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Quodlibet Journal: Volume 1 Number 5, August 1999
http://www.Quodlibet.net
The Oxford Movement and the 19th-Century
Episcopal Church:
Anglo-Catholic Ecclesiology and the American
Experience
© Larry Crockett
Few movements in church history have
received as much attention--the accolades, the condemnation, or,
indeed, the critical study--as the development in early and middle
19th-century English history of what is know variously as
"Tractarianism," "the Oxford Movement" or "Puseyism." Chadwick, for
example, argues that "The Oxford Movement changed the external face,
and the internal spirit, of English religious life."1
But its influence reaches well beyond the Anglican communion: Imberg
evidently cites with approval the suggestion that John Henry Newman
was one of the fathers of Vatican II conciliarism,2
and Dale Johnson argues that Tractarianism influenced even the
English nonconformist traditions.3
In terms of the Oxford Movement and the Episcopal Church, Holmes
argues that "The issues raised in the 1830s and 1840s by the Oxford
Movement formed a central tension that has colored the Episcopal
Church's worship and theology ever since."4
DuBose, at the end of his life, granted that he "passed through and
was enriched by the more Catholic stage of the Oxford
Movement."5
DeMille observes that it has often been supposed that "the High
Church movement in the United States was an imported affair--a mere
offshoot of the Oxford Movement."6
William Palmer Ladd, parodying some of the "antics" he witnessed in
Episcopal worship in the 1940s, complains that "the Oxford Movement
bequeathed to us an evil heritage ... [because] its leaders
turned with longing eyes toward Rome."7
Indeed, DeMille grants that "the Tracts were far more
favorably received in America than in England."8
Perhaps the plain way to take DeMille's
observation is that, since the Tracts were more favorably
received in America than England, then they were much more
influential in American than English history and, therefore, did more
to change American church practice and theology than that of England.
Another way to take DeMille's observation, however, is that the
Tracts were favorably received by American churchmen who were
already in the midst of a native yet maturing catholic movement. In
other words, to be "far more favorably received" would mean that the
Tracts were less influential than has usually been supposed
because a fair number in the American church had already reached, in
part or in full, many of the ecclesiological views advocated in the
Tracts for the Times. In fact, it is this thesis that I wish
to assess and finally espouse in this paper.
Can we marshal a succinct definition of
Tractarianism? Two emphases center about the doctrine of the
church9:
1) a high ecclesiology which sees bishops as the esse of the
church which is a divinely created society; and 2) a sacerdotal
priesthood conveying the saving grace of God in divinely created
sacramental acts (the emphasis on elaborate ceremonial tended to
appear later).10
For Tractarianism, the church is a divinely created and ordered
society which transcends--or ought to transcend--politics, geography,
and time. Moreover (and I think there are precedents in Book VIII of
Hooker's Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity), experience in this
divine society transforms how we reason about matters of the spirit;
there's a good case to be made that the Oxford Movement was fully a
romantic revolt against the degradation of the role of the heart and
emotion in worship propagated by the "high and dry" party of earlier
English ecclesial history in particular and what was perceived as the
arid rationalism of the Enlightenment in general.11
Holmes' three-part substantiation of his
claim that "the issues raised in the 1830s and 1840s by the Oxford
Movement formed a central tension that has colored the Episcopal
Church's worship and theology ever since" provides a useful way to
explore the thesis that Tracts were, in fact, less influential
in the Episcopal Church than is usually supposed. The three
Tractarian emphases that reputedly "colored the Episcopal Church's
worship and theology" are: 1) apostolic succession (a high
ecclesiology is a natural correlate); 2) baptismal regeneration
(auricular confession was seen as a correlate by
some);12
and 3) the doctrine of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
(elaborate ceremonial, reservation, and adoration were correlates for
some).13
For these emphases to count as influential, as Holmes supposes, would
mean that either they were lacking in the Episcopal Church or were in
only weak or nascent form and the appearance of the Tracts, as
a result, significantly accelerated their adoption in the American
church.
After sections which consider the
conversion of the Connecticut churchmen, Reed's argument that the
Oxford Movement can be understood as a cultural protest, Hopkins'
relationship to Tractarianism and ritualism, Newman's 1839 assessment
of the Episcopal Church, the origins of Nashotah House, and the
Tracts and their influence at General Theological Seminary,
this paper will conclude that "Tractarianism" too often has been
conflated with native catholic developments in the American church,
and that a better model for understanding the relationship of the
English and American churches is mutually influential yet parallel
development. The Connecticut Churchmen, the Scottish
Non-juring Tradition, and Samuel Johnson: Pre-Tractarian American
Catholicism in the Episcopal Church
As is well known, Samuel Seabury failed in
his attempt to return to the United States with an English
consecration to the episcopate but was successful in application to
the small, non-juring Episcopal church in Scotland. In the 1804
Prayer Book, specifically the ordination office, are reflections of
the Scottish traditions, presumably reflecting Seabury's concordat
with the Scottish Bishops: notable are the terms "sacerdotal,"
"altar," and "Eucharist." As Stuhlman puts it, "It is the eucharistic
tradition of this Connecticut churchmanship which made the teaching
of the early tracts ... unremarkable to American high-churchmen."
14
It might be supposed that the high church
movement in this country dates to Hobart but there is a case to be
made for dating it earlier. Not unlike what would happen in English
Tractarianism, Samuel Johnson, Daniel Brown, and Timothy Cutler read
themselves from Congregationalism to a surprisingly catholic
interpretation of Anglicanism. A gift of more than 1,000 volumes to
the Yale library from England proved pivotal in this
pilgrimage.15
As Gerardi details it, pivotal in their thinking was the "Patristic
scholarship of the Caroline Church."16
Notably, these churchmen came to doubt the
validity of not only their ordinations but, in some cases, even their
own baptisms because they were not performed by episcopally ordained
clergy. Johnson came to believe, by means of his reading of the
Caroline divines, that there is overwhelming evidence that episcopal
ministry was of apostolic origins. A direct inference from these
doubts would seem to be: no bishop, no church--which immediately
qualifies it as a high church position in terms of
ecclesiology.
Chorley argues that Samuel Johnson
(1696-1772) should be marked as the "first High Churchman in
America."17
Connecticut was a Puritan stronghold; indeed, one of Johnson's
greatgrandfathers was a Puritan who fled England and its dominance by
bishops in favor of Connecticut which became a dissenting stronghold.
As Wolverton puts it, Johnson "was the first American heir of any
consequence to the renaissance of Anglo-Catholic historical writing
which took place in England between 1660 and 1730."18
The parallel between this period and the American 19th century is
instructive: sandwiched between nonconformist polemic on one side,
and Roman Catholic claims on the other, English Anglicans from 1660
to 1730 were pressed to generate a specifically Anglican definition
of the church. This situation parallels in many ways the situation of
Anglicans in some parts of the colonies and, of course, later in the
19th century. More than others in the high church tradition, Johnson
appealed to tradition, the importance of the early church fathers,
and, most importantly, a comprehensive view of the church as an
indivisible unity of doctrine, liturgy (prayer book), and
Scripture.
Under the influence of the Cambridge
Platonist John Scott's The Christian Life, Johnson came to be
what Peter Droll calls a "sacramental Arminian."19
According to this view, the created order, most notably water, bread
and wine, and sacramental activity, such as the laying on of hands,
are divinely ordered so as to convey grace. Just as there is a
created order in nature, so Scott argued that there is a created
order in the church and, while neither Scott nor Johnson was
interested in unchurching those churches with presbyterial orders,
they believed that this created ecclesial order is best realized in
an episcopal succession back to the apostles.
The situation in which Johnson found
himself warrants comment. The Tractarians, with one notable exception
(as we will see), would become notable for their espousal of a
hard-line on the validity of non-episcopal orders but that view
already occurs, upwards of a century earlier, in Johnson's New
England.20
Doll observes that the new beliefs of Johnson and the other Yale
converts had to stand out from their old in order to justify the
social costs they would pay: Johnson's ancestors, revolting against what
they perceived to be the heavy-handedness of Laudian episcopacy in
England, moved to New England as a way of escaping episcopal tyranny.
Theologically, it meant a denial of the value and desirability of the
historic episcopate. For Johnson and the other Yale converts, to
convert to Episcopalianism was to embrace the form of ecclesiology
the earlier Congregationalists had most wanted to reject. The result
of the conversion was the adoption of the "high church" view of
Anglicanism in general and the doctrine of the necessity of Apostolic
succession for valid ministry more specifically. As Gerardi puts it,
"That day in the college library Johnson's circle held up a mirror to
the old presbyters of the New England Way and in it they beheld new
priests."22
Parenthetically, it should be noted that it
is sometimes supposed--indeed, the Tractarians sometimes wrote as
if--their espousal of a high view of the episcopacy was a dramatic
recovery of a doctrine long lost in Anglicanism. But high churchmen
generally (and some Evangelicals as well23)
held this view--which is how the Connecticut churchmen, who predated
the Tractarians, acquired the view from reading classical Anglican
theology in Connecticut in the eighteenth century. Nockles
underscores this common misperception: Nockles then provides a litany of testimony of
Anglican writers earlier than the Tractarians who espoused such a
view.26
Moreover, silence on a doctrine alone in any particular time or place
does not entail its rejection--it simply means it is not a point of
controversy. Nockles points out that many people readily and
uncritically believed the Tractarian polemic that their views on
apostolic succession were more novel vis-a-vis Anglican tradition
than, in fact, they were. I take the affirmation of what otherwise
might be taken as a Tractarian view of the episcopacy as the
esse of the church by the Connecticut churchmen, a century
before the first appearance of the Tracts, to be disconfirming
evidence of the Tractarian polemic.
The convert from a majority to a minority
religion pays a price for rejecting the dominant religious ethos of
his or her day and so tends to emphasize differences rather than
similarities between the new religion and the old; one wants
something distinctive for paying a stiff price. One thinks, for
example, of Henry Edward Manning's ultra-Montane Roman Catholicism in
England after his secession to Rome. So it is not surprising the Yale
converts emphasized an Anglicanism that stood out more starkly from
the dominant Congregationalism of the day than that generally
espoused by "cradle" Episcopalians who often would have wanted to
emphasize their American identity by de-emphasizing those Anglican
doctrines deemed incompatible with the New England ethos.
