No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Anglican Imagination of Matthew Arnold
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Abstract
This essay is an attempt to write Matthew Arnold into the narrative of Anglican thought in the nineteenth century. Overviews of general religious thought in the Victorian era give an appropriate nod to Arnold, but the institutional histories of the Anglican Church have not acknowledged his contributions to defining Anglican identity. In many ways, this is quite understandable: Arnold broke with much of traditional Christian doctrine. But, and just as significant, he never left the Church of England, and in fact he was an apologist for the Church at a time when even part of the clergy seemed alienated. He sought to expand the parameters of permitted religious opinion to include the largest number of English Christians in the warm embrace of the national Church. The essay concludes that the religious reflections of Arnold must be anchored in an Anglican context.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Journal of Anglican Studies Trust 2009
Footnotes
1.
University of Delaware, Jewish Studies Program.
References
2. Parsons, Gerald (ed.), ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment: the Experience of Victorian Anglicanism’, in Religion in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 14–66 (45).Google Scholar
3. Arnold, Mathew, ‘Preface to Last Essays’, in R.H. Super (ed.), The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 8 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), p. 150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Chadwick, O., The Victorian Church 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 4.Google Scholar
5. Parsons, , ‘Reform, Revival and Realignment’, p. 38.Google Scholar
6. See Erikson, Kai, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Wiley, 1966).Google Scholar
7. Arnold, Mathew, ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, in R.H. Super (ed.), Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 6 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1968), p. 120.Google Scholar
8. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 120.Google Scholar
9. Ibid.
10. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 97.Google Scholar
11. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 98.Google Scholar
12. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 99.Google Scholar
13. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 77.Google Scholar
14. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 107.Google Scholar
15. The Arnold family had a mixed relationship with Catholicism: Matthew’s father, the educational reformer Thomas Arnold, did not believe that Catholics could be part of a union of Christians, whereas Matthew’s brother, Tom, converted in 1856 to Catholicism (returning to the Anglican fold in 1865 and, finally, ending as a Catholic again in 1876). Both Arnold and his brothers were on warm terms with Newman.
16. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 107.Google Scholar
17. Arnold, Mathew, ‘Culture and Anarchy’, in R.H. Super (ed.), Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 5 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), p. 235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 103.Google Scholar
19. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 238.Google Scholar
20. By such identification, it is easy to understand why so many critics have accused Arnold of trying to save the sacred by secularizing and then calling it sacred. This criticism runs from F.H. Bradley to T.S. Eliot and today to James Wood. In particular, see Wood’s, , The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999).Google Scholar
21. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 180.Google Scholar
22. For a highly individual yet scholarly criticism of Arnold’s determined and persistent attack on Non-Conformity/Dissent, see Clyde Binfield’s, , So Down to Prayers: Studies in English Nonconformity, 1780–1920 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1977). I thank an anonymous referee for this bibliographic pointer.Google Scholar
23. See Douglas, Mary, ‘Introduction to Group/Grid Analysis’, in Essays in the Sociology of Perception (London: Routledge, 1982).Google Scholar
24. Ward, David A., ‘Transformed Religion: Matthew Arnold and the Refining of Dissent’, Renascence 53.2 (2001), pp. 97–117 (108–109).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25. Marsh, Peter T., The Victorian Church in Decline: Archibald Tait and the Church of England, 1868–1882 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), p. 1.Google Scholar
26. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, p. 44.Google Scholar
27. Ibid.
28. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, p. 45.Google Scholar
29. See Ward, , ‘Transformed Religion’, p. 100.Google Scholar
30. Chadwick, , The Victorian Church, p. 45.Google Scholar
31. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, in Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 8, p. 64.Google Scholar
32. Stanley, Arthur, Life and Correspondence of Thomas Arnold: Late Headmaster of Rugby School, and Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford 2 (London: B. Fellowes, 4th edn, 1845), p. 187.Google Scholar
33. See Bowen, Desmond, The Idea of the Victorian Church: A Study of the Church of England, 1833–1889 (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1968), p. 358.Google Scholar
34. Arnold, , ‘Puritanism and the Church of England’, in ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 65.Google Scholar
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Berger, Peter, The Social Reality of Religion (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), p. 137.Google Scholar
39. Berger, , The Social Reality of Religion, p. 47.Google Scholar
40. Ibid.
41. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 6.Google Scholar
42. Arnold, , ‘St. Paul and Protestantism’, p. 87.Google Scholar
43. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 67.Google Scholar
44. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 86.Google Scholar
45. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 67.Google Scholar
46. I came across the image of the cathedral and bazaar in a famous discussion by Eric S. Raymond regarding computer code and open source software. See his Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2001).
47. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 239.Google Scholar
48. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 80.Google Scholar
49. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 239.Google Scholar
50. From the Latin prīvāre, to deprive.
51. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 197.Google Scholar
52. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 239.Google Scholar
53. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 80.Google Scholar
54. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 81.Google Scholar
55. Arnold, , ‘The Church of England’, p. 86.Google Scholar
56. Arnold, , ‘A Last Word on the Burials Bill’, in Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 8, p. 90.Google Scholar
57. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 197.Google Scholar
58. Arnold, , ‘Culture and Anarchy’, p. 193.Google Scholar
59. Chesterton, G.K.. The Victorian Age in Literature (London: Williams and Norgate, 1913), pp. 76–77Google Scholar. He suggested a darker implication of Arnold’s embrace of state religion: ‘he was trying to restore Paganism: for this State Ritualism without theology, and without much belief, actually was the practice of the ancient world. Arnold may have thought that he was building an altar to the Unknown God; but he was really building it to Divus Caesar.’
60. Arnold, , ‘A Last Word on the Burials Bill’, p. 90.Google Scholar
61. Arnold, , ‘A Last Word on the Burials Bill’, p. 91.Google Scholar
62. Arnold, , ‘A Last Word on the Burials Bill’, p. 96.Google Scholar
63. Arnold, , ‘A Last Word on the Burials Bill’, p. 110.Google Scholar
64. Arnold, , ‘A Psychological Parallel’, in Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold 8, p. 130.Google Scholar
65. Ibid.
66. Arnold, , ‘A Psychological Parallel’, p. 135.Google Scholar
67. Roberts, A.P., Arnold and God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 200.Google Scholar
68. Berger, Peter, The Social Reality of Religion (London: Faber & Faber, 1969), p. 125.Google Scholar
69. Davie, Grace, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 93–116.Google Scholar
70. This point is certainly open to challenge. A recent biographer, Nicholas Murray, notes that the religious writings of Arnold ‘could scarcely have been written by a man to whom Christianity meant nothing. [He] remained a believer and a worshipper after his own fashion until — quite literally — the day he died.’ Murray, Nicholas, A Life of Matthew Arnold (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar
71. Sagovsky, Nicholas, argues that the theology of the Catholic (formerly Anglican) priest George Tyrrell (1862–1909) had significant parallels to Arnold, concluding that both attempted to balance the needs of the day with the claims of tradition. See his Between Two Worlds: George Tyrell’s Relationship to the Thought of Matthew Arnold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
72. Of course, Arnold’s Anglicanism in no way resembles Anglicanism today, whether in thought, demographics and location. As the heart of Anglicanism has begun to move to points south (one thinks especially of Nigeria), the issue of an established Church with centuries of privilege disappeared as Anglican missions moved into areas where the Church was unknown. The Church of England is as much a part of what Philip Jenkins calls the ‘Global South’ as it part of England. See Jenkins, Philip, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).Google Scholar