The Oxford Movement

Origins: National Apostasy and the Tracts for the Times

The movement is conventionally dated to July 14, 1833, when John Keble preached his Assize Sermon at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. Entitled 'National Apostasy,' the sermon was a passionate protest against Parliament's suppression of ten Irish bishoprics — an act Keble regarded as a sacrilegious intrusion of the civil power into the sacred order of the Church. As Peter Kerr has noted, 'the spoliation of the Irish Church in 1833 provided the initial rallying cry for the Oxford Movement.'

John Henry Newman, who heard the sermon and was deeply moved by it, later called that day the start of the Oxford Movement. Together with Keble, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Richard Hurrell Froude, and others, Newman began publishing the Tracts for the Times — ninety pamphlets issued between 1833 and 1841 that set out the theological foundations of the movement.

The Tracts argued that the Church of England was not a creature of Parliament but a branch of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, possessing a valid apostolic succession of bishops stretching back through the laying on of hands to the Apostles themselves. Tractarian rhetoric stressing apostolic descent and continuity demonstrated that the Church belonged to a tradition that was not a creature of the state and was no mere Protestant sect.

As Peter Kerr has argued, Tractarianism 'was not something which Newman, Froude and Pusey attempted to graft on to the Church of England and Ireland, but was indeed the flowering of a deeply rooted tradition within classical Anglicanism.' The deep roots of that tradition were firmly planted in the Caroline Church by bishops such as Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and Archbishop John Bramhall (1594–1663).

“Tractarianism was not something which Newman, Froude and Pusey attempted to graft on to the Church of England and Ireland, but was indeed the flowering of a deeply rooted tradition within classical Anglicanism.”

— Peter Kerr, on the roots of the Oxford Movement

Theology: Apostolicity, Sacrament, and Holiness

At the heart of the Oxford Movement was a recovery of the doctrine of apostolic succession. The Tractarians insisted that the episcopate was not merely a useful form of church government but a divinely instituted order through which the grace of ordination was transmitted. A bishop's authority derived not from the Crown or Parliament but from his unbroken consecration in the line of the Apostles.

From this flowed a high doctrine of the sacraments. Baptism was held to convey regeneration; the Eucharist was understood as a true sacrifice and a real presence of Christ. The Tractarians recovered the language of the Fathers and the Caroline Divines to articulate what they called the 'Real Presence.' The movement brought about 'a renewal in liturgy and worship in Anglicanism, with a renewal of the importance of the sacraments, and a renewed beauty and renewed sense of God's mystery in worship.'

Equally important was the call to holiness. Pusey, who became the movement's most formidable theologian after Newman's departure, wrote extensively on fasting, confession, and the interior life. The Tractarians recovered the practice of auricular confession in the Church of England, seeing it not as a Roman innovation but as an ancient pastoral provision of the Church.

The movement also renewed the Anglican understanding of priesthood and pastoral ministry. It produced a renewed self-sacrificing ideal of the priest as a man set apart for God and for his people — an ideal that would bear extraordinary fruit in the slum parishes of Victorian England.

“The Oxford Movement was a movement of Christian renewal — theological, liturgical, pastoral, and spiritual — and it was missionary in nature, demanding conviction and courage and exerting an influence on the whole Church.”

— Fr. Patrick Comerford, The Dearmer Society Lecture (2009)

Newman's Journey and the Crisis of 1845

John Henry Newman was the movement's most brilliant and restless mind. As he deepened his study of the early Fathers, he grew increasingly troubled by the question of where the authentic Catholic Church was to be found. His Tract XC (1841), which argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles were compatible with the decrees of the Council of Trent, provoked a storm of controversy and was condemned by the Oxford authorities.

Newman retired to Littlemore, a small village outside Oxford, where he lived in quasi-monastic community with a group of disciples. There, in a long agony of prayer and study, he worked out his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine — the intellectual framework that finally convinced him that the Roman Catholic Church was the true heir of the patristic tradition.

