The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years: 1833–1845

by Richard William Church, Geoffrey Best (editor)

Their unflinching and severe proclamation of Church principles and Church doctrines coincided with a state of feeling and opinion in the country, in which two very different tendencies might be observed. They fell on the public mind just when one of these tendencies would help them, and the other be fiercely hostile. On the one hand, the issue of the political controversy with the Roman Catholics, their triumph all along the line, and the now scarcely disguised contempt shown by their political representatives for the pledges and explanations on which their relief was supposed to have been conceded.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1891

About the author

Richard William Church was an English churchman and writer, known latterly as Dean Church.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard...

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work was written by a second tier adherent of the movement (who remained in the C of E). It is a valuable source on the movement, but I found the author's writing style to be somewhat difficult. Sentences contained multiple clauses; at times I had to go back to the beginning of the sentence to figure out who was the subject of the sentence. Having some prior knowledge of the political situation at that time, and how Oxford is governed, will help while reading this book.

I suspect the author is too hard on the theological liberals and their motives. At times I felt the author made the liberals the villains of the work. Like the Tractarians themselves, the liberals probably overreacted to the situation at hand. It demonstrates that faculty politics are the nastiest.

[foundfoundfound · Rating 4 out of 5]

the oxford movement was the one, brief, genuine effort to turn the church of england (essentially a catholic-hating club) into a genuinely religious body; that is, a church. it failed, naturally. the english tried religion and found it unpalatable.

r.w. church sympathetically describes, in mature high victorian prose, the process of this failure.

a useful supplementary guide to the material treated in john henry newman's classic "apologia pro vita sua".

[Christopher Pokorny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary of the Oxford/ Tractarian Movement from a second generation tractarian adherent. Having a working knowledge of the events and persons involved, help the reader make progress through the book. Seems to be middle of the road, and not pushing in any direction, but objectively reporting what happened and how it shaped the religious/scholastic/educational field at the time.