The Anglican Origins of Newman's Celibacy

1996 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. W. Young
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Robert Southey ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

In his historical defense of the doctrines of the Church of England, published in 1826, Robert Southey assumed that “the question concerning the celibacy of the clergy had been set at rest throughout Protestant Europe.” The conclusion that Anglicanism necessarily entailed the rejection of celibacy was, in early-nineteenth-century England, decidedly premature, and the ambiguity over celibacy in the Church of England is starkly and exceptionally exposed in the life and work of John Henry Newman. Recent assessments of Newman's peculiar standing in Victorian society have often emphasized the sexual—or rather, the seemingly sexless—dimension of his image, as if to concur with Sydney Smith's celebrated witticism: “Don't you know, as the French say, there are three sexes—men, women, and clergymen?” The nature of specifically clerical celibacy, however, and its influence on the young Newman, have tended to be overlooked in favor of a general psychosexual understanding of his own unwillingness to marry. As an antidote to such readings, this essay will explore the distinctively Anglican and firmly intellectual tradition behind Newman's decision, and will thereby argue that his celibacy was not as “perverse”—a word which, in Victorian England, connoted conversion to Catholicism as well as sexual peculiarity—as it has sometimes been made to seem.

The Shifting Discourse Culture of Methodism, 1791–1832

2019 ◽  
pp. 142-175
Author(s):  
Andrew O. Winckles
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Hannah More ◽  
Sunday Schools ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
The Church

This chapter lays out some of the shifts in Methodist discourse culture that occurred during the early nineteenth century and suggests that, in response to these changes, Methodist women found new ways to reach their audiences and work around the Methodist hierarchy. In particular, it focuses on the lives and writings of Sarah Crosby, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Mary Tooth, and other members of their circle in order to illustrate how they adapted earlier Methodist discourse practices for new and potentially subversive purposes. It then turns to the work of evangelical Anglican Hannah More in the 1790’s and early 1800’s to consider how a very well-known female evangelical within the Church of England negotiated a shifting discursive terrain, especially in her Cheap Repository Tracts and her work with the Mendip Hills Sunday Schools which led to the Blagdon Controversy.

The Incarnation and the Christian Socialist Conscience in the Victorian Church of England

1995 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Industrial Society ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Urban Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

Among the churches of nineteenth-century Britain, the Anglican Church held a unique, and somewhat embarrassing, position. It was, of course, the established Church of England—an arm of the state, assigned the honor and duty of serving as the focus and guide of the nation's spiritual life. Its position was embarrassing by the mid-nineteenth century because it obviously was not fulfilling its ostensible role. The increasingly secular nature of industrial society on the one hand, and the Christian challenge of Nonconformity on the other, cost the Church membership among all classes of people. That loss significantly undermined the Anglican claim that the established Church served the religious needs of the whole nation, and it led to persistent Nonconformist cries for disestablishment. Furthermore, Christianity's appeal to its traditional following, the poor and lowly, seemed to evaporate in the industrial environment of the Victorian city. Not only did typical urban workers not go to church (or chapel, for that matter), they were generally rather hostile to organized religion and particularly to the Anglican Church. In the Church of governors and employers, where services and sermons often could appeal only to the educated, workers felt, not unjustly, uncomfortable and unwelcome.There were several internal impediments to increasing the popularity (and thereby the social influence) of the Anglican Church, not the least of which was the dominant theology of early Victorian England. During what Boyd Hilton has called the “Age of Atonement” (roughly the first half of the nineteenth century), evangelical thought both shaped and justified the economic and social assumptions which underlay the policies of competitive capitalism.

The Rev. William Harte and Attitudes to Slavery in Early Nineteenth-Century Barbados

1979 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. T. Gilmore
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Early Period ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Christian Love ◽  
The Church ◽  
Slave Population ◽  
The Way

In St Mary's Church, Barbados, there is a monument to a curate who died in 1851, and ‘whose labours as a clergyman of the Church of England for fifty years were distinguished by talent, energy & faithfulness. His efforts were unceasing to make known the truths of the Gospel to all classes in this island. At an early period in his ministry he led the way in rescuing the then slave population from spiritual bondage and darkness. In this work of Christian love he was ever resolute, singlemin-ded, Sc uncompromising’. Mr Harte's claim to our interest is further increased when we learn that he was once prosecuted by the vestry of his parish for, among other things, teaching slaves ‘doctrines of equality inconsistent with their obedience to their masters’ and for comparing the white inhabitants of his parish to those of Sodom and Gomorrah, somewhat to the advantage of the latter.

‘A Practice of a Very Hurtful Tendency’

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 315-326
Author(s):  
W. M. Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Clear Pattern ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

The church of England in the eighteenth century has been bitterly criticised by succeeding generations for what the high Victorian church of England regarded as two cardinal sins, firstly non-residence of the clergy on their cures and secondly, and consequently, lack of pastoral care. However, generalisations are misleading and especially these generalisations which are largely based on the evidence of opponents of the established church in the early nineteenth century and on standards of pastoral care of one man to one parish, however small the parish, that were only achieved for a period of sixty or seventy years during the later nineteenth century. How misleading these generalisations are becomes apparent when the evidence for non residence and for standards of pastoral care is examined more closely. The object of this paper is to demonstrate that from the evidence of one particular county a clear pattern of clerical residence emerges that is not entirely incompatible with contemporary expectations of pastoral care.

