The Anglican Imagination of Matthew Arnold

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-218
Author(s):  
Matthew LaGrone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Matthew Arnold ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis essay is an attempt to write Matthew Arnold into the narrative of Anglican thought in the nineteenth century. Overviews of general religious thought in the Victorian era give an appropriate nod to Arnold, but the institutional histories of the Anglican Church have not acknowledged his contributions to defining Anglican identity. In many ways, this is quite understandable: Arnold broke with much of traditional Christian doctrine. But, and just as significant, he never left the Church of England, and in fact he was an apologist for the Church at a time when even part of the clergy seemed alienated. He sought to expand the parameters of permitted religious opinion to include the largest number of English Christians in the warm embrace of the national Church. The essay concludes that the religious reflections of Arnold must be anchored in an Anglican context.

The Shaking of the Seven Hills

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 439-455
Author(s):  
P. D. L. Avis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
Anglican Theology ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Church

The doctrine of justification, for Luther the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae, was for the authors of the report Doctrine in the Church of England (1938) not worth mentioning. Here, however, the members of the Archbishops' Commission on Christian Doctrine were not representative of the Anglican tradition as a whole which has not been remiss in attending to the matter of justification. The doctrine presents a challenge to the Anglican attempt to find a via media and there are pronounced oscillations of emphasis in the Anglican tradition on this question, represented by Bishop Bull and J. H. Newman on the right and Hooker and F. D. Maurice on the left. Newman's Lectures on Justification provoked further efforts to find a synthesis and led, by the end of the nineteenth century, to a restatement of the doctrine of justification within Anglican theology, which though in certain respects catholic in form, was definitely evangelical in spirit.

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.

“Unreasonable and Unbecoming”: Self-Recommendation and Place-Seeking in the Church of England, 1700–1900

1995 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
W. T. Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Fundamental Difference ◽  
Victorian Era ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Academic Standing ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church ◽  
Strong Contrast

Ecclesiastical patrons used a broad range of criteria to select clergy for preferment to livings and dignities in the Church of England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The qualifications of nobility, of academic standing, of services to the Church and State, of a patron's influence and strong churchmanship were among those that were most common. But a further factor affected advancement: that of self-recommendation. Ecclesiastical historians, particularly those of the Victorian era, have tended to see this as a morally questionable, if not corrupt, method of gaining advancement—and one which was primarily a feature of the Hanoverian Church. Indeed the traditional view of ecclesiastical history, though increasingly under challenge, regarded the Hanoverian and Victorian Churches as standing in strong contrast to each other. This contrast has tended to include the quality and recruitment of the clergy. Yet, there was no fundamental difference in the methods used by patrons in distributing livings and offices in the Church in these two centuries. Crown livings and senior posts in the Church were distributed by ministers and patrons who were prone to favor, influence, and persuasion. It was to this system that self-recommendation was directed, in the hope of securing preferment. Because of the success of personal solicitation, self-recommendation remained a factor in nominations to places in the Church throughout the nineteenth century. Even when it was declared unacceptable for the appointment to senior Church offices by Gladstone in 1881, self-recommendation remained in existence in a covert form.

‘This Romish business’ - Ritual Innovation and Parish Life in Later Nineteenth-Century Lincolnshire

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 384-395
Author(s):  
R. W. Ambler
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Context ◽  
Holy Communion ◽  
Parish Church ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Church ◽  
Mixing Water

In February 1889 Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, appeared before the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury charged with illegal practices in worship. The immediate occasion for these proceedings was the manner in which he celebrated Holy Communion at the Lincoln parish church of St Peter at Gowts on Sunday 4 December 1887. He was cited on six specific charges: the use of lighted candles on the altar; mixing water with the communion wine; adopting an eastward-facing position with his back to the congregation during the consecration; permitting the Agnus Dei to be sung after the consecration; making the sign of the cross at the absolution and benediction, and taking part in ablution by pouring water and wine into the chalice and paten after communion. Two Sundays later King had repeated some of these acts during a service at Lincoln Cathedral. As well as its intrinsic importance in defining the legality of the acts with which he was charged, the Bishop’s trial raised issues of considerable importance relating to the nature and exercise of authority within the Church of England and its relationship with the state. The acts for which King was tried had a further significance since the ways in which these and other innovations in worship were perceived, as well as the spirit in which they were ventured, also reflected the fundamental shifts which were taking place in the role of the Church of England at parish level in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their study in a local context such as Lincolnshire, part of King’s diocese, provides the opportunity to examine the relationship between changes in worship and developments in parish life in the period.

Anglican Emigrant Chaplaincy in the British Empire and Beyond,c.1840–1900

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Direct Involvement ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Church

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.

A Leicestershire Recusant Family: The Nevills of Nevill Holt – I

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
James I ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The Church

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.

Child Sexual Abuse, Integrity Systems and the Anglican Church: Truth, Justice and Love

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Virginia Miller ◽  
Seumas Miller
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Male Sexuality ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Safety Measures ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Commissions Of Inquiry ◽  
Integrity System ◽  
The Church

Abstract This article concerns child sexual abuse in the Anglican Church of Australia and the Church of England and, in particular, an integrity system to combat this problem and the ethical problems it gives rise to. The article relies on the findings of various commissions of inquiry to determine the nature and extent of child sexual abuse in the Anglican Church. The two salient ethical problems identified are: (1) design of safety measures in the light of the statistical preponderance of male on male sexuality; (2) justice issues arising from redress schemes established or proposed to provide redress to victims.

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.

Deification in the Long Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-81
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Education ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Expressions ◽  
Russian Religious Thought ◽  
The Church

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.

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