Evangelicals, Anglicans and Ritualism in Victorian England

It is difficult today, with Liberal Catholic ascendancy in the Church of England, to imagine the shock which the advent of the Tractarian Movement caused in Protestant England in the early part of the nineteenth century. While High and Low Churchmen as well as Evangelicals differed considerably in their precise understanding of the formularies of the Church, they were nevertheless agreed in their Protestantism. The more perceptive soon realised that Tractarianism was no mere chimera and dire predictions of where the doctrinal stance of the early leaders would end were confirmed by the publication of Tract 90 by Newman. (See ‘Newman’s Doctrine - Development or Deviation?’ Churchman vol 106/1 1992.) Dr Scotland’s article deals with the second phase which moved logically from doctrine to liturgical practice. The response of the Protestants was varied. Because of the revisionist rewriting of history by the Tractarians, the Parker Society published the writings of the sixteenth-century Reformers to confirm that the Church of England had been truly reformed. While these publications served a valuable purpose they did not stem the tide of liturgical revision towards Rome and eventually, in desperation, Protestants banded together in a large number of Societies of which Church Association was but one. Considerable intolerance was shown by both sides in the long-running dispute and each brought the other before the courts of the land. The English Church in medieval times had of course been part of the Western Roman Catholic Church presided over by the papacy. English worship in that era before the Reformation was characterized by a good deal of ritual centred on the mass and the sacramental system. In addition there were many monastic houses with their daily rounds of processional services and sung offices which contributed to the development of ceremonial. Much of this heritage was eradicated by the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers in their desire to recover a simpler way of religious life and worship more in keeping with the New Testament and early church practices. For the most part English church worship remained plain and unadorned until the middle years of the nineteenth century, when a series of events combined to create a renewed desire to recover medieval ritual in the Church of England. The Emergence of Ritualism in the Church of England in the Nineteenth Century