Cranmer Theological Journal
2024, Vol. 1, No. 2, 47–68
https://doi.org/10.62221/ctj.2024.203
| Essay |
Personal Reflections on the
Anglo-Catholic Identity
Keith L. Ackerman1
This paper explores the origins and significance of Anglo-
Catholicism within the Anglican tradition. It traces the history of
this movement from its roots in the pre-Reformation English church
through the Oxford Movement of the 19th century to its impact on
Anglicanism today. The paper examines the key beliefs and practices
of Anglo-Catholics, their emphasis on the Catholic heritage of the
Anglican Church, and their contributions to the development of
Anglican liturgy, theology, and social justice. It also discusses the
challenges faced by Anglo-Catholics in the twenty-first century and
their ongoing efforts to preserve and promote their distinctive
tradition within the broader Anglican Communion.
Keywords: Anglo-Catholic, Church of England, Episcopal Church, John
Keble, Oxford Movement, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Tractarian
Introduction
The Anglo-Catholic identity is the culmination of a tradition that emphasizes
how Anglicanism has been shaped by its continuity with the “heritage of the
Catholic Faith.” This includes the entire history of the pre-Reformation English
church—dating back to its origins in ancient Britain—as well as how that
heritage helped shape the subsequent five centuries of the independent
Anglican church. This combined history shaped Anglo-Catholicism as it exists
today, both in England and America.
That heritage has been maintained, developed and promoted by Anglo-
Catholics and their forebears, both in their contribution to the overall identity
of Anglicanism, and also as a distinct identity within Anglicanism more broadly.
This paper offers my own reflections on both the origins and relevance of that
identity for Anglicans in America today, based on both that which we inherited
1
The Rt. Rev. Keith L. Ackerman, SSC, DD, is the Assisting Bishop in the Diocese of Fort Worth
(Texas), Bishop Vicar for the Diocese of Quincy (Illinois) and an Honorary Trustee at Nashotah
House. His email is bishop@bishopkeithackerman.com.
48 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
from England, and the parallel Catholic movement in the Protestant Episcopal
Church in the United States of America.
Such a Catholic expression within the Church of England did not begin with
the rival factions of the sixteenth century, but in the English patrimony that
extended from St. Alban’s in the second century through to Julian’s cell in
Norwich. While the most visible expression of that Catholicism in the
independent Church of England came with the nineteenth-century reform
sparked out of Oxford, it has been prominent since those earliest days.
Nonetheless, this ongoing Catholic contribution to Anglicanism was
summed up memorably by Lancelot Andrewes, a theologian under both
Elizabeth I and James I, in his argument that “One canon reduced to writing by
God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries,
and the series of Fathers in that period—the centuries that is, before
Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.”2
In this paper, I will highlight the activities and views held by the Catholic
Anglicans in both England and the United States. I will begin by reviewing the
English patrimony, and how it led to the Catholic influences in the centuries
after the Reformation. I then review the development and impact of the Oxford
Movement evolved to become the Anglo-Catholicism of the twentieth century.
Finally, I trace the Catholic influence from the earliest days of the American
church through the nineteenth century, and conclude with brief thoughts about
issues facing American Anglo-Catholics today.
This exposition will be filtered through my own experience, born into
Anglicanism, as were generations of my family before me in both Wales and
England. My identity is as an Anglo-Catholic—including five decades as a priest
and three as a bishop—and I cannot recall a time in my life when I did not believe
that Anglicanism is truly Catholic. I acknowledge that since the earliest days of
the Reformation, the Anglican identity has found multiple expressions, and has
often been contested. However, I reject the modern explanation (uniquely
popular in America) of Anglicanism as “three streams.”3
Such a characterization
confuses the expression of the Anglican faith with its essence. While there may
be multiple expressions of Anglicanism, its essence—for all times and in all
2
Quoted in Robert L. Ottley, Lancelot Andrewes (London, 1894), 163.
3
The “three streams” conception began with Lesslie Newbigin, The Household of God (SCM Press,
1953). It is both widely cited but also often criticized; for the latter, see Gillis Harp, “Navigating
the ‘Three Streams’: Some Second Thoughts about a Popular Typology,” VirtueOnline, 2009,
https://virtueonline.org/navigating-”three-streams”-dr-gillis-harp and Paul Edgerton, “There
Should Never Have Been Three Streams,” North American Anglican, November 17, 2020,
https://northamanglican.com/there-should-never-have-been-three-streams/.
Cranmer Theological Journal 49
places—lies in its heritage from the “one, Catholic and Apostolic Church,” the
undivided Church that we profess every week in the Nicene Creed.
English Patrimony
Anglo-Catholics claim the heritage of the Church planted in the British Isles as
their own, and a part of what is commonly called the “English patrimony.” This
has been defined as the sum total of the spiritual, pastoral, cultural and social
traditions that have come down to us primarily via the experience of Christian
life in the British Isles.
