The Clapham Sect was a group of evangelical Christians, prominent in England from about 1790 to 1830, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and promoted missionary work at home and abroad.
He writes regularly for the BBC and is a contributing editor to the Ship of Fools website..
About author(s): Stephen Tomkins has a PhD in Church History at London Bible College and author of the acclaimed William Wilberforce: A Biography and A Short History of Christianity.
The book ends by assessing the long term influence of the Clapham Sect on Victorian Britain and the Empire.
Within the story of the people are the stories of their famous campaigns against the slave trade, then slavery, the Sierra Leone colony, Indian mission, home mission, charity and politics.
Stephen Tomkins tells the fascinating story of the group as one of a web of family relations - father and son, aunt and nephew, husband and wife, daughter and father, cousins, etc.
Its members included William Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, James Stephen, Zachary Macaulay and others.
The group centred on the church of John Venn, rector of Clapham in south London.
The Clapham Sect was a group of evangelical Christians, prominent in England from about 1790 to 1830, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and promoted missionary work at home and abroad
