Chapter 12: Early Religious Controversies
CHAPTER 12
EARLY RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSIES
IN the year 1829, Newman became involved in two religious controversies: the independence of the Church of England from the State and the orientation of the Christian Missionary Society. The first altered Newman’s position at Oriel and began his exodus from the college. Both would consolidate his separation from the Evangelical party.
During the age of the Tudor and Stuart kings, relations between Church and State consisted of an alliance that was more than an external policy. It was a deep-seated relationship based on a religious (and cultural) understanding of the sacred character of kingship with its corresponding customs and piety. Royal authority was not limited to purely temporal matters. This notion of society and government had been shaken by Cromwell’s dictatorship, but the long reign of George III had renewed the relationship between Church and State and restored the influence of the High Church Party in the Establishment.1
The marriage between Church and State known as Erastianism was replaced in the nineteenth century with a new Erastianism based on the Liberal and Unitarian concept of progress as the new secular religion. Lord Brougham and Lord John Russell, who espoused these ideas, led the Whig Party to advance Catholic Emancipation and pass the Reform Bill. The Whigs wanted to break the united front of the traditional allies: High Church, the Crown, the Bishops, and the Tory Ministry. High Church Anglicans tried in vain to maintain ecclesiastical autonomy, while Broad Church Anglicans, inspired by Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby and Stanley, sought Latitudinarian inclusiveness. Despite their divergent positions, these men were prepared to make any sacrifice to preserve the national character of the Established Church.2
In 1828, under the threat of a civil uprising in Ireland, the Tory government, led by Prime Minister Arthur Wellesley, and Home Secretary Robert Peel, radically changed its policy toward Ireland in favor of Catholic Emancipation. Peel was a graduate from Christ Church at Oxford and represented the University in Parliament. In light of his constituency he resigned in February 1829.
The same day that Peel’s resignation was read, the Convocation of Fellows at Oxford once more petitioned Parliament against Catholic Emancipation. The previous year, Newman had voted in Convocation against Emancipation, but this year, he abstained from voting.3 Before he had acted on the ideas of ecclesiastical independence taken from Whately’s Letters of an Episcopalian, Newman wrote years later that although he did not vote and was ambivalent about Catholic Emancipation, he opposed Peel for academic motives, under the influence of Keble and Froude, not ecclesiastical or political ones.4 On the other hand, Newman saw the Irish Temporalities Bill for Catholic Emancipation as the beginning of the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland (the Anglican Church), but he was not hostile to Catholic Emancipation.5 The day following Convocation he confided to Rickards: “I was not for the Petition, but should like much to turn P. out.” And then he commented: “The clamours of the Catholics are but the accidental developments of the jealousy Ireland must feel towards a country which has stolen her Parliament and independence. It is not a religious question.”6
Although the Oxford Fellows differed on their view of the “Catholic question,” the majority opposed the emancipation bill. They were unified only in opposing Peel’s reelection. By this, they hoped to assert the independence of the Church and of Oxford University from Parliament. Newman led the opposition to Peel at Oxford. Provost Hawkins and Whately rallied in support of Peel without consulting, as was customary, the Oriel Common Room. Sir Robert Inglis was elected with a majority of 146 as representative for the university. Inglis had been an undergraduate at Christ Church and in 1825 had strongly opposed Catholic Emancipation.
Newman was jubilant about this victory, but it angered Hawkins and Whately, who remonstrated with Newman for his important role in Peel’s defeat. Although Hawkins and Newman remained on civil terms, from this point on Hawkins would use his authority as Provost at Oriel to successfully oppose Newman.
