Anglican Revival

In London the Lord Bishop of London last week presided at "Evensong" in a stadium whose vastness was needed to accommodate a multitude of Church of England pious.

From Canterbury the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury broadcast exaltation for the "restoration in England of the great conception of the Catholic Church."

To Oxford and St. Mary the Virgin's Church traveled Church of England and Episcopalian pilgrims.

In Atlantic City the College Catholic Clubs (Roman) used "Newman and the Oxford Movement" for the general theme of their conference.

To Manhattan Episcopal Bishop William Thomas Manning summoned Bishop William Hall Moreland from Sacramento to preach on "The Oxford Movement and Its Influence on the Church and the World."

In Albany Federal Judge Frank Cooper and the local Protestant Episcopal Laymen's Association stormed at Presiding Bishop James De Wolf Perry because he insists upon attending a solemn high mass at an Anglo-Catholic Congress in Philadelphia next October.

--All because on July 14, 1833 Rev. John Keble mounted St. Mary's pulpit in Oxford and preached a sermon on ''National Apostasy."

The apathy and degradation to which the Church of England had fallen gave Dr. Keble sound reason for his diatribes. On Easter Day, 1800, the Lord Bishop of London had reported there were only six communicants in St. Paul's Cathedral. Elsewhere, conditions in the Church of England continued worse. Many a rural clergyman was a lazy oaf, neglectful of baptisms and communions. The font in many a church was cluttered with debris, the altar a rickety table on which the minister tossed his greatcoat and riding crop.

Dr. Keble's "National Apostasy" sermon electrified the Oxford Movement for which he, John Henry Newman and later Edward Bouverie Pusey worked. They yearned for order in ritual and discipline in the priesthood. They started a series of tracts, full of exaltation and theology, which ended with John Henry Newman trying to show that there was no real difference of form or theology between the Church of England and the Church of Rome. On the grounds that the Pope in Rome alone held the true Apostolic Succession from St. Peter, Newman withdrew from the Anglican Communion, later became a Cardinal.

The Tracts and Newman's conversion stirred up resounding piety and dissension in the Church of England and in the collateral Protestant Episcopal Church of the U. S. High-Churchmen in England and Anglo-Catholics in the U. S. wanted symbolism, celibacy and other "Romish" practices in their worship. Opposed were the Low-Churchmen and the plain Episcopalians, who detested every smack of Rome.

In England where Anglicanism is the State Religion, differences betweeen High and Low Churchmen occasionally have violent repercussions upon the life of the people. In the U. S. where Protestant Episcopalians number only 2,000,000 their denominational dissensions mean far less. Not so, however, to the communicants themselves, as the Albany complaint demonstrated.

The Albany Episcopalians protested against Presiding Bishop Perry "giving sorrow to the members of the Protestant Episcopal Church by his attendance at such [Anglo-Catholic] Congress."

Tartly retorted Bishop Perry: "I am glad ... to state very plainly that it is my purpose to act as the presiding Bishop of the whole Church, including . . . every school of thought within her membership."

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