The Spiritual Pilgrimage of the Rev. R. J. Campbell

1979 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Robbins
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Public Figure ◽  
Holy Trinity ◽  
Review Of Reviews ◽  
The Times ◽  
The City ◽  
Spiritual Pilgrimage ◽  
The Church

The death of Canon R.J. Campbell on 1 March 1956 did not cause a national stir. There was an obituary the following day in The Times and some comment on subsequent days from friends and associates, but little to indicate that fifty years earlier he had been a substantial public figure. One obscure diarist, who had known Campbell as a young man, felt that ‘the grudging admission…of some academic distinction’ was an inadequate summary of Campbell's life and work. In part, of course, having outlived most of his contemporaries, Campbell was paying the penalty for his longevity. More important, however, was the fact that for decades he had consciously avoided the limelight. ‘No man’ he had written to the novelist Margaret Lane in December 1947 ‘could more carefully avoid publicity than I have done for a generation’. From 1930 to 1946 he had been a residentiary canon and then chancellor of Chichester and before that served as vicar of Holy Trinity, Brighton for six years. It would appear that he possessed an eminently Anglican pedigree. In May 1903, however, a frail, ascetic-looking, prematurely white-haired Campbell had commenced his ministry at the City Temple, the leading Congregational church in London. W. T. Stead's Review of Reviews looked forward to the ‘Renascence of Nonconformity’ under the leadership of this thirty-five-year-old young man. Over seven thousand people attended the services on his first Sunday. Picture postcards of Campbell were soon on sale and later admirers could purchase the R. J. Campbell Birthday Book containing his ‘favourite poetical quotations, portrait and autograph’. There was even A Rosary from the City Temple, described as being threaded from the writings and sermons of R. J. Campbell. The publicity which attended his arrival in London rarely left him for the next dozen years. In September 1915, rumours of Campbell's intention to resign the pastorate and speculation about his subsequent course were thought of sufficient interest to reach the news columns of The Times. His resignation merited a leader in the newspaper and, following his reception into the Church of England in early October, the comments of prominent religious leaders were printed. In 1916 Campbell published A Spiritual Pilgrimage, and a reconsideration of this volume throws interesting light on the cross-currents of Edwardian religious life.

The City, the Countryside and the Social Gospel in Late Victorian Nonconformity

1979 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 415-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. W. Bebbington
Keyword(s):  
Church Attendance ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Adult Population ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
The People ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The late nineteenth-century city posed problems for English nonconformists. The country was rapidly being urbanised. By 1881 over one third of the people lived in cities with a population of more than one hundred thousand. The most urbanised areas gave rise to the greatest worry of all the churches: large numbers there were failing to attend services. The religious census of 1851 had already shown that the largest towns were the places where there were the fewest worshippers, although nonconformists gained some crumbs of comfort from the knowledge that nonconformist attendances were greater than those of the church of England. Unofficial surveys in the 1880S revealed no improvement. Instead, although few were immediately conscious of it, in that decade the membership of all the main evangelical nonconformist denominations began to fall relative to population. And it was always the same social group that was most conspicuously unreached: the lower working classes, the bottom of the social pyramid. In poor neighbourhoods church attendance was lowest. In Bethnal Green at the turn of the twentieth century, for instance, only 6.8% of the adult population attended chapel, and only 13.3% went to any place of worship. Consequently nonconformists, like Anglicans, were troubled by the weakness of their appeal.

Tract 90

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. G. Pahls ◽  
Kenneth Parker
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Best Effort ◽  
The Church

In 1864, John Henry Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua characterized Tract 90 as his last best effort to remain in the Church of England. While Newman always celebrated his reliance on Anglican Caroline divines, this chapter demonstrates his unacknowledged debt to a notable Oxford convert of the Caroline period, Christopher Davenport (1598–1680), known in Franciscan religious life as Franciscus à Sancta Clara. Davenport served as Catholic chaplain to Queen Henrietta Maria and penned his irenic Paraphrastica Expositio Articulorum Confessionis Anglicanae (1634) to promote the reunion of the churches of England and Rome. The chapter demonstrates Newman’s use and close reading of Davenport’s work, analysing numerous paraphrases that Newman employed to build his arguments.

‘What could be more Christian than to allow the Sikhs to use it?’ Church Redundancy and Minority Religion in Bedford, 1977–8

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 399-411
Author(s):  
John Maiden
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Religious Congregations ◽  
British Council ◽  
Minority Religion ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church ◽  
Migrant Groups

In 1985, Faith in the City, The Church of England’s report on Urban Priority Areas, commented that Christians frequently had an excess of church buildings, while ‘people of other faiths are often exceedingly short of places in which to meet and worship’. The challenge of securing sacred space has been common to migrant groups in Britain, and during the 1970s sharing of space between national historic denominations and migrant religious groups was identified by the British Council of Churches (BCC) and its Community and Race Relations Unit as a leading issue for interreligious relations. In the case of the Church of England, ancillary parish buildings were occasionally shared with non-Christian religious congregations for limited use: for example, later that decade the church halls of All Saints, Gravelly Hill, Birmingham, were being used by Muslims and Hindus for festivals and clubs.