The contrast between the situations of the
high churchmen in England and those in America also warrant comment,
particularly as those situations bore on developing ecclesiology.
Establishment in England was a reality which some high churchmen
celebrated but a few, especially after the advent of Tractarianism,
began to question. In New England, of course, not only was the
Episcopal Church not established, it faced the real hostility of the
political and cultural establishment, which was dissenting
Protestant. Moreover, the failure of the established church/state in
England to look past its own interests and provide the New Englanders
with a bishop early surely pushed the New Englanders to look
elsewhere than England for the ideal ecclesiology. The paradigm for
these New England Anglicans, therefore, was not England but was the
early church. For a church struggling against the dissenting
Protestant establishment, episcopacy emerges not as the bene
esse of the church, but as the esse of the church. As a further
corollary, it would seem that for an episcopal church to be situated
in a politically and culturally hostile environment, questions of
ecclesiology become more pressing, more quickly, than if it is
situated in a culturally and politically friendly environment. If
this is right, it should not be surprising that some American
developments usually explained in terms of the rise and influence of
the Oxford Movement in fact emerged early in the Episcopal Church
because its situation differed in so many ways from the English
church.
Connecticut churchmanship also played a
role in the development of the doctrine of the real presence of
Christ in the Eucharist. Samuel Farmer Jarvis (1786-1851) was the son
of the second bishop of Connecticut and was also a professor at
Hartford College. In a sermon at St. Thomas Church in New York, June
26, 1836, before the Board of Missions, he attempted to advance a
case for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Albright
claims that this was "one of the earliest attempts to describe the
real presence of Christ in the sacrament" in the American
Church.27
Notably, this is earlier than any detectable influence of the
Tracts.
By comparison, Newman himself was
evolving--and sometimes equivocating, at least publicly--in his
doctrine of the Eucharist. Newman did not write a tract specifically
on the sacraments, which is interesting in its own
right.28
But there are passages in other tracts where he discusses the
sacraments. Tract 10 considers apostolic ministry, certainly a
principal Tractarian theme. As spelled out by Imberg, there are
subtle changes in Newman's editing of Tract 10 from the 1833 to the
1834/5 edition of the tract, which seem to temper a strong doctrine
of real presence. For example, the 1833 edition of the tract
describes the priest as "intrusted with the awful and mysterious gift
of making the bread and wine Christ's body and blood." The later
edition reads "intrusted with the awful and mysterious privilege of
dispensing Christ's Body and Blood."29
Note the transition from "making" to "dispensing" and notice also
that the capitalization has changed.
As Imberg details it, Newman was sensitive
to political pressures, especially from bishops, and was not above
yielding to some of it as he evidently did in Tract 10. The later
edition has softened the priest's role in the Eucharist even as it
has emphasized the "Body and the Blood," which presumably would be
more difficult to attack. Imberg argues that Newman changed the
reading but not his mind since in correspondence with his sister he
seemed to defend the earlier reading. But the point is that the
published writing, and that which would have made its way to America,
would have been no more "advanced" and arguably less advanced than
that which was already expressed in the American church.
One rebuttal to this conclusion is that the
Tracts would have enjoyed greater influence than a sermon. But
Thomas' sermon was before the Board of Missions which would have had
a significant influence on the Westward-bound missionary church.
Moreover, Newman dealt very carefully on the doctrine of the real
presence, particularly publicly, because the Roman doctrine of
transubstantiation was notably abhorrent to the majority of the
Church of England and was taken to be the primary doctrine of
"popery" or "priestcraft"--the formal declaration of the even more
abhorrent doctrine of papal infallibility by Vatican I was still 35
years away.30
And, as we just saw, Newman was playing his editorial cards with an
eye to their political reception in a church he was still--in the
middle 1830s, a dozen years prior to his conversion--saw as his
own.
The result that I take from this section is
that there was a robust catholic self-understanding in the Episcopal
Church prior to the advance of Tractarianism that even Newman
recognized as in some ways more advanced than that in the English
Church. The Tractarian Movement as a Countercultural
Protest against a Church-State Establishment in England: Reed's
Cultural Construction
Noting that there were several movements in
the nineteenth century that reacted against the dry rationalism of
the eighteenth century, John MacQuarrie sees parallels between the
Oxford Movement in England, the Schleiermacher-inspired German
theology which emphasized the intuitive and the affective, and
Kierkegaard's subjective critique of state
Christianity.31
All three movements reflect some distrust of reason, particularly in
its ability to discern religious truth.
From a sociologist one would expect a
sociological construction of history and that is precisely what we
get with John Shelton Reed's Glorious Battle: The Cultural
Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism.32
His Introduction is a period sketch that, especially for one who came
of age in the 1960s and 70s, sounds precisely like a portrait of the
tumultuous American 1960s. Yet, says Reed, it is a sketch not of the
1960s but of the Anglo-Catholic movement in England of the 1860s. In
a word, Reed interprets the Anglo-Catholic movement, in parallel with
the 1960s in America, as a countercultural movement: Reed's thesis turns on the fact that the Oxford
Movement generated both opposition and affront, not only from the
power structure but from people in a wide variety of positions, both
high and low, in the social hierarchy.
High in the affront generated by the
Tractarians, for Reed, was the posthumous publication of Froude's
Remains in 1838. It espoused spiritual discipline, anguished
self-examination, and a patent loathing of the Reformers and the
Reformation.34
A chronicle of the growing suspicion of the movement is advanced by
Reed as he attempts to sustain his anti-culturalist thesis. The
"Romanizing" tendencies of Ward, Oakely, and Faber exacerbated the
suspicions, and, not wholly unlike Matthew Fox in the modern Roman
church, Pusey was silenced, and, later, Newman estranged and
self-exiled to Littlemore, not unlike those Americans who retreated
to rural communes in the 1960s.
Reed also underscores the importance of
other movements in the nineteenth century that we sometimes too
easily associate with "Tractarian" because there were "other, less
theological tributaries to the current of ceremonial
revival."35
For example, the Cambridge Camden
Society--a group that included some Tractarians but, with 700 members
from across the theological perspective in the Church of England--was
much more inclusive than the Tractarians, espoused architectural
causes that can too easily be designated "Tractarian." The Camden
Society was instrumental in the restoration of many churches, both
externally and internally, over a number of years and much of that
restoration was Gothic revival.36
Reed even speaks of "Gothic religion," which came to be identified in
some minds with Tractarianism as the nineteenth century unfolded.
Perhaps because of this problematical association, the Camden Society
was reconstituted later as the Ecclesiological Society. The point is
that the Oxford Movement was part of a much larger Romantic movement
which sought restoration of the church in terms consonant with
antiquity and, to a lesser extent, the Middle Ages. Not all of this
larger movement was Tractarian but it has been easy to slip into the
habit of assuming that Tractarianism was responsible for the
renovations, writings and controversies generated by this larger
cultural, literary, and architectural movement which swept through
the nineteenth century, both in the United States and in
Europe. Tractarianism, Ritualism, and John Henry
Hopkins' American Catholicism
As we will have occasion to see more than
once, Tractarianism, along with viewpoints consonant with it such as
ritualism, faced more opposition from the hierarchy in England than
it did in the United States. As noted at the outset, one can take
this as evidence of the exceptional influence of Tractarianism on
America or, as I prefer to interpret it, as evidence that the
Tracts were less influential because they met a native
catholic movement in the United States that was, in many respects,
more sophisticated than that in England.
It is difficult to imagine a more important
figure in nineteenth-century Episcopal history than John Henry
Hopkins (1792-1868). A lawyer, architect, musician, as well as a
bishop for thirty five years, and Presiding Bishop at the conclusion
of the War Between the States and immediately afterwards, Hopkins was
at the height of his powers and influence when the controversies over
the Tracts were at their zenith. Though not a great scholar
(his opposition both to evolution and developmentalism was not well
expressed), his influence stemmed in part from four major works he
produced.
DeMille, though not always consistent on
the relative influences of Tractarianism and native Catholic
developments in America, advances the importance of Hopkins for
understanding the early development of catholic thinking and practice
in the young American church: "That John Henry Hopkins (1792-1868) so
early became a High Churchman is an excellent reason for inferring,
apart from all other evidence, that in the early nineteenth century
Catholicism was in the air."37
DeMille lists Hopkins as one of the "Pre-Tractarian High Churchmen,"
but this is somewhat misleading since Hopkins was contemporary with
many of the Tractarians. The categorizing is right since Hopkins got
his catholicism independently of the Tractarians (and of Hobartian
traditions), but temporally it is misleading since Hopkins and the
Tractarians were roughly contemporaries and since Hopkins exemplified
the ability of church on both sides of the Atlantic to reach similar
conclusions about the same time. Not unlike the Tractarians, and the
earlier Connecticut churchmen, he read himself to his catholic
positions.
A recurring theme in Hopkins' work was a
defense of ritualism which he believed could be defended on biblical
grounds. The Primitive Church defended not only wide latitude
in terms of permissable ritual actions in the liturgy; it also
defended a strong doctrine of baptismal regeneration and the
episcopacy as essential to the church. In particular, he makes an
interesting appeal to Old Testament ritualism, which he claims was
not abolished by New Testament doctrine. The problem with Roman
practice at the time of the Reformation, he claims, was not advanced
ritual per se but the theological doctrine informing the
ritual. Mullin argues that his reasoning is so deeply based in
Scripture, Hopkins can reasonably be labeled a "biblical
ritualist."38
Especially when we recall that early Tractarianism did not emphasize
ritual as one of its primary planks, Hopkins' extended and early
defense of ritualism illusrates the independence of the American
church from the English church in general and Tractarianism more
specifically.