In 1830, the Whigs returned to power after a period of seventy years. Lord Grey formed a Whig government and made Brougham Lord Chancellor of the new Ministry. Brougham, a Scottish lawyer who had argued for parliamentary reform for years, played an important role in persuading the House of Lords to pass the 1832 Reform Act and the 1833 Anti-Slavery Act. In July 1833, the Whig Ministry passed the Irish Temporalities Act that would reduce the Episcopal sees of the Irish Church from 22 to 10. Although many of these sees were small Anglican dioceses supported by tithes imposed on Irish-Catholics, Newman feared a State reform of the Church. He thought that Evangelicals within the Whig Government did not have “much use for the Church or the Creeds” and thus played into the hands of Liberals and secularists. According to Newman, Blomfield, the Bishop of London, had promoted Evangelicals to positions of influence and had lost the simplicity and unworldliness of men such as Milner and Scott; the new Evangelical party played into the hands of the Liberals.7
Another case of civil government interfering in ecclesiastical matters was the establishment of a joint Anglican–Lutheran Episcopal See in Jerusalem. Since the turn of the century, English missionary societies had desired to establish a mission in Jerusalem for the conversion of Jews, and in 1833, Anglican services began in Jerusalem. In 1841, however, for the sake of political expediency among the English, Prussian, and Turkish governments, a mixed diocese was established without regard for religious truths and practices.
Newman could not bear the religious liberalism or doctrinal indifference of the ruling party that carried this out. He opposed Parliament’s control over the Anglican Church, and, at the same time, he considered the loss of Church prerogatives as an abuse. In some sense, he held an inconsistent position that favored government patronage of the Anglican or Established Church while objecting to State interference. Newman hung on to some of the High Church and Tory beliefs in a national church, espousing the Divine Right of Kings and Passive Obedience, but his sympathy for the Tories was short-lived. Neither they nor the Whigs respected the Church.
In 1833, Newman wrote to Walter John Trower, a Fellow at Oriel:
… I am become neither Whig nor Tory. In proportion as a Government disconnects itself with the Church, so does it cease to be the duty of a Churchman to be a Politician, and both the Tories and the pious Whigs are disconnected since the Reform Bill, and other political measures have been passed.8
While acknowledging the importance of the emancipation of slaves, Newman told him that he would press for more effective Church discipline, independence of bishops from the Crown, and restoration of the power of excommunication.
Contrary to Newman’s view, the Irish ecclesiastical reforms were moderate and reasonable measures.9 Nonetheless, like Keble and Froude, Newman did not accept older Church-State models, such as the Tudor Settlement, the Church-State envisioned by Hooker, nor the theocracy advocated by Laud and Stafford. Historian Christopher Dawson describes Newman’s ideal as “the spiritual freedom of the Apostolic Church and the Catholic inheritance of the Church of the Fathers.”10
The greatest threat that Newman perceived was the Liberal and Utilitarian philosophy, which he refuted in a sermon that he delivered in 1832. To the self-satisfaction and superficial optimism of Deism he presented the Christian doctrine, which recognized the dark reality of evil and suffering. He opposed the true natural religion of fallen man to the sham natural religion of some philosophers. Socinians, also known as Unitarians, and some Deists based their beliefs on a mistaken notion of God and a shallow optimism about man. Newman described the tenets of these systems thus:
[T]hat the rule of Divine government is one of benevolence, and nothing but benevolence; that evil is but remedial and temporary; that sin is of a venial nature; that repentance is a sufficient atonement for it; that the moral sense is substantially but an instinct of benevolence; and that doctrinal opinions do not influence our character or prospects, nor deserve our serious attention.11
Newman opposed another sort of liberalism that was taking place among deeply religious people who organized societies for propagating the Christian faith in far-off lands. Two of these societies were The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, established in 1689 and 1701, respectively. These societies wished to preach Christianity in parts of Africa that had never heard of the Gospel. The first of these new missionaries to Africa were neither English nor Anglican; they were Lutherans from Germany.
The Christian Missionary Society was another association of Evangelical Anglicans established for the same laudable purpose in 1799, but which, unlike the other two, sought Episcopal supervision after it was founded. At its founding, the Society’s first resolution was that every Christian, not only the church as a body, had the obligation to propagate the Christian faith. Furthermore, the first resolution stated, “if the church did not move, individual Christians must move.”12 Its first missionaries were also German Lutherans.
In spite of the praiseworthy goal of these societies, they disregarded the importance of doctrine by seeking membership from any Christian even if he espoused heterodox beliefs. Aware of the doctrinal indifference that resulted, Newman, who had by then left Evangelical doctrines behind, remained in the Christian Missionary Society, hoping to exert a positive influence. In March of 1829, he was elected as joint-secretary for the Oxford Branch of the Society.
