Clapham Sect

[2] In the course of time the growth of evangelical Christian revivalism in England[3] and the movement for Catholic emancipation fed into a waning of the old precept that every Englishman automatically counted as an Anglican.

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.

Liturgy, sermons and sometimes meetings at Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common were a central feature, largely neighboured by upmarket new homes and expensive single-home plots of land (fashionable villas in the terms of the time).

[10] The reformers included members from St Edmund Hall, Oxford and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Charles Simeon had preached to students from the university, some of whom underwent an evangelical conversion experience and later became associated with the Clapham Sect.

The group are described by the historian Stephen Tomkins as "a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage".

[11] By 1848 when evangelical bishop John Bird Sumner became Archbishop of Canterbury, it is said that between a quarter and a third of Anglican clergy were linked to the movement, which by then had diversified greatly in its goals, although they were no longer considered an organised faction.