The date of publication for The
Primitive Church was 1835. This would seem to preclude much
chance for influence by the Tracts for the Times, which began
publication in 1833 and ran through 1841. If one dates Tractarianism
to Keble's publication of The Christian Year, in 1827,
however, then we have an earlier inception of the movement. In
particular, the romanticism of The Christian Year parallels
Hopkin's Madonna of the Chair. Nockles points out that "Keble
enabled them [high churchmen] to associate High Churchmenship
no longer with mere 'formalism' but once more with that 'heart
religion, play of mind, and elasticity of feeling' which Newman later
defined as vital elements of the Tractarian ethos."39
DeMille observes that Hopkins, the artist and the architect, looked
sympathetically on the Middle Ages for resources to enliven his
church: "Where Hobart and his followers were authoritarian, Hopkins
was a romanticist."40
Consequently, I think it not too much of a stretch to suggest that
what Keble was to the English church, Hopkins was to the American
church.
If we look at The Novelties Which
Disturb Our Peace, we see Hopkins as an American catholic
commentator on his own contentious time.41
It consists of four letters addressed to the bishops, clergy, and
laity of the church. The Third Letter deals with the Holy Eucharist
in general and Tractarian treatments of it in particular. Hopkins
argues that Pusey's view in particular is too close to the Roman
doctrine of transubstantiation and, therefore, warrants
disapprobation. Hopkins contrasts his own view, which he believes is
more consonant with early catholic development: "the faithful
communicant is made, by the Holy Spirit, a partaker, verily and
indeed, of the Body and Blood of Christ, after a heavenly and
Spiritual manner, so as to become mystically one with his Divine Lord
..."42
Perhaps not surprisingly, Tract 10, which
we saw earlier, and Tract 90, play a significant role in Hopkins'
treatment. Hopkins appeals to Roman Catholics such as Bossuet who
grant that a denial of Transubstantiation does not in itself entail a
denial of the Real Presence. Indeed, Hopkins argues that even Roman
bishops concede that the doctrine of the Church of England is "that
of the real and substantial presence of Christ's body and blood, as
fully as any Catholic can do."43
As a result, we see Hopkins drawing some fine distinctions--the
doctrine of the real presence is genuinely Anglican yet the Anglican
does not have to embrace the Tractarian doctrines which blur the
differences between Anglican and Roman positions.
As influential leaders such as Hopkins
distinguish between what they perceive to be genuine Anglican
positions and distortions by Tractarians that blur the differences
between classical catholic and Roman Catholic positions, therefore,
we have evidence not of puissant Oxford Movement influence but of
carefully nuanced rejection of Tractarian doctrines. Newman and His Assessment of the American
Church in the British Critic (October, 1839)
In 1807, John Henry Hobart caught the
attention of an early Tractarian, Hugh J. Rose, with his Tract on
Episcopacy. Rose was Professor of Divinity at Durham and
Principal of King's College in London from 1836 on--just as the
Tracts were beginning to be published.44
Hobart toured Europe, in the process spending a number of months in
England. During that time he discussed current theological topics
with English churchmen, including Newman, in March, 1824. As Albright
puts it, Hobart "may have influenced this young potential leader
[Newman] far more than has hitherto been
admitted."45
Albright concedes we don't know this for sure, but we do have a
"glowing tribute" to Hobart by Newman entitled "The Church Principles
of Bishop Hobart."46
In attempting to assay the relationship of
the English Church to the American church, it would indeed be helpful
to have had one of the Tractarians make his way around the United
States in an effort to assess the development of the Episcopal
Church. Alas, so far as I know, no significant Tractarian visited the
United States but we do have the next best thing: an extended essay
by Newman on the American Church, "predicated on reports of an
American presbyter, a Mr. Caswell," subsequently published in the
British Critic in 1839 (Newman edited it between 1837 and
1841; later it was discontinued because of the uproar it caused in
England).47
This is a remarkable piece in many ways;
one senses a Newman in transition six years before his secession to
Rome, yet the Anglican Newman is still richly in evidence as he
extols--sometimes hesitatingly, sometimes hopefully--the catholic
principles informing, albeit imperfectly, the Church of England and
the Episcopal Church in the U.S. The power of Newman's prose and
anguish is evident, for example, as he bemoans the fact that "The
civil power has cut us off from Christendom, has done, it must be
confessed, its utmost to reconcile us to our
degradation."48
Showing a respectable command of the vagaries of early American
Episcopal history, Newman brandishes the Phoenix-like quality of the
Episcopal Church.
The reader can sense an anguished,
exercised Newman, searching for evidence that would confirm the
Church of England's catholicity, and taking great joy in the
establishment of the episcopacy in America as evidence of that
catholicity. As he writes, "the English church, the desolate one, has
children."49
No barren church, no longer an isolated exile, the Church of England
can claim the signs of catholicity in the bearing of apostolic fruit,
notably, in a hostile environment which parallels the early
church: Newman worries the English church subsists by
state subsidy and protection and, therefore, its claim to be a branch
of the one, holy catholic church is compromised. More happily,
offspring that flourish, complete with catholic principle and the
marks of catholicity, independently of state nurture and control is
evidence, Newman believes, of implicit, valid catholic principle in
the mother. It is the "Apostolical model" which is the bedrock of
Catholic truth, for Newman: "It is encouraging to find that the
[American] Church, though deprived of all external aids
[is still based on] ... the ground of the consistency,
definiteness and stability of its creed."51
Deepening Newman's interest in the American
church's growth and success is the fact that he sees a parallel
between the religiously chaotic American situation and the early
church: success in such an environment is evidence of God's
encouragement and sanction. And since the child has borne rich fruit,
to press the metaphor, the seed of the mother must be genuine, that
is to say authentically catholic: Newman quotes with approval Caswell's
description of one American cleric's decision to abandon the
sectarian groups for the Apostolical Church: "He therefore connected
himself with the American Episcopal Church; since here he found all
that is best in Romanism, without its corruptions; all that is
valuable among the dissenters, without their
disorder."53
For Newman, this is evidence that the American church possesses the
catholic principle which naturally draws Christians to it if they
have it available as a choice.
Newman underscores his "main point:" the
reason he takes such joy in the American church is because of its
"instinctive appreciation of the Succession; its silent cherishing of
it when obtained; and afterwards its sudden and vigorous
development."54
While granting that there is immaturity in the American church, he
argues that it possesses a "high gift" that will take some time to
fully exploit. Notice in particular the striking centrality of what
Newman takes to be the American church's possession of this high
gift: Given this approbation and endorsement that the
American church is founded on the "Apostolic Commission," it should
not be surprising that Newman is conversant with the ecclesiologies
of Seabury and Hobart--though it might be disappointing he says
little about the American Samuel Johnson. Seabury is invoked by
Newman to show that the American church already has as its primary
principle, the Apostolic Succession and many, if not all, of the
earmarks of a mature Catholicism. He happily quotes
Seabury: Notably, Newman is also a keen enough student
of the American church, along with the history of its establishment
of the episcopacy, to underscore the fact that the American prayer
book, under Seabury's concordat with the Scottish Episcopal Church,
restored the ancient consecration prayer which the English Church had
truncated. As a result, therefore, at least in Newman's eyes, the
American church more fully evidenced Catholic principle in her
Eucharistic rites than did the English Church.
Hobart is also invoked. Recall that the
mature Bishop Hobart met the younger Newman in England for dinner in
1824 and presumably advanced his high ecclesial views to the
searching, still maturing Newman. As Newman interprets Hobart in
1839, the latter provides a "precise account of the supernatural
state of the Christian Church."57
As a result, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
theological winds between England and America were bidirectional.
More forcefully, I don't see how we can avoid the conclusion that
there must have been significant influence on Newman's ecclesiology
by the American churchmen and the specific unique circumstances of
the American church--situated as it was, flourishing independently of
a patronizing, stifling state.
To be sure, about half of this long piece
is devoted to what Newman sees as imperfections in the American
church's implementation of its catholic principle. Newman was
certainly no democrat and he was distinctly puzzled and chagrined by
the power of the laity and "inferior" clergy in the American church.
At the same time, he spends some time wrestling uncomfortably with
Hobart's criticism of the English Church, most notably Hobart's
supposition that the English Church was Erastian, surely a very
sensitive point with the maturing Newman.58
But we should be clear about Newman's
overall evaluation of the American church: "All depends upon her
informing principle: if this be short of the true, all will go to
waste; if it be 'Apostolical Order,' it will be
right."59
Newman is clearly convinced that the American church has the correct
"informing principle" and, therefore, it is only a matter of time
before church practice correctly manifests this catholic, informing
principle. Moreover, it is also clear that Newman understands the
American Church better than his Tractarian colleagues and gets right
the importance of seeing catholicism flourish in a pluralistic,
nonestablishment environment that recapitulated the history of the
emergence of pristine Catholicism in the early centuries. In the
final analysis, his evaluation of the American church is distinctly
more positive than his evaluation of the established English
church: This passage is remarkable in several respects.
First, Newman is suggesting that the English church can learn from
the American church since the American church is implementing
Catholic principles free from the stifling interference of the state.
Unlike his Tractarian brethren, he sees the American church as
uniquely able to implement Catholic principles. The American church
is in the position to be prophetic, calling the English church to
recognize the debilitating, inhibiting implications of
establishment.
More generally, in the entire piece, there
is little suggestion by Newman that the Oxford Movement, as we now
call it, is somehow instructing the young American church on how to
instantiate Catholic principles. If anything, it is the other way
about. The American church thrives, as Newman sees it, because it
embodies catholic principle and it does so without the loathesome
patronage of a state more interested in its own aims than the
church's. In a word, the Episcopal Church in America is on its way to
being the branch of the Catholic church that Newman wishes the Church
of England would be.
Subsequent to 1939, there certainly was
influence on the young American church by Tractarianism, but it is
instructive for the thesis of parallel development that the most
important Tractarian wrote in 1839 that the English church had more
to learn from the American church than the other way about. One
wonders if an American Newman would have found it necessary to
translate to Rome.61 Nashotah House and Early American
Anglo-Catholicism
It is easy to imagine that the Oxford
Movement must have inspired the founding of Nashotah House, that
controversial, idiosyncratic voice for Catholicism in the Upper
Midwest. Of course, questions associated with Nashotah have greater
import than that of one small Wisconsin seminary; Breck's influence
was felt in many areas of the country, notably Minnesota and
California, and the "Biretta Belt" of the Episcopal Church owes much
to Nashotah.
