Protestant Reactions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Atherstone
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

Protestantism was a major rallying cry during the Tractarian controversies. It was anathematized by some Oxford Movement radicals as a ‘heresy’, and held tenaciously by evangelical campaigners as ‘the pure Gospel of Christ’. Protestant polemicists decried Tractarianism as a revival of Roman Catholicism in an Anglican disguise and called their brothers-in-arms to fight the theological battles of the Reformation over again. Focusing on the events in Oxford itself between 1838 and 1846, this chapter surveys the rhetoric which surrounded three overlapping themes—Protestant Reformers, Protestant Formularies, and Protestant Truth. It shows how these loomed large in the speeches and writings of those who wanted to defend the Protestant hegemony of the Church of England and the University of Oxford.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
The Right ◽  
Race And Religion ◽  
The Church

In the 1940s and 1950s, Britain was relatively uniform in terms of race and religion. The majority of Britons adhered to the Church of England, although Anglo-Catholic leanings—the last gasp of the Oxford Movement—prompted some people to convert to Roman Catholicism. Although the secularization thesis has had a tenacious grip on twentieth-century literary studies, it does not account for the flare-up of interest in religion in mid-century Britain. The ecumenical movement, which began in the 1930s in Europe, went into suspension during the war, and returned with vigour after 1945, advocated international collaboration among Christian denominations and consequently overlapped with the promotion of human rights, especially the defence of freedom of worship, the right to privacy, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression.

Reserve and Physical Imagery in the Tractarian Poetry of Isaac Williams (1802–65)

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 246-258
Author(s):  
John Boneham
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Real Presence ◽  
Established Relationship ◽  
Apostolic Succession ◽  
The Church

The Oxford, or Tractarian, Movement began as a conservative reaction to the reforming measures of the 1820s and 1830s and in particular to the Whig government’s passing of the Irish Church Temporalities Bill in 1832. For the Tractarians, the cumulative effect of such legislation was that the authority of the Church was being seriously compromised by interference from the secular government, which could now include those who were not necessarily Anglicans or even Christians. While it was these overtly political concerns that moved John Keble to preach his ‘Assize Sermon’ which has. traditionally been seen as marking the beginning of the movement in July 1833, the Oxford Movement was to develop into a spiritual revival whose concerns went far beyond politics. In rejecting the established relationship between Church and state the Tractarians came to emphasize the Church’s innate spiritual autonomy and appealed increasingly to the authority of tradition as reflected in the writings of the church fathers of the third and fourth centuries. In doing so their emphasis on certain beliefs and practices of the primitive Church, such as baptismal regeneration, the real presence and the apostolic succession, was seen as betraying sympathy for Roman Catholicism and disloyalty towards the Church of England.

Two Philosophers of the Oxford Movement

Philosophy ◽  
1933 ◽  
Vol 8 (31) ◽  
pp. 273-284
Author(s):  
Clement C. J. Webb
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Political Life ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
The Social ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
The University ◽  
Speculative Thought

This year is being celebrated by a large number of our fellow-countrymen as the centenary of a movement, associated with the name of the University of Oxford, of which, although in its first stage it might easily be mistaken—and has often been mistaken—for a mere wave of theological and ecclesiastical reaction within the Established Church of England, the attentive historian of the nineteenth century must take account as in fact a very powerful influence in the religious and, no less really though to a less degree, in the social and political life of the whole nation. Considerable, however, as is the importance which may justly be attributed in other respects to what is known as the Oxford Movement, the professed student of philosophy may be excused if he is chiefly struck by the apparent remoteness of its original leaders from the currents of speculative thought characteristic of the period in which it began its course. There were perhaps among them only two who can be named as contributors to philosophical literature in the technical sense now commonly borne by the term “philosophical”; and the contributions even of these two can scarcely be said to have taken their place among the works to which an ordinary teacher of philosophy would be likely to direct the attention of his pupils. To these two, however, John Henry Newman and William George Ward, I propose to devote here a few pages which may be found not without interest to readers of Philosophy.

Samuel Wesley’s Conformity in 1684

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
William Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Charles I ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Strong Commitment ◽  
The University ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Church

This chapter explores Samuel Wesley’s decision to abandon his family’s commitment to Dissent and conform to the Church of England around 1684. Wesley was raised in a Dissenting family and educated at a Dissenting academy. His decision to conform to the Church of England was therefore surprising and there have been a number of explanations for it. This chapter explores the range of motives for Wesley’s decision and presents new evidence for the reasons for this decision. The decision was undoubtedly influenced by the desire to go to the University of Oxford. Other accounts have suggested that Wesley was unhappy with the attitudes of his fellow students at the dissenting academy he attended, and that he had developed a strong commitment to the idea of Charles I as a martyr. He may also have attended Oxford with the intention to remain a Dissenter but gradually found himself drawn to the Church of England. Other influences may have been his future wife, Susanna, who had conformed at the age of twelve.

