John Clifford (minister)

John Clifford CH (16 October 1836 in Sawley, Derbyshire – 20 November 1923 in London) was a British Nonconformist minister and politician, who became famous as the advocate of passive resistance to the Education Act of 1902

Clifford was son of a warp-machinist. As a boy, he worked in a lace factory, where he attracted the notice of the leaders of the Baptist community, who sent him to the academy at Leicester and the Baptist college at Nottingham to be educated for the ministry. In 1858, he was called to the Praed Street chapel, Paddington (London), and while officiating there he attended University College and pursued his education by working at the British Museum.

He matriculated at the University of London (1859), and took its Bachelor of Arts degree (1861), Bachelor of Science (1862), Master of Arts (1864), and Bachelor of Laws (1866), and in 1883 he was given the honorary degree of DD by Bates College, United States, being known thereafter as Dr Clifford. This degree, from a small American college, afterwards led to sarcastic allusions, but Clifford had not courted it. Clifford's achievements at the University of London provided evidence of his intellectual equipment.

At the Praed Street chapel, he gradually obtained a large following, and in 1877 the Westbourne Park chapel was opened for him. As a preacher, writer, propagandist and ardent Liberal politician, he became a power in the Nonconformist body. He was president of the London Baptist Association in 1879, of the Baptist Union in 1888 and 1899, and of the National Council of Evangelical Churches in 1898. He was instrumental in ensuring that the Baptist Union endorsed the liberal side in the Downgrade controversy, and in arranging the censure of Charles Spurgeon.

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