They called it a “meeting that never adjourned” and an unending “concert of benevolence.” They were, in the words of Edmund Burke, “God’s little platoon.” That group, the Clapham Circle, may just serve us as a model for faculty fellowships.
A Company of Friends and a Great Cause
When his bill to abolish the slave trade was defeated in Parliament in 1789, William Wilberforce and his friend Henry Thornton called together an informal group of acquaintances who would become a company of friends in pursuit of a great cause. Many of the members moved to the village of Clapham, a prosperous suburb five miles from the heart of London. For 20+ years, they labored together to correct a great injustice—by working first, to abolish England’s participation in the slave trade and second, to abolish slavery as an institution in the British Empire. They became known as the Clapham Circle—or as opponents called them the Clapham Sect.
“The common bond that held these friends together was the desire to apply their faith in Jesus Christ to personal, social, political, national and international matters. Making no claim to be theologians, they worshiped together, prayed together and studied the Bible seriously,” believing that “they were representatives of God’s kingdom on earth and faithful stewards of all God had given them.”—Richard Gathro
Faculty Communities as Concerts of Benevolence
As faithful stewards of all God had given them, the Clapham Circle succeeded because they were captured by a compelling cause—the suppression of the slave trade. A compelling cause, by its definition, must exist above and beyond the individual and their immediate community. In other words, the Clapham Circle sought the common good while, as Wilberforce wrote, “boldly asserting the cause of Christ in an age when so many who bear the name of Christians are ashamed of him.”
“Circles of elites”, as James Davidson Hunter calls such groups, can help change the world when they promote the common good. Faculty communities of Christ-followers can become places of grace, civility, and respect, as well as deep fellowship. Such circles can also become not only one of the best communities on the university, but also one the best communities for the university.
Faculty Communities: A Company of Friends and a Visionary Community
Kevin Belmonte described the Clapham Circle in this way. They were a remarkable group because they:
“…complemented one another. Each person possessed different kinds of talent and training. Each might well have made a mark for themselves had any chosen to act alone. But because they acted in concert, they exercised a powerful influence and achieved a lasting legacy . . . but they did not act in lockstep. Sometimes they disagreed. But they always did so civilly. Indeed, they welcomed the constructive conversation that flows when people of different views come together out of desire to seek truth and the common good.”
Is your faculty fellowship a company of friends?
Is it a community committed to causes beyond itself—indeed perhaps to the common good?
Is your faculty fellowship able to boldly assert the person and cause of Christ while being perceived as a community “for” the university?
— Jay Lorenzen