Peter Nockles’s THE OXFORD MOVEMENT IN CONTEXT is far too scholarly, richly detailed and subtly nuanced to be the first book about John Henry Newman or the Oxford Movement that a novice in 19th Century British history will feel up to.  The beginner might well first read Newman’s two novels CALLISTA and LOSS AND GAIN and then slowly and deliberately spiral outward and upward into the huge specialized literature about the Church of England (CoE) in the first half of the 19th Century.

With that caveat, a more advanced reader will not want to pass Nockles by. For this distinguished scholar brings to life the late 18th and early 19th Century Church of England and also its embattled on-the-defensive sisters in Scotland and Ireland. That Church is seen as it jousts with Parliament to remain “established,”  that is, both the official and the popular religion of England and a kind of partner to Crown and Government. The Oxford Movement appeared after the Reformers, the Puritans and the Methodists as yet another effort to return an increasingly worldly, secularizing CoE to Christian religious fervor. 

Inevitably, John Henry Newman takes center stage. His early conversion to Evangelical Christianity within the CoE also introduced him to patristics and the Christianity of the first five centuries. He and his associates in the reforming Oxford Movement, Richard Hurrell Froude, John Keble and Edward Pusey, as Nockles demonstrates, did not come from nowhere. They built more than they were willing to admit on often underestimated predecessors of the previous fifty years, especially among  the old “high and dry” Anglican high churchmen.

There was a nation-wide struggle for the religious heart of John Bull among Anglicans across the board, Evangelicals, Methodists, Roman Catholics, secularizers and the “middle way” Oxford Movement. Newman and colleagues moved  boldly with their 90 Tracts for the Times to vindicate the apostolic and “catholic” claims of the national church. They challenged often wealthy, worldly bishops to stand up to an interfering Parliament--even to the point of martyrdom. The Oxford Movement also sought to restore pre-Reformation beliefs and practices to a church officially, albeit weakly, Protestant.

Even as the CoE establishment beat back Newman and the Movement, it eventually absorbed many of their ideas on liturgy, reading of history, prophetical religion, celibacy, invocation of saints, auricular confession, the Eucharist, Baptism and on and  on.

In short, the Oxford Movement, like predecessor waves of reform throughout English history, left the national church an organization much more dedicated than before both to individual holiness and to ways of life inducive to collective sanctity. Ironically, as Peter Nockles concludes (p. 320) “...the Oxford Movement caused the Church of England to become theologically more tolerant when, in fact, its aim had been to make it more dogmatic.”

-OOO-

09/25/2002
Swannanoa, NC

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The making of good books about the Church of England’s 19th Century Oxford or Tractarian Movement to reinvigorate the Church of England and about its leaders, especially John Henry Newman, is an academic growth industry. That is as it should be. For the Oxford Movement attempted important things. In the short run it appeared beaten back or at least contained. But long after its heyday from 1833 to 1857 its ongoing impact has made the Church of England holier, less worldly more supernatural, more “catholic,” less protestant, more sacramental, liturgical and an appealing combination of both heart and mind.***

Peter B. Nockles wrote THE OXFORD MOVEMENT IN CONTEXT: ANGLICAN HIGH CHURCHMANSHIP 1760-1857 to do just what the name suggests--to place the movement against a broader background of 19th century churchmanship, politics, spirituality and the passionate interactions of friends, foes and families. This is a very human book. It abounds in names of people beginning with the best known: John Henry Newman, Richard Hurrell Froude, John Keble and Edward Pusey, the movement’s giants. Nockles also goes a long way to revive the reputation of Newman’s early collaborator and ultimate critic, William Patrick Palmer of Worcester College. Another name not often made so much of by scholars doing a broad survey is Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter, an implacable foe of John Henry Newman, who nonetheless almost unconsciously imbibed some of the ethos of the Oxford Movement.***

Indeed, not a few names in Nockle’s very scholarly book are of relatively minor, largely misunderstood and sometimes almost unknown figures who are shown to have set the stage for the great movement of reform.***

Newman, Froude and other leaders made those who disagreed with them at least rethink what it was that made the Church of England both credible and unique. Was that august body best thought of as Reformed Catholic? Or as Protestant Catholic? More Protestant than Catholic? More Catholic than Protestant? How important for Anglicanism were the insights of the 16th Century reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Bucer and Peter Martyr, whose ideas were tacked onto a largely Catholic set of of official documents, including the 39 Articles? Were these insights of the 1500s to be given higher intellectual and definitive status than the consensus of the early Fathers of the undivided Church through the Fifth or Sixth Century A.D.? The zeal and intellectual brilliance of the Tractarians made it impossible for others to ignore these questions.***

Even though contemporary Anglican bishops ruled that the Church of England remain staunchly Protestant, time worked in favor of the Oxford men, sometimes also called Puseyites or Newmanites. That so many Anglican or Episcopalian churches today burn candles, encourage frequent reception of the Eucharist, display rich vestments and even the Stations of the Cross can in no small measure be credited to trends begun by the Oxford Movement.***

In the 1830s and 184040s a considerable number of ardent adherents of the movement could not find what they sought within the Church of England. They then became Roman Catholics. Some affected by the Tractarian crusade, who nonetheless remained Anglicans, thought that Newman and others were too impatient, too thin skinned when faced by fairly mannerly rebukes by bishops, Thus the great politician William Ewart Gladstone is cited by Nockles writing to his friend, the future Cardinal Henry Edward Manning on October 24, 1843 (two years before Newman went over to Rome): “...he (Newman) does not see the English church in her members to be growing more Catholic from year to year. ...all have been running in the same direction but he faster than others, and I fear somewhat past his peak.” (p.301)***

For a person generally familiar with 19th Century England and its established church THE OXFORD MOVEMENT IN CONTEXT is an exciting read. Beginners, alas, should delay taking it up until they have done introductory readings. But while not the first or even the third book a novice should read about the Oxford Movement, at some point any serious, well prepared reader will be more than satisfied to have spent time with Peter Nockles’s minutely detailed survey.***

-OOO-

09/25/2002
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