This patrimony began with St. Alban, who became the first Christian martyr
in Britain in either the third or early fourth century. The English church grew
both with the Celtic church and the Roman-Gregorian Mission of Augustine of
Canterbury. That patrimony included notables such as Augustine (late sixth
century), Bede (c. 673–735), Hilda of Whitby (614–680), Edward the Confessor (c.
1003–1066), Richard of Chichester (1197–1253), and Julian of Norwich (1342–c.
1416) to name a few.4
Even in the midst of today’s secularism and agnosticism,
each of the countries of Great Britain still claim earlier saints (also claimed by
Anglo–Catholics ) as their national patron saint—whether St. George (c. 201–c.
300) in England, St. Patrick (c. 385–c. 461) in Ireland, St. David (c. 500–c. 600) in
Wales, or the apostle Andrew in Scotland.
Centuries later, there was a profound need to reclaim the heritage of the
Catholic faith that had been planted “in England’s green and pleasant land” by
saints who shed their blood. Beginning with the sixteenth-century English
Reformation and continuing through the Cromwellian Protectorate (1653–1659)
and the “Glorious Revolution” (1688), luminaries were raised up to produce an
independent English church with a character distinct from the other post-
Reformation churches of Europe. The nineteenth-century Oxford Movement
drew upon the deposit of faith that had been received—both the original English
patrimony and how that patrimony was shaped during the first three centuries
of the independent English church.
4
Charles Gore, Catholicism and Roman Catholicism: Three Addresses Delivered in Grosvenor Chapel in
Advent, 1922 (A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1922), http://anglicanhistory.org/gore/grosvenor.html.
50 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
Anglicanism after the Reformation
From this perspective, let us first analyze how the matter of identity was shaped
during Tudor England, setting the stage for a State Church in search of an
identity. According to Florence Higham,
When Henry VIII had broken with Rome and dissolved the monastic
orders, he endeavored to halt the course of the Reformation in
England by forbidding doctrinal change. It was by no means
unreasonable. The denial of the Pope’s supremacy, whether
justifiable or not, did not run counter to the temper of a rising
nation-state; it was a different matter to introduce new dogma
which would breed disunity in the Church and might well give rise
to faction in the secular sphere.5
This position is supported by P. M. Dawley,6
but assumption that these actions
would win a Reformation victory cannot be supported.
It is certainly true that when Elizabeth I became monarch in 1558, she found
a Church quite different from the one her father Henry had left—after 11 years
of turmoil with the conflicting changes instituted by her brother Edward and
her sister Mary. Those who had been convinced that a clear victory for
Reformation had been achieved would be disappointed by the new queen.
Elizabeth was determined to defend her idiosyncratic Religious Settlement of
1559 without any further progress toward becoming more Reformed, the
movement that had been proceeding so rapidly during the reign of Edward VI.7
The English bishops who in the 1560s had seen themselves as the natural
leaders of continuing change found themselves under Elizabeth defending a
status quo, one that many did not believe in. In response to such support, those
who often referred to themselves as “the godly” (later “Puritan”) believed that
the biggest obstacle to living out their understanding of the Reformation lay
with the episcopacy, and thus they sought to replace the episcopacy with a
system seen in Geneva: a presbyterian one.8
As a result, Diarmaid MacCulloch concluded that “when James inherited the
English throne with remarkably little trouble in 1603, he also inherited a Church
5
Florence Higham, Catholic and Reformed: A Study of the Anglican Church 1559–1662 (SPCK, 1962),
https://archive.org/details/catholicreformed0000high, 1.
6
Powel Mills Dawley, John Whitgift and the Reformation (Adam & Charles Black, 1955), 15.
7
Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation (Penguin Group, 2003), 371–72.
8
MacCulloch, The Reformation, 372.
Cranmer Theological Journal 51
of England that had undergone a contest for its identity.”9
In other words, if one
were to ask in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries what real Reformation
looked like, there may well have been as many answers given as there were
people asking the question. This movement was not an innovative approach to
the nature of Anglicanism. John Jewel (1522–1571), Richard Hooker (1554–1600)
and countless others had firmly “maintained the continuity of the reformed
Church of England in an unbroken Catholic line.”10
As Owen Chadwick states, “England was unique in its Reformation, unique
in the Church established in consequence of the Reformation. The English
Reformation was emphatically a political revolution, and its author, King Henry
VIII resisted, for a time ferociously, many of the religious consequences which
accompanied the legal changes everywhere else in Europe.”11
The realities of the
differences between the Continental Reformation and the English Reformation
are simply a matter of record, as are conflicts over the identity of the Church
in/of England. Much of this turmoil would eventually provide the seeds of the
Oxford Movement.
During the centuries between the Reformation and that movement, perhaps
the most important period was the seventeenth century. This included several
key events: the executions of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud in 1645
and of King Charles I in 1649, the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell from
1653–1658, and the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy. Finally, there was the
publication of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which continues to be the
official prayer book of the realm to this day.
