Tractarians for Our Times

BRIAN HORNE finds much to enjoy in a collection of essays on the Oxford movement
From Oxford to the People: Reconsidering Newman and the Oxford Movement. Edited by Paul Vaiss, Gracewing, £15.99 THREE YEARS AGO a conference was held to commemorate the 160th anniversary of a sermon preached on July 14, 1833, before the University of Oxford by John Keble. That such an event should have taken place is not, in itself, surprising: the
famous "Assize Sermon" has
long been held to mark the beginning of a movement that was to revolutionise the life of the Church of England, and scholars have met at regular intervals to celebrate the occasion. What is surprising is that the conference was held in France at Paris X University in Nanterre.
As Geoffrey Rowell remarks in
his forward to this book, it would have astonished the leaders of the Oxford Movement, John Keble, John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey, to be commemorated in Paris, which was associated for them with Revolution. But as the years pass it is becoming increasingly apparent that the theological issues raised by the Tractarians have a significance that reaches far beyond the borders of England.
This volume of sixteen essays is the fruit of that conference of
1993. At the centre of the book is the figure of John Henry, Cardinal Newman which is as it should be, for he was at the centre of the Oxford Movement; inspiring it and energising it with his distinctive genius until he resigned his incumbency at Litticmore in 1843 and withdrew from the Church
of England. His departure left the movement temporarily bereft of leadership and many of its members feeling bewildered and betrayed. Hence the importance attached to his "autobiography" when it appeared in 1864, the Apologia Pro Vita Sua in which the story of his spiritual journey was publicly narrated. But it is an enigmatic work, and the two essays on the Apologia, one by a distinguished Anglican historian, Owen Chadwick, the other by Newman's Roman Catholic biographer, Ian Kcr, demonstrate the tantalising ambiguity of the author's account of himself.
There is a rich variety in these essays: some focus upon the intellectual and spiritual precursors to the Oxford Movement, others investigate the early influences upon Newman himself. Some are
sociological or historical in their tendencies, others strictly theological. All bring insights that are fresh and illuminating, but there are three essays of particular interest to contemporary readers for they touch upon concerns that are as vital today as they were a century ago.
Peter Nockles in Church and King: Tractarian Politics Reappraised clearly shows that the Oxford Movement, which in many ways was a call to radical change within the Church, was nonetheless far from radical in political matters and, for the most part, argued strongly for the continuation of the Establishment of the Church of England. This paradoxical state of affairs is explained by their fear of secularisation.
"In the spirit of Tory Anglican
ism, Newman regarded the challenge to the hereditary monarchical principle as an aspect of secularisation rather than as an assertion of ecclesiastical liberty". This is said of' Newman in his early years, but it was a position held consistently by Keble, who looked back to the early seventeenth century as an era in which Church and State were ideally related. Only Hurrell Froude offered a genuine challenge to the status quo and it alarmed his Tractarian friends.
On the other hand, Stephen Prickett argues convincingly that the conventional picture of its leaders as men who had little or no interest in social change needs adjustment. His fascinating account of Keble's Crewian Oration at the Oxford Commemoration ceremony demonstrates
Keble's passionate concern for educational reform.
Sheridan Gilley's contribution, The Ecciesiology of the Oxford Movement, is perhaps the most disturbing and pertinent of all the essays. It is also the most personal. Newman is, again, at the centre of the picture, and Gilley's account of the subject under discussion is, in a sense, also his own Apologia. The editor, in his introduction, points out that this essay, more than any other, "brings the issues raised by the Oxford Movement to bear on the present situation of the Church of England" (p 5). Indeed it does; but its author's sharp criticisms of Anglican ecclesiology end on a personal note that will echo in the hearts of many who have been distressed by the present crisis in the Church of England.