Glorious Battle: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Anglo-Catholicism

by John Shelton Reed

Overview

How the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England overcame opposition to establish itself as a legitimate form of Anglicanism.

A thorough, compelling, and often amusing account of how the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England overcame vehement opposition to establish itself as a legitimate form of Anglicanism.

From working class tenements to the pages of Punch to the very Houses of Parliament, the Victorian Anglo-Catholic movement provoked bitter debate and even violence throughout Victorian times. Rotten vegetables were thrown at priests as they spoke from their pulpits, and fistfights broke out among families over whether dear departed ones would be buried "High Church" or "Low Church." In this innovative critical study, John Shelton Reed provides the first comprehensive treatment of the rise, growth, and eventual consolidation of this controversial movement within the Victorian Church of England.

Reed identifies Anglo-Catholicism as a countercultural movement, in some ways not unlike the counterculture of the 1960s, one that championed practices that were symbolic affronts to some of the central values of the dominant middle-class culture of its time. He identifies certain members of the clergy (including John Henry Newman and his circle), the urban poor, women, and youth of both sexes, expecially those who were put off by "muscular Christianity," as those most attracted both to what the movement had to offer and to the shock value it gave to the institutions, classes, and individuals whom they despised. Each of these component groups can be seen as culturally subordinate or in decline—threatened, oppressed, or at least bored by the Victorian values that the movement challenged—and thus ready to hear subversive messages.

A distinguished sociologist, best known as a major interpreter of the American South, Reed here explores new ground with characteristic scholarly acumen, thorough and meticulous research, fresh perspective and insight, and a remarkably engaging literary style. He has uncovered and taken full advantage of a wealth of largely untapped archival material, from the library of Pusey House, Oxford, as well as the Bodleian Library and the British Library, and has fashioned this into a cogent analysis that will enhance understanding of the subject for both scholars and general readers. His conclusions will shed light on many aspects of Victorian studies and the related disciplines of history (social, cultural, political, intellectual, and ecclesiastical), literary studies, women's studies, and the study of social movements. All future work on Anglo-Catholicism and related subjects will be indebted to Reed's Glorious Battle.

This book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826513809
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	01/01/1970
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	396
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

The noted scholar and essayist John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina. His numerous books include One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture; Southern Folk, Plain and Fancy; and Whistling Dixie: Dispatches from the South. He also serves as editor of the journal Southern Cultures. He attends the Chapel of the Cross (Episcopal), in Chapel Hill.

What People are Saying About This

Dale A. Johnson

Reed is especially good at describing and understanding the meaning of the social conflicts that he considers. He gives major attention to followers rather than leaders. His contribution to our understanding of the support that the movement had and the reasons it was able to develop as it did cannot be matched."
—(Dale A. Johnson, Professor of Church History, Divinity School, Vanderbilt University)

Joseph L. Altholz

Reed is sound in factual matters, talented in bringing together items from diverse sources, assiduous in his research, and intuitively right in his judgments. He has been captured by his subject, by the sheer zest of the story. He possesses that highest objectivity, the capability of being surprised by the evidence. This is what makes him convincing.
—(Joseph L. Altholz, Professor of History, University of Minnesota)

Editorial Reviews

This scholarly and entertaining book is a valuable addition to the extensive literature dealing with Victorian ecclesiastical history. Narration and analysis create a lively and insightful story that will appeal to the specialist or any interested reader.
—Albion

The seriousness of the points at issue does not stop the details of the disputes from being funny—indeed, often hilarious. Mr. Reed is a storyteller in the great Southern tradition.
—National Review

Will be the standard work on ritualism and Anglo-Catholicism in the nineteenth-century for many years to come.
—Heythrop Journal

Glorious Battle is probably the most substantial work on the post-Tractarian High Church ever written, and it should be read by everyone with a serious interest in Victorian religion, whether that interest is literary, historical, political, theological, or sociological.
—Nineteenth-Century Prose

Glorious Battle is an engaging work for students and scholars of history, social and religious movements and Victorian literature.
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Reed's book ranks as a major scholarly contribution to Anglican history and Victorian studies. It is also a delightful tale that will appeal beyond a narrow academic constituency to a broad readership

American Historical Review

The seriousness of the points at issue does not stop the details of the disputes from being funny—indeed, often hilarious. Mr. Reed is a storyteller in the great Southern tradition.

National Review

Reed, a sociologist specializing in the American South, offers a refreshing and polished account of how the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England established itself as a recognized form of Anglicanism in the face of overwhelming odds.

Choice

Reed "writes with an elegance and wit which make his book a pleasure to read

Church Times

Glorious Battle is magnificent.

New Directions

John Henry Newman, John Keble and E.B. Pusey spearheaded the Oxford Tractarians' movement that brought on the Church of England's bloodless civil war in the latter two-thirds of the 19th century. The campaign of this new Anglo-Catholic faction of the High Church proposed to bring the Church of England back to its roots. The Low and evangelical factions saw the movement not as a renaissance but as a reversion to dreaded Roman Catholicism. Though scholarly and professorially deadpan, Reed, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina and author of several books on the American South, has an attractive affection for his subject: particularly its famous and famously oddball figures, polemical language and political irony. He suggests that the movement developed like other ideological revolutions and shows how it settled, ironically enough, within a few generations, from its radical origins into place as part of the Establishment. That is, as Reed sums up, "Anglo-Catholicism had become increasingly conventional, almost respectable. By the 1890s most Anglo-Catholics plainly regarded this fact as a triumph. But it could also have been seen as the ultimate indignity." The real hero of the story, though Reed doesn't directly say so, is Victorian society, which, for all its rigidity, conservatism, sexism and blustering self-righteousness, was, finally, like its greatest novelist, Anthony Trollope, wonderfully and unexpectedly tolerant, progressive and accommodating. Glorious Battle is an engaging work for students and scholars of history, social and religious movements and Victorian literature. Illustrations. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

An account of how the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England overcame opposition to establish itself as a legitimate form of Anglicanism. It describes Anglo-Catholicism as a counterculture movement that championed practices that went against the grain of the middle-class values of the time. For those interested in Victorian studies, history, literary studies, women's studies, and the study of social movements. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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