Let me begin with a confession. This paper has turned out differently from what I planned. It was to be about how Frank M. Turner treated eight life crises of John Henry Newman. But that paper would have been far too long. It has become instead more a "discourse on the method" for writing history. My remarks also come to terms with six things in JOHN HENRY NEWMAN which, when first read, I found particularly striking or even puzzling. Call my recast remarks less ambitious or a kind of "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer," substituting Turner for Chapman and Newman for Homer. Or think of our session together as a first reconnaissance trek to the lowest foothills of Mount Everest. As proposals go, it is modest.

In 1864 Charles Kingsley asked, “What, then, does Dr Newman Mean?” Dr Newman responded with APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA. I ask today, “What, then, does Dr Turner mean?” And what is he saying to whom in JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION?

Who is Dr Frank M. Turner? To what readers is he pitching his message? What is his method for writing history? How well does he apply that method? Where does he not apply it? What is there in his Newman for readers like me for whom the book was not explicitly written?

Born in 1944, Dr Frank Turner is the John Hay Whitney Professor of History at Yale University. In 1966 he was graduated from the College of William and Mary and in 1971 was awarded his PhD degree by Yale University. William and Mary bestowed an honorary doctorate in 1991. (1) 

Dr Turner writes for fellow academic historians of 19th Century England. Many have been trained to study this world as if there is no God and as if religion is entirely subjective. Without Professor Turner's magisterial encouragement, up and coming apprentices of history might be tempted not to work at all in the world of 19th Century Anglo-Catholicism and its Via Media in religion. People like them, who read one another and are willing to read most or all of Turner's citations and secondary sources, are the readers best qualified to critique his JOHN HENRY NEWMAN.

Dr Turner's book thus wins for Newman a thousand or so prima facie unlikely academic readers. This he does by showing his this-worldly, positivistic peers how they can and should apply Turner's broad-gauged, secular historical method to a 19th Century England in which most actors found religion far more salient than do today's secular researchers. Although all such scholars may read one another, not all read Newman. (3)

About reactions of less well prepared or less relentlessly secular readers who are not faculty members of major research universities Frank M. Turner seems unconcerned. Yet non-specialist readers like me cannot help but value his combative, sometimes angry, sprawling, 740 page book of the year 2002, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. 

Through this book Dr Turner shows colleagues that his boundary-disregarding, secular method finds even in the ostensibly spiritual many earthly nuggets amenable to current research techniques. He finds them in pamphlets and tomes not read by secular scholars for decades. Turner's colleagues are also implicitly invited to look anew at their own favorite personalities and themes of 19th Century England and then "go and do likewise." They should, Turner exhorts, not methodically or a priori exclude religion from the scope of their professional attention. But they should also learn to be more catholic in what they deign to notice. While not excluding religion from their works, they may, nonetheless, contentedly treat religious experiences just as positivistically as they would any other human force of the Victorian Age.

Professor Turner writes serious history intended for sober, in depth, earthbound students of 19th Century English politics, economy, religion and culture. For that reason at least 9/10 of his product resonates with the HARD TIMES philosophy of Mr M'Choakumchild and Thomas Gradgrind, "Now, what I want is, Facts. ... nothing but Facts. ... Stick to Facts, Sir!"  (4)

The genesis of THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION seems to have been Professor Turner's shocked discovery in the APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA (written 19 years after the future cardinal had become a Roman Catholic) that John Henry Newman imaginatively recast and unobjectively "spun" major events of his Anglican years. Indignation, both personal and professional, over this alleged sleight of hand sustains the author for 740 pages. (5)

In an earlier (1993) book, key, I think, to understanding his NEWMAN, Frank Turner advocated that historians

--(1) reclaim facts and forgotten treasures by doing close research on fields “once abandoned or demeaned by scholars"; (6)

--(2) ”recapture that world of concrete social reference that informed both religious and non-religious intellectual life and exchange”. (7)

After learning in addition directly from Turner's book on John Henry Newman, today's apprentice historians should also 

--(3) begin to draw on a far wider range of scholarly writings about the 19th Century: its trade, for instance, its bankruptcy laws and biographies of its scientists and statesmen;

--(4) retroactively and imaginatively apply to 19th Century England recently developed insights into such factors as truth-telling, sexuality, eating disorders, hypnotism and magic. 

