SE CHRONICLE 684

4 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

The Oxford Movement & Education As we went to press, we were preparing to host an important academic conference taking place at St Edward’s on Friday 23rd September. A distinguished team of leading academics will convene to explore the distinctive role of the Movement in the context of schools, universities and the nation.

Oxford Movement that it should feature in any conversation about religious reform in England. St Edward’s history is tightly entwined with these 19th-century developments. The School’s founder, Thomas Chamberlain, was a devoted adherent of the Oxford Movement. When he founded the School in 1863, Chamberlain’s vision was to establish a number of schools with Anglo-Catholic traditions at their heart, thus embedding the principles of the Oxford Movement in the education system. St Edward’s School’s rich association with the Movement is embodied in its buildings, most notably the chapel which stands at the centre of our community. The chapel was completed in 1878, only five years after the School was re-located to Summertown – this physical embodiment of the Oxford Movement’s values was a key priority in the early years of the School’s foundation. St Edward’s School is the only school established by Chamberlain that still survives today.

Religious reform in England is most commonly attributed to the 1500s and Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church when he established the Church of England and made Protestantism the country’s dominant faith. However, three hundred years later, a group of scholars from the University of Oxford campaigned for their own series of cultural and religious reforms. The intellectuals quickly gathered a national following and became known as ‘The Oxford Movement’. They challenged many of the changes brought about by Henry VIII and campaigned to reassert the Church of England as a divine organisation detached from English politics. The Oxford Movement began in the early 1800s and its impact was immediate

and long-lasting. Many of the scholars involved in the movement debated arguments of theology and sought to bring back established forms of Catholic worship that had been abandoned after Henry VIII’s Protestant reforms. However, their impact went beyond simply matters of religion; their ambition to revive the old features of the Catholic Church led to a number of architectural changes, which can still be seen today. The Oxford Movement re-established the prominence of Gothic architecture and inspired the designs of many mid-19th-century building projects, such as the Palace of Westminster, Big Ben and the Royal Courts of Justice in London, and also the design of Keble College, Oxford. So significant is the legacy of the