What is ritualism, and why did it cause so much controversy in nineteenth-century English Christianity?

In this short introduction, I look at ritualism as more than “fancy church” or clerical taste. Because ritualism was bound up with bigger questions about worship, beauty, sacraments, priesthood, the poor, and what the Church of England was for.

For some people, it looked like a dangerous drift toward Rome. For others, it was a way of bringing dignity, reverence, and the visible life of the Church back into places that had been starved of both.

So this is a short introduction to what ritualism was, where it came from, and why it mattered.