Before the end of the year, however, he debated with John Hill, his joint-secretary and a well-known Evangelical from St. Edmund Hall, over the doctrinal content of two sermons given in support of the Society.13 Newman followed this disagreement with the circulation of a letter by which he aimed to increase subscription to the Society with members of the university. He wished to increase the influence of the university clergymen and the Anglican hierarchy in the Society. His authorship of the letter soon became public news.14
In the letter addressed to the clergymen residing at Oxford University, Newman outhned the evils of the Society.15 He criticized the espousal of Calvinist doctrine by some of its central directors, and pointed out the confusion caused by large public meetings that rivaled the parochial system. He objected to the prominence given to preaching over church services and the usurpation of the Church’s prerogative to ordain ministers and send them as missionaries. Newman urged his peers to act in favor of the doctrine and authority of the Anglican Church: “Things cannot remain as they are. This Society must approach the Church, or recede from her. If with an unwise timidity we let things take their course, it will insensibly be familiarized to the principles and practices of schism, and be lost to us with its resources, actual success, prospects for the future, its piety and activity …”16
In 1830, Newman was not reelected as secretary. Instead, an extreme Evangelical was elected. Newman complained that the Society did not recognize any doctrinal principles and that its inclusion of all types of Christians undermined Christian doctrine. Such inclusion conciliated all Christians at the expense of the truth.
It was at about this same period, in 1830, that Frank Newman set off on a missionary enterprise in Persia. John Henry Newman realized the importance of missions and wished to support their work, yet he considered that the risk of losing legitimate authority and a definitive creed in the Church was too great. The Methodists had already separated themselves from the Anglican Church over the question of ordination and commission of missionaries to North America.
During this period, even as he was embroiled in these controversies, Newman continued to serve his parishioners. At the outset of 1830, he obtained permission from the bishop to have a curate for Littlemore, a village at one end of his parish. He contracted Mr. Gower, the chaplain of Magdalen College, for a proposed sum of £50.17 The curate had the care of approximately 200 people living in Littlemore. Gower was an Evangelical and expressed disagreement with Pusey’s teaching of baptismal regeneration and therefore was a poor choice. In September, Newman replaced him with his friend Isaac Williams, who was elected Fellow of Trinity College the following year.
A year earlier at Littlemore, Newman had hired a room for weekly services and catechetical lectures. He realized the village needed its own church and anticipated it ultimately becoming a parish separate from St. Mary’s. The people were poor and unable to support a pastor, and the neighboring parishes were hostile to having another parish because these parishes could charge double fees for non-parishioners. Newman obtained support for his scheme of building a church at Littlemore from Froude and Robert Wilberforce, but Provost Hawkins rejected the proposal. Newman would have to wait seven years to build the church.
Newman faced the party politics at Oxford, but on a greater scale he was introduced into national politics. The controversy over Catholic Emancipation of Ireland heightened his concern for State-Church relations that would respect ecclesiastical government. During the period of 1829 to 1830, he also understood more keenly the need for doctrinal orthodoxy and episcopal oversight of the missionary societies.
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1Dawson, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement, 6-11.
2Ibid., 10.
3LD, Vol. II, Diary entry (February 5, 1829), 117.
4Apo., 14.
5Dawson, Spirit of the Oxford Movement, 36.
6LD, Vol. II, JHN to Samuel Rickards (February 6, 1829), 117-19; 118.
7Apo., 31.
8LD, Vol. III, JHN to Walter John Trower (April 16, 1833), 290-93; 292.
9Dawson, The Spirit of the Oxford Movement, 9-15.
10Ibid., 10.
11“On Justice as a Principle of Divine Governance,” in John Henry Newman, Oxford University Sermons (April 8, 1832), 104, available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/oxford/sermon6.html. After this it will be cited US.
12Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society, Vol. I (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1899), 68.
13LD, Vol. III, JHN to John Hill (December 11, 1829), 178.
14LD, Vol. III, Diary entry and footnote (March 8, 1830), 198.
15Newman, VM, Suggestions Respectfully Offered to Individual Resident Clergymen of the University in behalf of the Church Missionary Society by a Master of Arts (February 1, 1830), Vol. II, 9-16.
16Ibid., 15.
17LD, Vol. II, JHN to Richard Bagot, Bishop of Oxford (February 1, 1830), 194-95; Bishop’s reply, ibid., 195.