The seventeenth century also included important leaders in the church’s
reclamation of its Catholic heritage. As Higham summarized,
In no respect was the Anglican Church more truly a synthesis of
Catholic and Reformed than in the matters of its piety. There was
room within its bounds at the beginning of the seventeenth century
for Andrewes’ Preces Privatae liturgical in form and derivation, and
for the sober Calvinism of Lewis Bayly.12
9
MacCulloch, The Reformation, 371.
10
Raymond Chapman, ed. Firmly I Believe: An Oxford Movement Reader (Canterbury Press, 2006),
15.
11
Owen Chadwick, The Reformation. Pelican History of the Church, vol. 3 (Penguin Books, 1964),
97–98.
12
Higham, Catholic and Reformed, 140.
52 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
As Geoffrey Rowell tells us in The Vision Glorious, “The seventeenth century
divines had drunk deeply at the well of patristic theology.”13
The Caroline
Divines, living during the reigns of King Charles I and after the Stuart
Restoration, cannot be overlooked. Lancelot Andrewes (1555–1625) was clearly
the spiritual father of Charles I, and was a translator for the Authorized Version
of the Bible. These Caroline Divines also included George Herbert (1593–1633),
John Cosin (1594–1672), Thomas Ken (1637–1711) and Thomas Sprat (1635–1713).
Among these men, the faith was celebrated in England as an ongoing reality of
the “faith once delivered.”
Finally, Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) has been called the “Shakespeare of the
Divines” due to his poetic writing style that informed subsequent generations.
After serving under Laud’s tutorship, Taylor became chaplain to King Charles I.
Taylor was imprisoned, retired to Wales, and upon the Restoration was
consecrated Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland.
Between the Restoration and the Oxford Movement, one party within the
Church of England continued to favor the church's Catholic heritage over its
Reformed one, with a high view of tradition, liturgy, and the Eucharistic service
at the altar. Commonly known as “high churchman” they anticipated some (but
certainly not all) of the beliefs and actions of the later Tractarians14 and Anglo-
Catholics.
The Nineteenth-Century Catholic Revival
In 1832, the decline of the Church of England caused Thomas Arnold,
Headmaster of Rugby School, to observe that “The Church as it now stands, no
human power can save.”15
Apart from any argument one may have in terms of
13
Geoffrey Rowell, The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in
Anglicanism (Oxford University Press, 1983), 9.
14
Various terms have been used in the past five centuries for more Catholic-minded Anglicans.
“High Church” was used in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century for those who sought a
more apostolic and less Puritan Church of England, while after 1833 “Tractarian” referred to the
authors of the Tracts for the Times and their followers, a group later termed the “Oxford
Movement.” The 1850s and 1860s brought the controversial rise of “Ritualism,” a subsequent
movement (with some Tractarian members) that emphasized more Catholic ceremonial worship.
The term “Anglo-Catholic”—although sometimes mentioned in Victorian England—became the
preferred term for the merger of Tractarian and Ritualistic beliefs in the twentieth century. See
Peter Benedict Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–
1857 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 33–43; Nigel Yates, Anglican Ritualism in Victorian
Britain 1830–1910 (Oxford University Press, 1999), 40–69.
15
Harold Ellis, The Hand of the Lord: A Simple Account of the Oxford Movement (Mirfield
Publications, 1958), 9.
Cranmer Theological Journal 53
divine soteriology or ecclesiology, these sobering words from a trusted leader
indicate the concerns of many Churchmen of this period. As Clifford Morehouse
later wrote:
The Church in the first third of the nineteenth century had sunk to
a sorry state, both in England and in America. In both countries it
was heavily encrusted with worldliness, but in the former country
especially, largely because of its establishment, it had almost wholly
lost its sense of divine commission in the eyes of the bulk of its
adherents, and was generally regarded as little more than an ethical
department of the State. Baptisms and Communions were neglected;
in many churches the font was filled with an accumulation of debris
and the altar was a rickety table that served more often as a
convenient place for the minister's overcoat, hat, and riding whip
than as God’s Board. The Bishop of London recorded that in 1800
there were only six communicants in St. Paul’s Cathedral on Easter
Day. ’Confirmation,’ says a recent historian, ’was administered to
hordes of candidates, for the most part unprepared.’ The future
appeared to be bleak and a movement was needed.16
For Anglo–Catholics, the following year marked the long-delayed
reawakening of the Church to her nature. On July 14, 1833, John Keble effectively
launched the Oxford Movement with his Assize Sermon entitled “National
Apostasy.” The movement was led by three fellows of Oriel College, Oxford
University—Keble (1792–1866), John Henry Newman (1801–1890), and Richard
Hurrell Froude (1803–1836)—and was later joined by Edward Bouverie Pusey
(1800–1882).
That movement “has been characterized by so sober an historian as Bishop
Stubbs as the greatest religious change since the sixteenth century, wrought by
influences ‘more intellectual and more spiritual than those which effected the
Reformation.’”17
It was, as Sydney L. Ollard has said, “a ringing call to Churchmen
to realize the immediate danger in which the English Church stood, and to rally
16
Clifford Phelps Morehouse, The Oxford Movement, American Congress Booklet 17 (Morehouse,
Published for the Catholic Congress of the Episcopal Church, 1933),
https://anglicanhistory.org/usa/acb/17.html.
