Liberal Catholicism, Liberal Catholic Movement

Liberal catholicism, as a theological development in Anglicanism, had its beginnings in the publication of Lux Mundi (1889), a collection of essays written by Oxford Anglican teachers and edited by Charles Gore. Lux Mundi took the doctrine of the Incarnation as a central theme for interpreting Christian faith in light of the conflicts which were of great importance at the end of the nineteenth century: evolution and the historical criticism of the Bible. Liberal catholicism was a movement which also sought to integrate the sacramental and ritualistic aspects of the Tractarian movement with such social concerns as urban poverty, industrialism, war, and the development of a Christian socialism. 

Theologically, the best exposition of the concerns of liberal catholicism can be found in Essays Catholic and Critical (1926) and in the writings of William Temple, Archbishop of York and later of Canterbury. The movement received its final, official expression in Doctrine in the Church of England (1937). Certain themes predominate in all the writings which represent the liberal catholic movement: revelation and history in the Bible, religious experience, the uniqueness of Christ and the Christian revelation, the synthesis of religious belief and intellectual integrity, and the relationship of the church to the political and social order.In all these concerns the authority of Christian belief in the rapidly changing social, scientific, and philosophical culture of the European world between the first and second World Wars was fundamental to liberal Catholicism.

The influence of liberal catholicism upon the Episcopal Church in the United States can be seen in various statements and papers of General Convention on ecumenism and the authority of scripture, as well as social and moral questions. The fundamental concern with the authority of Christian belief in those documents reflects the liberal catholic concern for accepting the genuine historical development of cultures in the light of the Incarnation. Episcopal theologian William Porcher DuBose (1836-1918) reflected liberal catholic influence in his concern to rediscover the tradition of the church in new ways and contexts.