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‘Standing in the old ways’: historical legitimation of Church reform in the Church of England, c. 1825–65
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
During the early and mid-nineteenth century the Church of England underwent a wide-ranging series of institutional reforms. These were intended to meet the pastoral challenges of industrial society, acknowledge the changing relationship of Church and State, and answer the more pertinent criticisms of its radical and dissenting antagonists. Particularly during the 1830s, the constitutional adjustments of 1828–32, the accession of a Whig administration, and widening internal divisions appeared to place the Church in a newly perilous position. The reforms were consequently enacted in a highly charged and febrile atmosphere. Each measure was closely scrutinized by concerned and sometimes panic-stricken Anglicans,’ seeking to establish whether it would strengthen the Church or was in fact a manifestation of threatening forces. In such circumstances, the legitimation of reform assumed crucial importance. As ever, the prospective reformer required a legitimation which would appeal to the widest possible constituency. Among allies, it could serve to embolden waverers, doubters, and often the reformer himself. If possible, it should engage the sympathies of potential opponents. It was also essential that the legitimation would not so constrain the reformer that the initiative’s practical effectiveness was blunted.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997
References
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11 The revival of both rural deans and ruridecanal chapters is often misdated and misunderstood. For a full and more accurate account, see Burns, ‘Diocesan Revival’, ch. 4, with corrections in idem, ‘Hanoverian legacy?’, pp. 267–70.
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30 The Official Report of the Church Congress, held at Portsmouth,… 1885 (London, 1885), p. 479; W. Emery, Church Union and Progress (Cambridge, 1867), p. 14.
31 See Thompson, Bureaucracy and Church Reform, pp. 48–9; Burns, ‘Hanoverian legacy?’, pp. 281–2.
32 As the climate for parliamentary Church reform became less hostile, historical legitimation similarly came to play a larger part in the justification of Commission reforms, which also increasingly took account of the effects of the Diocesan Revival.
33 Blomfield, Charge, pp. 64–5.
34 See the prominence of the Church in John Wade, The Extraordinary Black Book (London, 1832; repr. Shannon, 1971). For a reassessment with implications for the study of Church reform, see Philip Harling, ‘Rethinking “Old Corruption”’, P&P, 147 (May 1995), pp. 127–58.