17
Morehouse, The Oxford Movement.
54 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
to her aid.”18
It aroused echoes that have reached to every part of Christendom
and that have not yet ceased to reverberate.
The role of the Assize Sermon was much like that of Martin Luther’s 95
Theses for the Reformation: neither was the cause of what would follow, but
both highlighted pent-up concerns. Reading that sermon raises several
questions. First, why would Parliament’s proposed suppression of ten bishoprics
in Ireland have anything to do with what would be called the Oxford Movement?
Second, did Keble and the other authors of the Tracts for the Times19 imagine
what would ensue?
In fact, the underlying principle of the relationship between church and state
was on the minds of many Englishmen in 1833. To Keble and other Tractarians,
the suppression of ten bishoprics in Ireland was seen as “an attack on Church
rights and a treatment of bishops as state officials, not as men ordained in a
succession going back to the Apostles and holding their order within the Holy
Catholic Church.”20
Keble was clear in his concerns and called upon churchmen to honor their
profession and obligations: “Under the guise of charity and tolerance we are
come almost to this pass, that no difference, in matters of faith, is to disqualify
for our approbation and confidence, whether in public or domestic life.”21
While some today may not understand Keble’s urgency, at the time it
resonated with those who believed that the Church is the Bride of Christ, and
that the bishops of the Church of England could lay claim to an Apostolic
Succession unbroken since the Upper Room. If this sermon began the
movement, subsequent meetings, gatherings and responses articulated an
actual plan of action. One key gathering was the Hadleigh Conference held at
the rectory in Hadleigh in Suffolk from July 25–29, 1833, a small conference that
likely laid the groundwork for the Tracts for the Times.22
What came next was an unapologetic claim that the heritage of the English
patrimony was an integral expression of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic
Church. This movement was later termed “Catholic Revival,” both by supporters
18
Desmond Morse-Boycott, They Shine Like Stars: The Story of the Great Church Revival (Skeffington
& Son, 1947), 87–88.
19
From 1833 to 1841, “Members of the University of Oxford” published 90 tracts (most
anonymously) in the Tracts of the Times series. These were authored by Newman, Keble, Pusey
and others.
20
Chapman, Firmly I Believe, 1.
21
John Keble, “National Apostasy” July 14, 1833 (A. R. Mowbray, 1833),
http://anglicanhistory.org/keble/keble1.html.
22
R. W. Church, The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years 1833–1845 (Macmillan, 1892), 94–104.
Cranmer Theological Journal 55
of these efforts to recover the Catholic (i.e., universal) aspects of the undivided
early church, and also by opponents who made accusations of “Romanism” or
“Papism.” Note that while there had been missionary endeavors at this point—
often a consequence of colonialism—this was a movement entirely within the
Church of England, because the first formal conference of Anglican bishops did
not occur until the first Lambeth Conference in 1867.
The publication of the Tracts—and the concerns expressed by Keble—were
very quickly heard by members of Parliament. At this point in Great Britain, in
spite of the lifting of certain civil restrictions on Roman Catholics and
Protestant Dissenters, Parliament was decidedly led by those from the
Established Church, including graduates of Oxford and Cambridge.23
As Nockles
wrote, in the early nineteenth century a “gradual divorce” had begun such “that
religion and politics could no longer be presented as but ‘two aspects of the
same thing.’”24
This divorce was fueled by the earlier rise of Methodism and its
success in evangelizing workers during the Industrial Revolution, which also
was shaping popular understanding of Church and state. As Mammana writes:
The first result was the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in
1828, which opened the way for Protestant Dissenters to sit in
Parliament. In 1829, Roman Catholic Emancipation did the same for
those for whom it was named.25
Indeed, the stage was being set for a movement that would cut across classes
and recall the Church to her heritage.
Tractarians taught that in baptism we become inheritors of the Kingdom, so
we must treat the people of God as royalty. Largely unknown in the Established
Church, this dignity gave a new hope to people who had been brought up simply
to “know your station.” As Geoffrey Rowell says,
In studies of an earlier period of the Catholic Revival there have been
valuable correctives to a tendency to claim too much for the Oxford
Movement Leaders. Dr. Peter Nockles has emphasized that the old
“High Churchmen” (having a “high view” of the nature of the church)
23
Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (A. & C. Black, 1966).
24
Peter Benedict Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–
1857 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), 44.
25
Richard J. Mammana Jr., ed., Tracts for the Times: Numbers One–Ten (Littlemore Press, 2000), 12.
56 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
were both more distinct and more theologically alert than some
Tractarians allowed.26
However, it is yet the very implementation of Tractarian principles into
parochial and pastoral life that has endured.
