Letters
Not Oxford's Church
Sir: is the Church dead? asks A. N. Wilson (23 July). Having witnessed the faded Jamboree of the Oxford Movement he Comes to the conclusion that it is, and that a Powerful contributory factor was the Oxford Movement itself which divided and confused the Church of England. There were those, contemporary with Keble and Newman, who saw then that it would have this result. Dr Arnold of Rugby told Pusey that the doctrines the Tractarians were seeking to revive were 'too mischievous and foolish ever to be revived with success. But they may be revived enough to do harm to cause the ruin of the Church of England'.
Faith, however, cannot concur in the finality of A. N. Wilson's words. The Church, as Calvin said, has many resurrections. The very decline of the Oxford Movement, so vividly described in the article, could herald the rebirth of the Church of England. The genius and character of the Church are not to be identified with that Movement, which has been no more than a parenthesis in its history, but with its Protestant and Reformed doctrines based upon Scripture alone. One hundred and fifty years of the Oxford Movement have hidden but not obliterated that identity. Its rediscovery now will enable the Church of England to rise again.
Revd Dr David N. Samuel
birector, Church Society, Whitfield House,
186 Kennington Park Road, London SE11
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