I have been reflecting recently on the various labels and parties within Anglicanism, and what true Anglo-Catholicism should look like. I have written this article in light of my recent article, The Via Media and the Caroline Divines, in which I came to the conclusion that the via media approach of the Caroline divines and Tractarians is the ideal form of Anglicanism, or Anglo-Catholicism. A problem that may arise in the modern state of Anglicanism is that it can be quite hard to “fit in” with one stream. If someone were to ask me “What kind of Anglican are you?”, I would probably struggle to give a definite answer. If I were to say “Anglo-Catholic,” it could give the impression that I don’t care for the historic Anglican tradition or patrimony, and am just seeking to imitate Rome in a supposed pursuit for Catholicity. Another option instead of Anglo-Catholicism could be “Classical Anglicanism” or to be “Old High Church.” This position has many strengths, although it may indicate a rejection of much of the theological, liturgical, musical and architectural development of the 19th century and the Catholic revival within the Church of England. “High Church” seems to be generally a good answer, but it may be a bit broad.

I find that I can point to divines that I aim to imitate and have a great reverence for, such as Lancelot Andrewes, Richard Hooker, William Laud, John Cosin, Jeremy Taylor, Anthony Sparrow, George Bull, and also many of those who were instrumental in the Catholic revival of the 19th century, such as Edward Pusey, William Palmer (not the one who converted to Rome), Michael Ferrebee Sadler, James Bowling Mozley, and countless others. It appears that within this stream of divines, there is a consistent pattern—that being a true devotion to the Church of England. All of these theologians were true sons of the English Church, and although they may have had certain grievances with the church at some points, they nevertheless remained loyal to the faith that was handed down to them from previous generations.

In the 19th century, those who were loyal to the Anglican patrimony yet also contributed to the great Catholic revival would call themselves “Anglo-Catholic.” When John Henry Newman was still a loyal member of the Church of England, he called Anglo-Catholicism “the religion of Andrews, Laud, Hammond, Butler, and Wilson”.1 As I pointed out in my article on the via media, these were all 17th and 18th-century divines who represented a moderate approach to theology, avoiding the extremes of both Rome and the Ultra-Protestants. Also, the 19th-century Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology consisted of republications of 16th-18th century Anglican divinity, specifically those from a high-church persuasion. When Anglo-Catholicism is defined along these lines, I am a firm Anglo-Catholic.

As we can see, the term “Anglo-Catholic” had a relatively different usage during the 19th century than it does now. George Ayliffe Poole identifies the Anglo-Catholics as the party that succeeded bishop John Jebb, an 18th-century to early 19th-century high-church divine in Ireland who was a fairly monumental influence on the members of the Catholic revival.2 Poole explains that the Anglo-Catholics believe that “the church indeed hath power to decree ceremonies, and to determine in matters of controversy,—but that to the English churchman the church of England is for such matters The Church; and that he must go to the records of the church universal not to condemn his own holy mother, but to support and confirm her authority; and to prove, not to question, her teaching.”3 Poole himself identified as an Anglo-Catholic, that being a member of the Catholic Church in the particular communion of the Church of England, and a believer in its right as a valid and authoritative teaching body. He wasn’t fully aligned with the Oxford Movement (although he still agreed with most of the Tracts), yet this didn’t stop him from adopting the Anglo-Catholic label. Poole’s definition of Anglo-Catholicism presupposes a loyalty to the Anglican tradition and patrimony, which would therefore mean that to be an Anglo-Catholic is to be a loyal member of the Anglican church, following the footsteps of the great divines of the past.

To summarise before continuing: Anglo-Catholicism under this paradigm refers to the idea that Anglicanism is a true part of the visible Church that Jesus Christ instituted. The Anglican church then has its own jurisdiction and authority, and this authority is that of a local or particular church in matters of faith and practice. It means there is a loyalty that is due to the patrimony of this church; both the Catholic patrimony of the undivided Church, and the Anglican patrimony, found especially in the school of the Caroline divines and their successors. There is also due a submission to the declarations of the Catholic Church (i.e. the creeds and councils) and the formularies of the Anglican church (the 39 Articles, the Book of Common Prayer, etc.).

In more recent times, Anglo-Catholicism has sometimes been viewed as “Roman Catholicism without the Pope.” A lot of Anglo-Catholics don’t care for the Anglican patrimony, or they do only insofar as they can justify their existence by appealing to it. A similar approach is taken by the extreme Evangelical Anglicans, which is at its worst in places like Sydney, where being an Anglican is a secondary identity, and being “Evangelical” is primary. This sort of Evangelical Anglicanism doesn’t care much for the Anglican patrimony, apart from the vague idea of the English reformation being “Protestant” and “Reformed.” I find that both of the approaches of an extreme Anglo-Catholicism and an extreme Evangelicalism that don’t care for their own church’s patrimony are incoherent and untenable options.

