The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857

by Peter B. Nockles

This study breaks new ground in setting the Oxford Movement in its historical and theological context. Peter Nockles conducts a rigorous examination of the nineteenth-century Catholic revival in the Church of England, and shows that in many respects this revival had been anticipated by a revival of the Anglican High Church tradition in the preceding seventy years. No other study offers such a comprehensive treatment of the extent of divergence, as well as of continuity, between the Oxford Movement and the older High Churchmanship preceding it.

Genres: Religion, Church History, History

364 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 1994

Reviews

[Jack W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rare critical look into the Oxford Movement disinterested in promoting their perceived nemesis in Evangelicalism, Nockles looks almost entirely at the High Churchmen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and pieces together a High Church theology of all the flashpoints with the Oxford Movement, and suggests through incredibly thorough research that the Oxford Movement was relatively uninterested in maintaining an Anglican High Churchmanship, and far more interested in following a new "ethical" church based on a new interpretation of the Church Fathers, led by John Henry Newman.

A must read for Anglicans today struggling to find an identity amidst the "three streams" and Evangelical Christians who reject a synthesis between the Church and government or "Christian nationalism" or less enthusiastic religion, this book reveals a world of religion and politics of which most evangelicals and Anglicans alike are utterly oblivious.

[Tynan Brooks]

Certainly shatters a number of Tractarian myths, but also goes to show, I think, the ways in which Anglo-Catholicism really did have resources in the tradition that allowed for its flourishing.