Nonetheless it is important that we note the difference between simply the
Established Church and two great movements of religious revival within it,
namely Evangelicalism and Tractarianism. Rowell argues the last two had much
in common:
The polemics of nineteenth-century theology, exacerbated by latent
anti-Catholicism in British society, led many to view—and indeed to
experience—them as two antagonistic movements. More recent
scholarship has attempted to re-assess this simple polarity, and has
argued that there was more in common than might at first sight be
admitted. Many of the leading figures of the Oxford Movement—
Newman, Robert Isaac Wilberforce, and Henry Manning had
Evangelical backgrounds—although Keble and Pusey did not.27
Among Tractarians, numerous plans were discussed for the Tracts and other
next steps. In the end, Newman’s view prevailed: “Everyone has his own taste”
and “No great work was ever done by a system, whereas systems rise out of
individual exertions.”28
The Tracts would be written and distributed. Parish life
and pastoral work would be done, and the Established Church would never be
the same.
We should acknowledge the names of those most intimately engaged in the
Catholic Revival: not only Keble, Pusey, and Newman, but also Charles Marriott
(1811–1858) in the initial efforts and Alexander Herriot Mackonochie (1825–1887),
Arthur Henry Stanton (1839–1913), and Arthur Tooth (1839–1931) in later
generations. Beyond these, there are many others without whom there would
not have been a Catholic Revival.
It would be inappropriate to leave this brief survey without acknowledging
more fully Edward Pusey, who may have been the most significant person in the
26
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, vii–viii.
27
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 6.
28
John Henry Newman, “History of My Religious Opinions from 1833 to 1839,” Apologia pro Vita
Sua (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1908) https://www.newmanreader.org/works/
apologia65/chapter2.html.
Cranmer Theological Journal 57
movement, although he since has stood in Newman’s shadow. As Desmond
Morse-Boycott wrote,
To the modern Anglo-Catholic, Dr. Pusey looms through the mist of
time as an austere giant, who did great works, and was a scholar of
massive learning, and revived conventual life in the Church of
England, and gave a name [of Puseyite] to the movement other than
“Tractarian”, but he seems so lofty, lonely, austere, self-disciplined,
so aloof from enthusiasm, so sober as a judge, to the young so elderly
and to the aged so heroic, that he is, as it were taken for read.29
Despite his noble birth, all indications are that Pusey perceived a call to the
priesthood at a very young age. His earlier education had served him well: he
learned German, Arabic, Syriac, and Chaldee, often working sixteen hours a day
with frail health. After building an English and European scholarly reputation,
in 1828 he was appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford and Canon of
Christ Church, posts he held until his death.
Although he was not initially a Tractarian, in 1833 Pusey published and signed
his “Tract on Fasting.” After that, he attracted Evangelical opposition at Oxford,
and was falsely accused (and convicted) of heresy for a sermon on Holy
Communion preached in May 1843—which resulted in a two-year ban on
preaching.30
In his later career, Pusey edited the Library of the Fathers, published
his own books of biblical interpretation, and continued his teaching at Oxford.
He was later credited with restoring religious life to the Anglican Communion.31
Beyond theology and worship, the Oxford Movement spurred broader
changes in English society. Keble’s book of poems, The Christian Year, written
in 1827, helped parishioners enrich their spiritual life beyond what was provided
by the Prayer Book. It marked the beginning of the movement’s efforts to revive
the observance of the key holy days of the liturgical year, one that impacted not
only Anglicans, but British Christians more generally.32
Nowhere was the impact of the movement more visible in the revived
importance placed on the observance of Christmas, a concern shared with
Charles Dickens. Although he regularly attended Unitarian churches, Dickens
was concerned about the lack of regard shown by the Established Church in
29
Morse-Boycott, They Shine Like Stars, 73.
30
Morse-Boycott, They Shine Like Stars, 75–76.
31
Morse-Boycott, They Shine Like Stars, 121.
32
Joshua King, “John Keble's The Christian Year: Private Reading and Imagined National Religious
Community.” Victorian Literature and Culture 40, no. 2 (2012): 397–420.
58 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
general in ministering to the masses and that the Evangelicals provided a
spoken Gospel without action.
Rowell attributes the revival of Christmas celebrations at home and in the
city to Dickens. On the other hand, he credits the Oxford Movement with the
incarnational and particularly liturgical aspects of such celebration, which
provided more encouragement to many parishioners compared to the reserved
style of the previous generation. By the end of the nineteenth century, the
nation’s celebration of Christmas had become more prominent, with special
services and musical events throughout the season.33
In many ways the Methodist movement, with its emphasis on a Rule of Life
and its desire to be among the people, had helped pave the way for the Oxford
Movement. While the Catholic Revival began at Oxford and was initially led by
academic theologians, it had immediate pastoral implications, particularly in
raising the importance of the faith for the urban poor:
They were learned men and part of their achievement was to draw
on the inheritance of patristics theology and devotion which had for
many years been neglected in Anglicanism. If the Church of England
was ill adapted in its organization and government to respond to the
increasingly rapid changes in nineteenth century society, nowhere
was this more evident than in the expanding urban areas.34
Many considered it ironic that the Oxford Movement addressed this need and
brought a revival of pastoral care. In a very real sense, these urban parishes
became a type of laboratory for the living out of the faith, seeking to address
the needs of the marginalized working-class people of industrial Britain. As
Rowell concluded:
If the Oxford Movement may be said to have changed the pattern of
Anglican worship it was in these urban parishes that the changes
both began and were pressed to extremes. Decorous restraint and
academic discourse were alike out of place in the slums. Mystery and
movement, colour and ceremonial were more. The sacramental sign
could speak more strongly than the written word. But if these were
the characteristics of worship in the town parishes influenced by the
Oxford Movement, that worship impressed through the devotion
33
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 128–29.
