This week in Christian history: Japan legalizes Christianity, Kathryn Kuhlman dies, John Henry Newman leaves Oxford

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, February 18, 2024

John Henry Newman leaves Oxford – Feb. 23, 1846

A portrait of John Henry Newman (1801-1890), influential churchman who led the Oxford Movement in the Church of England and later became a cardinal-deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. | Public Domain

This week marks the anniversary of when John Henry Newman, an Anglican theologian who famously converted to Catholicism and became a cardinal, left the University of Oxford.

A prominent member of the Oxford Movement, which was a movement within the Church of England to reconcile it with Catholicism, Newman joined the Catholic Church in October 1845.

Newman’s decision to leave Oxford stemmed from his embrace of Catholicism and backlash to his efforts to reconcile Catholic teaching and the doctrinal positions of the Church of England.

“[Trinity College at Oxford] had never been unkind to me,” Newman recounted in 1864. “There used to be much snapdragon growing on the walls opposite my freshman's rooms there, and I had for years taken it as the emblem of my own perpetual residence even unto death in my University.”

“I have never seen Oxford since, excepting its spires, as they are seen from the railway.”

Later, in 1877, Newman would be made the first honorary fellow of Trinity.