James Sherman (minister)

The Rev. James Sherman (21 February 1796 – 15 February 1862), was an English Congregationalist minister. He was an abolitionist, and a popular preacher at The Castle Street Chapel in Reading from 1821 to 1836 and the Surrey Chapel, Blackfriars, London from 1836−54.

Sherman was successor at the Surrey Chapel to Rowland Hill. Although he was subsequently became known as a Congregationalist, Sherman was originally ordained to the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion.

The son of an officer in the East India Company, he was born in Banner Street, St. Luke's, London, on 21 February 1796. After some education from dissenting ministers, he spent three years and a half as apprentice to an ivory-turner.

Sherman entered, on 6 November 1815, the Countess of Huntingdon's Cheshunt College. He preached his first sermon in London in Hare Court chapel, Aldersgate Street, in 1817, and on 26 Nov. 1818 he was ordained to the ministry in Sion Chapel, Whitechapel. After preaching for some time in the Countess of Huntingdon's chapel at Bath, Somerset, he was appointed permanent minister of her chapel at Bristol, where he made the acquaintance of Hannah More and of Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck. In April 1821 he moved to Castle Street chapel, Reading, Berkshire.

James Sherman was a prominent supporter of missionary work, principally the work of the non-denominational London Missionary Society. The missionary Rev. Samuel Oughton was sent to Jamaica from Sherman's Surrey Chapel in 1836; an arrangement on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society, a body that worked closely with the LMS, and practiced congregational principles of church governance.

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