Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Faught, C. Brad. Review of F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, by Jeremy Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Anglican and Episcopal History 75, no. 4 (2006): 612-613 ***** Begin Content ****** TYNDALE UNIVERSITY 3377 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M2M 3S4 TEL: 416.226.6620 www.tyndale.ca Note: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Faught, C. Brad. Review of F.D. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority, by Jeremy Morris. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Anglican and Episcopal History 75, no. 4 (2006): 612-613 612 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY Jeremy Morris. ED. Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. ix 4- 238, introduction, bibliography, index. $95.00. These days, the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide struggle with the hydra-headed issue of homosexuality: gay priests, gay marriage, and at least so far, one openly gay bishop. Of course, it was not always so and the volume under consideration here harks back to issues characteristic of nineteenth-century Anglicanism, namely Christian Socialism and the veracity of Christian revelation. One of the most important figures in these Victorian-era debates was Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872), and in Jeremy Morris’ capable hands his ecclesiology and, to a lesser extent, his life and times, receive close treatment. The author’s approach is to probe Maurice’s ecclesiology with a view to making clear his subject’s longstanding contribution to the history of the Church of England. To this end, Morris credits him (rightly) with being one of the foremost theologians of modern Anglicanism, although considerably more might have been said (only three minor references) about his near contemporary Charles Gore, who, it now seems clear, is Maurice’s equal in long-term impact. But, that said, Maurice was at the center of most of the main church controversy of his era, from the 1830s’ high water mark of the Newman-led Tractarians to the later impact of Darwinism. Given Maurice’s prominent position in church affairs, the author perceptively makes the point that he might have made a good candidate for inclusion in Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918) with his “combination of moral earnestness, immense diligence, philanthropic and educational activity, and religious fervour.” That fervor began during Maurice’s Unitarian upbringing, which saw him, like other Dissenters, occupying a marginal role in English politics and in response configuring a religious stance that was by definition oppositional to the established church of England. His decision, therefore, to be baptized into the state church while an undergraduate at Cambridge was one fraught with religious, family, and political implications. Maurice’s Anglican career began with an endorsement of Coleridge’s view of the proper relationship between church and state, the writing of an idealist novel, Eustace Conway, in 1834, and ordination that same year. The 1830s of course were yeasty years in which to enter the priesthood, 613 BOOK REVIEWS and Maurice, like many of his contemporaries, was caught up in the Church of England’s party conflicts, embodied most clearly by the Tractarians. Maurice’s response to this internecine strife was to fashion an irenic middle ground, he thought, between extremists from both the Tractarian and evangelical parties. In the process, he penned his most important work, The Kingdom of Christ (1838), which ultimately marked him out as the informal leader of the so-called broach church, today the dominant face of Anglicanism in the West. In this capacity he assumed a leading position in the formation of Christian Socialism from 1848-52, which in his view enunciated for the church a systematic approach to the social ills of industrial England. It also, however, contributed to his being viewed with increasing suspicion by Anglican traditionalists. And in 1853, when Maurice published Theological Essays, his opponents saw an opportunity to attack him based upon his apparent rejection of the doctrine of eternal punishment. Branded a universalist, Maurice was dismissed from the professorial chair he held at King’s College, London. The author does an excellent job of drawing together the various strands in Maurice’s career, all the way to its final years of partial rehabilitation at Cambridge, where he took up a chair in 1866. Morris’ slim volume satisfies well. It is intentionally theological in focus and therefore cannot be expected to deliver textured history, even if Maurice himself can best be understood as emblematic of his era. Nonetheless, Morris’ work is careful, methodical, and synthetic, and, in the crowded world of books on the nineteenth-century Church of England, stands out as one of the most accomplished. C. Brad Faught Tyndale University College, Toronto Toronto, Canada ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. William Horsey Library - Tyndale Digital Collections *****