As we saw in the
previous posting on this subject, just as the Oxford Movement gained what
many authorities consider its greatest triumph — neutralizing the “Broad Church”
(“Latitudinarian”) clergyman and Oxford professor Renn Hampden — it also set in
motion a reaction that would within a few years undermine the Movement and
bring it to a screeching halt, at least as far as its original purpose of
reviving the Church of England was concerned.
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| Religion without God/Christianity without Christ |
And the reaction against the Movement was intense. To take a typical example, remembered today
only because its author was Matthew Arnold, an article in the April 1836 Edinburgh Review was titled, “Dr.
Hampden and the Oxford Malignants.”
Other attacks were not quite as subtle.
At the heart of the reaction was something that early
nineteenth century ordinary members of the Church of England feared even more
than the “new things” that were flooding into the Anglican communion under
various labels. These labels included
Latitudinarianism, Broad Church, the New Christianity, Neo-Catholicism,
Liberalism, etc., and later,
Christian Socialism, Muscular Christianity, Democratic Socialism, Social
Justice, etc.
Ironically, what the ordinary member of the Church of
England feared more than anything else was the “Roman” Catholic Church with the
pope at its head . . . which was the most organized and effective force against
the “new things.” It comes as no real
surprise, then, that the most effective effort in the Church of England to deal
with the new things, the Oxford Movement, came under fire from those promoting
the new things as “Romish” and an attack on the Anglican church!
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| John Keble |
Of course, the leaders of the Oxford Movement, i.e., John Henry Newman, John Keble, and
Edward Pusey denied that they were Romanizing.
They were (in their opinion) working to return the Church of England to
its Catholic roots, but not link it in any way to corrupt Roman Catholicism. As the theory
went, Roman Catholicism was very well in its own way in those countries where
that tradition had grown up, but was an alien imposition in England, which
adhered — in theory — to a pre-Tridentine Catholicism abandoned by the Roman
Catholic Church after the Council of Trent.
Unfortunately, what gave a great deal of leverage to the
Broad Church opponents of the Oxford Movement and made matters much easier than
otherwise for Hampden’s supporters was the fact that a number of people had
joined the Movement, evidently under the impression that the intent was to
return the Church of England to the fold shepherded by the Bishop of Rome. AsS.L. Ollard noted in his book,
A new school had arisen — men who had not the love and zeal
for the English Church which had marked the first disciples. This party, to use Mr. Newman’s own
description, “cut into the original Movement at an angle, fell across its line
of thought, and then set about turning that line in its own direction.” These fresh recruits were able and brilliant
to a man, but they certainly lacked the same temper of discipline, sobriety and
self-distrust, which marked the earlier disciples. To come to names, they included Mr. W.G.
Ward, Fellow and Tutor of Balliol, originally a follower of Dr. Arnold; Mr.
F.W. Faber, Fellow of University, a poet and author of many well-known hymns;
Mr. F. Oakeley, Fellow of Balliol, Prebendary of Lichfield and incumbent of the
Margaret Street Chapel; Mr. J.B. Morris, Fellow of Exeter, an eccentric
scholar, but profoundly learned in Oriental languages; and Mr. J.D. Dalgairns,
also of Exeter College. They were mostly
“keenly religious men,” Mr. Newman says, but the witness of Dean Church who
knew them well is no less true: “The direction of these men was unquestionably
Romewards, almost from the beginning of their connection with the Movement, . .
. “Rome. . . . so far as they understood it, had attractions for them which
nothing else had.” But Mr. Newman held
them back. In the long run they were to
help ruin the Movement in Oxford. This
party stood in sharp contrast to the original men of the Movement. (S.L.
Ollard, A Short History of the Oxford Movement, op. cit., 64.)
As might be expected in an established church, the leaders
were alarmed at the direction matters were taking. As long as the Movement involved doctrine to
which few ordinary Anglicans paid any attention, or ritual practices that could
be safely confined to the few locations where they could be practiced, the
Movement could safely be ignored, marginalized and ignored, or treated with
indulgence and ignored.
The moment the Movement interfered with “real life” (as
some people think of politics), however, its fate was sealed.
#30#
