If we are to take the measure of a religious movement by its creative output, we must give attention to the works of Lewis, Chesterton, Rutter and Tavener. We may conclude that the abundance or dearth of talented individuals is a sure indication of the worth of any group, whether it is MRA, fundamentalism, Tractarianism, Pentecostalism or the publishing of novels on the Rapture.
One person we cannot ignore is John Keble. Like other 19th century English giants, he was a formidable scholar. Professor of Poetry at Oxford, he wrote hymns such as ‘New Every Morning’ and ‘Blest are the pure in heart’ we well as substantial studies and sermons, particularly the sermon on national apostasy which kick-started the Oxford Movement and led to a triumvirate of Newman, Pusey and himself reminding all and sundry that the Church of England had an ancestry that went back beyond Henry the Eighth and Thomas Cromwell. The movement was sealed by the foundation of a spanking new Oxford college, with a Fair Isle architectural pattern and a majestic chapel, named after Keble. Nothing could be clearer as a memorial of an unassuming champion of one brand of Anglican faith.
Most of his adult life was spent as a country clergyman. He was spared the venom that targeted Newman and Pusey. He went about his business in a quiet gentlemanly way. He might have gone unnoticed were it not for the furore that accompanied the immoderate claims of his Tractarian colleagues. We remember him as a gifted hymn-writer not unlike Cowper or – in the present generation – Timothy Dudley-Smith, in his manner. ‘The Christian Year’, his collection of poems, was anchored in Scripture; its best poems became well-liked hymns.
Keble College had as its warden in the sixties Austin Farrer, a friend of C.S. Lewis. Farrer had a reputation as a maverick theologian. He had a lucid writing style, not unlike that of C.S. Lewis, as can be seen in his ’Saving Belief’, described by him as a discussion of essentials. And that is what it is: the Christian faith – evidence, providence – in everyday language. Michael Ramsey and Rowan Williams, in the same Anglo-Catholic tradition, became Archbishops of Canterbury.
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