Edward Bouverie Pusey and the Oxford Movement

The Oxford Movement, initiating what is commonly called the Catholic Revival of the Church of England and of global Anglicanism more generally, has been a perennial subject of study by historians since its beginning in the 1830s. But the leader of the movement whose name was most associated with it during the nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, has long been neglected by historical studies of the Anglican Catholic Revival. This collection of essays seeks to redress the negative and marginalizing historiography of Pusey, and to increase current understanding of both Pusey and his culture. The essays take Pusey’s contributions to the Oxford Movement and its theological thinking seriously; most significantly, they endeavour to understand Pusey on his own terms, rather than by comparison with Newman or Keble. The volume reveals Pusey as a serious theologian who had a significant impact on the Victorian period, both within the Oxford Movement and in wider areas of church politics and theology. This reassessment is important not merely to rehabilitate Pusey’s reputation, but also to help our current understanding of the Oxford Movement, Anglicanism and British Christianity in the nineteenth century.

Rowan Strong is Associate Professor of Church History at Murdoch University, Australia. He is the author of several books on the Oxford Movement and Anglicanism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and has published numerous articles on Christianity in the British Empire. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Carol Engelhardt Herringer is Professor of History at Wright State University, USA. She is the author of the monograph ‘Victorians and the Virgin Mary: Religion and Gender in England 1830-85’ as well as of several articles on Victorian religion and culture.