Towards a Richer Appreciation of the Oxford Movement

To read The Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement more or less from cover to cover has been a hugely rewarding experience, even though I am no stranger to its subject matter – the history and writings of the movement that campaigned to revive a catholic theology, practice and sensibility within the Church of England in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In engaging with this book I am, in a sense, coming home. John Keble’s parochial ministry, John Henry Newman’s epistemology and ecclesiology, and Edward Bouverie Pusey’s sacramental and ecumenical theology have been deeply formative for me. And that is the spirit (or ethos in Tractarian-speak, as James Pereiro has shown)1 in which I approach this estimable example of the Oxford Handbook genre. The Oxford (or Tractarian) Movement was a creative upsurge of theological, pastoral and liturgical renewal which lasted from its arresting beginning with John Keble’s Assize Sermon and the first Tracts for the Times in 1833 to John

Henry Newman's catastrophic defection to the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, though the movement's momentum continues to this day. I have to say that I found the narrative and the accompanying analysis of the forty-three chapters of this Handbook not only instructive, but also quite enthralling. It often felt like a privilege to be guided, by specialist scholars who also write clearly and elegantly, through the ideas and events that profoundly shapedon the whole for good -the modern Church of England and the Anglican Communion. However well we may think that we know the scene, we will still have much to learn academically and to gain spiritually from the careful study of this comprehensive, authoritative and impressively presented compendium. It is now the best place to begin the study of the Tractarians and their quasisuccessors the Anglo-Catholics; it constitutes the centre of gravity for research agendas into the controversies, personalities and perplexities of this formative era of modern Anglicanism. This book guides us through the background, history, dramatis personae and theological polemics of this turbulent time. But it also covers Tractarian political and social commentary (of which there was more than has usually been assumed), church architecture (which Peter Doll helpfully relates to the constitutive ecclesiology of the Church of England), poetry (Keble being the best-selling poet of the nineteenth century with The Christian Year), novels (especially those of Keble's redoubtable disciple Charlotte M. Yonge), church music and hymnody and the revival of the religious life. The book also looks further afield with an appraisal of Tractarian ecumenism (rather, the lack of it) by Mark D. Chapman, and judicious surveys of the spread of Tractarian ideas and practices in Britain and Ireland, mainland Europe, parts of the British Empire, and the United States of America. The distinguished editors themselves provide eight of the chapters, as well as an Introduction. So what more could one ask? In highlighting some aspects of the treatment that stand out for me, I will also raise a few questions and point to a handful of shortcomings.

The High Church Background
It is particularly helpful to have no less than three chapters devoted to the pre-Tractarian High Church tradition as a major factor in the context and provenance of the Oxford Movement (as pioneered by Peter Knockles). The High Church tradition has its origins in Richard Hooker and Lancelot Andrewes at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, was daringly exhibited by Queen Elizabeth i in her private chapel, and flourished in the prolific writings of the Caroline divines of the seventeenth century (those who served in the reigns of Charles i and Charles ii) and their successors in the eighteenth. These divines were 'High Church' , not because of any advanced ceremonial or ritual predilections or practices (which even the Tractarians themselves were not particularly interested in), but on account of their elevated views of the Church of Christ as a divine institution, apostolic in its foundation and continuous through the centuries in its teaching and its ordinations by bishops in historical succession. It was their ecclesiology that made them 'High Church' and distinguished them from the Evangelicals and the Low Churchmen or Latitudinarians who were weak in their doctrines of the Church, the sacraments, the priesthood and the episcopate. I did not notice the name of Alexander Knox (1757-1831), a significant recent High Church precursor in some respects of the Tractarians, and he is not listed in the Index. It will be more difficult to ignore Knox now that David McCready's study has been published.2 As J.C.D. Clark has highlighted in several works (noted here, though his name is not in the Index), the High Church constituency included a significant Nonjuror influence (those who were inhibited by their ideology and previous Oath of Allegiance from submitting to William and Mary's accession to the throne in 1689, following the deposition of James ii), as well as (potentially treasonable) Jacobite sympathisers and fellow-travellers, one of whom was Samuel Johnson.3 Dr Johnson is pleasingly honoured here as the most significant lay Anglican of the eighteenth century, though I think he is run a close second by Edmund Burke.