One purpose (or at least one effect) of such speculations is to root firmly in context and clay the feet of lofty Tractarians, High and Dry Anglicans, Dissidents and others who took religion seriously. The spiritual is rigorously to be presented in utterly materialist contexts and grounded in day-to-day human difficulties and motivations accessible to positivistic research. Turner's intended readers may include some acolytes who read only what Turner certifies to them as important. (8)

What we amateurs derive from Dr Turner's Newman depends on how much we already know (and from what prior perspective) about Newman and his age when we first pick up Turner's book. I, for one, began THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION in the late summer of 2002, eight or nine months after commencing (based on a slim, sporadic previous acquaintance spread over decades) a relatively steady immersion since then in Newman and Newmaniana. Turner's, I judge, is no book for total beginners and may have been too much even for an advancing beginner like me. 

Since then I have re-read Turner four more times. I have cordially and constructively corresponded with him by email, while continuing to read more writings by Newman himself and additional Newman scholarship. During my first reading, Dr Turner gave me more of a detailed sense of the flow of the 90 TRACTS FOR THE TIMES and a feeling for their authors and foes and the Victorian Age than I had read anywhere else. He also seemed the first modern writer to lay out in such great detail how riled up Newman and his collaborators were against Evangelical Protestantism, as distinct from generic "liberalism." Further reading, however, now shows me somewhat less originality in Turner's NEWMAN than I first thought. But I have learned a very great deal and continue to learn more with each re-reading, especially as I run down and procure a fair number of the more readily available secondary sources on which Turner draws.

What fruit can a broader audience of amateurs, less specialized intellectuals and relatively  uncritical Newman lovers pluck from Turner's book? What do we hear him say?

I hear Frank Turner say that to grasp the Newman of history, we should read not only possibly self-serving works by Newman and by recent scholarly commentators with an agenda but also search out Newman's contemporaries, people who knew him better than any of us is ever likely to. These include his mother, his sisters, his brothers, his friends, his foes: Anglicans, Evangelicals and Dissenters along with Archbishop Richard Whately, and Roman Catholics such as Orestes Brownson. We should read with care and an open mind Blanco White, William Gladstone and Henry Manning. Throughout his narrative, Dr Turner lovingly selects secondary sources and splashes them onto his canvas with Chestertonian gusto. He implicitly invites us to dip into as many as we have time for. Not one of a score or so of his references which I have checked out has completely disappointed  me. I must confess, however, that sometimes I do not see their direct relevance to John Henry Newman. (9)

Here is how, in retrospect, I first reacted to JOHN HENRY NEWMAN: THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION. Three things now strike me.

I. Frank M. Turner elects not to apply his method at all to the Newman family's moderate bible-reading, non-fanatical version of the national Anglican faith. 

II. Frank Turner speculates at length. To me, on reading Turner for the first time, the author seemed to toss away the customary caution of the ivory tower. Instead he drew heavily on what I at first took to be recent avant garde, sometimes unproven or questionably relevant historical scholarship from other disciplines. I found, however, through subsequent rereadings and more particularly through procuring and reading a fair number of his "avant garde" sources, that what appeared speculations to me were simply widely held academic corridor talk to Professor Turner.

III. Even on a first reading, the greatest portion of Turner's chronological narrative made good sense to me. I found it particularly useful that he embedded concrete biography in broader social trends using traditional historical scholarship. Into this category fell (a) the moral centrality of patriarchal family life in England, (b) the bankruptcy of John Henry's father, (c) the symbiotic relationship between Evangelicalism, commerce and the law of evidence. And this hard headed part of his method, let me remind, makes up beyond 9/10th of his book.