On October 9, 1845, Newman was received into the Roman Catholic Church by the Passionist priest Blessed Dominic Barberi. His departure was a shattering blow to the movement, but it did not destroy it. Pusey, Keble, and a new generation of Tractarians continued the work within the Church of England, and the movement entered a new and fruitful phase.

Newman was later made a Cardinal, and was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. He is venerated as one of the greatest religious minds of the nineteenth century, and his writings on the development of doctrine, the nature of conscience, and the grammar of assent remain landmarks of Christian thought.

The Irish Connection

One of the most important myths to dispel about the Oxford Movement is that it had little to do with the Church of Ireland. In fact, it was events affecting the life of the Church of Ireland that provided the immediate impetus for the movement. The Erastian reforms introduced by the Whigs in the early 1830s — reducing by ten the number of Episcopal sees in the Church of Ireland — were seen as treating the Church as merely one other department of government. Keble's Assize Sermon was a direct response to this 'national apostasy.'

Even before Keble's sermon, there were leading High Church figures in the Church of Ireland who were precursors of the Oxford Movement, including Bishop John Jebb of Limerick and the layman Alexander Knox. And the movement's deep roots were firmly planted in the Caroline Church of Ireland by bishops such as Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) and Archbishop John Bramhall (1594–1663).

Three bishops of the Church of Ireland in the nineteenth century illustrate the movement's Irish dimension. Richard Mant (1776–1848), Bishop of Down and Connor, was unequivocal about his High Church allegiance, arguing for baptismal regeneration in his Bampton Lectures and becoming a patron of the Cambridge Camden Society. Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886) of Dublin, known to his detractors as 'Puseyite Trench,' fought to preserve the Catholic inheritance of the Book of Common Prayer at Disestablishment. Archbishop William Alexander came under the influence of Newman while an undergraduate at Oxford and is said to have almost followed him to Rome.

Among the key Irish figures in the wider Anglo-Catholic movement were Father Robert Dolling (born at Magheralin, Co Down), the quintessential East End slum priest; John Dowden (born in Cork), the church historian who became Bishop of Edinburgh; Archdeacon George Dundas Carleton from Dublin, who played a key role in organising the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress; Dean Richard Church of St Paul's, son of a Cork merchant; and Charles Gore (1853–1932), the leading intellectual of the second generation of Anglo-Catholics, whose parents were both Irish-born.

“Tractarianism was not something which Newman, Froude and Pusey attempted to graft on to the Church of England and Ireland, but was indeed the flowering of a deeply rooted tradition within classical Anglicanism.”

— Peter Kerr, on the roots of the Oxford Movement

Reshaping the Liturgy

Perhaps the most visible and controversial contribution of Anglo-Catholicism over the years has been the reshaping of Anglican liturgy. With that reshaping came renewal in church music, architecture and art, and in time this movement also taught Anglicanism as a whole — including Evangelicals — to be more Eucharistic in worship.

One approach came from Prayer-Book Catholicism, which tried to cultivate an 'Olde English' style of worship, demonstrating that Catholic worship was entirely compatible with loyal conformity to the Book of Common Prayer. A second approach, the Missal Tradition, emerged in the early twentieth century, when many Catholic-minded Anglicans used the Anglican Missal instead of the Book of Common Prayer and wore Roman-style vestments, introducing popular devotions such as the Rosary and Benediction.

From the 1930s on, a third approach — the Parish Communion Movement, or the Liturgical Movement — gained influence. Reaching back beyond both the Book of Common Prayer and the Missal, this movement sought out the liturgical ethos and practices of early Christianity. They increased lay participation in worship, celebrated facing the people, introduced congregational singing of the Mass, and simplified ceremonial. It is this third phase that has made Anglo-Catholicism's greatest contribution to Anglican liturgy today.

