The Bible Christian Church was a Christian vegetarian sect founded by William Cowherd in Salford, North West England in 1809. To join the church, members had to sign a pledge that committed them to a vegetarian diet and abstention from alcohol. Followers of Cowherd's ideas were commonly known as Bible Christians or "Cowherdites." Cowherd was one of the philosophical forerunners of the Vegetarian Society founded in 1847.