Ecumenical initiatives have a history as long as the first divisions among Christians appeared in antiquity. The present book is concerned with the efforts towards reunion promoted by those who, in some way or another, were related to the Oxford Movement or claimed descent from it. Its author, Mark Chapman, an intellectual historian and Vice-Principal of the Anglican Ripon College (Cuddesdon), is well qualified to deal with the subject. His angle, as was perhaps to be expected, is eminently Anglican and dedicates less attention to the Catholic Church’s involvement and response to ecumenical overtures. The book follows chronologically the different stages and evolution of the ecumenical contacts and the various changes of scenario and partners in dialogue at time went by: Anglican and Catholics at first; Anglican, Orthodox and Old Catholic later on.

Tractarian and Anglo-Catholic doctrine of the Church had a natural ecumenical dimension. The Church universal, founded by Christ, was constituted by three branches – Anglican, Orthodox, and Roman – which had preserved apostolic succession and the fundamentals of the faith. There had been some early ecumenical initiatives like the one of William Palmer of Magdalen towards the Orthodox Church and the not much more successful one of Fr George Spencer’s proposal of an association of prayer for unity. The late 1850s saw, a renewed impulse to ecumenical initiative. The Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom (APUC), founded in 1857, grew out of the enthusiasm and sanguine hopes of the Rev. Frederick George Lee and Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle, a pre-Tractarian Catholic convert. The aim of the Association was prayer for unity, and this uncontroversial objective attracted many to it: Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox. Lee, Phillips, and some others also aspired to an early review by Rome of the vexed question of the validity of Anglican Orders. It is difficult to estimate the numbers of those who joined the association, as there are no reliable records, but membership grew rapidly. Ritualists were the dominant influence within it. However, the remnants of the Tractarian old-guard – Keble, Pusey, and Isaac Williams – kept their distance from the Association, considering it to be too unrepresentative and Rome-prone.

Harmony among APUC’s members was to prove short lived. The Union Newspaper, the early organ of the Association, alienated many High Churchmen because of its advocacy of ‘Romish’ practices. Its successor, the Union Review, trying to assuage Anglican sensitivities, managed to offend Catholic ones. The Union Review’s implicit and at times not-so-implicit advocacy of the three-branch theory raised doctrinal issues which could not be overlooked for long. The English Catholic hierarchy, without supporting the APUC, had done nothing at first to discourage Catholic membership of the Association. They soon felt impelled to intervene. In 1864, they obtained a rescript from Rome condemning the Association. The condemnation was renewed in December 1865 after a letter of remonstrance against the rescript signed by 198 Anglicans. Most Catholics then deserted APUC. It continued its operations but the condemnation left behind an atmosphere of bitterness among many of its Anglican members.

Pusey seemed now to take up the reins of the ecumenical dialogue with his Eirenicon (1865). This was not originally intended as a response to the APUC rescript but as an answer to Manning’s claims in The Workings of the Holy Spirit in the Church of England (1864), where he, Manning, maintained that the Church of England rather than being a bulwark against infidelity, as Pusey had claimed, had caused the progressive slide of the English people into error. The Eirenicon changed the tone of the ecumenical dialogue, turning it into a detailed examination of Catholic doctrines such as infallibility and devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Newman became now Pusey’s main correspondent. Their exchanges, however, were mired in their different understandings of the rule of faith. Pusey stood immovable on the quod semper (what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all), while Newman rested his case on the theory of development. As a result, their dialogue went round in circles, rarely to meet head on. Two more Eirenicons were to follow; the last one – Is Healthful Reunion impossible? – was published in 1870 during Vatican Council I. The Council went on to define the infallibility of the Pope that Pusey had feared. He saw it as a disastrous blow to the prospects for reunion, and in 1876 republished his third Eirenicon under the revised title Healthful Reunion as conceived possible before the Vatican Council.

The dismissal of the APUC and the Vatican Council definitions closed the door to dialogue with Rome. Anglican ecumenical attention turned now to the eastern churches and those of the continent which had broken away from Rome, in particular the Old Catholic Church. These episcopal churches, national in character and deeply anti-papal, were seen by many Anglicans as more promising partners in dialogue than Rome. The Bonn Reunion Conferences of 1874 and 1875, organised by Döllinger, were a moment of hope. The original optimism was however short lived. Pusey, who was not taking part in the conferences, reacted strongly against Orthodox intransigence in respect to the Filioque, writing a long pamphlet against its removal from the Creed. The various parties to the conferences drifted inexorably away from each other. Ecumenical paths seemed, at least for the time being, closed. Ecumenism had been all along a minority interest within the Church of England, now even those who had been involved in it turned their attention towards building up the Anglican Communion around the globe.

The Fantasy of Reunion is a scholarly and well-paced narrative of the history of nineteenth century initiatives for reunion, although perhaps is to be regretted that Catholic attitudes and responses are not described at greater length and with more depth. The title of the book makes a reference to the sense of failure and disappointment felt by those who took part in the APUC or the Bonn Conferences; it also seems to suggest the pessimism of the author about the possible success of present and future ecumenical initiatives.