Oxford Movement and the Church

Oxford Move workforcet and the church serviceArticle reprinted from Cross Way recurrence Autumn 2008 No. 110 (C)opyright church building Society material may be used for non-profit purposes provided that the source is acknow leadged and the text is non altered.THE OXFORD gesture By David PhillipsIt is likely that we will see a growing evoke in the Oxford Movework forcet in the wake of proposals by Roman Catholics to keep i of its make upers a saint.The early part of the 19th century was a period of great social change in Europe and the type of the church was being weakened and threatened. However, several(prenominal) reform was necessary and fantan took the lead. In 1833 a Bill was passed to abolish two archbishoprics and eight bishoprics in Ireland. Whilst the decision was reasonable not least because of the riddles in Ireland it was for whatever the straw which broke the camels back.There were those who look atd this was unwarranted interference by the state in the affairs of the Church and demonstrated the weakness of the Church. bottom Keble responded with a dissertation in the University Church in Oxford entitled national apostacy and he found support from three other Oxford workforce in particular John Henry Newman, Hurrell Froude and William Palmer. In September 1833 these men began to publish Tracts which were referred to as The Oxford Tracts handsome rise to the later name The Oxford Movement.It is said that the chief concern of the Oxford men was the dignity of the Church and they argued in the Tracts that it was sacrilege for non-Church bodies to disgrace hands on the Church. They in like manner had a strong aversion to the emerging liberalism and a impulse for personal holiness. In these things they would earn found sympathisers amongst Evangelicals moreover this was not exclusively that surfaced in the Tracts.At the time High Church referred to those who had a tall regard for the Church and its elans including originat ion and its Protestantism. and so High Churchmen were fail in their response to the new movement. Some warmed to what was said nigh the nature and dignity of the Church whilst others saw that it would lead to disestablishment and indeed to some Roman practices at least. The impact of the movement was untold(prenominal) that the old tubercle of high church was largely lost and the term came to be associated with the Tractarians. The regime in Oxford also distanced themselves from the Tracts and from any association of the name with the university.Historians will sometimes say that Evangelicals were slow to respond or even ill fit stunned to do so, but this is clearly not the case. The robustly evangelistic publisher The Record (later to become The Church of England Newspaper) commented on a letter direct by the Oxford men to the Archbishop of Canterbury and then later on the early Tracts in its December issues of 1833.We must confess the surprise was extreme and the sorrow moving with which we read the tracts of the Apostolical Society at Oxford, extracts from which appeared in our last number. Had we not read them with our own eyes, it would have been difficult to persuade us that such(prenominal) effusions could have escaped, at any time, from the pen of Protestant clergymenThe Record attacks the Oxford men on apostolic succession not because Evangelicals rejected the idea but because the Oxford men were touting the Roman view of succession. As a Protestant Church the Church of England, cannot nor would it wish to claim such succession and to do so was sheer folly. They also state that the Tracts talk of clergymen conveying the sacrifice, being intrusted with the keys of enlightenment and hell and being intrusted with the awful and mysterious gift of making the starting line and wine Christs body and blood.The editorial describes all these as melancholy and hellish Popish delusions.Thus right from the outset Evangelicals, or at least some of the m, saw the errors and responded to them, a fact that is not always recognised. concisely afterwards Hurrell Froude, one of the original four died and his theological remains were published in 1838. These showed unequivocally his opposition to the Protestant Reformation and his empathy for Medieval Catholicism. This seems to have woken others up to the real heart of the Tractarians who were becoming increasingly critical of the Church of England and idealistic regarding the Church of Rome.In 1841 Newman published his famous Tract 90 attempting to argue that the Articles, if properly understood, support Roman Catholic doctrine. Newman himself seems to have at last recognised that his arguments were wrong because he left for Rome but others continue and hushed continue to argue the same points. I recall one clergyman arguing that his belief in purgatory was acceptable because the Articles denounce the R.C. doctrine of purgatory and that was not his doctrine. Eventually this pervers e sort of reasoning had to be resolved and evangelicals found that they had to resort to law to do so.Evangelicals at the time, as today, were adamant that they were the legitimate Anglicans, the true heirs of the Reformed Church of England. The case of George Gorham whence shook the movement to its roots. Bishop Philpotts of Exeter despised Evangelicals and when a Patron attempted to open Gorham to a living in the Diocese the Bishop argued and then set out to prove that Gorham did not hold to the doctrine of the Church on baptismal regeneration. This was serious because no evangelical believed in baptismal regeneration and nor did they believe that it was the doctrine of the church. If Gorham was rejected on this basis then all evangelicals could cause themselves driven out. An appeal was therefore launched but the Bishops decision was initially upheld. Evangelicals that contested the issue right to the Privy Council where they won.For Anglo-Catholics this demonstrated the prob lem of establishment that a secular court, as they saw it, had the final say. For Evangelicals it was a reminder that within the Church hierarchy they were weak and often opposed whilst they had much stronger support amongst the laity, and particularly in parliament. More importantly it demonstrated that men like Philpotts could not be trusted to read the Articles and Prayer ear tally in its plain historical meaning, revisionism had begun.From an early stage Tractarianism was manifest in Ritualism and they founded the Church Union to promote their cause. In 1865 Evangelicals responded by forming the Church tie-up which from the outset had amongst its aims the goal of clarifying the law on ritual and doctrine. Thus a series of test cases were fought which mostly, though trustworthyly not in every detail, upheld the Evangelical view.This ought to have settled matters, but of course it did not. The Ritualists still refused to abide by the law. The obvious thing would have been for Bishops to remove such clergy from office but the Bishops generally declined to do this. This failure to discipline has plagued the Church of England down to the present and has encouraged all manner of practices and beliefs to flourish unchecked.The problem therefore for Evangelicals was what to do next and this led to division amongst them. The Church stand believed it must fight on and so they took the matters to the courts. The fact was that the law forbade certain practices and the Ritualists were doing them. Therefore the courts instructed the Ritualists to stop and they did not. If the law was to be upheld then there had to be a final recourse when people refused to obey it and thus some clergy were imprisoned.But many Evangelicals all did not like this approach either because they did not like taking the matter to court in this way or because they feared the outcome. Thus J.C. Ryle in particular encouraged the creation of a new body, The Protestant Churchmens Alliance, whi ch absorbed the earlier Protestant Association. The Alliance also fought ritualism but not to the lengths the Association did. The Alliance merged eventually into the field of study Church League and thus was finally reunited with the Association in 1950 when some(prenominal) became Church Society.With the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see that the fears of many were realised because the imprisonments led to a swing in public opinion in favour of the Ritualists. At the same time the Association, as a primarily lay organisation, tried to do what the Bishops failed to do, which was preserve discipline as a mark of the Church.Today many of the practices that were opposed by our evangelical forebears are greens within the Church of England and are even found, sometimes unwittingly, in evangelical churches.David Phillips is General Secretary of Church Society.