In short, Frank M. Turner is persuading secular scholars to read the essentially religious Newman. He also persuades all-purpose but religiously focused Newman fans that to understand Newman's religion we need also to learn more of Newman's 19th Century context, which was a rapidly changing world embedded in mesmerism, science, colonial expansion and political experimentation.

Here is what I generally expected Turner's NEWMAN to exhibit, as he applied and followed his method.

--All important original and secondary texts 1801-1845 by Newman and  others bearing on THE CHALLENGE TO EVANGELICAL RELIGION would be selected, presented and would demonstrate careful study by the author.

--Those texts would be analyzed and interpreted by Dr Turner in a timeless way that meets high traditional and contemporary academic standards of history-writing. That is, both Edward Gibbon, Hillaire Belloc, Stuart Vyse, Barbara Weiss, Alison Winter and Mary Katherine Tillman would approve.

--The interpretive tools will, as advertised, be broad-gauged, draw on several disciplines and include up-to-date, even avant garde interpretive hypotheses developed in and for other areas by other scholars but applied, often for the first time so broadly, by Turner to Newman and 19th Century English Evangelical Protestant Religion. Turner will clearly label his speculations as such.

--The interpretations will be fresh, original and add new knowledge and insights.

 PART TWO: SIX PUZZLERS IN TURNER'S TEXT

I had at least six preliminary difficulties with Turner's NEWMAN. Either I had not realized how embedded a phenomenon like spiritualism was in Victorian England or I almost instinctively rejected themes like male anorexia. I had to come to terms with those shockers before feeling empowered to go deeper. I did, as well, go deeper but that is a writing project for the future, not now. If others feel a similar need for a rough and ready, preliminary cutting through the underbrush of Turner puzzlers, then the rest of this paper is for you. 

I also suggest future research which I would like to see done, derived from Turner's method and suggested sources.

I am sorry that Professor Turner pays virtually no attention to that concrete form of Anglicanism which John Henry Newman learned from his parents and family.

Newman himself in Chapter I of APOLOGIA briefly described this religion:

I was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible; but I had no formed religious convictions till I was fifteen. Of course I had a perfect knowledge of my Catechism.

Future researchers might usefully look into the churches in London and elsewhere which the Newmans and Fourdriniers attended. How had the old French Huguenots adapted themselves to the national religion of England? Where did John Henry's mother's family worship? The subject seems eminently suited to the Turner method. Even though others such as Maisie Ward and Sean O'Faolain have touched upon what might be called the "mere Anglicanism" of the Newmans, the field is wide open for future research. Perhaps Professor Turner can persuade his students to do fifty or so monographs on this subject over the next five years. (10)

Newman's journal  (February 9, 1824 and elsewhere) shows Newman, Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, concerned to  find money to keep his brother Francis at Oxford. Dr Turner writes:

"Again and again he prayed about his financial problems and repeatedly saw those prayers answered, as if by magic, when small amounts of money arrived unexpectedly in the mail." (NEWMAN, p.122, italics and underlining mine.)

There is nothing in Turner's cited secondary source (see end note 11) to suggest that Newman (who is not mentioned there, nor are Tractarians or Victorian England) either believed in magic or had superstitious personalities. Dr Turner seems however tacitly to invite his chosen academic readership to believe that both praying and believing that prayers will be answered are magical. (11)

 In a part of Chapter 7 called "The Tractarian Appeal to Mystery," Professor Turner connects natural theology and evangelical religion. They parallel each other through being created by applications of private judgment to their respective objects. Frank Turner cites James B. Mozley who in 1838 made a case for superstition being tolerated (albeit not actively commended or promoted) at times in the church. In an age of too much light, the church must provide a retreat into something more dim and awful (NEWMAN, p. 323). Earlier in the same year William Sewell had attacked the natural theology thrust of Paley and others (ibid., p 324). For Christians credulity trumps scepticism. Turner comments, "Of course, what Sewell here termed scepticism many people would have regarded as the everyday use of reason." (ibid., 324)

