The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and their Times

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 90 BOOK REVIEW THE OXFORD MOVEMENT: A THEMATIC HISTORY OF THE TRACTARIANS AND THEIR TIMES BY C. BRAD FAUGHT The Oxford Movement: A Thematic History of the Tractarians and Their Times. By C. Brad Faught. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press,2003.Pages xi + 184.Cloth,$45.00,ISBN 0271022493; Paper, $22.50, ISBN 0-271-02394-5. To Newman scholars, much of the material in this book is familiar. We see Newman, Froude, Keble, and Pusey at Oxford joined in friendship and collaboration in the great work of defending the Anglican Church. The Oxford Movement flourishes in the 1830s as these leaders organize,preach,and write Tracts for the Times, hence the name Tractarians. Newman’s growing doubts about the Anglican Church and the Rome-ward drift of the Movement culminate in his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845—breaking his ties with beloved Oxford. There is less familiar material in Faught’s account which goes beyond 1845: viewing the work of the Oxford men spreading to Britain’s towns and cities as Tractarians and Anglo-Catholics carry on in the wake of the loss of Newman. Intended as a“modern, brief”(xi) synthesis, Faught’s book has several distinctive features in addition to the expanded time coverage. It pursues a thematic approach with separate chapters on each theme: politics, religion and theology, friendship, society,missions.(The author does not explain on what principle he has chosen these themes.)The Movement is examined largely in political terms as part of a 19th century British debate over the proper relationship between Church and State. Newman is not presented as the great leader of the Movement; Froude, Keble, and Pusey receive extensive coverage, as Faught suggests that Pusey and Keble also made major contributions to the theology of the Movement. Faught differs with Newman contemporaries such as R.W. Church who saw his conversion as “The Catastrophe” and the end of the Movement. With so many able leaders, the Movement went on, and can be said to end in 1845 only in “a restricted sense” (27). The book begins with the statement that the Oxford movement “was a seminal event in the religious, political and Social [sic] history of mid-ninteenth-century Britain” (ix). As the author moves beyond 1845 he considers the impact of the Movement on social problems, women (Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Yonge), architecture, and British missions overseas including the United States. This material is the most interesting and the freshest part of the book. The reader learns, for example,that Keble’s The ChristianYear was published in the United States in 1834; five years later the Tracts began to appear in the U.S. These topics suggest areas for further exploration by scholars. 91 However,this longer view of the impact of the Oxford Movement depends on the premise that: “Anglo-Catholicism—the heir to the Oxford Movement—came to encapsulate many of the ideas and practices advocated by the Tractarians” (27).The problem, which Faught senses but does not resolve, is that the ideas of Newman and the Oxford men are not identical to those of Anglo-Catholics. True, Pusey’s revival of Anglican sisterhoods can find roots in the fasting and asceticism of Newman and Froude and in Newman’s monastic bent evidenced at Littlemore. On the other hand, Newman had little interest in ritualism and vestments—which so engaged AngloCatholics .While Pusey showed some concern for the social conditions in Britain, the Oxford men did not take to the slums to meet these new problems. In the 1830s British society was only slowly becoming aware of these issues. Who, then, is a Tractarian? How is he defined? Faught gives lengthly (and repetitive) coverage to William Gladstone “a lay Tractarian”—an identity open to serious question. One cannot help wondering if Newman, who truly was the leader of the Movement, would have recognized the Movement in these later Tractarians. This book is clearly written especially in setting out the political context of the Movement in Chapter 1.Throughout the book there is repetition, perhaps inevitable given a thematic approach—an approach that creates difficulties for readers with no knowledge of...