The 19th-century Oxford Movement sought to reform the English church, reconstituting it on High Church principles. The movement formally began in July 1833 with a sermon by Oxford professor of poetry John Keble on national apostasy. Keble attacked threats to the church, including Erastianism (subordination to the government), and Latitudinarianism, the formal name for the laxness with which his contemporaries approached church ritual and dogma.

Three additional Oxford dons joined Keble’s lead: Edward Bouverie Pusey, Hebrew professor; John Henry Newman; and Richard Hurrell Froude. Over the next 12 years following the presentation of Keble’s ideas, a crucial period for reform occurred that proved seminal to all aspects—religious, political, and social—of Britain’s 19th-century development. These four men launched a crusade to counter what they viewed as the liberal spirit of their era. They were also known as Tractarians, based on their publication of Tracts for the Times, a document that attacked Parliament’s passing of the Irish Church Bill in 1833 as a threat to the sovereignty of the sacred church.

The bill resulted from the fears of the Duke of Wellington, then prime minister, and some members of his Tory Party that the Irish might revolt if they did not pass a bill repealing the Corporation Acts of 1661 that prevented Roman Catholics from holding an elected seat in Parliament. Representatives of the Church of England at Oxford saw the act as a betrayal and sacrilege.

John Keble

As the movement expanded, it sought to reinstitute High Church doctrine, supported by the belief in the divine nature of the Church of England and the importance of the Book of Common Prayer, a service book in use since the 16th century. As part of the rituals, accompanying vestments were donned and incense used. Influenced by Methodism, the movement urged “earnestness” on the part of young men and led to an Evangelical approach. Anglo-Catholic practices had their roots in medieval times, dictating appropriate food for certain days.

Keble later moved to Hursley to serve as a clergyman, partly because as a reserved individual, he did not like the type of intellectualism and lack of humility practiced by some of Oxford’s dons. He saw little place for logic in matters of faith. The lively and outspoken Froude, conversely, thrived in such an atmosphere, while the scholarly Pusey used his authority to establish six features, comprising “Puseyism.” They included high regard for two sacraments, for ordinances, and for “the visible part of devotion,” which included the “decorations” of the church.

Keble’s departure pushed the movement into a new stage. More liberal church members protested the movement, charging its leaders with an attempt to return to Roman Catholicism, a charge Pusey countered by expressing a desire for a blend of the English and Roman churches. While the four dons did not agree on every issue, their common goal led to a near-unshakable unity.

It was broken by Newman’s famous conversion to Catholicism in 1845, a consequence of the call to a return to medieval ritual that Keble had foreseen as a possible result and hoped to avoid. While that conversion signaled the movement’s formal conclusion, it simply moved the center of activity from Oxford to London and into the country.

The Oxford Movement eventually touched all areas of English life, including education and the social challenges that arose with industrialization, art, and architecture. Tractarian missions were founded and operated by nuns, usually from nursing orders. They offered health and education services to the poor and helped train young women in nursing. The English landscape reflected the religious revolution, adding schools and orphanages, as well as in the new churches, almost always of a Gothic design to emphasize the ideals of an earlier age.

Novels of the time, including Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley (1849), alluded to the movement, while others, including everything published by Charlotte Yonge, a neighbor of John Keble, built entire plots and designed themes around the doctrines. In the country, his ideals slowly became a part of rural life, and Yonge determined that her novels would imaginatively reflect the stages of the movement. She discussed many of the plots with Keble, whom she referred to as “my vicar,” listening as he cautioned her not to specifically mention doctrines but to emphasize the movement’s code of conduct.

Her popular Heir of Redclyffe (1853), for example, promoted the idea that redemption may only be achieved through self-sacrifice. As her popularity grew in the 1850s and 1860s, she included among her friends individuals representing the various phases and influences on the religious revival. Her two-volume Pillars of the House, or, Under Wode Under Rode (1873) brought all the church themes together, treating what were innovations as commonplace; society had accepted the reforms and the marks of the movement were everywhere evident.

Bibliography
Dennis, Barbara. Charlotte Yonge: Novelist of the Oxford Movement: A Literature of Victorian Culture and Society. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1992.
Fought, C. Brad. The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and Their Times. University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.

Categories: British Literature, Literary Terms and Techniques, Literature, Novel Analysis

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