The similarities between Tractarianism and
Nashotah-style Anglo-Catholicism, to be sure, are unmistakable.
"Blessed John Keble" appears in the hagiography of the stained-glass
windows of the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin at Nashotah; indeed, the
Oxford-Nashotah connection is long-standing.62
The question, of course, is one of historical origins: did Nashotah
Anglo-Catholicism, with its distinctive emphasis on quasi-monastic,
personal holiness and its belief that the church occupies holy
ground, originate principally or even significantly at Oxford? To put
it another way, would Nashotah have developed largely as it did if
the Oxford Movement had come along much later or even not at all?
Reeves questions the supposition that American high churchmanship
must have depended on Tractarianism: Admittedly, we have some historiographical
problems here. In support of this claim, Reeves references DeMille, a
respectable source, but appealing to general histories, even one as
readable as DeMille's, is something less than satisfactory in terms
of making a case in the face of evidence on both sides of the issue.
The question remains: does the primary historical evidence support
Reeves' and DeMille's claims of parallel or even prior American
catholic development in general and can we infer, as a result, that
Nashotah's development in particular was not substantially dependent
on the Oxford Movement?
Adding to our perplexity is the fact that
Reeves writes that Breck and Adams, both students at General
Theological Seminary were "stimulated" by Tractarian literature (I
will take up the influence of the Oxford Movement on the American
seminary in the next section). Again, he quotes DeMille to sustain
his claim: What's interesting are the lines from DeMille
that Reeves does not quote, which would seem to support his
conviction, expressed earlier in his article, that Nashotah was
substantially independent of Oxford: These lines immediately follow the words quoted
by Reeves and, together, they frame--but do not answer--the question
of the relative influences of the native catholic movement and
Tractarianism on the conception, origination, and development of
Nashotah and Nashotah-style American Anglo-Catholicism. Perhaps we
can do no better than metaphorical comparisons--what is seed and what
is summer sun evidently the preferred metaphorical comparison--but
dates and written evidence might help us do a little
better.
The early date for the founding of
Nashotah, especially when compared with similar institutions in
England, would seem to count against primary Oxford influence. The
plan for Nashotah's "Society of Protestant Monks" dates to 1840 with
the visit of Jackson Kemper to General Seminary. As relayed by
Reeves, the audience Kemper found at General consisted of students
influenced by Hobartian high churchmanship who relished "stories of
heroic missionaries across the centuries."66
The founding of the Board of Missions in 1835, along with the
declaration that membership in the Missionary Society and the
Episcopal Church were coextensive, brandished the missionary
enthusiasm that was in the air. The missionary bishop as the soul of
the church inspired people from General Seminary to the Tractarians
in England, including Newman. Newman "received the idea [of
missionary bishops], which was obviously completely new to him,
with greatest enthusiasm."67
Herklots in particular emphasizes this American influence on the
English Church with regard to understanding the church as missionary
endeavor, suggesting that it was the daughter who influenced the
mother.68
Three missionaries from General arrived at
Nashotah at the middle of 1841 and by the end of 1841, it was
established. By 1843 seven people were at Nashotah and erected the
two-story structure, the "Red House," that today serves as the chapel
for the summer program. By this same date, Nashotah had attracted not
only attention across the nation--some of it quite negative, of
course--but also attention in England, at least some of it positive.
Pusey cited its establishment rhetorically: "Have you heard of the
establishment in Wisconsin, which Bishop Kemper calls his most
promising mission?"69
Notably, Cuddesdon, which was England's first Tractarian, common-life
institution, would not be founded until 1854. At 13 or 14 years
earlier than its English counterpart, therefore, temporal priority
goes to the American Church in terms of the establishment of a
missionary-monastic community.70 "Oxford Movement" and "Romanism" are terms that
seem inextricably linked, especially given the history of
conversions, from Newman until today. As a result, it might be useful
to have some sense of Nashotah's understanding of its relationship to
Roman Catholicism. One surprising feature of the "order of Protestant
Monks" at Nashotah was their belief that their understanding of
Catholicism was at striking variance with the Roman version of
Catholicism. Breck believed it required a monastic community in order
that the "Romanist be made to feel sensibly the power of the Catholic
Church."71
Despite being a ritualist and being widely supposed to have Romanist
sympathies, Breck believed there was a primitive Catholicism which
predated the Roman version which could be manifested in the Episcopal
Church: Nashotah had no business office or student
accounts in the early days; students who were unable to pay were
received as readily as those with some means. The Swedish Lutheran
Unonious, as an example of the community's missionary spirit, found
the young community appealing and soon joined both it and the
Episcopal Church, later becoming a priest. He described the creed of
Nashotah in these terms: "Come in your poverty and we shall share
with you our small means; come in your ignorance and we shall teach
you until you are fit to be accepted as a worker in the vineyard of
the Lord." Reeves concludes that "At the time, there was nothing like
this within Anglicanism." If this judgment is right, notably, it
means that Nashotah at least in some respects, was earlier in its
expression of Anglo-Catholicism than Oxford.
Walworth's essay on the Oxford Movement,
which we will meet more fully in the next section, devotes a chapter
to Nashotah.73
Walworth knew the founders of Nashotah at "the Chelsea Seminary of
1841" (General)74
and writes of a letter in his possession from Breck to Wadhams which
details Breck's intention to found a community of unmarried men based
on "staunch Catholic principles." With the exception of remaining
unmarried, the principles cited by Breck in the letter can be found
in earlier Hobartian high churchmanship and we are given no evidence
of direct Tractarian influence. Walworth spends much of his time
detailing why Nashotah developed into a different community, one
somewhat more consonant with mainstream Episcopal practices than the
community earlier envisioned. But interestingly, Walworth has no
qualms about crediting the idea of Nashotah to Tractarianism: "One
thing should be set down as undoubted; that no part of all this
tendency toward the monastic life is an outcrop of Protestantism, but
must be attributed to the Tractarian movement."75
We get an assertion but no argument in support of this moot
claim.
Admittedly, Walworth's is not an
academically critical essay; its 19th-century polemical aims
dominate. Yet it exemplifies the disposition of both the time it was
written, in 1895, and much later simply to conflate the terms
"catholic movement" and "Tractarian" or "Oxford Movement." There is
in Walworth, as is true in other writing as well, an assumption that
the referents of these terms need not be kept distinct. For Walworth,
if it involves an Episcopal development toward more catholic theology
or practice, then it is perfectly appropriate to label it
"Tractarian." His is a book primarily about the catholic movement in
the Episcopal Church, with a small amount of casual detailing of
actual American use of the Tracts and Oxford theology, but the
entire phenomenon is labeled "Oxford Movement." While Walworth is a
particularly egregious example of this conflation, he certainly was
not the last to propagate it. The Tracts for the Times and General
Theological Seminary
Perhaps the strongest case for significant
Tractarian influence on the catholic movement in the Episcopal Church
is built on their reception at General Theological Seminary. In
chronicling the catholic movement in the United States, one might
suppose that George DeMille would be about the business of arguing
for parallel development between England and America. In fact,
DeMille makes the case for overwhelming Tractarian influence and it
seems as though the thesis for parallel catholic development is
mortally wounded:
It looks as though we might have Reed's
countercultural argument going here which might explain why the
documentary evidence looks less impressive than it
is--countercultural movements are most likely to appeal to young
people and they tend to leave less written documentation than
establishment movements. Perhaps the parallel thesis can be
accommodated to the writings of mature American catholics, but it
fails to take account of the enthusiasms of the young, especially
those at General Seminary, who would have been most susceptible to
the Tractarian calls to action.
Exemplifying this Tractarian enthusiasm, as
DeMille interprets it, was Bishop Kemper's visit to General in 1841,
which resulted in Adams, Breck, and Hobart responding to his
missionary call to spread the catholic faith to the West. DeMille's
claim is we "can trace... clearly the innovating spirit of the
Tracts" in Breck's call to Nashotah. But at the same time,
DeMille also grants that Breck himself attributes his sense of call
to the writings of William Rollingson Whittingham.77
Indeed, earlier DeMille grants of Whittingham: So it seems that DeMille himself has not done
that much better than Walworth's inconsistent use of labels and
historical explanations. If Whittington anticipated the ideas of the
Tractarians and Breck attributes his sense of call to Whittington,
then it seems we ought to take Breck's account at face value and
conclude that Nashotah catholicism was largely an American
development.
Clarence Walworth's The Oxford Movement
in America, which we met in the last section, is interesting on a
couple of scores.79
First it claims to be about the effect of the Oxford Movement in the
United States by one who writes as an eyewitness to the history.
Second, Walworth was a student at General Seminary and claims in the
book to have been a close associate of Arthur Carey, the seminarian
who was subjected to trial prior to his ordination as a deacon
because of alleged extreme Tractarian views. We get an extended
treatment of the Carey trial buttressed by the unargued assumption
that Carey's views were straightforwardly Tractarian.
The essay is transparently tendentious
since it is more of a memoir and a theological tract with a specific
theological agenda to derive from the events he purports to
analyze--he was one of the General Seminary students who later
seceded to Rome. What Walworth labels as "Oxford Movement" in the
United States is called by DeMille the "catholic movement" and
Walworth gives us little grounds for concluding that the developments
he describes ought in significant measure to be explained in terms of
the influence of the Tracts for the Times.
A less tendentious assessment of the
relationship of Tractarianism to General Seminary can be found in E.
Clowes Chorley's "The Oxford Movement in the
Seminary."80
In stark contrast to their reception by the hierarchy in England,
Samuel Seabury, for a time editor of the (pro-Tracts)
Churchman, lobied successfully for their publication in the
United States. In a remarkable irony, given the grief the
Tracts were to cause General Seminary, Samuel Coleman
published the Tracts with the condition that part of the
proceeds were to benefit the seminary.