We should never forget that this contribution to the wider church came at a price. Priests who were regarded as ritualists were suspended, dismissed, assaulted and even jailed for practices that are now the norm, including the use of lighted altar candles. Eventually even a bishop — Edward King of Lincoln — found himself in court defending his practice of the Catholic faith and his efforts to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Hymnody: A Treasury of Praise

From the Wesley brothers to Graham Kendrick, the impression is often given that hymn-writing and hymn-singing is the preserve of evangelicals. Yet the greatest treasury of Anglican hymnody must be the one stacked high with the works of the Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics, including John Henry Newman, John Keble, John Mason Neale, and Percy Dearmer.

Newman gave us 'Praise to the Holiest in the Height,' 'Firmly I Believe and Truly,' and 'Lead, Kindly Light' — written just a month before Newman heard Keble preach his Assize Sermon. Keble gave us 'New Every Morning Is the Love,' 'Sun of My Soul, Thou Saviour Dear,' and 'Hail, Gladdening Light.' John Mason Neale, suspended by his bishop for fourteen years for his 'ritualism,' used that time to make some of the finest hymns of the Orthodox Church and of Thomas Aquinas accessible to the English-speaking world — including 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,' 'Good King Wenceslas,' and 'Of the Father's Love Begotten.'

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895), a Church of Ireland hymn-writer in the Tractarian tradition, gave us 'Once in Royal David's City,' 'There Is a Green Hill Far Away,' and 'All Things Bright and Beautiful.' Her religious work was strongly influenced by her contacts with the Oxford Movement, including Dean Hook of Chichester and John Keble himself.

Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) collaborated with Ralph Vaughan Williams in editing the English Hymnal (1906, 1933), as well as editing the Oxford Book of Carols (1928) and Songs of Praise (1925, 1931). The Anglo-Catholic contribution to Anglican hymnody and choral heritage is incalculable — it shaped the devotional life of the entire English-speaking Church.

The Slum Priests and the Social Conscience of Anglicanism

In the generation after Newman, the Oxford Movement's theological convictions found expression in a great revival of liturgical worship and, more heroically, in the slums of Victorian England. In the East End of London, the 'slum priests' were known for their audacity and their piety. In places such as the mission church of Saint George's in the East, thuribles were swung, genuflecting was encouraged, the sign of the cross was made frequently, devotion to the Blessed Sacrament was taken for granted, confessions were heard, and holy anointing was practised.

Father Charles Lowder knew the poor must be brought the ministry of Christ in the celebration of the sacraments and the preaching of the Gospel. Beauty and holiness had to be brought into the midst of squalor and depression, as a witness to the Catholic faith in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God, present and active in his world. The sick and the dying were to receive this sacramental presence as far as was possible; deathbed confessions, the oil of unction, even occasionally Holy Communion from the reserved sacrament, became the priests' weapons against the horrors of the cholera epidemic in East London in 1866.

Father Robert William Radclyffe Dolling (1851–1902), born at Magheralin, Co Down, was the quintessential East End slum priest, heading up Saint Martin's mission in Stepney and working with the Winchester Mission in the slums of Portsmouth. His biographer records his social convictions in his own words: 'I speak out and fight about the drains because I believe in the Incarnation.'

As the Anglo-Catholic slum priests brought the slum dwellers and the working class a taste of the beauty and the holiness of the kingdom of God in the midst of their squalor, they were posing a sacramental challenge to the ugliest expressions of industrialisation and capitalism. Geoffrey Rowell writes: 'The legend of the Anglo-Catholic slum priest is not without foundation … they maintained that the richness of Eucharistic worship was not only the legitimate heritage of the Church of England, but that which embodied as nothing else could the sense of the reality of Divine grace in a way which could be grasped by the poor and unlettered.'

Maurice Reckitt comments on the 'ritualism' of the Anglo-Catholic slum churches: 'The Ritualists were teaching not only through the ear but through the eye — even in extreme cases through the nose — an illiterate race of social outcasts who could learn only with difficulty by more intellectual means amidst the hideous squalor of such places as London Docks and Miles Platting. The worship of God in which they joined was, by the violent contrast to all else in their lives, at once a vindication of the other-worldliness of their faith and an implicit condemnation of the filthy environment amid which the social sin of an acquisitive and complacent ruling class had condemned them to live.'

