Tuesday, June 24, 2025

It is the 24th of June 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

So there is this family in England- and we could take a number of the famous men from this family and say we represent them as circles- and these men have some things in common and other things not in common, and so we could lay the circles over each other as to convey those things that they share and those things they don’t share.

Maybe this isn’t making sense.. but what if I told you that this family- a family that claimed to have an unbroken line of ministers going back to Queen Elizabeth was called “Venn” one V, two-N’s and yes… it was the grandson of Henry Sr- John who was the logician and mathematician for whom the diagram is named. But Henry Sr, who is our character for today, was perhaps the most famous in a family of famous preachers and lecturers.  

Henry Venn was born on the 2nd of March in 1724- the son of a vicar in a family with over a century of ministers, he was destined to enter the family business. He attended Cambridge but was more known for his play as a cricketer than a scholar. In fact, he was one of the better batsmen of his day and played for the team in Surrey when they took on the English national team. But, the family business called, he was ordained in 1747 and between 1747 and 1754 he served as a lecturer at Queens College- geography and Greek, and was a curate in various parishes.

Sometime in 1753 or 1754, he read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. Not unlike his contemporary, John Wesley, he was struck to the core by that very serious book and realized he himself had never truly believed. It was at this time he took a call to Clapham- if you know of the so-called “Clapham Sect,” the evangelical Anglicans, they take their name from the Parish that Venn would receive and transform over 12 years. In those 12 years, over 20 men began training for the ministry. Most of them would not work for reform within the Anglican Church, as Venn had tried, but instead became non-conformists in large part because the university requirements for becoming ordained were too expensive and were prohibitive for people who couldn’t up and move to a university town.

By 1756, he was corresponding with Wesley and attending his conferences. That same year, he allowed George Whitefield- the famous frenemy of the Wesleys- and of a more “Reformed” bent- to preach in his church.

Venn would find himself pulled by different theological emphases- like Wesley, he was concerned with conversion and an active faith, but did come to find Law’s book overly moralistic. He liked Whitfield’s preaching- in fact, some books will tell you that Venn was the first preacher in England to make a practice of an extemporaneous preaching style- borrowed from Whitefield.  

But it was 1757 when he would be confirmed in his theological particulars- and this was on account of his marriage to Elling Bishop, the daughter of a clergyman and a voracious reader of theology. Henry introduced Elling to Wesley, and Elling listened to his bit on “Christian Perfection”- or that idea that a Christian could, hypothetically, in this life, reach a level of perfection, and Elling would have none of it. She would plead with Henry to lean more into Whitefield than Wesley- and so it was.

Elling would die just ten years into their marriage, having birthed five children. He remarked in 1771, the same year he was advised to move to a warmer climate, to Yelling in Huntingdonshire. He wrote “I go to Yelling a dying man,” but lived 27 more years, and here he is credited with starting a small group of like-minded ministers and men. They would include John Newton at nearby Olney, along with his friend William Cowper and Charles Simeon. This would be foundational for the Anglican Church, as so many who dissented with its formality and, for them, lack of a “living faith” caused them to go to the Methodists or other non-Dissenters. It is the tradition of Venn, through Newton and Simeon, and Venn’s own son and grandson, who encouraged evangelical revival from within the church. His son and grandson, John and Henry, were both members of the Church Missionary Society in the early days of missions, and his granddaughter was Charlotte Elliot, the hymn writer most famous for “Just As I Am”. His legacy is the Clapham Sect, his ministry within the Anglican communion, and evangelical fervor. Henry Venn Sr died at Clapham, visiting his old parish, on this the 24th of June in 1797- born in 1724, he was 73 years old.

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and Ephesians 2:

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. 17 He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 24th of June 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who has not yet reached Christian perfection but is working up the ladder as an Operating Thetan- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who thinks you might be impressed with the progress he has made with stamps on his pizza loyalty card… Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.