Notes in the History of Sir Jerome Alexander Second Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and Founder of the Alexander Library, Trinity College, Dublin

1872 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 220-240
Author(s):  
Charles Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The Will of Sir Jerome Alexander, a parchment transcript of which is preserved in the Chief Probate Office, Dublin, is a document of more than ordinary interest; even with its cumbrous repetitions we owe no apology for producing it in full:–“In the name of God Amen. I, Sr Jerome Alexander of the City of Dublin, one of the unprofitable servants of Almighty God, being of a perfect sound disposing memory, praised bee God, this three and twentieth day of March in the yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Charles the Second of that name by the grace of God of England, Scotland, Fraunce and Ireland King Defender of the Faith &c. the two and twentieth, and hereby renounceing and admitting and declareing all former Wills and Testaments by mee at any time heretofore made to bee utterly void & of none effect, doe declare this to bee my last true Will and Testament in manner & form following and doe now soe declare it to bee. And first of all I resigne my soul into the hands of Jesus Christ my blessed Saviour and Redeemer, confidently trusting and assureing myselffe in by and through his onely merritts and mediation to receive life everlasting; and I doe hereby profess myselfe to dye as I have allways lived, a sonne of the Church of England, which is the most absolute and best forme of government in all the world,’ twere to bee heartily wished that it were practised in all the Churches of Christendome, and my body I commend unto the earth from whence it came to receive decent and comely buryall, without any greate pompe or ceremonies whatso-ever, not doubting but at the last day it shall bee raised againe and united unto my soule with it for to partake of immortall and everlasting happiness.

Anglican Orders and Orthodox Politics

2006 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 270-300
Author(s):  
BRYN GEFFERT
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Church ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Shed Light

This essay examines the political and religious impetus behind Patriarch Meletios Metaxakis's recognition of Anglican orders in 1922. The furore surrounding recognition, the events that led up to it and the fall-out that followed shed light on the many difficulties faced by religious leaders in the post-war Orthodox world, difficulties that led to fierce jockeying among Orthodox clerics as they tried to establish themselves in relation to their coreligionists and to the larger Christian world. The controversy also offers insight into the problems inherent when a ‘comprehensive’ Church such as the Church of England enters into discussions with a more uniformly dogmatic confession such as Orthodoxy.

Sacerdotalism

1910 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-356
Author(s):  
George E. Horr
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
The Church ◽  
Do So

The provisions for the fourth of the series of Dudleian Lectures are as follows:“The fourth and last lecture I would have for the maintaining, explaining, and proving the validity of the ordination of ministers or pastors of the churches, and so their administration of the sacraments or ordinances of religion as the same hath been practiced in New England, from the first beginning of it, and so continued at this day. Not that I would in any wise invalidate Episcopal Ordination, as it is commonly called and practiced in the Church of England; but I do esteem the method of ordination as practiced in Scotland, at Geneva, and among the dissenters in England, and in the churches in this country, to be very safe, Scriptural and valid; and that the great Head of the church, by his blessed spirit, hath owned, sanctified, and blessed them accordingly, and will continue to do so to the end of the World. Amen.”The topic of Sacerdotalism is naturally involved in the terms of this Foundation.The term “Sacerdotalism” has been defined as “the doctrine that the man who ministers in sacred things, the institution through which and the office or order in which he ministers, the acts he performs, the sacraments and rites he celebrates, are so ordained and constituted of God as to be the peculiar channels of His grace, essential to true worship, necessary to the being of religion, and the full realization of the religious life.”

William John Butler and the revival of the Ascetic Tradition

1985 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 365-376
Author(s):  
Ann Frances
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
The Church

William John Butler, sometime vicar of Wantage in Berkshire and founder of the Community of St Mary the Virgin, gave a concrete and contemporary expression to an aspect of the ascetic idea current among followers of the Oxford Movement, which was revealed in their desire to restore monastic life in the Church in England. The Community founded by Butler was one of the earliest of the indigenous Anglican communities for women. In no way could the desert ideal or the later pre-Reformation models of religious life be reconstructed, nor would they have been appropriate in the climate of the time. However Butler believed, as had Newman, Pusey and others, that the basic principles of monastic life remained valid and they could and should find their place in the contemporary Church of England. It was believed that the Church had the grace and the resources of devotion within itself to give birth to the religious life anew, to continue its nurture and promote its development. Certainly the enhanced spirituality resulting from the example of deep devotion of the Tractarians themselves and that of their followers engendered a religious atmosphere in which new spiritual adventures were made possible.

Collective Sovereignty? Conscience in the Gathered Church c. 1875-1918

1987 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 479-506
Author(s):  
Clyde Binfield
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Political Concept ◽  
Religious Concept ◽  
The Times ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Sovereignty ought to be a natural concept for Christians whose rhetoric is full of words or collections of words like ‘Lord’ or ‘King’ or ‘Kingdom’ or ‘Crown Rights of the Redeemer’. It ought to be doubly natural for the Christian inhabitants of an earthly kingdom whose monarch protects a national church. In fact, ‘sovereignty’ is not a word which comes trippingly to ordinary Christian lips, and it is a religious concept as fraught with theological ambiguity for Christians as it is a political concept fraught with secular ambiguity for citizens. Indeed, for British Christians and citizens the ambiguities merge. For a Roman Catholic who recently edited The Times, ‘Liberty puts the individual in command of his own decisions; his vote is the ultimate political sovereign in a democracy; his purchase is the ultimate economic sovereign in a free market.’ For a critic of the Methodist-turned-Anglican who was Prime Minister when that was written, ‘Where the Church of England lists thirty-nine essential articles of faith, Mrs Thatcher names three: the belief in the doctrine of Free-Will; in the divinely created sovereignty of individual conscience; and in the Crucifixion and Redemption as the exemplary, supreme act of choice.’ Yet to a political journalist, interpreting the same Prime Minister’s view of British sovereignty as opposed to any Western European understanding, it seems that Parliament alone is sovereign: ‘no citizen or subordinate authority can have any unalienable rights against the state, which can lend out power to groups or individuals but never give it away.’ Whose vote then is ultimate political sovereign? Whose conscience then is divinely-created sovereign?

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