34
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 116.
Cranmer Theological Journal 59
and holiness of life and pastoral concerns of the priests who led that
worship.35
Rowell notes the conclusions of social researcher and reformer Charles Booth:
Booth himself concluded that in parishes in which the poor
outnumbered all the rest ‘the High Church section is more
successful than any other. They bring to their work a greater force
of religious enthusiasm’, and their ‘evidently self-denying lives
appeal….to the imagination of the people.’ Nonetheless, ‘the
churches themselves’ were ‘largely filled by people from other
districts and of higher class attracted by the stir of religious life.” “To
live a life of voluntary poverty,” he wrote, “seems to be the only road
to the confidence of the people.”36
Finally, a discussion of the Oxford Movement would not be complete without
considering its role in overseas missions of the nineteenth century, during the
great era of Victorian missionaries who helped found most or grow many of the
national provinces of the Anglican Communions. The Church of England
established missionary societies to take the Gospel, and by implication, an
Anglicanized version. While often associated with the Evangelical identity, the
Catholic identity was also well represented among these nineteenth century
efforts.
Under the Oxford Movement, Religious Orders for men and women were
reestablished, and numerous Religious became a part of the missionary
endeavors in various parts of the Anglican world. Among the many such orders
include the Community of St. Mary the Virgin (1848), the All Saints Sisters of the
Poor (1851), Sisters of Saint Margaret (1855), the Society of St. John the Evangelist
(“Cowley Fathers”) founded in 1866, the Society of the Sacred Mission (1891), the
Community of Resurrection (1892), the Society of the Divine Compassion (1894),
the Society of St. Francis (1936), Community of St. Clare (1950), as well Anglican
versions of the Order of St. Benedict and the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross.
Morse-Boycott credited Pusey with the restoration of the religious life.37
These orders have been established in various parts of the Anglican
Communion, with the Religious often establishing schools and hospitals, many
of which stand to this day. In the twenty-first century reality of the Anglican
35
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 116.
36
Rowell, The Vision Glorious, 139–40.
37
Morse-Boycott, They Shine Like Stars, 121.
60 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
Communion, the general ethos of a particular Province often reflects the nature
of the Missionary Society or Religious Order which began worthy ministry
endeavors.
It was not uncommon for Oxford Movement missionary priests to become
bishops, one of the most obvious being Frank Weston, SSC, OBE (1871–1924). His
rousing address at the Second Anglo-Catholic Congress of 1923 remains a
clarion call to all:
Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the
oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who
are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him,
gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet.38
Anglo-Catholicism in America
English settlers came to America from a variety of Christian backgrounds and
established their colonies with a variety of policies that favored specific
religions to a greater or lesser degree. The first colony at Jamestown was
decidedly Anglican, and the first Eucharist in America likely occurred there in
June 1607. The Virginia and the Carolina colonies officially supported the
Church of England, while Anglicanism was also common and (at times
supported) in the mid-Atlantic colonies. As in England, the 1662 Book of Common
Prayer was the official prayer book at the time of the Revolutionary War.
For its own preservation, after the Revolutionary War, the American church
broke ties with England to form the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United
States of America, Samuel Seabury was consecrated America’s first bishop in
1784 and the first American Book of Common Prayer was approved in 1789. Over
the next 50 years, that church would evolve differently from its English parent
as the new nation expanded in territory and population. This divergence would
shape how the Oxford Movement was received here.
America’s first bishop, Samuel Seabury (1729–1796) was born into
Congregationalism and became an Anglican, as did his father, a Congregational
minister in New England. The irony in our treatment of Anglo-Catholic identity
is that while one can easily follow the progression of the English patrimony in
England and the subsequent Oxford Movement—and while Seabury was
38
Report of the Anglo-Catholic Congress, London, July 1923 (Society of SS Peter & Paul, 1923), 185–
86.
Cranmer Theological Journal 61
described as being a kindred spirit for High Church clergy—the American High
Church development was quite different.