The Oxford Movement, Marriage and Domestic Life: John Keble, Isaac Williams and Edward King

2014 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 366-377
Author(s):  
John Boneham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Social Importance ◽  
The Church

While a number of studies have highlighted the theological and social importance of the household in nineteenth-century Protestant Britain, the significance of domestic life for the leaders of the Oxford, or Tractarian, Movement remains almost completely unexplored. In a sense this is unsurprising, since the movement, which began in the 1830s, emphasized the importance of recalling the Church of England to its pre-Reformation heritage and consequently tended to stress the spiritual value of celibacy and asceticism. Whilst B.W. Young has highlighted the importance of celibacy for John Henry Newman, the movement’s main figurehead until his conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845, and other works have reflected upon the Tractarian emphasis on celibacy and tried to explain its origins, historians of the Oxford Movement have paid very little attention to the Tractarian attitude towards marriage and domestic life.

Community and Controversy: Jews, Anglicans, and Biblical Criticism in Mid-Victorian England

AJS Review ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Edward Breuer
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Victorian England ◽  
Jewish Scholar ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Way

Mid-nineteenth-century Victorian England was roiled by public controversies regarding the legitimacy of biblical criticism, largely fueled by Anglicans and the Church of England establishment. Jews were well aware of these public controversies and even spoke out in a forthright manner. At this very juncture there was also a rather remarkable Jewish scholar, Marcus Kalisch, who began to advance critical notions in his commentary to the Pentateuch, ultimately coming to conclusions not altogether different from the leading critical scholars in Germany. This article explores the way in which Anglo-Jews first avoided, and then finally confronted, Kalisch's work, and what that said about communal sensitivities and self-consciousness.

The Library of the Fathers

2002 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 294-306
Author(s):  
Austin Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Church

The Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century sought to emphasise the nature of the Church of England as “Catholic”, continuing the work of the Incarnation throughout all times and places. Part of this theological and historical polemic involved being in harmony with the writers of the early Christian centuries, the Fathers of the Church. John Henry Newman, John Keble, Richard Hurrell Froude, and (later) Edward Bouverie Pusey, appealed to the Fathers of the Church from the beginning of the Movement. This eventually blossomed into an ambitious programme for translating the works of the Fathers into English, many of them for the first time. “The Library of the Fathers”, as it was called, was a major contribution to historical and theological studies. It had an influence well beyond the narrow confines of a church “party” or movement.

After the Happy Union: Presbyterians and Independents in the Provinces

1996 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 283-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
David L. Wykes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Glorious Revolution ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Fund ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Glorious Revolution ◽  
The Church

The Glorious Revolution encouraged Presbyterians to hope for comprehension within the Church of England. The failure of those hopes led them to co-operate more closely with their Congregational brethren. In London the earliest practical outcome of this increased co-operation was the Common Fund, which held its first meeting in June 1690. Controlled by managers drawn from both denominations, the Fund was established to offer financial help to poor ministers, congregations, and students who lived in the provinces. A scheme for uniting the two ministries, the Happy Union, set out in the ‘Heads of Agreement’, was adopted a year later on 6 April 1691, but within months this union had dissolved amidst bitter dissension. In less than four years all the schemes for co-operation between Presbyterians and Congregationals had collapsed in London. Nevertheless, co-operation between Presbyterians and Independents, and even the ideals of the Happy Union, continued in the provinces long after the failure in London. In part this was because the desire for a union between the two denominations was widely held throughout the country; indeed the earliest agreement was made by an Assembly of West Country ministers at Bristol in June 1690, nearly a year before the ‘Heads of Agreement’ were adopted in London. Moreover, in many localities following toleration, Presbyterians and Independents still came together in one meeting as a result of the earlier persecution and because of their loyalty to a particular minister. Where dissent was strong, such as in London and the major towns, separate congregations for Presbyterians and Congregational were likely; but where dissent was weaker, particularly in the countryside, congregations included members from both denominations. In these circumstances, members had to accept a minister who did not necessarily share their own denominational preferences. During the first two decades of the eighteenth century the majority of these joint congregations were to divide, as (in most cases) the smaller body of Congregational supporters withdrew to establish their own meetings. There had, however, been more than twenty years of co-operation in many areas in the period following the collapse of the Happy Union in London, and in a few cases such arrangements even continued until the early nineteenth century. There is evidence from at least two congregations, at Leicester and Chesterfield, of a formal agreement to settle the differences between the two denominations. The Happy Union and its failure in London has been the subject of a number of studies, but by contrast the continuing co-operation between Presbyterians and Independents in the provinces has received little detailed attention.

The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-67
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Community Dynamics ◽  
Church Discipline ◽  
Sexual Offences ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Female Community ◽  
The Church ◽  
Unmarried Girl

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.

Scottish Missionaries, ‘Protestant Hinduism’ and the Scottish Sense of Empire in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century India

2007 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Constable
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western India ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Free Church ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

This article examines the Scottish missionary contribution to a Scottish sense of empire in India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initially, the article reviews general historiographical interpretations which have in recent years been developed to explain the Scottish relationship with British imperial development in India. Subsequently the article analyses in detail the religious contributions of Scottish Presbyterian missionaries of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Missions to a Scottish sense of empire with a focus on their interaction with Hindu socioreligious thought in nineteenth-century western India. Previous missionary historiography has tended to focus substantially on the emergence of Scottish evangelical missionary activity in India in the early nineteenth century and most notably on Alexander Duff (1806–78). Relatively little has been written on Scottish Presbyterian missions in India in the later nineteenth century, and even less on the significance of their missionary thought to a Scottish sense of Indian empire. Through an analysis of Scottish Presbyterian missionary critiques in both vernacular Marathi and English, this article outlines the orientalist engagement of Scottish Presbyterian missionary thought with late nineteenth-century popular Hinduism. In conclusion this article demonstrates how this intellectual engagement contributed to and helped define a Scottish missionary sense of empire in India.

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