“The richness of Eucharistic worship was not only the legitimate heritage of the Church of England, but that which embodied as nothing else could the sense of the reality of Divine grace in a way which could be grasped by the poor and unlettered.”

— Geoffrey Rowell, The Vision Glorious

Anglo-Catholic Socialism

Father Henry Stanton, of Saint Alban's, Holborn, once told an audience: 'As the only thing I care much for is Socialism, I am a very dangerous lecturer.' He strongly sympathised with the Paris Commune of 1871, referred to himself only half in jest as 'Citizen Stanton,' and was inspired by the 'clubs' of the Paris Commune to form his Brotherhood of Jesus of Nazareth for working-class men and boys.

Bishop Brooke Foss Westcott, one of the founders of the Christian Social Union, almost echoed Marx in 1890 when he wrote: 'Wage labour, though it appears to be an inevitable step in the evolution of society, is as little fitted to represent finally or adequately the connection of man with man in the production of wealth as in earlier times slavery or serfdom.' Around the same time, Stewart Headlam was speaking about 'Sacramental Socialism,' seeing in the Eucharist a vision of the social and political Emancipator.

Bishop Charles Gore was a leading figure in the Christian Social Union too. He always said that his passion for social justice dated from a tour of the slums of Oxfordshire with the trade union leader Joseph Arch. Members of the Community of the Resurrection, founded by Gore in 1892, consistently demonstrated a strong Christian social commitment. Politically, Percy Dearmer too was an avowed socialist, serving as secretary of the Christian Social Union from 1891 to 1912, and after his appointment as a canon of Westminster Abbey in 1931 he ran a canteen for the unemployed from the abbey.

It was the combination of incarnational and sacramental theology and social concern which was the keynote of Bishop Frank Weston's address to the Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1923. He believed that the sacramental focus gave a reality to Christ's presence and power that nothing else could: 'The one thing England needs to learn is that Christ is in and amid matter, God in flesh, God in sacrament.' And so he concluded with words that have become justly famous: 'You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums … It is folly — it is madness — to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the throne of glory, when you are sweating him in the souls and bodies of his children.'

“You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums.”

— Bishop Frank Weston, Anglo-Catholic Congress (1923)

The Revival of Religious Life

One of the most remarkable fruits of the Oxford Movement was the revival of the religious life in the Church of England. In 1841, Pusey heard the profession of Mother Marian Hughes, the first profession of a nun in the Church of England for three centuries. In 1852, the widowed Harriet Monsell (1811–1883) was professed a religious by Canon T.T. Carter, the 'Last of the Tractarians,' and became the first superior of the Community of Saint John the Baptist at Clewer, near Windsor.

Mother Harriet was born in Dromoland Castle, Co Clare — a sister of Lord Inchiquin and the Irish patriot William Smith O'Brien, and sister-in-law of the Irish Tractarian hymn-writer John Monsell. Three years after her profession, the Society of the Holy Cross was founded by Charles Lowder in 1855, drawing inspiration from the work of Saint Vincent de Paul in seventeenth-century France.

Since then, the role of Anglican religious orders in mission has been immense. They include most notably the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (the Cowley Fathers), founded by Richard Benson in 1866; the Community of the Resurrection (the Mirfield Fathers), founded in 1892 by Charles Gore; and the Society of the Sacred Mission (the Kelham Fathers), founded in 1893 by Father Herbert Kelly. Contemplative orders such as the Benedictines at Alton Abbey, Burford Priory, and Malling Abbey have fostered holiness and scholarship.

These communities kept alive the tradition of the Daily Office, the choral Mass, and the contemplative life that the Reformers had suppressed. They became schools of prayer for generations of Anglican Catholics and sent missionaries to Africa, Asia, and the Americas who planted the Catholic tradition in the Anglican churches of the Global South.

