The Clapham Circle and the End of the Slave Trade

In the late 1700s, a small group of committed Christians gathered regularly in a village just south of London called Clapham. They became known as the Clapham Sect, and their varied gifts would reshape an empire.

William Wilberforce possessed the gift of persuasion — a voice so compelling that colleagues said hearing him speak was "the greatest pleasure in life." But Wilberforce alone could never have dismantled the slave trade. Hannah More wielded the pen, writing pamphlets and poems that stirred the conscience of ordinary British families. Zachary Macaulay had an astonishing memory for data and spent years compiling the devastating economic and human evidence. Granville Sharp, a self-taught legal scholar, fought case by case through the courts. And John Newton, the former slave ship captain turned pastor, offered something no one else could — the raw, repentant testimony of a man who had once profited from the very evil they opposed.

No single gift was sufficient. The orator needed the writer. The lawyer needed the statistician. The activist needed the pastor. Yet one Spirit burned in all of them — the same holy conviction that every human being bears the image of God.

Paul reminds the Corinthians that the Spirit distributes gifts differently to each person, but always for the common good. The Clapham circle lived that truth. Their varied gifts, kindled by one Spirit, broke the chains of millions.