Online Encyclopedia
Oxford Movement
For the 20th century Oxford Movement or Group see Moral Rearmament
The Oxford Movement was an attempt to prove that the Church of England was a direct descendant of the Christian church established by the Apostles. It was also known as the Tractarian Movement after its series of publications, Tracts for the Times (1833-1841). The leader was John Henry Newman a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and vicar of St Mary's Church, Oxford. He had been influenced by a sermon by John Keble in 1833 criticising the increasing secularization of the Church of England. Other prominent members were Archdeacon Henry Edward Manning, Edward Pusey, and Robert Wilberforce .
In the ninetieth and final Tract, Newman argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the sixteenth-century Church of England. The Movement ended when Newman, driven further than he had expected by his own arguments, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845. Anglo-Catholicism, which owes its revival to the Oxford Movement, has had a massive influence on global Anglicanism which continues to this day.