Seabury was described as a “strong, conservative churchman of the Laudian
type; unalterably opposed to either theological or ecclesiastical innovations; a
true disciple of the non-jurors.”39
Remarkably, having received his consecration
as a Bishop from the non-juring Bishops of Scotland, and having agreed to take
back to the American church their liturgical changes to the 1662 Book of
Common Prayer, Seabury was not only seen as a leading bishop in that endeavor,
but “a strong sacramentalist. We owe to his influence the present [1928] form of
our Consecration Prayer taken from the Prayer Book of the Scottish Church.”40
Soon after Seabury’s death, then-Presiding Bishop William White (1747–1836)
ordained John Henry Hobart (1775–1830), first to the diaconate and then in 1801
to the priesthood. Described as “a larger Seabury, touched with emotion, awake
to the necessities and responsive to the spirit of his time,”41
Hobart was perhaps
the leading American High Churchman of the early nineteenth century, serving
as the third bishop of New York from 1816–1830. What exactly does “High
Churchmanship” mean? In Hobart’s own words,
HIGH CHURCHMAN [is a term] denoting an eminent degree of
attachment to the essential characteristics of the Church, and zeal
for their advancement.… The Low Churchman [is one] who
deprecates the distinguishing characteristics of the Church, or who
is lukewarm or indifferent in advancing them.42
High Churchmen, then, in the view which has been exhibited of
it, is that term which designates those who insist on the
ministrations and ordinances of the Church, as constituted by Christ
and His apostles, because they are the means and pledges to the
faithful of that salvation which is derived through the merits and
intercession, and sanctifying grace of a Divine Redeemer; and who
love and adhere to the Liturgy as embodying, and powerfully
39
Chorley, Men and Movements, 139.
40
Chorley, Men and Movements, 139.
41
Chorley, Men and Movements, 140.
42
John Henry Hobart, The High Churchman Vindicated: In a Fourth Charge to the Clergy of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York (T and J Swords, 1826), 6–7.
https://archive.org/details/highchurchmanvin00hoba.
62 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
exhibiting evangelical truth and duty in the purest and most fervent
language of devotion.43
Flowing from this leader of the High Church wing came numerous disciples
who caught the vision of a Church that was not dependent upon the Established
Church, but—without the constraints of the Established Church—were able to
further a vibrant form of sacramentality. Some of the High Church notables of
this period in American Church history are Abraham Jarvis (1739–1813), Thomas
Church Brownell (1779–1865), Henry Onderdonk (1789–1858), William Delaney
(1797–1865), George Upfold (1796–1872), Thomas Atkinson (1807–1881), William
Odenheimer (1817–1879), and John Williams (1817–1899). While they are generally
acknowledged as prominent High Churchmen, they did not necessarily adhere
to the Ritualism roiling the late Victorian church. As the High Churchmen
gained prominence in the American Church, it was prepared to receive the
developments from 1833 in the Church of England.
In 1806, Hobart established the Theological Society to train younger New
York clergy. In 1814 and 1817, the General Convention supported plans to
establish in New York what became General Theological Seminary, which began
instruction in 1819 and merged with Hobart’s efforts in 1821.44 Two decades later,
the seminary found itself in crisis when the Tracts for the Times reached the
United States, because it was viewed as furthering the principles of “The Oxford
Heresy” (as it was termed by evangelical clergyman James Milnor).
Even before this crisis was resolved, another seminary was founded in
Wisconsin by two General Seminary alumni, guided by the principles of the
Oxford Movement. Those alumni were William Adams (1813–1897) and James
Lloyd Breck (1818–1876), who in 1842 founded a semi–monastic mission under
the guidance of the first Missionary Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Jackson
Kemper (1789–1870).
Eventually this mission would be named after the two lakes on which it was
built: Nashotah House. Those at Nashotah House lived the life envisioned by
many of the Tractarians: live in community, pray the Daily Office together, and
create new mission churches. Breck wrote in 1842: “We rise at 5 A. M. Matins at
6. The Morning Service of the Church at 9. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the
Litany at 12. On Thursdays the Holy Eucharist at the same hour of 12. The
Evening Service of the Church at 3, and Family Prayer or Vespers at 6:30 or 7 P.
43
Hobart, The High Churchman Vindicated, 19.
44
Edward Rochie Hardy, Jr., “The Organization and Early Years of the General Theological
Seminary,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church 5 no. 3 (1936): 147–76.
Cranmer Theological Journal 63
M. Our students labor between 7 and 9 in the morning, and 1 and 3 in the
afternoon.”45
Walter Webb—later bishop of Milwaukee—reported, “On their
return at Nashotah [from Green Bay] they began at once the celebration of the
Holy Communion; and from October 1842, there has never been a Sunday on
which the blessed Eucharist has not been offered, the Divine Service Pleaded
on the Nashotah Altar.”46
With a diocese that was effectively the entire Midwest, Kemper’s influence
extended beyond Nashotah to found new parishes and dioceses. By the early
1900s, the dioceses from Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana were affectionately
called “The Biretta Belt,” defined as “dioceses in the vicinity of the Great Lakes
that were once considered to be characterized by Anglo-Catholic practices. The
term is derived from the traditional fondness of some Anglo-Catholic clergy for
wearing a Biretta. Use of this hat was considered by some to be an emblem of
Anglo-Catholicism.”47
To precisely define a date for the rise of Anglo-Catholicism in the United
States is difficult, but Chorley dates it around the time of the Civil War.48
In the
Midwest, Nashotah House and Racine College under the leadership of the James
DeKoven (1831–1879) were natural institutions for training and mentoring
Anglo-Catholics.
