Oxford Movement

For the 20th century Oxford Movement or Group see Moral Rearmament

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The Oxford Movement was an attempt to prove that the Church of England was a direct descendant of the Christian church established by the Apostles. It was also known as the Tractarian Movement after its series of publications, Tracts for the Times (1833-1841). The leader was John Henry Newman a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and vicar of St Mary's Church, Oxford. He had been influenced by a sermon by John Keble in 1833 criticising the increasing secularization of the Church of England. Other prominent members were Archdeacon Henry Edward Manning, Edward Pusey, and Robert Wilberforce.

In the ninetieth and final Tract, Newman argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the sixteenth-century Church of England. The Movement ended when Newman, driven further than he had expected by his own arguments, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845. Anglo-Catholicism, which owes its revival to the Oxford Movement, has had a massive influence on global Anglicanism which continues to this day.