The Peel Web

Religion in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

This movement grew out of the Whig reforms of the early 1830s, particularly the 1832 Reform Act and the alliance of the Whigs with the Dissenters in the cause of religious freedom. The Whigs clearly disliked the attitude of a majority of bishops in the House of Lords during the Reform Bill debates, and their tampering with the Irish Church made many staunch supporters of the Anglican Church fear that a reformed parliament would end by reforming not only the State but the Church. Many High Churchmen were alarmed at the Whig attitude towards the Anglican Church - which explains why Gladstone was a member of the Oxford Movement.

The ideas of the Oxford Movement were confined largely to the intellectual elite of Oxford University which concerned itself hardly at all with the problems of industrial Britain. All those involved in the movement agreed that the Anglican Church was in danger of final spiritual decay because it had forgotten the doctrines of the apostolic succession, the priesthood and the sacramental system.

John Henry Newman led the way by publishing Tracts for the Times, starting in 1833. This was the same year that John Keble delivered his sermon on 'National Apostasy'. The tracts were always short; the first one was on the apostolic succession. By the end of 1834, some 46 tracts had been written and distributed. Newman converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845 because he found that all his arguments defending the Anglican Church were more appropriate to the Roman Catholic claim to be the true Church.

Edward Pusey then joined the Tractarians (as they were now called) - he was a professor and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. He taught that the Anglican Church belonged to the wider Catholic [universal] church, and encouraged a greater care for external order and ceremonial in services. The revival of interest in church architecture and ritual was part of the broader revival of historical studies. The Anglican Church returned to its original roots, concentrating much more on the 'beauty of holiness'. As a result of the work of the Oxford Movement, the Church of England became much more sacramental; ritual returned; vestments were used once more.