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The Oxford Movement in Practice
The Tractarian Parochial World from the 1830s to the 1870s
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3/28/2018 The Oxford Movement in Practice | Reading Religion
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Prac ce)
George Herring
New York, NY: Oxford University Press, July 2016. 384 pages. $120.00. Hardcover. ISBN 9780198769330. For other formats: Link to Publisher's Website.
Review
In the years preceding the publica on of the 1837 Lectures On the Prophe cal Office of the Church, John Henry Newman had been laboring to establish
a theological warrant for the con nued existence of the Church of England in an apostolic ethos. Facing the poli cal emancipa on of Catholics along
with dissen ng Protestants, Newman and his Tractarian compatriots championed the unique apostolic succession of Anglican clergy, sacramental life, and
the apostolic origins of its Book of Common Prayer as guarantors of their church’s future should it be disestablished. Newman’s ongoing study of the
fi h‑century monophysite controversy conspired in the summer of 1839 with Nicholas Wiseman’s review of the Tracts for the Times and the two proved
devasta ng for Newman’s apostolic theory of the Church of England. This set Newman on an ill‑fated quest of English catholicity with his infamous Tract
90 and its thorough repudia on by the English episcopate which led Newman to gradually depart the Church of England for Roman Catholicism between
1841 and 1845.
In The Oxford Movement in Prac ce, George Herring presents a new historical explora on of Tractarianism as it manifested in the wake of Newman’s
conversion. The work is richly sourced, making important use of careful demographic and sta s cal research to locate the work of Tractarian clergy
within English parochial life. The result is a broader, more‑textured portrait than previous explora ons focusing on the Oxford Movement’s standard
luminaries—Newman, John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude, and Edward Pusey. As such, Herring’s work fills a significant lacuna in the field. As he argues,
despite their having comprised no more than five percent of the total number of English clergy, the dis nc ve ideas of Tractarian‑inspired clergymen
con nued to flavor English parochial life in a manner wholly dispropor onate to their compara vely small number.
A second sec on summarizes the development of key Tractarian themes as they were implemented on the ground from the 1840s through the 1860s.
Here, Herring makes rich use of the wri ngs of local Tractarian clergy as they aimed to prac cally animate the apostolic ethos made popular by the
voluminous literary output of Newman and his in mate Oxonian compatriots. Chapters on the dis nc ve role of the clergy, liturgy and ceremonial, daily
prayer, sacramental prac ce, and pastoral prac ce demonstrate the concerted a en on of local clergy to recover authen c Chris anity from various
modern lapses while remaining loyal to the episcopal governance that was not always suppor ve of their intended goals. Par cularly deligh ul in this
vein is Herring’s explora on of various prac cal ini a ves undertaken by Tractarian clergy in the name of their more comprehensive theological vision.
His par cular account of the group’s campaign to remove rented box pews—symbols of worldly socioeconomic dis nc on in the 1840s and 1850s—
illustrates the dynamic rela onship between theology and church prac ce inherent in Tractarianism.
A third sec on presents a forceful rejec on of Nigel Yates’s well‑known argument for the fundamental con nuity between Tractarianism and the later
Ritualist movement. In its place, Herring argues for a fundamental discon nuity between the two based on Ritualist tendencies to circumvent
episcopal/canonical authority, and in the corresponding ina en on among Ritualists to the established Tractarian virtues of reserve and economy. Here,
Herring clearly favors the Tractarian side—par cularly for its a empt to establish apostolic prac ces through a less‑controversial, bo om‑up method
rather than by the more abrupt, and contested, top‑down means. In the end, however, his sharp arguments for discon nuity largely depend on the
privileging of evidences overlooked by Yates while downplaying evidences that be er establish a genuine line of succession. If one cannot judge that
Herring has achieved thorough reversal, his presenta on certainly serves as an important correc ve counterpoint to standard treatments of the
rela onship between the two movements.
In many ways The Oxford Movement in Prac ce serves well as a specula ve account of what might have been had Newman’s 1839 crisis not happened.
Although Herring amply roots his case in the wri ngs of later Tractarians, I was quite taken by Newman’s ubiquity throughout the volume. Certainly any
treatment of the Oxford Movement cannot stray far from Newman’s long shadow, but the short‑lived dura on of Herring’s dis nc ve Tractarianism—
from 1845 to the onset of Ritualism in 1858—gestures in its own way to the fundamental instability of Newman’s constructed “apostolical” religion.
Apostolic connec on to the church of history longs for a catholic connec on beyond the local church. As Newman moved from his Via Media and began
to explore the dogma c poten al for renewed communion between the churches of England and Rome, Ritualism might be profitably contemplated as a
similar explora on on liturgical grounds. Newman spoke of his own experiment as “proving canon,” and his conversion bears witness to his judgment
that the canon had failed. One wonders if Herring’s compara vely nega ve portrait of the transi on from Tractarianism to Ritualism suggests a similar
judgment.
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