Tractarian Reactions to the High Church Tradition
Although there would have been no Oxford Movement without the solid theological heritage of the High Churchmen, some of the more advanced of the Tractarians, led in this matter by the incendiary Richard Hurrell Froude and by Newman himself, affected to despise their predecessors, disparaging them as 'old unspiritual high and dry' , 'old orthodox two-bottles' and so on. Even John Keble, the progenitor of the movement, joined in this, though he averred that all he taught and practised in his parish of Hursley had been learned from his ecclesiology 16 (2020) 243-253 father, a High Church clergyman of the old school, under whom he had served his curacy. In slandering the eighteenth-century Church of England for somnolence, laxity, worldliness and lack of fervour, Tractarian polemic set a trend that was followed by Anglo-Catholic historians until the early twentieth century when a modest revisionism commenced. As Nigel Aston remarks, modern historiography has 'rescued' the eighteenth-century church (p. 51). Norman Sykes finally broke the spell in his work of 1934, Church and State in the Eighteenth Century.4 Norman Sykes' name and work is not mentioned anywhere in these three chapters. A fresh trajectory in study of the eighteenthcentury church was set by the contributors to the volume edited by John Walsh, Colin Haydon and Stephen Taylor in 1993.5 While the Tractarians' emphasis was typically didactic, though coupled with the concept of reserve, and practised with measure and sobriety of demeanour, especially in the pulpit (Newman being the paradigm, with his studied immobility of posture), the actions and propaganda of some were typically excited, polemical and combative. Their provocative stance alienated the remaining High Churchmen, notably the Hackney Phalanx, together with some, such as William Palmer (of Worcester College, Oxford), William Ewart Gladstone and Walter Hook. who had initially been caught up in the movement. Newman was the leading Tractarian tactician and masterminded its initiatives, including by ruthless political scheming, as pointed out here by Simon Skinner.

Evangelical Influences
Several of the Tractarians, including, ineradicably, Newman himself, were formed in their religious sensibility by Anglican Evangelicalism, with its trademark biblicism, its assumption of a dateable moment of personal conversion, its emphasis on preaching, and its sense of personal election and calling (which was not confined to Calvinists: witness John Wesley). A chapter of the Handbook is appropriately devoted to the impact of Evangelicalism on the movement. It is clear that Evangelicalism should be regarded as complementary to High Churchmanship in the making of the Tractarian ideology, both schools of thought being infused with Romanticism. A continuing Evangelical seriousness and subjectivism is detectable in the Oxford Movement, whether by way of continuity or reaction (the latter expounded, at length and with some excess, in the case of Newman, by the late Frank Turner).6 It is plausible to suggest, as Henry Tristram for one did, that the young Newman's Evangelicalism intensified his natural tendency to introspection (an introspection verging on solipsism at times, which he vaunted). Henri Bremond referred to Newman's 'autocentrism' and judged that Newman was 'the most autobiographical of men' .7 Gladstone -another case in point -believed, cogently, that former Evangelicals, now Tractarian in their allegiance or sympathy, had found it to fail them because it raised expectations of experiential blessings that could not be met. Tractarian scholarly devotion to Scripture and its exposition (see Timothy Larsen's chapter) may be another strand of Evangelical influence (though an indirect one because not only Pusey but also Keble -both clear of Evangelical formation -were tireless biblical commentators) and Newman's parochial sermons are replete with scriptural quotations and allusions. Tractarian biblical interpretation, like that of the Evangelicals, was not only completely uncritical by the standards of contemporary German scholarship (at that time becoming known in Britain) and ruled by dogma, but was intentionally and polemically anti-critical. Pusey's immense labours in that field were intended as a riposte to and refutation of the critical methods and their results that he had, as a young scholar, imbibed in German universities and had initially defended in print. Pusey's complete volte-face with regard to German scholarship remains baffling. The alternative hermeneutic that the Tractarians espoused and promoted was the allegorical method that had largely governed patristic and medieval exegesis. Although the Tractarians' allegorical exegesis often seems ludicrously fanciful to us today (examples are given), for them it was indispensable as the only way to maintain Bible-based orthodoxy amid the disorientating revolution in the methods of biblical study that was then getting under way. However, allegorical or figurative interpretation, unconstrained except by dogma, was not all there was to Tractarian hermeneutics. Allegory was merely the husk (if we want to risk that metaphor); the kernel was As far as Newman's historical method is concerned, The Arians of the Fourth Century and his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine are key texts, both of them combining exposition and assertion, though the balance is different in each case.12 Newman's history-writing was always intentionally controversial. That in itself does not disqualify it, but Newman knew no other method. Owen Chadwick gave Newman credit for historical sympathy at least, writing: 'The theologian in Newman vehemently distrusted the new school of historians, the historian in him could not help learning from them.'13 Empathy for the fathers and martyrs of the early church, yes, but really Newman had little sense of 'the pastness of the past' .14 At decisive stages in his inner journey to Rome (both in 1839) he saw himself as a Monophysite and then as a Donatist. We would probably say, 'That is not a good enough reason for your decision.' Newman is often hailed for his concept of development, but it is equally often misunderstood in a liberal, progressive sense. The church's expression and articulation of its faith, Newman insists in an intriguing paradox, changes over time, but 'it changes … in order to remain the same' .15 So the need to claim identity on grounds of dogma trumps the acceptance of empirical change. Real, jagged difference is smoothed over. Surprisingly, some standard works on Newman and history, such as those by Bokenkotter and Holmes, are not mentioned, even in this chapter.16 With regard to the Tractarians and history, the elephant in the room is their view of the sixteenth-century Reformation. It is touched on by several contributors, though not dealt with anywhere in a coordinated manner. Yet coming to terms with the Reformation was a dominant motif (as well as motive) in their writing, both private and public. The Tractarians vowed to 'unprotestantise' the Church of England, but they worked in a fog of ignorance compounded by prejudice. Hurrell Froude read some of the sources, but deployed them in a juvenile way. He proposed that the Protestant martyr Bishop Latimer was akin to Henry Bulteel (1800-1866, a maverick, hard-Calvinist curate in Tractarian Oxford who was disciplined by Bishop Richard Bagot, reciprocated by describing the bishop as Antichrist, and started his own sect, ending up in the Plymouth Brethren). Froude labelled John Jewel, author of the foundational text of the English Reformation, the Apologia ecclesiae Anglicanae (1562) and afterwards a diligent Bishop of Salisbury, 'an irreverent Dissenter' . The worst thing that Froude could find to say about the English Reformers was that they would have been out of place in the Senior Common Room of a nineteenth-century Oxford college. Newman promoted a viciously distorted perception of German Lutheranism and confessed that he had never read Calvin, though he slates him in the Essay on Development.17 He assimilated the English Reformation to his bug-bear 'popular Protestantism' and so tended to compare the worst of Protestant Christianity with the best of Roman Catholicism.18