Education, Mission, and the Anglican Communion

Saint Columba's College, Rathfarnham, was founded in 1843 by Lord Emly, Lord Adare, and the Revd Dr William Sewell with the intention of training Irish-speaking missionaries within the Tractarian tradition. The Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic influence was particularly notable in Trinity College Dublin, which counted nine Tractarian clergy among its graduates up to 1835, and at least forty-three in the period 1836–1870. Trinity also developed its own missionary society with Anglo-Catholic leanings: the Dublin University Mission to Chota Nagpur, founded in 1890.

As Sykes and Gilley have shown, the Anglican Communion as we know it today exists primarily because of the missionary impulses that can be traced to the Oxford Movement — the understanding of the episcopate pioneered by the Tractarians in the 1830s, and the massive reinforcement the movement gave to the existence of the episcopate beyond the boundaries of the Church of England. They note the high impact the Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic movements had on Anglicanism in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada — places where Irish High Church, Tractarian, and Anglo-Catholic missionaries were most active.

The best-known of these Irish missionaries was 'Father Pat' — Henry Irwin (1859–1902), educated at Saint Columba's College and Keble College, Oxford, who worked as an SPG missionary on the Canadian frontier. His life was notable for its hardship, the tragic death of wife and child, and his unwavering, selfless dedication. A key role in the later shaping of the Anglican Communion was played by another Irish High Church bishop, Henry Montgomery (1847–1932), from Moville, Co Donegal, who became Secretary of SPG (1901–1918), inspired and directed the Pan-Anglican Congress of 1908, and served as secretary to the 1908 and 1920 Lambeth Conferences.

It was proposals in 1865 from one Irish-born Tractarian bishop in Canada, John Travers Lewis (1825–1901) from Co Cork, Bishop and later Archbishop of Ontario, that led to the calling of the first Lambeth Conference in 1867. As Sykes and Gilley summarise it: 'No Bishop, No Church!' — the Tractarian doctrine of apostolic succession was the theological engine that drove the formation of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

“No Bishop, No Church!”

— Sykes and Gilley, summarising the Tractarian doctrine of apostolic succession

The Essentials of Anglo-Catholic Spirituality: Twelve High Views

Drawing on the work of John D. Alexander, Fr. Patrick Comerford identifies twelve 'high views' that characterise authentic Anglo-Catholic spirituality. The Oxford Movement tried to recapture a vision and identity of Anglicanism as Catholic — holding the faith of the universal Church: the catholic scriptures, creeds and doctrines as defined by the Councils of the early undivided Church, the Catholic ministry and order of bishops, priests and deacons, the sacraments of the Catholic Church, and our continuity and communion with the early Fathers. As Bishop Frank Weston said at the 1920 Lambeth Conference: 'Why am I obliged to take my view of the Church's teaching from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the Church is 1,920 years old?'

1. I

   A High View of God

   Anglo-Catholic worship at its best cultivates a sense of reverence, awe, and mystery in the presence of the Holy One.

2. II

   A High View of Creation

   The Anglo-Catholic view of the world is highly sacramental, seeing signs of God's presence and goodness everywhere in God's creation. In worship, the best of creation — as reflected in art, craftsmanship, music, song, flowers, incense, etc. — is gathered up and offered back to God.

3. III

   A High View of the Incarnation

   Our salvation began when Christ took flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. God became human in order to transform human existence through participation in his divine life. The Collect of the First Sunday of Christmas expresses this Anglo-Catholic vision perfectly: "O God, who wonderfully created us in your own image, and yet more wonderfully restored us through your Son Jesus Christ: Grant that, as he came to share in our humanity, so we may share the life of his divinity."

4. IV

   A High View of the Atonement

   Evangelical detractors often overlook the fact that authentic Anglo-Catholicism looks not only to Christ's Incarnation but also to his Sacrifice. Anglo-Catholic spirituality entails a lifelong process of turning from sin and towards God. And so, many Anglo-Catholics find the Sacrament of Penance an indispensable aid in this process.

