383. Oxford or Tractarian Movement (1)
The Oxford movement stimulated religious feelings. It was strong protest against the materialism and utilitarianism of the Victorian age. Oxford movement was basically a movement for religious reform, also known as Tractarian movement or Anglo Catholic Revival. It is called Oxford because some Oxford professors and scholars were the force at the back of it. The Oxford movement sprang mainly from the conditions that arose in England as a result of the demand of equal treatment by the non-conformists on the one hand and by the Roman Catholics on the other. This movement had nothing to do with politics. The aim of the Oxford movement was to restore the dignity, purity and zeal of church. It also aimed to protect the church from the encroachment of the state as threatened by the Whig reform Bill of 1832. Gates writes that Oxford movement was in its essence an attempt to reconstruct the English Church in harmony with the romantic (mediaeval) ideal. The Oxford movement stressed the abs...