Ritualism gained ground for a variety of reasons and
probably the most significant one was Sir Walter Scott. England was being swept by a romantic revival
that in reaction to the Enlightenment contempt for the Middle Ages, looked upon
the Medieval world as infinitely fascinating and even as the apogee of Western
civilization. To the romantic mind anything
medieval not only had an irresistible draw, but was ipso facto infinitely superior to anything modern. In art the pre-Raphaelite school became the
heart and soul of Victorian taste. In
architecture, it was the neo-gothic of Pugin and Sir Charles Barry. And this overflowed into the Church with an
incredible abandonment of the Puritan contempt for all traces of papism.
A second factor in the success of the Ritualists was their
willingness to take posts that no one else wanted, usually because the salaries
were deemed insufficient by the more ambitious clergy or because the ministry
was among the working or lower classes.
Many parishes, including those that in the nineteenth century served the
working classes had sufficient endowments to support clergy and even to pay for
the liturgical gewgaws required for ritual upgrades, but, especially in the new
industrial cities, there were many parishes that did not. Clergy who had independent means—and not an
inconsiderable number did—did not have to rely on the parish for support—or for
approval of their liturgical innovations.
Ritualists actually got a reputation for working among the under-classes
and this enhanced their reputation—especially among the politically liberal
sections of society. William Gladstone,
three-times Prime Minister, was perhaps the most notable liberal politician
supportive of the Ritualist Restoration.
Lord Halifax (Charles Wood, 2nd
Viscount Halifax) was another.
One person who was not supportive—to the contrary was so
anti-ritualist that the bishops dare wear only their black chimeres over their
rochets when officiating in her presence—was Queen Victoria whose taste in
liturgics ran to the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland. Victoria was ever-mindful that she was a
Protestant Sovereign reigning over a Protestant England but ultimately, much
like her predecessor, Elizabeth I, was not able to exercise her influence over
Church ceremony far beyond her own chapel.
Similarly while many of the old aristocratic families clung to
low-Church tastes, the new blood and new money was quite gung-ho for smells and
bells.
The ritualist revival drove a deeper and more clear wedge
between the High Church and the Low Church.
Just entering a church or seeing its clergy vested told you exactly
where they stood. Before the ritualist
revival, liturgy was fairly standard throughout England; as a result or the
revival it ran the spectrum from low church quasi-dissent to high church quasi-Romanism.
The apogee of Ritualism was All Saint’s Margaret Street. It had begun as a dissenters’ chapel in the
18th century, plain and Spartan in its architecture, later coming
into communion with the Established Church.
In 1829 William Dodsworth was named as incumbent. Dodsworth was a Low Church Evangelical who
was converted to High Churchmanship by the Tracts for the Times and won his
congregation over to the Tractarian position.
Dodsworth eventually “swam the Tiber” and became a Roman Catholic. He was succeeded by Frederick Oakeley who
also—as a result of the Gorham Case—would become a Catholic but not before
proposing that the chapel be rebuilt in a more suitable, i.e. pre-Reformation,
style and raised £30,000 (today about 3.2 million dollars) for the project.
Oakley’s successor, William Upton Richards, decided to see
the project through and enlisted the assistance of the Cambridge Camden
Society, to build the quintessential Anglo-Catholic house of worship. The result was an exuberant tribute to
romantic eclecticism. Inside is a
kaleidoscope of mosaic, glass, painting, marble and tile. The Church is fitted out with brocaded
dossals and antependia, gorgeous vestments and sacred vessels, candelabra, and
altar crosses on a scale worthy of a Spanish cathedral. The final cost was over £70,000
(or approximately 8 million USD in today’s money. There was an attached school to provide the
choristers for services and a parish house.
Just as an aside, All Saint’s Margaret Street
has a reputation for being not only “gay-friendly,” but “gay swamped.” Years ago I read an amusing little book by
Father Colin Stephenson entitled Merrily
on High. It is an entertaining, if
campy, collection of anecdotes about some of the second and third generation leading
lights of the Oxford Movement were There
has always been a gay subtext to ritualism.
This is not to accuse any individual of inappropriate behavior—indeed the
moral tone set by the early Tractarians, both married and celibate, set a
standard that remained unbroken for over a century. Nevertheless, high-Church parishes such as
All Saints, Saint Mary the Virgin in New York, The Church of the Advent
(Boston), and Ascension/Saint Agnes in Washington all have easily accommodated
themselves to the more liberal views of the Anglican and Episcopal Churches in
their respective countries wile correspondingly low-Church congregations such
as Saint Helen’s Bishopsgate in London, The Falls Church (Falls Church, VA), or
many of the parishes associated with the various new Anglican fellowships in
the United States would take a more conservative approach to LGBT
parishioners. Ironically the Church
could survive the doctrinal and liturgical divergences created by
Tractarianism, but are finding themselves torn apart on contemporary social
issues such as the inclusion of women and of LGBT people. 
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