Oxford Movement
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- Not to be confused with the twentieth-century Oxford Group.
The Oxford Movement was an affiliation of High Church Anglicans, most of which were members of the University of Oxford, who sought to demonstrate that the Church of England was a direct descendant of the Christian church established by the Apostles. It was also known as the Tractarian Movement after its series of publications, Tracts for the Times (1833–1841); the Tractarians were also called Puseyites (usually disparagingly) after one of their leaders, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford. Other prominent Tractarians included John Henry Newman, a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, John Keble, Archdeacon Henry Edward Manning, Richard Hurrell Froude, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Wilberforce, Isaac Williams and Sir William Palmer.
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[edit] Early movement
The immediate impetus for the Movement was the secularisation of the Church, focused particularly on the decision by the Government to reduce by ten the number of Irish bishoprics in the Church of Ireland following the 1832 Reform Act. Keble attacked these proposals as 'National Apostasy' in his Assize Sermon in Oxford in 1833. Its leaders attacked liberalism in theology, and more positively took an interest in Christian origins which led them to reconsider the relationship of the Church of England with the Roman Catholic Church. The movement postulated the Branch Theory which states that Anglicanism along with Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism form three "branches" of the one "Catholic Church." In the ninetieth and final Tract, Newman argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the sixteenth-century Church of England. Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845 as a result of his being taken further than he had expected by his own arguments, followed by Manning in 1851, had a profound effect upon the movement.
[edit] Criticisms
The Oxford Movement was attacked for being a mere Romanising tendency, but it began to have an influence on the theory and practice of Anglicanism. It resulted in the establishment of Anglican religious orders, both of men and women, and an emphasis on liturgy and ceremony. In particular it brought the insights of the Liturgical Movement into the life of the Church. Its effects were so widespread that the Eucharist gradually became more central to worship, vestments became common, and a considerable number of Catholic practices were introduced into worship. Inevitably this led to controversy which often ended up in court.
Partly because bishops refused to give livings to Tractarian priests, many of them ended up working in the slums giving rise to a critique of social policy, local and national. The establishment of the Christian Social Union which debated issues such as the just wage, the system of property renting, infant mortality and industrial conditions, and to which a number of bishops were members, was one of the results. The more radical Catholic Crusade was much smaller. Anglo-Catholicism, as this complex of ideas, styles and organisations became known, has had a massive influence on global Anglicanism which continues to this day.
[edit] Converts to Roman Catholicism
As mentioned above, the principal writer and proponent of the Tractarian Movement was John Henry Newman, who after writing his final tract, Tract 90, became convinced that the Branch Theory was inadequate and so converted to the Roman Catholic Church. A series of similar conversions followed, which to a lesser extent continues to the present.
Other major figures who became Roman Catholic as a result of the movement were:
- Thomas William Allies, Church historian and former Anglican priest.
- Robert Hugh Benson, novelist and monsignor.
- John Chapman OSB, patristic scholar and Roman Catholic priest.
- Augusta Theodosia Drane, writer and Dominican prioress.
- Frederick William Faber, theologian, hymn writer, Oratorian and Roman Catholic priest.
- Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest.
- Robert Stephen Hawker, poet and Anglican priest, converted on his deathbed.
- James Hope-Scott, barrister and Tractarian, converted with Manning.
- Henry Edward Manning, later created a Cardinal.
- George Jackson Mivart, biologist, later excommunicated by Cardinal Herbert Vaughan.
- Augustus Pugin, architect.
- William George Ward, theologian.
[edit] References
- Essays Catholic and Radical Kenneth Leech & Rowan Williams (1983) Bowerdean.
- Norman, Edward R. Church and Society in England 1770–1970: A Historical Study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976. ISBN 0-19-826435-6.
[edit] See also
- Alexander Penrose Forbes
- George Cornelius Gorham
- George Anthony Denison
- James Bowling Mozley
- Renn Dickson Hampden
- Richard William Church
- Thomas Mozley
- Walter Farquhar Hook
- Anglo-Catholicism
- Anglican Breviary
- Anglican Communion
- Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament
- Guild of All Souls
- Neo-Lutheranism
- Ritualism
- Society of the Holy Cross
- Society of King Charles the Martyr
- Society of Mary (Anglican)
[edit] External links
- Tracts for the Times
- The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years 1833-1845 by R. W. Church
- The Oxford Movement by Wilfred Ward
- Religious Thought in the Oxford Movement By Clement Charles Julian Webb
- Tractarianism (Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge)
- Anglo-Catholic Socialism
