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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