Christmas Every Day

1833

John Keble begins the Oxford Movement

The publication of his work The Christian Year in 1827 led to John Keble (1792-1866) being named Oxford Professor of Poetry and resulted in a much keener interest in the Anglican church of the Christian calendar and long-neglected traditions. This poetic call to look backward was made in the midst of much turmoil. The British government had weakened the dominant position of the Church of England by removing restrictions on Protestant Dissenters and Roman Catholics and by legislation regarding the property of the Church of Ireland. Many, including Keble, felt that all this signalled a moving away from the proper relationship between Church and State. On July 14, 1833, he gave a strongly-worded sermon at Oxford University with the provocative title “National Apostasy”. In it, Keble warned of a weakening of religious sentiment and a loss of the notion that Britain was a Christian nation and he went so far as to predict a time of persecution. How was an English Christian then to behave? Keble counselled patience and encouragement.

I do not see how any person can devote himself too entirely to the cause of the Apostolical Church in these realms. There may be, as far as he knows, but a very few to sympathise with him. He may have to wait long, and very likely pass out of this world before he see any abatement in the triumph of disorder and irreligion. But, if he be consistent, he possesses, to the utmost, the personal consolations of a good Christian: and as a true Churchman, he has that encouragement, which no other cause in the world can impart in the same degree:—he is calmly, soberly, demonstrably, SURE, that, sooner or later, HIS WILL BE THE WINNING SIDE, and that the victory will be complete, universal, eternal.

This sermon inspired what became known as the Oxford or Tractarian Movement, an impulse inside Anglicanism to return to older ceremonial practices which may be termed High Church and a fondness for Gothic architecture and decoration. It eventually led to the abandonment of the Church of England by leading Tractarians such as John Henry Newman and Henry Manning, both of who adopted Roman Catholicism and rose to the rank of cardinal. Keble stayed within the Anglican Church.