The Tracts achieved a significant
sale in the United States and were particularly well received in New
York. As Chorley interprets it, three facts account for the sales and
reception of the Tracts: the influence of Bishop Onderdonk,
who was also a member of seminary faculty; the support of The
Churchman; and the fact that the "Oxford theology" enjoyed "high
favor among many of the students and some influential members of the
Faculty."81
Chorley particularly emphasizes the consistent support of the
Tracts and the Oxford Movement by Bishop Onderdonk: At last, we have unequivocal evidence of
Tractarian influence. Bishop Onderdonk is explicitly endorsing the
Tracts and no amount of academic sleight-of-hand can obviate
this fact.
Not only did Bishop Onderdonk recommend the
Tracts, Bishop Seabury was also a supporter. As Chorley
interprets it, Seabury was not particularly chagrined by the
seemingly pro-Trent stance of Newman's widely denounced Tract 90.
Chorley chronicles the impact of the Tracts at the seminary,
somewhat cautiously citing Walworth, a problematical source as we saw
earlier. But Chorley is content to quote Walworth's claim that "We
had, in truth, a little Oxford on this side of the Atlantic ... Its
name was the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal
Church."83
Despite his greater historical sensitivity, Chorley does not note the
fact that Walworth tended to equate any kind of catholic principle or
practice with Tractarianism, and accepts Walworth's comment at face
value.
After a tantalizingly brief exploration of
the relationship of the Oxford Movement to General Seminary, Chorley
spends the bulk of his time with the admittedly fascinating Carey
trial, evidently content to assume that the relationship of the
Tracts for the Times to the seminary is not a point of
contention. Carey certainly held some advanced Anglo-Catholic views
that were akin to Newman's just prior to his secession to Rome.
Chorley characterizes Carey, "a young man of unusual charm and deep
piety" who had "been profoundly affected by the Oxford Movement."
The subsequent account of the trial of
Carey certainly establishes Carey's deep Anglo-Catholic convictions
and even antipathy to Protestantism, but we do not get anything like
a careful account that Carey's views were clearly derived from the
Oxford Tracts rather than the Anglo-Catholicism which already
characterized much of northeastern Episcopalianism. Granted, we get
an account of resolutions offered by seminary trustees which
reference, for example, Newman's Tract 90, but we do not get a
precise account of how specific tracts actually influenced either
seminarians or clergy, moving them to a position they would not have
reached solely on the basis of American catholic development which
was occurring largely independently of the Tracts. Even the
questions addressed to the seminary professors by the visting,
examining bishops do not establish a clear concern with specific
Tractarian doctrines; of 43 questions posed, only five refer to
tracts or to members of the Oxford Movement. Most concern Scripture,
the Book of Common Prayer, or the theology and practice of Roman
Catholicism. Less a trial of Tractarianism, it was an assessment of
the consistency of emerging American catholic principle and practice
with classical Anglican documents.
Chorley concludes ominously that "not a few
of these questions were inspired by a fear of the Oxford theology
accentuated by the excitement caused by the Carey
ordination."84
I think it is reasonable to conclude that fear of the "Oxford
theology" in general and Carey's views in particular precipitated the
unfortunate trial of Carey and doctrinal scrutiny of the seminary.
But Chorley conflates the question with whether people were afraid of
the "Oxford theology" with the question of whether Tracts were
actually responsible for the views of Carey and others at the
seminary with seemingly Romanist tendencies. A "yes" answer to the
previous question does not entail a "yes" answer to the latter
question. To conflate the two, moreover, is to obscure our view of
what the relationship of General Seminary was to native
Anglo-Catholicism on one hand and the Oxford Movement on the other.
As a result, Chorley serves us better than Walworth but that is faint
praise indeed.85 All Religion Is Local: An American Parish
and a Diocese in the 19th Century
By the time James Stewart Smith attended
Seabury Divinity School in Faribault in the 1870s (the original site
of the Cathedral for the Diocese of Minnesota), James Lloyd Breck and
Nashotah House had 30 years to extend their understanding of the
Catholic faith across the Upper Midwest. Presumably, the influence of
the Tracts would also have been in evidence at Seabury. Smith
became rector of St. Mark's in Chicago, historically a "low church"
parish, after ordination by Bishop William McLaren, a convert from
the Presbyterian church to both the Episcopal Church and
Anglo-Catholicism. David Holmes' "From Low Church to Anglo-Catholic
and Back Again: The Saga of a Middle-American Parish" chronicles the
evolution of an American parish in the later part of the nineteenth
century.86
In a scant four years, Smith moved St. Mark's from being the second
"lowest" parish in Chicago to a bulwark of
Anglo-Catholicism.
One task Holmes sets for himself is to
account for the rapidity of this transformation. He gives five
reasons: (1) influence of the Oxford Movement; (2) support of an
Anglo-Catholic bishop; (3) Smith came to St. Mark's at a low ebb; (4)
Smith was a prudent rector in many ways; (5) he made more than 5,000
parochial visits in 4 years--3 visits a day! As a result, it could be
argued, it looks as though we have a straightforward, clear
affirmation of the influence of the Oxford Movement on the
development of a presumably fairly typical American parish. Lest we
miss it, Holmes puts it first on his list of factors.
But closer inspection reveals a more
complicated pattern. Even Holmes explains his point 1, the influence
of the Oxford Movement, with reference to the "rediscovery of the
romantic and medieval in architecture."87
This seems to be a tacit acknowledgment of Reed's thesis, that the
Oxford Movement itself can be understood as part of a larger cultural
shift, a romantic, even cultural rebellion in the early and middle
nineteenth century that transcended political boundaries. On this
view, the Oxford Movement was as much effect as cause because deeper,
more subtle historical currents produced the times in which the
Tracts for the Times found influence. On this view, to
attribute Anglo-Catholic development in the American church
significantly to the Tracts is, therefore, too
simple.
Moreover, Holmes' tip of his historical hat
to Tractarianism is remarkably brief, even elliptical, in this
lengthy article; the power of local history (perhaps all religion, as
well as politics, is local in large ethnic American cities) takes up
much more space and seems to be the operant historiographical
assumption. Much more involved are Holmes' accounts involving local
details and trends. As the century passed, Chicago was increasingly
an ethnic and Roman Catholic city and even Holmes' account traffics
in explanatory appeals to the local "climate." Anglo-Catholics or
High Churchmen succeeded to bishoprics with greater regularity in the
Midwest. Anglo-Catholic liturgy was seen to speak to the growing
American need for the affective in religion. Bishops inclined to
discourage attendance at revivalist meetings could reasonably seek to
satisfy the emotional hunger of parishioners in a romantic age with
the beauty of medieval liturgy and Gothic architecture.
As a result, while Holmes certainly lists
the Oxford Movement as one reason why the Catholic movement in
America grew in the Upper Midwest during the nineteenth century, a
case can be made that he believes that local American history is what
bears the extended scrutiny because it finally was more important
than the distant English movement.
The behavior of bishops in an episcopally
ordered church is by definition always of interest but that of the
controversial, perhaps even notorious, Bishop Levi S. Ives of North
Carolina is more tantalizing than usual--particularly since he was
denounced by the General Convention of 1853 as "an absconding and
apostate delinquent."88
Ives advanced Tractarianism in North Carolina and opened his
controversial monastery about the same time as Nashotah. As a convert
later to Rome, his name might be deemed synonymous with the worst
excesses of Tractarianism.
As a result, the Ives' saga could be cited
as an obvious example of the powerful influence on the Episcopal
Church of the Oxford Movement. 89
Here, at last, surely, we have an unambiguous instance of Tractarian
influence. Even the title of Richard Rankin's article, "Bishop Levi
S. Ives and High Church Reform in North Carolina: Tractarianism as an
Instrument to Elevate Clerical and Lay Piety," might be taken as a
clear confirmation of the significance of the Oxford Movement in the
American church. Indeed, Rankin underscores the centrality of
Tractarianism for American history at the outset: Rankin details what he perceives to be the
influence of English Tractarianism on the American diocese: Ives
advocated "a humble piety reminiscent of the Middle
Ages,"91
the Rev. Moses Ashly preached a sermon at North Carolina's diocesan
convention "that showed the unmistakable influence of the
Tractarians,"92
and we read of Tractarian influence on laypeople seeking an
alternative to the moribund "Hobartian highchurchism" and the
evangelicalism degraded by sectarian conversionism. Rankin's thesis,
in short, is that Ives turned to Tractarianism as a way to reform the
Episcopal Church in North Carolina and to provide an Anglican piety
for the new age of feeling. The ill-fated, notorious (to some eyes)
Valle Crucis monastic community was founded in the mountains of the
diocese and the bishop espoused auricular confession. Ives confronted
charges of Romanism and succeeded in alienating those of the old High
Church party; indeed, Ives' secession to Rome in 1852 served to
confirm the worst suspicions of many in the diocese.
So do we have a clear case of significant
Tractarian influence in the Diocese of North Carolina? As Rankin
interprets the history, Ives believed that the old Hobartian high
churchism would not satisfy the piety needs of his diocese in a
romantic age. Its roots were in a different ethos and could not be
transplanted to the new time. He understood that successful
ecclesiologies could not be oblivious to the changing currents and
sensibilities of a large mission field such as the United States.
Moreover, Ives was unable to see in the Evangelical wing of the
Episcopal Church, which might have given his parishioners a
compelling piety for the day, a way to distinguish the Episcopal
Church from the varieties of Protestantism dominating Christianity in
North Carolina. Consequently, according to Rankin, Ives' only
alternative was a Tractarian renewal of his diocese. Tractarianism
was able to move the heart, speak to the soul, and convey a sense of
the powerful presence of God that he thought would speak to the
religious needs of North Carolinians. The rest is history, with
convulsions and controversy dominating the diocese for several years,
Ives' eventual scandalously embarrassing secession to Rome, and,
moreover, a repudiation of ritualism and Tractarian theology for some
decades in North Carolina. Tractarianism's indisputable, significant
influence on Episcopal history drops out of this messy history for
free as the story is recounted.
