Keble Pleaded with the English Church to Renew its Life
John Keble's sermon stirred a reformation movement.
“WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS, by which one may judge most fairly, whether or no a nation, as such, is becoming alienated from God and Christ?”
John Keble asked Britain this question in his sermon, “National Apostasy,” which he preached on this day, 14 July 1833. Among such symptoms of apostasy, he noted, were when a nation deliberately threw off restraint, tolerated lack of faith in those with positions of public trust, and left God out of public thought.
“What should be the tenor of their conduct, who find themselves cast on such times of decay and danger?” he asked. He answered they should behave like the prophet Samuel when Israel demanded a king. Samuel had vowed to pray for his nation and teach her “right ways.” Keble said that Christians in his day should pray, and remonstrate, likewise.
His sermon marked the beginning of the Oxford Movement—a revival of religion proceeding from “High Church” figures (those in the Church of England who wished to revive many Roman Catholic forms and beliefs). Among the leaders of this movement were Henry Manning, Edward Pusey, Richard Hurrell Froude, William Ward, and John Henry Newman.
The High Church party looked back to creeds and to apostolic succession for its religious authority, and argued for a continuity of Anglicanism in their day with Catholicism before the Reformation. Its members issued tracts and preached sermons to persuade the British to restore Christian life to the nation. Newman, for example, preached a sermon titled, “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness.” Here he solemnly warned his listeners that for a person who cared nothing about God here on earth, heaven would be a misery, for there everything is about God. “Heaven,” he said, “would be hell to an irreligious man.”
Some High Church reformers became Roman Catholics. Among them were Manning and Ward. Newman soon followed. He had written a tract in which he argued that the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England could be interpreted in a Roman Catholic way. When the Church of England banned him from issuing any more tracts as one of their priests, he resigned from his positions as priest and professor at Oxford.
Thus, the Oxford Movement divided the English church, but it had a profound effect on the spirituality of English clergy. It also forced leaders in the Church of England to reexamine on what basis their doctrine and authority stood.
—Dan Graves
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For more about Keble, see this story in Christian History #9, "Christ in his church: Newman and the Tractarians"