Listening to the news media today one could be forgiven for getting a very negative view of the Church. We hear and read of schism and breakaway groups, priests leaving for one reason or another. Is this a true reflection of the church today?

Well No! No Christian community has ever been without problems and there is nothing new about tension and disagreement in the life of the Church. Rows and division have been there from the very beginning.

In the Acts of the Apostles, we read of problems in the early church as it grew and extended it’s boundaries beyond Jewish cultural influence. Should the church open it’s doors and embrace people of all nationalities, languages, classes and social groupings to those who professed faith in Jesus Christ.,

In this case community leaders made a wise decision in deciding to discuss the issues rather than smothering them. They knew the difference between argument and dialogue!

As the centuries rolled by new problems arose, some were dealt with efficiently while others caused major divisions. (The great Schism of the 11^th Cent., the European Reformation etc.)

At the beginning of the 19^th Cent., religion in the Church of England had become jaded and tired. The church seemed to have lost its way. It needed a spiritual injection. It needed a religious reawakening.

And this is precisely what happened through the actions of the Whig parliament in 1833 and it directly concerned us here in Ireland.

In 1832, Parliament passed an Act which reduced two of the Archbishops in Ireland - Cashel and Tuam - to bishops and amalgamated about half of all the other Sees. While it is clear that this was a rationalising move in a church which only claimed the allegiance of a minority of the Irish people, it was seen by conservative church people as a violent attack on the Church by parliament - especially as Roman Catholics and non-Conformists had just been granted the right to sit in the House of Commons.

A group of clerical dons at Oxford, of whom John Keble, John Henry Newman, Richard Hurrell Froude and Edward Bouverie Pusey are the most well known, took grave exception to the Whig’s proposals.

They believed that the church is a divinely founded society with Jesus Christ at it’s head and that any reform was nothing to do with a secular parliament.

They commenced a campaign of opposition, with John Keble preaching an Assize sermon in the university church of St Mary on 14^th July 1833, in which he called the Whig government’s legislation - ‘National Apostasy’.

To reinforce their opposition, the Oxford dons next wrote a series of Tracts for the Times, examining aspects of the theological crisis created by the government’s action.

The Church of England, and remember that we were part of this church at that time, they taught, has passed through the Reformation, but is not simply of the Reformation. It is not a Protestant Church but it is a reformed catholic church, a subtle but significant difference.

We are part of the wider Church of Christ, cleansed of medieval abuses and unscriptural accretions in the 16^th Century, but all respects in continuity with what went before.

The Church has retained the historic three-fold ministry of bishop, priest and deacon; her bishops are part of the Apostolic Succession; her priests, by their Episcopal ordination are identifiable with Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox priests, and exercise the same priesthood; that through them her faithful are assured of a valid sacramental ministry.

These intellectual men believed the Church to be under threat and they sought to raise the whole tone of her life and witness. For them, what mattered most was personal and corporate holiness; and, because holiness may only grow upon a foundation of truth, they were especially concerned with doctrinal purity and theological orthodoxy.

The Oxford movement teaches us that all truth ultimately comes from God: Did not Jesus Christ himself say; ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ Christian truth does not depend for it’s validity upon the opinions of individual Christians at any one time. Something is true simply because God makes it true and reveals it to us, and for no other reason. Christian doctrine and moral teaching that were true in 33A.D and 1833A.D, remain true in 2008A.D

They cannot have become false by reason of their contradicting current values and ideas and because some people find them difficult.

Of Course the Oxford Movement did not go unchallenged, but it proved to be the most important religious reawakening in these islands during the nineteenth century.

Today, we are the heirs of the Oxford Movement so let us celebrate the 175^th anniversary and how it has shaped Anglicanism in these islands and in effect British Christianity.