But even Rankin's piece subtly undermines a
strong Tractarian thesis. Rankin calls attention to what he labels a
paradox--namely, that it was the "prevailing religious culture" that
shaped the appropriation, articulation and eventual rejection of
Tractarianism in the Diocese of North Carolina.93
Tractarianism in America can be seen as an English theological
import, convincing the minds and then the practices of American
clergy and congregations, or, alternately, it can be interpreted in
terms of a much more complicated American cultural and historical
situation to which we apply the label, thus seemingly accounting for
a stretch of history. Ives pressed certain Oxford practices and
sensibilities into place because "late 1850s high churchism was badly
out of synchrony with the Romantic heartbeat of the
age."94
On this second interpretation--which I think is even implicit in
Rankin's essay which otherwise might be taken as support of a strong
Tractarian thesis--what we call "Tractarianism" in the American
Church is as much effect as cause. The importation of Tractarian
ideas and practices were an attempt by the hierarchy and a few
presbyters to address certain profound changes originating in the
distinctly American experience of 19th-century pietism and
romanticism. Ives' espousal of Tractarianism, therefore, is as much
the effect of his sense of what North Carolina needed at that
point in time as it is a cause of subsequent--frequently
unfortunate--North Carolinian Episcopal history. The rejection of
Tractarianism in North Carolina, in fact, reflects the potency of the
local ethos in rejecting what was taken to be a foreign importation.
Tractarianism and the Catholic Movement in
the 19th-Century Episcopal Church: The Case for Parallel
Development
It should be evident at this point that, as
expressed by Kenneth Peck, "Some difficulty is encountered
ascertaining exactly when the Oxford Movement made its appearance in
this country."95
Peck attributes this difficulty to two factors: (1) the existence in
the Hobartian church of many of the themes of the Oxford Movement and
(2) the unusual sensitivity to Tractarian thought and practice in the
Episcopal Church occasioned by massive Roman Catholic immigration. In
other words, there clearly was some native catholic development in
the American church prior to the publication of the Tracts,
but gauging the impact of Tractarianism is made much more difficult
by the fact that there was increasing sensitivity to "Romanist"
practices on the part of the sectarian Protestant majority. How much
of the activity is attributable to Oxford Movement influence, and how
much is due to Roman-wary Protestant writers more carefully
scrutinizing Episcopal practice and theology?
Certainly any characterization of the
Oxford Movement's view of episcopacy has to take account of Pusey's
"low church" views. Pusey was idiosyncratic in a number of ways,
frequently frustrated Newman with his academic independence, and
stood quite at odds, for example, with the mystical irenicism of John
Keble. In point of fact, "Pusey regularly affirmed his mixed and
usually 'low' view of the Episcopacy and its
function."96
He often thought bishops in error and was ready to challenge them
when they were--Newman, who took episcopal authority very seriously,
habitually shrank from such confrontations. Moreover, he seemed to
think that bishops were a form of government that some churches
choose and some shed, without implications for their ecclesial status
as a church. Contra Newman in particular, he was skeptical of the
high church claim that bishops serve as bulwarks of orthodoxy in
church history: Thus the charitable construction seems to be
that Pusey's ecclesiology is a kind of organic high churchmanship--it
is the whole church that is vested with the authority of Christ and
the Apostles, not specifically the bishops. The less charitable
construction is that Pusey presumed he was right because he was a
professional academic whose job was to set the church straight when
it erred; he was frequently accused of arrogance. For Newman, of
course, as for most of the other Tractarians, bishops were the esse
of the church, without which it failed to exist at all. In a word,
they were prepared to unchurch the dissenting bodies. Furthermore,
Pusey was far less exercised by the perception of Erastianism in the
English Church than other Tractarians; confident in his scholarship,
he was prepared to correct the state as well.
With Newman's secession to Rome in 1845,
and Keble's virtual retirement to extended parish service, leadership
of the Oxford Movement largely passed to Pusey. Indeed, Pusey
patronized the development of several monastic and quasi-monastic
communities and incurred, as we saw, penalties for his views. As
well, he remained at the center of the movement, even in some ways at
its head, but his ecclesiology was far less episcopally shaped, as we
just saw, than John Henry Hobart or any number of earlier American
churchmen. Griffin concludes his paper by underscoring the
differences between Pusey and Newman: Consequently, it is simple minded to assume
that there was a univocal, high Tractarian view of the episcopacy.
Again, we have to be wary of supposing that a label names a
consistent, homogenous set of beliefs and practices. There were
Tractarian ecclesiologies but no one Tractarian ecclesiology that
might influence the American church.
I would like to make one observation that I
have not seen anywhere in the extensive literature about the
Tracts for the Times.99
It has often been said that Principia Mathematica, by
Whitehead and Russell, is one of the most discussed--and least
read--of any works in the history of mathematical logic. At three
hefty volumes, Principia Mathematica is a formidable read. The
Tracts were not really tracts in the modern sense. At five
thick volumes, their presence on the shelf is remarkably formidable.
How many people had access to all the Tracts? How many people
read them in any detail? Or were they, like Principia
Mathematica, widely talked about but much less often read? This
surely must have been the case in America where libraries were few
and far between in the nineteenth century. If this is the case, then
there is a significant parallel between the Tracts for the
Times and Principia Mathematica in this regard.
Consequently, we are left with a more subtle historical question: are
we dealing with the direct influence of the Tracts or the
influence of lots of conversations about and impressions of
the Tracts? If more the latter, then terms such as "Oxford
Movement," "Tractarianism," or "Puseyism," particularly in the
American church, name a somewhat different, more diffuse
phenomenon.
Peck points out that The Episcopal
Recorder for Feb. 2, 1839, argued that "the erroneous teachings
of the Oxford divines were present in this country prior to their
appearance at Oxford."100
Of course, that the Recorder claims this was so does not
establish it--my Tennessee grandfather used to say "Sayin' it's so
don't make it so" and while his grammar was deficient, his
philosophic insight was impeccable. But the date is significant; very
early there were sensitivities in print about whether American
"Tractarianism" originated in Oxford.
The last part of Peck's paper draws an
interesting parallel. As we have seen repeatedly, we cannot distill
Tractarianism in America from the specific characteristics of the
dominant American religion in the early nineteenth century. Peck
reminds us that upstate New York and New England had so been swept by
intense revivalism that it has been called the "burnt-over" district
by American historians. It is no accident, evidently, that Mormonism
originated in this burned-over district--as also did a strong center
of genuinely American Anglo-Catholicism. What did Mormonism offer the
weary Protestant looking--first this way, then that, one night
hearing a Wesleyan argue for one form of baptism, another night an
Anabaptist holding forth on behalf of believer's baptism--for an
authoritative word? Answer: a claim of direct, divine authority and a
centralized hierarchy, specifically bishops.101
In such an environment, Peck argues, both Mormonism and
Anglo-Catholicism emerged, offering different, yet parallel answers
to distinctly American questions: If this is right, it should not surprise us
that General Seminary would become the focus of alleged Tractarian
influence. But such alleged Tractarian influence would be less a
commentary on the appeal of the Tracts for the Times than it
would be on the exigencies of Christianity in the Northeast in the
middle nineteenth century. Again, we are back to the subtle
relationship between historic cause and effect. Of course, American
discussions of the Tracts were the cause of
controversy, extended discussion, refutations, a few secesssions, and
a myriad of other developments that have been chronicled--more often
assumed than argued for in a wide variety of general histories. But
just as importantly--and I think general histories have not done
justice to this point--American discussions of and interest in the
Tracts were the effect of a long, complex history of
attempts by American Anglicanism to distinguish itself from the
boiling cauldron of the many varieties of Protestant dissent and
revivalism which acted as a powerful catalytic agent as American
Episcopalians struggled to identify what it meant to be an episcopal
church in a republic shaped by the dissenting ethos.
As a result, the influence between the
English and American churches was bi-directional; the existence of a
disestablished, independent American church forced writers in the
English church to consider what it means for Anglicanism to be a
branch of the one holy catholic church; the American church first
began to frame the questions that would help define a conception of
Anglicanism as a communion. A close look at the correspondence and
publications of the times indicates the development was often
parallel and that the questions posed by the American experience
accelerated English development just as writings by English writers,
including the Tracts, brought into high relief issues
contributing to American development.
To cite the "Oxford Movement" or
"Tractarianism" as an account of the rise of the catholic movement in
America is far too simple a characterization of the complex, uniquely
American tapestry that was the Episcopal Church in the 19th century.
Of course, it would be absurd to suggest that the Oxford Movement had
no influence on the catholic movement in the Episcopal Church. But if
this paper has been successful at all, it is much less absurd to
suggest that the American part of the Tractarian controvery should be
principally understood as a manifestation of a much deeper and
distinctly native catholic development and its struggle to reach
catholic clarity in an environment dominated by a dissenting
Protestant ethos. Endnotes 1The Mind of the
Oxford Movement (Stanford, 1960), p. 58. 2Imberg, Rune, In
Quest of Authority (Lund, 1987), p. 13. Imberg quotes Martin
Svaglic to the effect that Newman's "thought is basic in all its
[Vatican II] deliberations." At the Caltech Newman Center
Homepage we read that "Newman is one of very few who are not
canonized saints to be quoted in the Cathechism. Aside from a few of
the early ecclesiastical writers (Tertullian and Origen, for example)
he is probably the most quoted of all such authorities"
(http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~newman/cat-newm.html). 3"The Oxford Movment
and English Nonconformity," Anglican and Episcopal History,
vol. LIX (March 1990). Johnson identifies Tractarian influence on the
architecture, worship and the theology of the dissenting churches.
Notably, ten Wesleyan Tracts for the Times were published in the
early year of 1842. Johnson observes, "The great contribution of the
Oxford Movement to English religion had been a revival of
church-consciousness, which in particular challenged the exaggerated
individualism of Nonconformity" (p. 93). 4A Brief History of
the Episcopal Church (Valley Forge, 1993), p. 103. 5"The Faith of a
Christian Today," in Armentrout, Donald S., A DuBose Reader:
Selections from the Writings of William Porcher DuBose (Sewanee,
1984), p. 199. 6The Catholic
Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1941),
p. 40. 7"Prayer Book
Interleaves," in Pritchard, Robert W., ed., Readings from the
History of the Episcopal Church (Wilton, 1986), pp.