5. V

   A High View of the Church

   We come to share in the divine life of the risen and ascended Christ by being incorporated through Baptism into his Body, the Church. And so the universal Church is neither an institution of merely human origin, nor a voluntary association of individual believers, but is a wonderful mystery, a divine society, a supernatural organism, whose life flows to its members from its head, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

6. VI

   A High View of the Communion of Saints

   The Church includes not only all Christians now alive on earth (the Church Militant), but also the Faithful Departed, who continue to grow in the knowledge and love of God (the Church Expectant), and the Saints in Heaven, who have reached their journey's end (the Church Triumphant). And so, we have fellowship with all who live in Christ.

7. VII

   A High View of the Sacraments

   Christ really and truly communicates his life, presence, and grace to us in the Sacraments, enabling us to give our lives to God and our neighbour in faith, hope, and love. Baptism establishes our identity once and for all as the children of God and the heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Eucharist, Christ becomes objectively present in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood.

8. VIII

   A High View of Holy Orders

   Since the days of the Oxford Movement, Anglo-Catholicism has borne witness to the threefold ministry of bishops, priests, and deacons in Apostolic Succession. The validity of our sacraments, and the fullness of our participation in the life of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, is intimately linked to the faithful stewardship of this gift.

9. IX

   A High View of Anglicanism

   The Anglican Churches are truly part of Christ's one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Anglo-Catholicism has borne a prophetic witness to the catholicity of Anglicanism. Since the days of the Oxford Movement, the standard has been the faith and practice of the ancient, undivided Church, holding ourselves, and our Anglican institutions, accountable to the higher authority of the universal Church.

10. X

    A High View of Mission

    Others may argue which came first, mission or the Church. But Anglo-Catholicism brought both together, for the Church could not be confined to the boundaries of the state, any more than it was a department of state — and so, as a consequence, gave us the worldwide Anglican Communion.

11. XI

    A High Standard of Hymnody

    Whatever you think of Songs-of-Praise type services, where would we have been last Christmas without Cecil Frances Alexander's 'Once in Royal David's City' or John Mason Neale's 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel'? The Anglo-Catholic tradition has given the whole Church its richest treasury of sacred song.

12. XII

    A Highly-Tuned Social Conscience

    If the Church is the sacrament of the Kingdom of God, then those who are nourished by its sacramental life must seek incarnationally to provide sacramental signs of the kingdom today. As Bishop Frank Weston declared: 'You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slums.'

These twelve high views are not a checklist but a vision — a coherent account of what it means to be a Catholic Christian in the Anglican tradition. They flow from one another as naturally as the articles of the Creed, and together they describe a way of being the Church that is at once ancient and urgently contemporary.

“I speak out and fight about the drains because I believe in the Incarnation.”

— Father Robert Dolling (1851–1902)

Legacy: The Anglican Catholic Tradition

The rediscovered emphases on apostolic succession and the Catholicity of the church, on priesthood, on sacrament and sacrifice, on prayer, holiness and the beauty of worship, are the legacy left by the Tractarians and the Anglo-Catholic movement. They were the most important religious reawakening in these islands in the nineteenth century, giving rise to a renaissance in spirituality, theology, scholarship, liturgy, music, art, and architecture, and to the revival of religious orders and communities.

The legacy of the Oxford Movement is a living faith in the incarnate Lord expressed in sacramental worship and self-sacrificing love for others. This is the meaning of the Gospel and the Catholic Faith. May it find forms and expressions that will enable it to continue to bring God's love to people in our own day.

The Holy Catholic Church Anglican Rite stands in direct continuity with this tradition. We hold the faith of the Apostles as transmitted through the undivided Church of the first millennium, expressed in the classical Anglican formularies, and renewed by the Oxford Movement's recovery of Catholic order, sacrament, and holiness. In our worship, our ministry, and our common life, we seek to be faithful heirs of that great inheritance.