Commemorating Edward Pusey

This week, we in the church calendar, we commemorate Edward Pusey, who lived between 1800 and 1882. He was a figure of immense importance for Anglicans, but most especially those of us in the Anglo-Catholic tradition.

In 1823, Pusey was elected to a fellowship at Oriel College, in Oxford, where he met John Keble and John Henry Newman (later Cardinal Newman), who together formed the leadership of the Oxford movement.

After studying theology and then Oriental languages in Germany, he was nominated Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford by the Duke of Wellington, which reflects the extraordinary breadth of his learning.

He was a major contributor to the famous Tracts for the Times and brought great weight and standing to them—albeit at the cost of censure at the time from the university authorities, who thought his view of the nature of the true presence of Christ in the elements taken in Communion was just a bit too extreme!

Nowadays, it seems altogether more usual for academic theologians of the Anglican Communion to believe too little rather than too much. Yet it was not only for seeking a recovery of the fullness of the teaching of the Western Church, as it was upheld by the historic church in England, for which Pusey is remembered. He was also a man of intense personal piety.

In addition, he was deeply committed to outreach to the new working classes created by the Industrial Revolution. In doing this, he set a model for Anglo-Catholics to this day.

Given our commitment to resourcing and renewing this tradition once again for a new century, it is a particular pleasure that we shall soon be welcoming the Principal of Pusey House in Oxford to the parish for our Michaelmas celebration.

In the meantime, however, I shall be reflecting (at the Entr’acte this Sunday) on my own recent experience in Kenya with Archbishop Wabukala. 

This reminded me powerfully that the region that has shown the greatest growth of Anglicanism worldwide over the past century is Africa, and that has lessons we do well to ponder!

The Rev. Canon Alistair Macdonald-Radcliff
Rector