Henry Venn (Church Missionary Society)

Henry Venn (10 February 1796 – 13 January 1873) was an Anglican clergyman who is recognised as one of the foremost Protestant missions strategists of the nineteenth century. He was an outstanding administrator who served as honorary secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1873. He was also a campaigner, in the tradition of the Clapham Sect, who frequently lobbied the British Parliament on social issues of his day, notably on ensuring the total eradication of the Atlantic slave trade by retaining the West African Squadron of the Royal Navy. He expounded the basic principles of indigenous Christian missions: these were much later made widespread by the Lausanne Congress of 1974.

The son of John Venn, rector of Clapham, and grandson of Henry Venn, he was born at Clapham on 10 February 1796. He matriculated at Queens' College, Cambridge in 1814, graduated B.A. as nineteenth wrangler in 1818, and was elected a Fellow of his college in January 1819. He graduated M.A. in 1821 and B.D. in 1828.

He was ordained deacon of Ely in 1819, and priest in 1820, and soon afterwards took the curacy of St Dunstan-in-the-West. In practice it was a sole charge, and he remained there four years. He returned to Cambridge in 1824, where he was a lecturer, and then a tutor. He was proctor in 1825, and for a short time evening lecturer at Great St Mary's. In 1826 he was appointed by an old friend of his family, named Wilberforce, to the incumbency of Drypool, Kingston upon Hull. He resigned his fellowship in 1829 on his marriage. In 1834 he accepted the living of St John's, Holloway, in the gift of Daniel Wilson who was then vicar of St Mary's Church, Islington, which he held for twelve years. He was appointed a prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral in 1846.

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