Attached to this section is Turner's tantalizing note number 61 at p. 682 which, while not strikingly a propos of the discussion, says,

My problem is that Professor Taylor does not apply material about mesmerism more directly and concretely to Newman and persons with whom Newman interacted. Mesmerism consumed many Victorians. There is no evidence presented that believing in this theology rather than that theology demonstrates predisposition to hypnotic susceptibility. (12)

Turner stresses that the rapidly asceticizing lifestyles among the most fervent Tractarians, particularly Newman's younger disciples at Littlemore, ran almost blasphemously counter to the moral and religious axioms of every moderate, comfortable, time-tested aspect of the typical Anglican or Evangelical or Dissenting family in every part of England. Celibacy, silence, fasting, use of the discipline: all these were shocking and medieval to 19th Century Englishmen. They also seem mildly shocking to Professor Turner, although he cites a goodly body of sources. (13)

Frank M. Turner makes a very good case that John Henry Newman's father's financial woes after 1815, leading to formal declaration of bankruptcy in 1821 and 1822, also had a major effect on John Henry's life and career. Late into old age the Cardinal felt defensive and obliged to defend his father's payment of his debts and honorable behavior.

Both Charles DIckens and Henry Manning had similar experiences with unanticipated family poverty. After taking his Oxford degree in 1830 Edward Manning returned to his father's home with no intention to enter a "dull and tame profession," i.e., the church. Manning wanted to enter politics and planned to stand for Parliament. But his father soon lost his money and was declared bankrupt. Henry was present at the formal declaration at Guildhall. His father later said to his son with much feeling, "I have belonged to men with whom bankruptcy was synonymous with death." Manning said, "It was so with him." Without family wealth to back him, Manning's dreamed for political career was at an end. (14)

Tantalizing is Turner's review of Newman's reputation for shaving the truth for his own advantage.  People who are very fond of the Newman of the Apologia tend particularly to dislike two of his opponents: Henry Cardinal Manning and Professor Charles Kingsley, Chaplain to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. Manning's psyche had its hidden recesses which I, for one, find increasingly explicable. Turner's book covers Newman only up to 1845. Still, its starting point is the alleged spin of Newman's life made 19 years later in APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA, a work catalyzed by Charles Kingsley's intense dislike of everything the "unmanly" and equivocating Newman allegedly stood for.

Kingsley is more complex than Manning and, I fear, even more often underrated as a Newman critic. He was a popular novelist, professor of history, churchman and crusader for causes.

Charles Kingsley objected to Newman's 20th Sermon of the Day, "Wisdom and Innocence," whose text was

"Behold," Jesus said to some of his followers,  "I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." (Matt. x. 16.) 

[For the complete text of the sermon see http://www.newmanreader.org/works/subjects/sermon20.html.]

In the end, what, does Dr Turner mean? What areas does he open up for future explorations by others?
 

Frank M. Turner’s book is history from a professional secular historian’s point of view. He does not write either to oppose or support Newman’s canonization or proclamation as Doctor of the Church. He is not trying to help or hinder religious persons who read Newman in order to draw closer to God. His publisher may hope for as wide and popular a religious readership as imaginable, but Professor Turner writes a serious history only for serious secular students of 19th Century English culture, politics, the economy, religion and other components. He does not go beyond his method. He presents "a downright account" of Newman as Newman himself called for.

[TO READ THE END NOTES ON ONE CONNECTED PAGE, CLICK HERE.]

[TO READ AN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, CLICK HERE.]

Patrick Killough
122 College Circle
Swannanoa, NC 28778
email: killswan@earthlink.net

August 2, 2003

Revisited August 9, 2008 Dallas, Texas after national Newman Association annual conference.