Elsewhere, numerous “shrine” Anglo-Catholic parishes were founded and
developed, often located in dioceses where the bishop reluctantly
acknowledged their existence. Parishes such as St. Mary the Virgin in New York
City, Mount Calvary in Baltimore, St. Clement’s in Philadelphia, Church of the
Advent in Boston, St. Mary’s in Pittsburgh, and St. James in Cleveland continued
to develop a liturgical life that in many instances exceeded that which was
celebrated in the Biretta Belt. These Catholic-leaning Episcopalians were often
met by suspicion. One highly visible example was that was that of DeKoven, who
twice failed to receive consents for his episcopal consecration after being
elected as Bishop of Wisconsin in 1874 and Illinois in 1875.49
Any discussion of nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholics must also include
Charles Grafton (1832–1912), the Bishop of Fond du Lac from 1889–1912. A Boston
45
Charles Breck, ed., The Life of the Reverend James Lloyd Breck, D.D., Chiefly from Letters Written by
Himself (E. & J.B. Young, 1883), 34.
46
William Walter Webb, “Nashotah House,” The Western Episcopalian, 1903, 6; as quoted by
Chorley, Men and Movements, 257–58.
47
Don S. Armentrout, and Robert Boak Slocum, eds., An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church: A User-
Friendly Reference for Episcopalians (Church Publishing Inc., 2000).
48
Chorley, Men and Movements, 268.
49
Chorley, Men and Movements, 328–29.
64 Ackerman | Anglo-Catholic Identity
native and eventually the Rector of Boston’s Church of the Advent, he was born
into considerable wealth and high social position. After perceiving a call to Holy
Orders, his bishop suggested that he go to England, where he met with Pusey
and with John Mason Neale, the great hymn translator who was a master of
eighteen languages. He remained in England for five years, and found a kindred
spirit in Richard M. Benson (1824–1915). In 1866, Benson, Grafton, and Simeon
Wilberforce O’Neill made their monastic vows and founded the Order of St. John
the Evangelist, with the hope that the “American Fathers” would return home
“to organize in the western hemisphere a Mission Society like our own.”50
Upon being consecrated the Bishop of Fond du Lac, Grafton continued to
live the life of a monk, although not in community. He also used his inherited
wealth to build and refurbish churches and supplementing clergy stipends. In
1889 he told his diocese,
Thankful that we in America are free from state control and
perplexing limitations of the English rubric, that our Prayer Book
here is to be interpreted in conformity with the traditions of the
universal Church, as Ordinary, our official ruling is that the
Eucharistic vestments, mixed chalice, wafer bread, Eastward
position, Lights on the Altar or borne in procession, and Incense are
the allowed usage of the Diocese of Fond du Lac.51
Anglo-Catholicism Today
The leaders of the Oxford Movement—building on the previous High
Churchmen and extended by the subsequent Ritualists—forever changed the
complexion of the Established Church of England and its American counterpart.
They restored the entire English patrimony, both English and Patristic. They
also reclaimed the importance of sacred tradition, reducing (although not
eliminating) four centuries of English suspicion of all things “Catholic.” On the
liturgical and ceremonial side, this included ad orientem, elevation of the
sacraments, kneeling, genuflecting, and the sign of the cross, as well as candles,
50
Charles Chapman Grafton, A Journey Godward of a Servant of Jesus Christ, The Cathedral ed., The
Works of Charles C. Grafton, ed. B. Talbot Rogers, vol. IV (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1914).
51
Charles Chapman Grafton, “Addresses to the Annual Council of the Diocese of Fond Du Lac,” in
Addresses and Sermons, ed. B. Talbot Rogers, The Works of Bishop Charles Chapman Grafton
(Longmans, Green, and Co., 1914), 146.
Cranmer Theological Journal 65
stone altars, paraments, and vestments. Perhaps most fundamentally, this
Catholic Revival restored the centrality of the sacramental life to Anglicanism.52
The center of liturgical life in the Church of England is the reality of the 1662
Book of Common Prayer, the church’s official prayer book for more than 300
years. Early Tractarians interpreted the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as being a
Catholic book, but the next generation of Anglo-Catholics advocated changes
in the Book of Common Prayer that would allow for a greater flexibility of
interpretation of the “Ornaments Rubric” in worship ceremonial,53
while their
opponents sought to use the prayer book and canons to restrict or ban such
worship. A 21-year revision process produced the 1927 “Deposited Book” that
was opposed by both Protestant evangelicals and nonconformists, and twice
rejected by Parliament.54
In