Professor King has previously written extensively on John Henry Newman, notably Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers and co-edited Receptions of Newman and The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman. In this book, he broadens his perspective to investigate leading Tractarian theologians’ views of the role lay people should have in the Church, and the roles some laypeople, influenced by Tractarianism, did play in the Church of England, both in England and overseas. He thus hopes to hold together theology and history. This is done in six chapters: Tracking Down the Tractarian Laity, Providence and Colonial Slavery, Ecclesiology and Church Establishment, Consensus Fidelium and Synods, Episcopacy and Empire, and Spirituality and the American Civil War.
Tractarian laity are identified by the parish churches they attended, societies they belonged to, circulation of Tractarian publications and names of those who signed petitions. However, many people, for example, Lord John Russell at St Paul’s Knightsbridge, attended their parish church regardless of its churchmanship, while only enthusiasts joined societies or signed petitions, and publications passed from hand to hand and may even have been bought by opponents to inform them what ‘the enemy’ said. Faithful Tractarian laity are, as is noted, difficult to identify. Those tracked down here are mostly well-connected, rich and male.
Under the heading, Providence and Colonial Slavery, Professor King notes the extent of involvement in West Indian slave ownership among the English middle and upper classes, through generations of inheritance and investment. He suggests that many Tractarians’ attitudes towards slavery were based on New Testament and Patristic general acceptance of the institution of slavery, and the experience of Tractarians like Hurrell Froude in the West Indies. Most Tractarians, clergy and laity, he suggests, while supporting abolishing the slave trade, advocated its gradual mitigation. Most thought, he suggests, that ‘Christianisation’ of slaves, in God’s providence, by baptism and teaching, and promoted by the newly established West Indian dioceses, would improve colonial society’s tone and the treatment of slaves, and gradually prepare slaves for freedom and citizenship. He notes that few English Tractarians, even those benefitting financially, had direct experience of the – often brutal – institution of slavery.
Considering ‘Ecclesiology and Church Establishment’ illustrates Tractarian clerical wariness of lay involvement, apart from the monarch, in matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. They held that, in matters spiritual, moral and doctrinal, bishops should govern the Church, in the manner of Cyprian and Ambrose. Whig legislation to divert appeals from ecclesiastical courts to a lay tribunal, to amalgamate Irish dioceses, and review English dioceses’ and cathedrals’ financial arrangements, aroused alarm and despondency among Tory-inclined bishops, clergy and leading laity. They feared that the Church’s catholicity was in danger. Some Tractarians and, later, Ritualists advocated disestablishment to remove baleful political influences.
Consensus fidelium and synods emphasize Tractarian concern for the infusion of knowledge in the faithful through schools for the poor, and ‘middle class’ schools, teaching ‘church principles’. This enshrined the Vincentian Canon, that is, being what the Church has ‘believed everywhere, always, and by all’, to establish the ‘common mind of the faithful’ as the people of God to be a bulwark of the faith, even if necessary, challenging unsound bishops.
After 1828, both Parliament and colonial legislatures might include Dissenters, unsympathetic to the Church, rendering them unsuitable bodies to participate in the Church’s governance. Should the ancient convocations, augmented to include laity alongside bishops and clergy, meet again to govern the Church? Keble and Pusey thought not, for laypeople had not been included in early Church councils. Others disagreed. Wealthy, educated, Tractarian laymen, who produced very large amounts of money to build and endow churches, thought ‘lay co-operation’ was necessary. From the 1850s, the convocations met to deliberate, and from the 1880s, a shadow lay ‘representative council’ was called. Gradually, bishops introduced diocesan and rural deanery ‘conferences’, not synods, including laymen, largely comprising the gentry class, to consult on ‘Church matters,’ other than doctrine.
Episcopacy and Empire considers lay participation in the governance of colonial dioceses where, from the 1830s, the Church was effectively disestablished. Colonial bishops, influenced by Tractarianism, led by bishop Selwyn in New Zealand, recognized that monarchical episcopacy was difficult to achieve amongst existing congregations of varying churchmanship. Bishops therefore, developed constitutional episcopacy, including lay, as well as clerical, representation. This was influenced by the precedent of the (then Protestant) Episcopal Church of the United States of America, although the American pruning of episcopal monarchical power by subsuming bishops into houses of clergy was not adopted.
Spirituality and the American Civil War returns to the earlier discussion of colonial slavery, outlining the variety of attitudes towards the American Civil War amongst Tractarian Anglicans and Episcopalians. Surviving diaries of English Tractarian Liberals, as well as Conservatives, show many sympathized with the Confederates, as did many Tractarian clergy, alongside the Church Times and the Guardian. So also did some leading Evangelicals, including Lord Shaftesbury. In England, Northern Unionists were widely suspected of hypocrisy in claiming to be fighting for the abolition of slavery. There was a stronger Tractarian sympathy for the predominantly Anglican South, whose military leaders were mostly Anglican, than with the more religiously diverse North.
Professor King’s extensive research provides important insights into Tractarian, and possibly, wider, Anglican theological and social attitudes towards slavery, illustrating the range of views held. The evidence largely reflecting the views of rich and upper-class Tractarians and middle-class readers of the Guardian and Church Times suggests they mostly favoured a gradualist approach to abolishing the institution of slavery, many years after the trade was abolished.
This series promises to place ‘theological movements of the Church’ in a full social, historical and political context, showing a close relationship between knowledge and social practice, rationality and cultural location. This study illustrates the influence of mid-nineteenth century political, social (and economic) contexts on Tractarians’ views of, and attitudes towards, slavery and laypeople’s gradual involvement in the Church’s governance.
