Item – Theses Canada

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OCLC number
46504402
Author
Faught, C. Brad(Curtis Brad),1963-
Title
The Oxford Movement and politics : church and state and social action.
Degree
Ph. D. -- University of Toronto, 1996
Publisher
Ottawa : National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1996.
Description
4 microfiches.
Notes
Includes bibliographical references.
Abstract
The Oxford Movement was high up in the concerns of the Church of England in the 1830s and 40s. Since that time its impact as a Catholic renewal movement has been measured primarily in religious terms. But, it may be argued, it was not only in the realm of religion and spirituality that the Movement left its mark. As an era of intense and widespread social and political change, early Victorian England proved fertile for all manner of prescriptions for the health of the nation. Victorian religion embodied some of these prescriptions and forwarded them with considerable force. The Oxford Movement, for one, was a clear expression of Victorian religiosity. Among other things, it championed social and political regeneration through renewal of the Church. In the wake of the wounding of the confessional State in 1832, and the suppression of ten Irish bishoprics in 1833, the Tractarians coalesced around the slogan "Church in Danger!" They gradually came to believe that the Church of England had been severely wounded by the erastian Parliament. And the only recourse they saw for the Church was to declare its independent, apostolic lineage in the hope of saving it from, as they saw it, the contaminating hand of the State. They disliked intensely the democratic gradualism of the time and sought to restore a lost social order by bolstering the place of the Church in society. This study examines the main ways in which the Tractarians went about promulgating their message of Church renewal and social regeneration. It posits the Oxford Movement's deep interest in questions of Church and State and the social order, and then demonstrates the ways in which the Tractarians and some of their fellow travellers acted on their convictions. To this end, the first chapter endeavours to place the Tractarians' social concerns in historical context, examining them in relation to, as they saw it, their rivals, the Christian and Utilitarian political economists. The intent of the chapter is to show how the Tractarians staked out much of the ground of political economy, appropriated it, and then made it reflective of their own religious agenda. The Tracts for the Times and the British Critic were the Tractarians' two main literary vehicles for spreading their message. They are examined in chapters two and three in order to extract their social and political content. Edward Pusey's Tractarian style of poor relief is looked at next, and is contrasted with that of Shaftesbury, the great Evangelical. The Additional Curates Society initially acted as an institutional base for the Tractarians' idea of a renewed and socially engaged clergy. It is examined in chapter five with a view to determining its influence as an extension of the Oxford Movement, and how, ultimately, its High Church ethos could no longer tolerate the anti-State Tractarians. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the ways in which the Oxford Movement influenced the political and social thought of Disraeli and Gladstone in their youth.
ISBN
0612117162
9780612117167