The Oxford Movement in context

Description

This study breaks new ground in setting the Oxford Movement in its historical and theological context. Peter Nockles conducts a rigorous examination of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival in the Church of England associated with the Tracts for the Times of 1833, and shows that, in many respects, this revival had been anticipated by a renewal of the Anglican High Church tradition in the preceding seventy years. Having established this element of continuity, Dr Nockles is then able to identify the distinctive features of Tractarianism in a manner which challenges many long-established views of the Movement. The author probes behind the shadow cast over Tractarian hagiography by the spell of the Movement's leader, John Henry Newman, and demonstrates the extent of the divergence of Tractarianism from the older High Churchmanship. There unfolds a human drama of a growing ideological division between erstwhile allies. An attractive feature of this reappraisal is the focus on hitherto neglected figures, such as William Palmer of Worcester College and Edward Churton; the author argues that such old High Churchmen were more faithful descendants of the earlier High Church tradition than were their Tractarian contemporaries. He contends that Tractarianism left a legacy of party division and conflict, making old High Church values vulnerable to a Low Church backlash. Nevertheless, the elements of weakness in the conservative line espoused by the old High Churchmen is recognised also. Dr Nockles concludes that, in an age of Romanticism and religious renewal, the vitality and dynamism offered by the Oxford Movement finally attracted the rising generation of the 1830s and 1840s in a way which the older High Churchmanship had become incapable of doing. The book draws on a wide range of little-known printed and manuscript sources, and provides an indispensable basis for a radical reassessment of the Catholic tradition in the Church of England.

Subjects