SOURCE: "The Oxford Movement: A Reconsideration," in The Representation of Victorian Literature, edited by Joseph E. Baker, Princeton University Press, 1950, pp. 33-56.

In the following essay, Harrold contends that the primary goal of the Oxford Movement was a rejuvenation of the "apostolic conception of Christianity, " a radical reaction against European secularism and liberalism.

In our present years of crisis it is appropriate to reconsider a movement which in itself was the product of a crisis, and which looked backward and forward to a series of culminating forces which give the word "modern" a meaning at once hopeful and ominous. For the Oxford Movement was not merely the work of what someone has called "a band of Oxford parsons," but an event—a continuing event—which has especial significance for anyone contemplating the fateful years of 1789, 1830, 1848, 1870, 1914, and 1939.

In the framework of this historical perspective, it is no longer possible...