Apostle to the Wilderness

Bishop John Medley was associated with a revolutionary group, the Oxford Movement (also called the Tractarians), in the Church of England that sought to return the church to its primitive and Catholic heritage. Part of this revolution was a rejection of the comfortable relationship between Church and State that had existed since the end of the seventeenth century. Equally suspect because of their perceived Roman Catholic leanings and the potential for disloyalty to the English Establishment, the Tractarians aroused strong feelings throughout Victorian English society. Medley was associated with the key figures of the movement and involved in many of the religious controversies of this turbulent time. In addition, he had the responsibility of maintaining the unity of an ideologically divided church in a colonial diocese. This book illuminates one part of the great societal change that occurred in thenineteenth century as the British Empire both reached its apex and began to be transformed into diverse independent political entities. The role of the church and religion in this imperial enterprise and in subsequent movements toward independence is central to an understanding of this process. As an experiment, W. E. Gladstone, sometime Prime MInister of England and keen churchman, arranged to appoint a member of the controversial Tractarian party to the Episcopal bench. Because such a move was politically and ecclesiastically dangerous in England, Medley was sent to the colonies. Intended to be a planter of British High Churchmanship in the soil of the new world, Medley became convincd over the course of his forty-seven-year episcopate that the American model of the church was more practical than the British. He eventually forged an identity for his diocese that was, in many ways, to be the pattern for the modern worldwide Anglican Church. He played a major role in developing a modern, pluralistic, Canadian civil society. By examining previously unpublished original source materials and by subjecting Medley's own writing to theological examination, this work reveals how this profoundly conservative Bishop became one of the makers of a new Canadian society. An understanding of the nature of Anglican policy and order is crucial to the challenges facing Anglicanism today. Medley's vision of a church that is at once rooted in tradition, yet cognizant of the spirit of the age and responsible to the needs of an ever-changing secular society, is immensely relevant to the present debate.