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The Oxford Movement in Practice: The Tractarian Parochial Worlds from the 1830s to the 1870s

Online ISBN:
9780191822391
Print ISBN:
9780198769330
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Movement in Practice: The Tractarian Parochial Worlds from the 1830s to the 1870s

George Herring
George Herring
Centre for Lifelong Learning, University of York
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Published online:
23 June 2016
Published in print:
1 May 2016
Online ISBN:
9780191822391
Print ISBN:
9780198769330
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book presents a reinterpretation of the historical progress of the Oxford Movement challenging a number of long-accepted interpretations. It argues that Newman’s departure in 1845 was far more energizing than an impediment to the growth of Tractarianism, and that Ritualism was neither a natural nor gradual outcome of the Movement; rather it was a sudden diversion beginning in the 1860s which reversed a number of the central principles of Tractarianism such as Antiquity, Reserve, and Economy, and catholic unity. It further argues that Tractarianism cannot be understood exclusively as a movement of ideas, but that its doctrinal theories were always intended to be realized in parochial practice, and that the purpose of this was not to re-catholicize the Church of England but to re-educate Anglicans into an understanding of its already catholic nature. To that end the book employs a thematic methodology to explore how theory was put into parochial practice. A statistical survey derived from the data presented in the Appendix, which for the first time details all the known Tractarian clergy and parishes, is employed to demonstrate the numerical size and progress of the Movement. The book concludes that Ritualism distorted efforts to evaluate the relative success or failure of Tractarianism as a historical phenomenon by shifting the criteria from inner reality to outward appearance.

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