It’s been two months since my website went live, so now’s a good time to talk about the name, right?

I’m sure people have some questions - I’ve definitely already been asked a couple of times!

Now, history savvy readers may already have made the link to William Wilberforce and the Clapham Circle. If you have - well done. Give yourself a pat on the back. If you haven’t, that’s fine, I wouldn’t have expected you too.

Anyway, William Wilberforce has long been a personal hero of mine, ever since I watched Amazing Grace back in 2008. If you ever asked me who I’d want to invite for dinner, my answer was probably William Wilberforce.

I admire Wilberforce for many reasons. I primarily admire him for being a man who didn’t let the social and economic norms of his culture blind him to the atrocities that were occurring. This applies to his fight against slavery, but also his fight for better public education, his fight against cruelty to animals and the many, many other causes he dedicated his life to.

I also admire Wilberforce for the way he refused to separate his Christian faith from his job as a politician, instead letting his faith inform his policies and actions. I admire his persistence in fighting for abolition, despite the many setbacks he and his friends faced. I admire the way he didn’t allow his chronic ill health to define him or prevent him from doing the work he loved and felt called to do.

As I said: he is a personal hero of mine.

Unfortunately, for many people, the older they get and the more they find out about their heroes, the more disillusioned they become. So far, that has not been the case for me with Wilberforce.

Last year, I read Eric Metaxas’ Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. As well as growing in me a deeper appreciation of Wilberforce and his accomplishments, this book properly introduced me to the Clapham Circle (also known as the Clapham Sect).

These were a number of WIlberforce’s close friends and contemporaries who, along with Wilberforce and his family, bought land and established homes together in Clapham. Together, they and their homes became a centre for hospitality, Christian thinking and the home base for many of the time’s most prominent and influential social justice movements.

Which brings me to why I named my website and blog Clapham Corner.

As I was thinking about my long term hopes and dreams for my life and this blog, I realised I also wanted my home (both physically and virtually) to be a place of hospitality, Christian thinking and a space for matters of social justice to be discussed and acted on. Because of this, and my long lasting admiration for Wilberforce, I decided I wanted the name of my blog to reflect this by being a less than subtle nod to his home and circle of friends.

After brainstorming a few ideas and figuring out what domains were available (because practical matters are just as important) I settled on the name you see today: Clapham Corner.

So, welcome to Clapham Corner. Come in, settle down and grab yourself a cup of something hot. Or cold, if it’s summer where you are. Let’s go on this journey together.