the church of england remained dominant, but it had a growing evangelical, revivalist faction, the "low church". its leaders included william wilberforce and hannah more. it reached the upper class through the clapham sect. it did not seek political reform, but rather the opportunity to save souls through political action by freeing slaves, abolishing the duel, prohibiting cruelty to children and animals, stopping gambling, and avoiding frivolity on the sabbath; they read the bible every day. all souls were equal in god's view, but not all bodies, so evangelicals did not challenge the hierarchical structure of english society. as r.j. morris noted in his 1983 article "voluntary societies and british urban elites, 1780-1850," "[m]id-eighteenth-century britain was a stable society in the sense that those with material and ideological power were able to defend this power in an effective and dynamic manner," but "in the twenty years after 1780, this consensus structure was broken." anglican evangelicalism thus, as historian lisa wood has argued in her book "modes of discipline: women, conservatism, and the novel after the french revolution", functioned as a tool of ruling-class social control, buffering the discontent that in france had inaugurated a revolution; yet it contained within itself the seeds for challenge to gender and class hierarchies.