William Wilberforce was most famous for his lifelong and ultimately successful campaign to abolish slavery in England. The film Amazing Grace, now showing in Australian cinemas, is about his life. But his influence on the world went deeper than just one issue. He was one of a small group of friends who became known as the Clapham Sect. They were fully devoted followers of Jesus, and made some very significant contributions to the world.
Wilberforce was one of the founders of the Society for Missions to Africa and the East (subsequently known as the Church Missionary Society) in 1799. This was right at the start of the modern missionary movement, just six years after William Carey had landed in India. The Society was at first unable to find Englishmen willing to be sent as missionaries to Africa, and over the course of the first ten years only five missionaries were sent out, all of them German Lutherans.
All five of the missionaries went to Sierra Leone, a colony where freed slaves from England were resettled. The capital of Sierra Leone is still called Freetown. Four of the missionaries were faithful to the end and died at their posts in West Africa after between two and 17 years of service. The fifth deserted and became a slave trader.