Keble, Froude, Newman, and Pusey

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
High Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition ◽  
The Way

The Oxford Movement, influenced by Romanticism, was rooted in the inheritance both of an older High Church tradition and of the Evangelical Revival. The Movement was characterized by an effort to recover the Catholic character of the Church of England. Its genius was John Henry Newman, who redefined Anglicanism as a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. John Keble had earlier opened the way to a new Anglican sensibility through his poetry in The Christian Year. The Oxford Professor of Hebrew, Edward Bouverie Pusey, brought to the Tracts his massive scholarship. Newman’s dearest friend, Hurrell Froude, gave the Movement a radical edge, which continued despite his premature death in 1836.

The Oxford Movement, Marriage and Domestic Life: John Keble, Isaac Williams and Edward King

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 366-377
Author(s):  
John Boneham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
The Church

While a number of studies have highlighted the theological and social importance of the household in nineteenth-century Protestant Britain, the significance of domestic life for the leaders of the Oxford, or Tractarian, Movement remains almost completely unexplored. In a sense this is unsurprising, since the movement, which began in the 1830s, emphasized the importance of recalling the Church of England to its pre-Reformation heritage and consequently tended to stress the spiritual value of celibacy and asceticism. Whilst B.W. Young has highlighted the importance of celibacy for John Henry Newman, the movement’s main figurehead until his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, and other works have reflected upon the Tractarian emphasis on celibacy and tried to explain its origins, historians of the Oxford Movement have paid very little attention to the Tractarian attitude towards marriage and domestic life.

Reconsidering the Movement after the 1845 Crisis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Macnab
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Parish Ministry ◽  
Private Correspondence ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
The Church

The conversions to Roman Catholicism of Newman and others close to the heart of the Oxford Movement in the 1840s required responses at many levels from those Tractarians who remained in the Church of England. This coincided with rapid changes in Tractarian forms of parish ministry and the earliest days of a restored Religious Life. From their prominent positions among the remaining Tractarians, E. B. Pusey, John Keble, and Charles Marriott gave spiritual counsel through their private correspondence, and offered philosophical and ecclesiological arguments in their published sermons and writings. They defended the theological basis of the Movement in general, and of Tract 90 in particular, against both Anglican and Roman Catholic critics.

Decadent Rituals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Walter Pater ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Religious Ritual ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

Anglo-Catholicism, the nineteenth-century movement within the Church of England that sought to reassert many of the forms and rituals of Roman Catholicism, exerted a significant shaping influence upon the religious aesthetics of English decadent writing. While the space that Anglo-Catholicism offered for a decadent performance of sexual difference has been examined before, this article offers a complementary argument, emphasizing a strand within decadence arising from the role of personality in reconceptualizing, and possibly distorting, religious orthodoxy. The first part provides a history of the discourse of degeneracy around the early Oxford Movement and the mediation of Anglo-Catholic ideas into English decadence through the writings of Walter Pater. It then discusses the ways in which decadent writing in England explored a distorting excess of personality through the aesthetics of religious ritual and asceticism.

The Architectural Impact of the Oxford Movement

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Doll
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Buildings

In this chapter the author argues that church buildings and their architecture influenced by the Oxford Movement cannot be understood apart from their essential grounding in the worship and self-understanding of the Church. This study sets the consideration of such church buildings in the wider context of the history of the Church of England both before and after the Reformation. The churches of the Church of England preceding and following the Oxford Movement articulate an Anglican sense of belonging to the Church universal and are thus a valuable contribution to the faith and witness of the Church far beyond the Anglican Communion.

‘Popery, Palestrina, and Plain-tune’: the Oxford Movement, the Reformation and the Anglican Choral Revival

2014 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 345-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Cole
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Church Music ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
English Reformation ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Musical Activities

Following an extended period of neglect, the early 1840s saw a dramatic revival of interest in English church music and its history, which coincided with the period of heightened religious sensitivity between the publication of Newman‘s Tract 90 in early 1841 and his conversion to Roman Catholicism in October 1845. This article examines the activities and writings of three men who made important contributions to the reformation of the music of the English church that took place at this time: Rev. Frederick Oakeley; Rev. John Jebb and the painter William Dyce. It pays particular attention to the relationship between their beliefs about and attitudes towards the English Reformation and their musical activities, and argues that such important works as Jebb‘s monumental Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland (1843) are best understood in the context of the religious and ecclesiological debates that were raging at that time.

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