That’s a wonderful achievement to set against the class blinkers of the Clapham Sect that led to the lunchtime comment. “The Christianity promoted in India and Australia in the early 19th century was evangelical due to the influence of the Clapham Sect,” said historian Stuart Piggin, introducing the sect. ” Clapham was a class act – an upper-class act.”Piggin contrasted the wealthy members of the Clapham sect and their networking with the powerful as a contrast to the Westleys’ mission to the plain people. In looking at the Clapham sect, we are looking at a change from above, as well as the evangelically inspired change in England from the Methodists. But the Clapham sect was not a sect in the religious sense, Piggins explained, “But a network, a confederacy of evangelicals.