there's some people that downplay the success of intentional social reform movements. There’s the idea that somehow they're counterproductive and we should just be kind of, faithfully present and that's sufficient. But, if you think about the levers Hannah More and William Wilberforce were pulling, it was very intentional. They were evangelicals. They knew the importance of the gospel and transforming individual lives and how that would then change society. They created societies, you know, to address specific issues. They recruited the elites to participate in the reformation of manners. Hannah More reached the masses through short stories and the tracts. I mean, there's all these levers they're pulling in this small little community.
You mentioned at the beginning, when you were first reading God's Politician, you wondered, when is this romance going to come to bear fruit? Hannah More was 15 years older than Wilberforce. There was no romantic interest that we know of, of course, but, they were certainly committed to each other, deeply. But they also were committed to a larger community called the Clapham Group. And as we think about and again, how to apply their lesson to today, would you talk about the importance of their community, their own friendship, and their larger Clapham community to the success of their endeavors together.
Kevin Belmonte
Well, Hannah More lived in a time of what we would call the salon culture. She was a member of the Bluestocking Circle. That's really vital when you think about Clapham. Yes, she moved in social circles where it was fashionable to meet around nothing stronger than lemonade. The whole idea was they were going to talk about books, they were going to read poetry, they were going to look at paintings, hear music. This was something that the culture did. They got together for meetings.
And so if you think about the Clapham Group – Clapham Circle – that was a case where Christians were very mindful of something that was going on, in the broader culture, they came together as Christians. Now it wasn't exclusively limited to Christians. I mean, I hasten to say straight away, Hannah More kept and maintained a wonderful correspondence with Horace Walpole, who had no interest in evangelicals. Wilberforce loved Charles Fox, who's portrayed in the film Amazing Grace, pulled apart politically, except in the case of abolition. When Wilberforce was a young gun there, before he'd come back to the the faith he'd known as a young person, he was Pitt’s attack dog, and he he really hit out after Charles Fox, so much so that Fox hated him for a time.
Well, after Wilberforce had the reunion with faith, he realized he needed to mend a lot of broken relationships, and then mended his relationship with Fox in the time that they spent together and the correspondence they exchanged. Wilberforce even wrote a review of one of the books of history. Fox wrote for the Christian Observer that stood out again, evangelicals were sort of tagged with this exclusivity, notion that being enthusiasts, they didn't want anything to do with the world. Well, here you have two people who are fully engaged with the culture of their time.
And so that was really it – Wilberforce and Hannah More became famous in their own right. Their friendship became famous in its own right. It was written about all throughout the English speaking world. Here are two exemplars of what it means to be in the world, but not of the world, to use a biblical phrase. They were committed to forming friendships with people who didn't share their worldview, but with whom they could find common cause.
And I think that salon culture, on the one hand, which was so prevalent when Hannah More was becoming established on her own in the late 1770’s and 1780’s, that was something the Clapham Group – Clapham Circle – picked up on, and they carried it forward. And they thought, okay, how can we take this template and sort of customize it, work with it, and carry over some of the things that exist from salon culture. They wanted to build each other up, to edify one another culturally with some of the things that they cared about, the books they read, the music they knew, the paintings, that kind of thing. They were very culturally literate, but I think they also wanted to be explicitly Christian. So, it was this wonderful hybrid. Their prior experience had prepared them for what fully flowered when the 1790’s got underway and the Clapham Circle got going.
Thank you for reading this week’s excerpt of our interview series between Mark Rodgers and Kevin Belmonte. Stay tuned for a new comic page next Wednesday!