Conclusion
The Tractarians were radicalised High Churchmen -Newman embracing aspects of that tradition with the fervour of a convert from the opposite pole, Evangelicalism. As Peter Nockles has brought out, the Tractarian platform was radical, innovative and subversive of the status quo.21 The Tractarians tested to destruction the prevailing Anglican consensus about the nature of the Church of England as a catholic, reformed, national and established church. They were belligerent against all comers: they despised the Old High Churchmen, regarded Evangelicals with disdain and vilified the Broad Churchmen or Liberal Anglicans such as Thomas Arnold and R.D. Hampden. With that, the early Tracts were virulently anti-Roman. When Newman set out his thesis on the development of doctrine, which culminated in the case for an infallible defining authority, he completely ignored the existence and significance of the Eastern Churches -they did not fit his Procrustean bed. The later Tracts set alarm bells ringing among all Anglican constituencies, as well as shocking other weighty, independent voices, notably William Palmer, William Ewart Gladstone and Frederick Denison Maurice. This collection is not hagiographical or uncritical, nor is it afraid of making judgements; in a few places it is quietly scathing. But on the whole, the major protagonists, some of whom, notably Froude, Newman and William George Ward, were adolescent in their behaviour towards those of opposing views, are let off lightly. I have suggested that a more substantial treatment of the relation of Tractarianism to the Romantic Movement and to the Reformation would have been an asset. I have recommended a deeper treatment of their historiographical understanding and aptitude. I might also mention that the handling of eighteenth-century thought is less than assured in places. Frequent unqualified, global references to 'rationalism' , 'liberalism' and 'the 'Enlightenment' , as though they were each one thing and we knew what that thing was, lack the nuance that is called for by the complex and diversified character of eighteenth-century European thought, not least the variegated complexion of 'the Enlightenment' , which did not lack various Christian expressions.22 Invited to contribute an 'Afterword' to assess the lasting impact on Anglicanism of the movement, if any, Colin Podmore notes in a rather downbeat way, that it changed the Church of England's 'visual appearance and, to a significant extent, its ethos also' (p. 622). I would put it more positively: Tractarianism set in motion a tide of renewal and reform that, augmented by other, more cosmopolitan influences from other Christian traditions, especially the Liturgical, Ecumenical and Biblical Theology movements, transformed not only the Church of England, but also the Anglican Communion, into a more catholic, but at the same time not less reformed or less gospel-minded expression of Christianity. Dr Podmore points out -and this is rarely noted -that the Oxford Movement was motivated by a passi0n for ecclesiology -a catholic ecclesiology (p. 624). He also also holds that those Anglo-Catholics who have accepted the ordination of women as priests and bishops have rejected 'the ecclesiological principles that brought the Movement into being' (p. 626), because 'patriarchal symbolism … underlies a catholic understanding of Christian priesthood' (p. 625). I trust one can hold to a catholic ecclesiology -one that is credally orthodox and also episcopal, liturgical, sacramental and conciliar -and claim a stake in the lasting treasure that the Tractarians bequeathed to Anglicanism without welding it to patriarchal authority structures. If not, the outlook worldwide for Christianity is grim.23 23 Let me relegate to a footnote one grumble: there are too many typos; the standard of copy-editing and/or proof-reading could have been better.