Oxford Movement

I

Introduction

Oxford Movement, known also as Tractarianism, religious revival emphasizing the catholic, that is, apostolic and universal, origins of the Church of England. Adherents of the movement held that the apostolic succession—that is, the valid transmission of apostolic authority to administer sacraments—was not broken by the English Reformation and that the Church of England constitutes a branch of the holy catholic church, of which the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches also are branches. The chief leaders of the movement were the British theologians John Keble, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Edward Bouverie Pusey, all connected with the University of Oxford.

II

Beginnings

Keble initiated the movement with a sermon, “On the National Apostasy,” at Oxford on July 14, 1833. Citing a recent statute abolishing ten bishoprics in Ireland, Keble warned the Church of England against the threat of domination by secular authorities and accused contemporary churchmen of national apostasy in abandoning the principles of 16th- and 17th-century Anglican theologians.

Later that month a group of religious leaders who agreed with Keble's thesis met and pledged their support of the principles embodied in the Book of Common Prayer and of the doctrine of apostolic succession.

III

The Tracts

Beginning in September 1833, Keble and several of his associates, chief among them Newman, Richard Hurrell Froude, and Isaac Williams, elaborated their religious views in a series of 90 pamphlets entitled Tracts for the Times, from which the term Tractarianism is derived. Newman also contributed greatly to the movement through persuasive weekly sermons delivered over a period of eight years. The movement received additional impetus through the adherence in 1834 of Pusey, whose prestige was so great that its members became known popularly as Puseyites.

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The Tractarians held that the Church of England, as part of the catholic church created by divine authority, was more than a merely human institution. They claimed further that Anglican bishops were the rightful successors of the apostles according to canon law. The Tractarians considered that the Church of England represented the via media (Latin, “middle way”) between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, both of which they regarded as abhorrent, and held that the church could be saved only through a return to its catholic origins.

Opposition to the Oxford movement became intense after the publication in 1838-39 of the Literary Remains of Richard Hurrell Froude, edited by Newman and Keble. This work alarmed and antagonized many Anglican bishops because of its sympathetic attitude toward Roman Catholicism and its attacks on the leaders of the Reformation. Thenceforth the bishops opposed the Oxford movement with increasing vigor.

Tract 90, issued by Newman in February 1841, brought the conflict with the authorities of the church to a climax. In the tract Newman attempted to prove that the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion were not inconsistent with the dogma of the Roman Catholic church. The leaders of the Church of England condemned the tract formally on March 15, and, on the insistence of the bishop of Oxford, publication of the Tracts for the Times was discontinued.

IV

Consequences

Several hundred clergymen thereupon left the Church of England and became members of the Roman Catholic church, joined, in 1845, by Newman himself.

The supporters of the Oxford movement who remained within the Church of England were known thereafter as Anglo-Catholics. After 1860 emphasis shifted from questions of doctrine to those of ceremony, giving rise to the movement known as ritualism, which sometimes is confused with the Oxford movement.

Tractarianism made important contributions to the Church of England. It restored the dignity of the church and its ministers, revived interest in theology and church history, strengthened appreciation of catholic liturgy, and inspired new artistic achievements in ecclesiastical music and architecture. In addition, the movement led to the organization of religious sisterhoods and stimulated a fresh awareness of the social responsibility of Christians, as evidenced, for example, by the establishment of Anglican missions in city slums.

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