150-151. 8The Catholic
Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1941),
p. 41. 9Archbhishop Ramsey,
in "John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement," Anglican and
Episcopal History, vol. LIX (Sept. 1990, poignantly observes,
"The teaching centered on the Church. ... It meant the representation
on earth of a church which essentially belongs to heaven, because the
church contains saints in heaven, as well as its representatives on
earth, and must needs do so because the heart of the church is the
living Christ himself" (pp. 333-334). 10I did not use the
word "ritual" because one can take "ritualism" to be an offshoot of
Tractarianism; Pusey, for example, later in the nineteenth century
disavowed much of what he saw in Anglo-Catholic ritualism as formerly
"advanced" practices became mainstream. See John R. Griffin, "Dr.
Pusey and the Oxford Movement," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XLII (June, 1975). Newman in
particular was not a skilled liturgist, even as a Roman
Catholic. 11John Sheldon Reed
in The Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian
Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville, 1996), makes the case for
understanding the Oxford Movement as a romantic, cultural revolt
against the arid formalism of the British Establishment. 12John Shelton Reed,
Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics f Victorian
Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville, 1996), p. 47. The emphasis on
auricular confession follows because a high view of baptismal
regeneration raises the vexing question of what to do about
post-baptismal sin. Tractarians aspired to personal holiness, took
baptismal regeneration as an objective act of God, and needed
something to deal with post-baptismal sin which calls into question
the efficacy of the original baptismal regeneration. 13A Brief History
of the Episcopal Church (Valley Forge, 1993), p. 104. 14Stuhlman, Byron D.,
Eucharistic Celebration 1789-1979 (New York, 1988), p.
69. 15Doll, Peter, "The
Idea of the Primitive Church in High Church Ecclesiology from Samuel
Johnson to J.H. Hobart," Anglican and Episcopal History, vol.
LXV (March, 1996), p. 17. 16Gerardi, Donald F.
M., "Samuel Johnson and the Yale Apostasy" of 1722: The Challenge of
Anglican Sacramentalism to the New England Way," Historical
Magazine of the Protestant Episocopal Church, vol. 47 (June,
1978), p. 173. 17Men and
Movements in the American Episcopal Church (New York, 1946), p.
136. 18Colonial
Anglicanism in North America (Detroit, 1984), p. 176. 19"The Idea of the
Primitive Church in High Church Ecclesiology from Samuel Johnson to
J.H. Hobart," Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. LXV (March,
1996), p. 19. 20As we will see,
Pusey was less impressed by episcopal authority than other
Tractarians. When the sensitive, fastidious Newman was subject to
disapprobation by Anglican bishops, he was deeply anguished. When
Pusey was similarly subject to episcopal disapproval, he blithely
ignored it to the extent he could. 21"The Idea of the
Primitive Church in High Church Ecclesiology from Samuel Johnson to
J.H. Hobart," Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. LXV (March,
1996), p. 24. 22Gerardi, Donald F.
M., "Samuel Johnson and the Yale Apostasy of 1722: The Challenge of
Anglican Sacramentalism to the New England Way," Historical
Magazine of the Protestant Episocopal Church, vol. 47 (June,
1978), p. 174. 23Nockles, Peter
Benedict, The Oxford Movement in Context (Cambridge, 1994), p.
152. 24Tracts for the
Times, vol. II for 1834-35 (London, 1839), p. iii. 25Nockles, Peter
Benedict, The Oxford Movement in Context (Cambridge, 1994), p.
146. 26Nockles points out
that George Berkeley Jr. preached "an uncompromising defence of
apostolical succession from the pulpit of St. Mary's Oxford" (p.
149). Both the person and the place are significant. Berkeley did not
stand out as a notable exception, according to Nockles. 27Albright, Raymond,
A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964),
p. 249. 28Imberg, Rune, In
Quest of Authority (Lund, 1987), p. 77. 30Keble's letter to
Newman, referring to Tract 10, included the comment, "I like your
papers better and better--and so does my Sister, Transubstantiation
and all" (Imberg, p. 80). Imberg questions where Keble is serious
with regard to Transubstantiation, but the point is the exceptional
sensitivity on this issue at this time and Newman's interest in not
causing too much of a furor in the mid 1830s--at precisely the time
Americans were reaching similar conclusions, but without as much fear
of ecclesial censure. 31Wright, J. Robert,
ed., Lift High the Cross: The Oxford Movement 1933-1983 (no
copyright date listed), pp. 14-15. 32John Shelton Reed,
Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian
Anglo-Catholicism (Nashville, 1996). 36Newman
specificially celebrates the building of a stone Gothic church in
Harford, Connecticut in his "The Anglo American Church, which
appeared in the British Critic in 1839. As a result, we may conclude
that the Gothic revival in the United States was under way at least
in the middle 1830s. See Essays Critical and Historical (London,
1885), p. 319. Newman credits American bishops for this development,
parallel in the way he credits English bishops for English
cathedrals. 37DeMille, George,
The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church
(Philadelphia, 1941), p. 28. 38Mullin, Robert
Bruce, "Ritualism, Anti-Romanism, and the Law in John Henry Hopkins,"
Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, v. L
(Dec., 1981), p. 384. 39Nockles, Peter
Benedict, The Oxford Movement in Context (Cambridge, 1994),
pp. 199-200. 40The Catholic
Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1941),
p. 29. 41The Novelties
Which Disturb Our Peace (Philadelphia, 1844). 42The Novelties
Which Disturb Our Peace (Philadelphia, 1844), Third Letter, p.
8. 44Yates, Nigel,
The Oxford Movement and Anglican Ritualism (London, 1983), p.
42. 45Albright, Raymond,
A History of the Protestant Episcopal Church (New York, 1964),
p. 230. 46The library staff
of the School of Theology, especially John Janeway and Bru Wallace,
made an extended effort to locate this essay, without
success. 47In Newman, John
Henry, Essays Critical and Historical (London,
1885). 54Ibid., p.
332. It is interesting how often the word "development" occurs in
this essay, many years before the publication of his essay on the
development of doctrine. 58This was a sore
point with other members of the Oxford Movement. Nockles, in his
Oxford Movement in Context (Cambridge, 1994), details the
defense of establishment by Rose, Watson, and Keeble and cites the
following refutation of Hobart by W. F. Hook: For Newman, the imperfections of the American
church stem not from lack of establishment but from lack of fully
implementing its founding catholic principle, namely, "Apostolical
Succession." Newman as well is sensitive to problems generated by the
"voluntary" system but is also much more keenly aware of the greater
potential in the American church for fully implementing catholic
principle. This entire episode suggests that the influence of the
American church on the English church in general, and on the Oxford
Movement in particular, has not been fully explored. As well, I fail
to see how American appeals to England for money for General Seminary
necessarily reflect problems with the American system; there simply
were a lot more Anglicans in England than in the U.S. and they were
much wealthier. 61Seabury blamed the
Church of England bishops for the secessions of Newman and others:
"By kind treatment and a liberal construction of the Articles, the
Bishops might have retained these men; by harsh treatment and a
narrow construction of the Articles, they were sure to estrange and
perhaps to lose them" (The Churchman, Nov. 22, 1845). Cited in
Chorley, E. Clowes, Men and Movements of the Episcopal Church
(New York, 1946), p. 218. 62Several of its
newest faculty are Oxford grads; the architecture is Oxford gothic;
Michael Ramsey taught there for a term and also appears in the
hagiography; indeed, the list goes on and on. 63"James Lloyd Breck
and the Founding of Nashotah House," Anglican and Episcopal
History, vol. LXV (March, 1996), pp. 50-51. The historiographical
question is exacerbated by the fact that the DeMille passages cited
by Reeves, specifically pages 24 and 25, are weaker in their claims
of American priority than Reeves'. I believe Reeves is right but he
has not adequately supported his claim--simply appealing to general
histories is not sufficient argument for such a contentious
claim. 64"James Lloyd Breck
and the Founding of Nashotah House," Anglican and Episcopal
History, vol. LXV (March, 1996), p. 52. 65The Catholic
Movement in the American Episcopal Church (Philadelphia, 1941),
p. 46. Note: the pagination in the text used by Reeves, which is
copyrighted 1941, and the edition I have, copyrighted 1941 but with a
second edition foreword dating to 1949, differ
significantly. 66"James Lloyd Breck
and the Founding of Nashotah House," Anglican and Episcopal
History, vol. LXV (March, 1996), p. 52. 67Cnattingius, Hans,
Bishops and Societies: A Study in Anglican Colonial and Missionary
Expansion, 1698-1850 (London, 1952), p. 202. 68Herklots, H.G.G.,
The Church of England and the American Episcopal Church
(London, 1966), p. 139. 69Chadwick, Own,
The Victorian Church (London, 1966), I, p. 504. 70Herklots, H.G.G.,
The Church of England and the American Episcopal Church
(London, 1966), cites Pusey's encouragement of monasticism in the
United States: "I looked to your part of the Church for some first
instance of it, for our Bishops would not set themselves at the head
of it, or take it under their guidance. You are freer" (p. 134).
Bishops uniformly opposed Tractarianism in England while some
American bishops openly supported it or, more often, were strong
proponents of catholic expression and doctrine in the American
church. This fact is part of what gave Tractarianism its
countercultural quality in England. 71"James Lloyd Breck
and the Founding of Nashotah House," Anglican and Episcopal
History, vol. LXV (March, 1996), p. 54. 72"James Lloyd Breck
and the Founding of Nashotah House," Anglican and Episcopal
History, vol. LXV (March, 1996), p. 74. This is not to suggest
that Nashotah has not had its share of secessions to Rome. 73Walworth, Clarence
E., The Oxford Movement in America (New York,
1974). 76DeMille, George E.,
The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church
(Philadelphia, 1941), p. 43. 79Walworth, Clarence
E., The Oxford Movement in America (New York,
1974). 80Chorley, C. Clowes,
"The Oxford Movement in the Seminary," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. V (Sept., 1936). 83Walworth, Clarence
E., The Oxford Movement in America (New York, 1974), p.
