High church

"High Church" relates to ecclesiology and liturgy in Christian theology and practice. Although now used with regard to many Christian denominations, it has traditionally been associated with the Anglican tradition in particular.

It is often employed in describing those Anglican parishes or congregations that employ many ritual practices associated in the popular mind with the Roman Catholic Mass. Supporters of the "High Church" position emphasize that these practices have to do with holiness, sanctity, and respect for God, Jesus, and the Church itself as the Body of Christ. As such they espouse a position that the Church as an organisation and the congregation at worship is "catholic" primarily in the sense that it is joined through its ritual to the Church "universal", and so they employ the terms "High Church" and "Anglo-Catholic" not as a reflection of any desire to ally the Anglican Church with Rome, nor in an attempt to reject the reformed Catholic position asserted by Anglicanism.

Due to its history, the term "High Church" can also be used to refer to aspects of Anglicanism quite distinct from the Oxford Movement or Anglo-Catholicism. There remain parishes which are "High Church" and yet adhere closely to the quintessentially Anglican usages and liturgical practices of the Book of Common Prayer. These congregations are what is termed "Prayer Book" in liturgy, but "High Church" in churchmanship and ecclesiastical outlook. Essentially this can be summed-up as following 'High' Ceremonial but not Catholic doctrine.

Within the Protestant and reformed traditions, the term is used to describe those groups that make a clearer distinction between religious items, people, practices, institutions and authority; and their secular counterparts. It would be an over-simplification to say that "high church" practice among Protestants is merely the use of ceremonial and formal worship styles. In general, the term could be applied to any tradition that interprets the religious as fundamentally -- even ontologically -- distinct from all else. For example, those in high church tradition tend to see clergy as intrinsically different in role, nature and authority from other members of the congregation. Those who take a "low church" view tend to see the clergy as one "calling" -- albeit distinct -- among many essential roles within the congregation.

Elastic in meaning, the term "High Church" has spread to those Protestant denominations which have undergone ritualistic revivals or realignments in their liturgical practices, for example, "High Church" Presbyterianism. Within Lutheranism there is also a historic "High Church" and "Low Church" distinction that is very comparable to that of Anglicanism (see Neo-Lutheranism and Pietism).

In contemporary Roman Catholicism, the term "high church" is sometimes used in contrast to "Traditional Catholic" to refer to Catholics who favour traditional celebrations of the reformed liturgy of the Second Vatican Council, with such practices as the use of incense, eastward celebration at Mass, the use of Latin, and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.