There has been a recent trend in Anglicans identifying as “Old High Church,” which seems to be a way to escape the current chaos in the Anglican identity crisis. This appeal to the Old High tradition is seen as a way to bypass all of the confusion that was caused during and after the 19th century, and can give us a more solid and stable body of divinity to look to. Personally I am sympathetic toward this option. It allows you to point to something concrete as your tradition, which is necessary in these days of uncertainty especially. A small problem with this route is that very few people are strict Old High churchmen, as that would require rejecting most of the 19th-century developments in not only liturgy but also music, ceremonial and architecture. What a lot of people mean by “Old High Church” is high church, but not Anglo-Catholic, or, high church without the 19th-century theological innovations of Tractarianism. This is where I think this approach really falls short.

The first problem is that the Oxford Movement, as well as the broader Catholic Revival (these two things are distinct!), didn’t innovate on any major point of doctrine that the Caroline divines or their successors believed. Tract 90 is an extreme example that is often pointed to, yet most of the tract is rather moderate, although the most controversial part lies in his exposition of Article 22 (Of Purgatory). My intent in this article isn’t to justify Tract 90, although even those high churchmen who were very much anti-Roman and conservative in their approach to Anglican theology, such as Arthur Philip Perceval, didn’t condemn and throw away the Oxford Movement because of this tract, even though he had some disagreements with it.4

By analysing the Oxford Movement as whole, one can see that it was a revival of Caroline divinity, hence why Tracts 27 and 28 were a republication of major sections of John Cosin’s History of Popish Transubstantiation, Tracts 37, 39, 44, 46, etc. were excerpts taken from Thomas Wilson’s works, Tract 64 was an excerpt from George Bull, Tract 72 was an excerpt from James Ussher, and there were multiple extended quote mines from 16th to 18th century divinity on topics such as the Eucharistic sacrifice, baptismal regeneration, etc. The Tracts of the Anglican Fathers series, which was a 19th-century series of tracts that reprinted sections of works from 16th to 18th century Anglican divines, had explicitly Tractarian editors, such as William Josiah Irons and John Fuller Russell.5 Russell also published an excellent work called The Judgment of the Anglican Church… on the Sufficiency of Holy Scripture, and the Authority of the Holy Catholic Church in Matters of Faith, which contains a large florilegium of quotes from the Anglican divines and an introduction explaining the historic Anglican view on the subject of Scripture, tradition and councils. It is evident that a major part of the Oxford Movement was a resourcement of earlier Anglican divinity in a time when such was becoming foreign to the English mind. Topics such as Apostolic succession and the Eucharistic sacrifice, both of which were extremely prevalent in earlier Anglican divinity, had begun to leave the public consciousness. John Henry Overton records that someone “wrote to a newspaper pointing out a misprint in one of the tracts: it had spoken of the ‘Eucharistic sacrifice,’ which of course was a printer's error for the ‘Eucharistic sacrament!’”6 It is clear that a revival needed to happen.

Arthur West Haddan, a notable theologian who was also involved with the Tractarian movement, wrote an important essay on the Caroline divines,7 which I pointed to in my article on the via media. Haddan’s approach cannot be pointed to as novel. His main point is that the Caroline divines (strictly speaking, these divines were during the time of Charles I and II, although Haddan extends the golden age of this divinity from the late 16th century to early 18th century) represent a continuous and authoritative body of divinity that Anglicans ought to look to. The Restoration Settlement and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer was extremely influenced by the Caroline Divines, such as Cosin, Sancroft, Sparrow, Thorndike, and others. It may be said that they effectively reinstituted Anglicanism after the interregnum period, meaning that modern Anglicanism is really a product of these divines. No other party has maintained a continuous presence and influence over the Church of England like this party did, and it didn’t die in the 17th century; in fact, it continued into the 19th century. This stream of divinity emphasised certain important theological points, such as the sacraments as means of grace, the divinely ordained episcopate, Apostolic succession, works as necessary for final salvation (although justification is meritoriously caused by Christ alone), and most importantly the prominent place of the Church fathers and Ecumenical councils as authoritative interpreters of holy Scripture.

Haddan argues that the fact that this “school of opinion has held possession of the Church for three centuries is assuredly a strong reason why that school should retain its place until very good grounds indeed have been produced for displacing it. And if to that school can be traced so much of what strength and goodness the Church can boast, that reason is all the stronger. Church feeling rallied round it at the time of the great Oxford movement.”8 The school of the Caroline divines has been a continuous stream within the Church of England that ought not to be displaced or ignored, as, unfortunately, some of the extreme Anglo-Catholics have a tendency of doing. Initially, the Oxford Movement and the Catholic Revival was a continuation of this stream, and there was not an abandonment of the Caroline principles in this revival; rather, it cemented them into the life of the Church. The advocates for the Old High-church position generally don’t seem to embrace this. Caroline divinity didn’t die at the beginning of the 19th century, it continued into the 20th and 21st centuries. It appears that if one is to ignore the 19th-century Catholic Revival for a historical project of reviving the Old High tradition, he grants that the stream of Caroline divinity, which has been the foundation and rock of the English Church for the past 400-500 years, died in the 19th century. The alternative is to embrace that the principles of the Caroline divines lived on through the 19th-century Catholic Revival and into the 20th and 21st centuries.