119. 84Chorley, C. Clowes,
"The Oxford Movement in the Seminary," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. V (Sept., 1936), p.
195. 85Unfortunately, I
don't find Chorley's account, "The Tractarian Movement in the
American Church" chapter VIII of his generally well-regarded Men
and Movements in the American Episcopal Church (New York, 1946)
to be any better despite its later date. 86Anglican and
Episcopal History, vol. LIX (Dec., 1990). 87Holmes, David L.,
"From Low Church to Anglo-Catholic and Back Again: The Saga of a
Middle-American Parish," Anglican and Episcopal History, vol.
LIX (Dec., 1990), p. 499. 88DeMille, George E.,
The Catholic Movement in the American Episcopal Church
(Philadelphia, 1941), p. 92. 89See Blackwell P.
Robinson, "The Episcopate of Levi Silliman Ives," in London, L. F.,
and Lemmon, Sarah M., eds., The Episcopal Church in North Carolina
1701-1959 (Raleigh, 1987), who observes "The degree to which Ives
was influenced by the Oxford Movement then afoot in England and to a
lesser extent in the United States is problematical, but certainly it
had its effect" (p. 197). Robinson references Stephen Neill who
argues that the single contribution to the English church was its
emphasis on "apostolic descent," which we have already seen was in
full flower in the American church prior to the Oxford Movement. As a
result, it should not surprise us that Robinson quotes James Thayer
Addison that "the Episcopal Church needed the Oxford Movement less
than did the Church of England, and for that reason ... it produced
here less extreme results" (pp. 198-199). 90Rankin, Richard,
"Bishop Levi S. Ives and High Church Reform in North Carolina:
Tractarianism as an Instrument to Elevate Clerical and Lay Piety,"
Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. LVIII (Sept., 1968), p.
300. 95Peck, Kenneth M.,
"The Oxford Controversy in America: 1839," Historical Magazine of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XXXIII (March,
1964). 96Griffin, John R.,
"Dr. Pusey and the Oxford Movement," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XLII (June, 1975), p.
141. 97Liddon, Life of
E.B. Pusey (London, 1898), II, p. 163. Quoted in Griffin, John R.,
"Dr. Pusey and the Oxford Movement," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XLII (June, 1975), p.
142. 98Griffin, John R.,
"Dr. Pusey and the Oxford Movement," Historical Magazine of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XLII (June, 1975), p.
153. 99Archbishop Michael
Ramsey, in his "John Henry Newman and the Oxford Movement,"
Anglican and Episcopal History, vol. LIX (Sept. 1990), comes
close to this observation when he points out that Pusey's "assession
to the movement meant that the tracts, instead of being exciting
little pamphlets, were massive treatises" (p. 332). 100Peck, Kenneth M.,
"The Oxford Controversy in America: 1839," Historical Magazine of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XXXIII (March, 1964), p.
49. 101There is a
parallel today with the small, but steady stream of conversions from
evangelical Christianity to Orthodoxy, which is widely brandished by
various American Orthodox periodicals. 102Peck, Kenneth M.,
"The Oxford Controversy in America: 1839," Historical Magazine of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, vol. XXXIII (March, 1964), p.
61.
Larry Crockett Bio Info.For the converts, there could be no middle ground, no compromise in such a hostile environment. Johnson had to have been convinced of the utter necessity of this step before he would throw away his settled, prestigious, and secure place in society and convulse the peace of his country and his people.21
A reassertion of the doctrine of the necessity of an apostolic ministerial commission was integral to early Tractarian polemic. The catenae patrum of the Tracts in favor of apostolical succession was in this case conclusive proof that the Tractarian advocacy was no novelty, since eighteenth-century witnesses such as Hornes and Johnes of Nayland were cited as well as their predecessors from the Stuart era. Yet, as on other questions, it suited the purposes of Tractarian rhetoric to portray their advocacy of apostolical succession as a recovery of an ancient truth lost sight of in the 'deadness' of eighteenth-century Anglicanism. The assumption was made that the focus on apostolical succession in the early Tracts had roused discussion 'on points which had long remained undisturbed'.24 This assumption [by the Tracts for the Times] deserves questioning.25
Both movements exemplify a phenomenon increasingly common in the cultural politics of modern industrial society; beneath their many obvious dissimilarities they share one definitive characteristic. Each stood in opposition to some of the dominant values of its time and place, appealing to people who were, for one reason or another, disaffected from those values. Both were, in short, "countercultural" movements.33
We have the proof that the Church, of which we are, is not the mere creation of the State, but has an independent life, with a kind of her own, and fruit after her own kind. ...if her daughter can exist, though the State does not protect, the mother would not cease to be, though she were protected no longer.50
In reading such accounts, how we are thrown back into the times of early Church-history, and find ourselves among the Valentinians, Marcionites, Cataphrgians, Ebionites, Manichees, and all of the other prodigies to which the presence of the true Church gave rise, as the sun breeds reptiles ... so we are prepared to believe that even in these fallen times she has so much of her ancient glory ... to grow and increase when they fall to pieces.52
They have gone forward from one truth to another; from the Apostolic Commission to the Succession, from the Succession to the Office--in the office they have discerned the perpetual priesthood, in the priesthood the perpetual sacrifice, in the sacrifice the glory of the Christian Church, its power as a fount of grace, and its blessedness as a gate of heaven ... You would not know whether you were in America or England, while their books were before you, in Birmingham [England] or New York, amid collieries or cotton-crops.55
It remains, then, that there is no other way left to obtain a valid commission to act as Christ's ministers in His church, but by an uninterrupted succession of ordination from the Apostles, where it is wanting, all spiritual power in Christ's Church is wanting also ... The Eucharist is not only a sacrament, in which, under the symbols of bread and wine according to the institution of Christ, the faithful truly and spiritually receive the body and blood of Christ but also, a true and proper sacrifice ...56
Let the American Church take her place; she is freer than we are; she has but to will and she can do. Let her, as Mr. Caswell in one place suggests, react upon us, according to the light and power given her. Let her not take our errors and increase them by copying, but let her be, as it were, our shadow before us--the prophecy and omen, the mysterious token and the anticipated fulfillment of those Catholic principles which lie within us, more or less latent, waiting for the destined hour of their development.60
The appeals for spiritual and ecclesial regeneration by Pusey, John Keble, John Henry Newman, Hurrell Froude, and other Tractarian leaders had less of an initial impact on the Episcopal Church than on the Church of England. That was in part because the high church party in America had long since made the case for Catholicism. ... The Tracts for the Times and Pusey's Letter to the ... Lord Bishop of Oxford had little to say about apostolic succession, the visible church, the value of the sacraments, or the authority of the early church Fathers that could surprise America's high churchmen.63
The early literature of the Oxford Movement particularly stimulated younger men like James Lloyd Breck and William Adams, students at the General Theological Seminary. George DeMille has observed, "The intense piety of Pusey, the daring iconoclasm of Froude, above all the literary genius of Newman, acted like a tonic on the new generation."64
They had been placed in a receptive mood by the teachings of Hobart, Whittingham, and Onderdonk. The ground was seeded, and the Tracts were like summer sun.65
We simply hold by the Church, and wish to realize, in a quiet way, the strength of her principles. There is a Catholicity further back than Rome; and who can forbid us this, if we can become worthy of it?72
But the chief effect of the Tracts was felt, naturally, by the younger men, particularly by the students at the General Theological Seminary. Here was not different basic doctrine ... but the old doctrine .... was now clothed in new splendor. ... the general tone of the Tracts, the Athanasius contra mundum attitude, was just the thing to appeal to ... the inborn revolutionary spirit of men in their twenties. ... Everyone was reading Newman, and most were falling under the spell of his magic pen. Coxe, Tucker, Carey, Wadhams, Walworth, Adams, Breck--the list of Newmanites is very nearly the roll call of the notable men of the seminary during this decade.76
His researches early led him to an almost complete anticipation of the ideas of early Tractarians; so much so that it was said of him by an English priest, "If the whole Catholic Church was buried save only your Whittingham, I believe out of that one man the whole Catholic Church might rise up again like our Lord in living glory."78
I have been much pleased to know that the Oxford Tracts have arrested the attention of some of the most intelligent and seriously minded among you. I would it were more so. Among their influences are the spiritual views which they give of the Church ... and I cannot but think that by the divine blessing on their good sense and moral principle, there will be a happy deliverance from the weight of worldly principles, views, feelings, and operations which now presses down the Church to a level so secular, and often of so questionable a moral character.82
Given the historical ties and the theological similarities between the English and American churches, the question was not whether tractarianism would spread to the American Episcopal church, but when. ...by the time the movement had run its course in the early 1850s, tractarianism had thrown the whole American Episcopal church into turmoil and ignited a controversy of the first order.90
I am not disturbed, because I never attached any weight to the Bishops. It was perhaps the difference between Newman and me; he threw himself upon the Bishops and they failed him; I threw myself on the English Church.97
There was, then, a special lament in Newman's remark that Pusey had never been close to the Catholic Church, though he imitated its rituals, translated its devotional books, and commenced ecumenical activities. For Pusey did everything on the impressive strength of his own will, and the Oxford Movement worked to subordinate the private will to that of the Church and its Bishops.98
The appeal to Catholic truth, the emphasis upon strong episcopal government, the exclusionist attitude toward those who are not within the orthodox fold of the Church and the attempt to bring the whole realm of the lives of Churchmen under the direct supervision of the Church all have parallels in such a denomination as the Mormons.102
The American churchman [Hobart] is apt, in his nationality, to exaggerate these evils [of establishment], overlooking the various advantages of such a union, both to the country and to the church, by the creation of a kind of religious atmosphere, and entirely blinding his eyes to the still greater disadvantages of his own system. The very circumstance that the churchmen of America are obliged to see for subscriptions in England for the establishment of a library to be attached to their Theological Seminary at New York, is quite sufficient to show the inadequacy of the voluntary system (p. 89).
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