National Apostasy: the High Church response to 1827-1832

I have previously suggested that Keble's National Apostasy Sermon of July 1833 belonged to an established High Church genre in the face of the constitutional revolution of 1827-32 (Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation, Reform Act).  Comparing Keble's sermon with an 1829 sermon from an Irish High Church context revealed significant similarities.  Likewise, startling similarities are evident when it is compared with a sermon given by Henry Handley Norris - the leading figure in the Hackney Phalanx - in 1835.

The same 'Church in danger' theme is evident from the title: 'Neutrality in Time of Danger to the Church'.  The same approach from Scripture as that taken by Keble is also seen, with Norris similarly drawing parallels with the history of Israel, in this case with Esther: "And if we are now, what the Jews were then ...".  In the words of Keble, "We naturally turn to the Old Testament, when public duties, public errors, and public dangers, are in question".  And there is the same concern for, and evident pride in, this "pure and apostolical portion of Christ's Holy Catholic Church".

Where Keble saw his society "transgressing as those Jews did", Norris saw a parallel between the plotting of Haman and the contemporary agitation against the Church:

To bring it completely home to us, our respective times and circumstances with reference to our own portion of the Catholic Church, must also correspond; and though, on first glancing upon the case, this obvious discrepancy presents itself, that no overt act of hatred so revolting to humanity has been perpetrated, as the promulging a decree of extermination against our whole communion, yet the spiritual wickedness, constituting the very gall of bitterness in this sanguinary proscription, may still be abroad amongst us, and in active operation, compassing the same ends, with a refined malignity, by circumvention and intrigue.

He also drew a comparison with the apostate Emperor Julian, who "under this mask of moderation ... withdrew from the Christians, and their spiritual rulers, the privileges that had been granted to them", the same "guise of charity and toleration" which Keble had condemned and which Norris described as "that specious impartiality, which leaves to every man full power of judging for himself what faith and worship he shall adhere to".

Keble's fear of the constitutional revolution resulting in a Church "trampled on and despoiled by the State" was also heard in Norris's sermon:

The statement is most remark able with reference to our own Church, in the times in which we live: for terms could not be chosen more accurately descriptive, even in their minutest details, of the spoliations and restraints now under legislative deliberation, for its future discountenance, and intended, if it be possible, to be passed into laws.

For Keble, this was another expression of the "efforts of anti-Christian powers" which had confronted the Church throughout its existence, as Norris also recognised:

It is one of those seasons "of trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy," which, many a time, in ages past, the church has experienced, and to which, from a moral necessity, it is still continually liable, in its passage through a world equally at enmity with it, and the God of its salvation.

In the face of national apostasy, Keble declared that remonstrance was "the unequivocal duty of every Christian, according to his opportunities, when the Church landmarks are being broken down", alongside renewed fidelity to "duties, public and private".  This, too, was the call given by Norris:

Let Esther's example, then, be adopted as your pattern, and steadfastly embracing her awakened conviction, in the enlarged view of it which I have been endeavouring to set forth, take each of you this true estimate of your Christian responsibility, that you are come to your respective places and influence in society, as she came to the kingdom, "for such a time as this" for the particular exigencies, with especial reference to the Church, of your own probationary period; and casting your selves, as she did, by humiliation and prayer, upon the divine succour and support, brace up your minds to the heroic standard of her determination.

With John Jebb's 1829 sermon, Norris's sermon is further evidence that Keble's Assize Sermon was part of a wider High Church response to the constitutional upheavals of 1827-1832, the dismantling of key aspects of the Anglican state, and the threat posed in this new context to the life and mission of the national Church.  The three sermons share common themes, common discourse, and a common analysis, all traditionally High Church.  Put simply, there is little - if anything - in Keble's Assize Sermon to suggest that it was "the start of the religious movement of 1833".  Rather, his sermon stands alongside those of Jebb and Norris as expressions of a High Church response to the constitutional revolution and the ideologies which inspired it.  

Set alongside

Such sermons demonstrate the vitality of High Church political theology even as the Anglican constitution was undone, a political theology which would find its natural successor not in "Tractarian anti-establishmentism" (Nockles) but in what John Hughes termed  "Anglicanism as integral humanism", sustaining the Christendom vision and its practices after the ending of the confessional state, rather than colluding with a sectarian drift to cultural irrelevance.