high church vs low church?

[kamikat]

I've seen these terms used by Episcopalians/Anglicans. What do these terms mean? Does it just apply to worship service or does it also apply to theology. Does low church mean liberal?
thanks!
kamikat

[Naomi4Christ]

High/low refers to the worship style rather than the theology, although there is a strong correlation between worship style and theology.

A high worship style is associated with Anglo-Catholic theology, so highly sacramental with stimulation of all senses. A low worship style is associated with evangelical theology, so more bible based and personal relationship with Christ. But there is nothing preventing Anglo-Catholics from having low worship, or evangelicals having high worship. Most churches will have the full range of churchmanships in their weekly programmes, simply with different emphases.

[ContraMundum]

Sounds like a sporting event when you put it that way, doesn't it?

Current score at Old Trafford: High Church 1, Low Church 2, second half. Goals for High Church by Pusey (19) and for low church Ryle (22) and Jensen (26). No injuries.

[higgs2]

Sounds like a sporting event when you put it that way, doesn't it?

Current score at Old Trafford: High Church 1, Low Church 2, second half. Goals for High Church by Pusey (19) and for low church Ryle (22) and Jensen (26). No injuries.
Well you are chipper and jolly and pretty funny today, aren't you? :D I like you this way.

[romaneagle13]

Ok I just put one in the ol' onion bag for high church. Score is 2 all.

But seriously, you can be high church with evangelical (more protestant) theology or an Anglo-Catholic who likes low-church worship. I personally am in the former camp.

[kamikat]

Ok, how about this for a better question. If a person has never attended a worship service in an Episcopalian church, what should one expect? Would a low church and a high church have different Sunday services? How could one tell what to expect? Two of the churches near me have female pastors. Does this automatically make them low church? Would I hear different music? I'm just trying to understand what the differences are and which church to visit. I like a "smells and bells" Catholic Mass, but am politically liberal. Where would I fit in?
kamikat

[karen freeinchristman]

Ok, how about this for a better question. If a person has never attended a worship service in an Episcopalian church, what should one expect? Would a low church and a high church have different Sunday services? How could one tell what to expect? Two of the churches near me have female pastors. Does this automatically make them low church? Would I hear different music? I'm just trying to understand what the differences are and which church to visit. I like a "smells and bells" Catholic Mass, but am politically liberal. Where would I fit in?
kamikat
I would say that you won't know until you go.
Women pastors can be high church or low church.

[Albion]

Ok, how about this for a better question. If a person has never attended a worship service in an Episcopalian church, what should one expect? Would a low church and a high church have different Sunday services? How could one tell what to expect?

One should expect a High Church parish to be rather like a Roman Catholic one in the style of services, perhaps a bit more elaborate in fact. Low Church parishes would have a bit less ceremony, but still be thought quite ritualistic and ceremonial to most Protestants. It's just "Low" by comparison to other local parishes.

One difference is that High churches always have communion services. Low churches usually have prayer services without communion several times a month or so. But even these may seem to a visitor to be about the same, except that communion is absent. In either case, the service follows the same format as Catholic Mass, including a book to help you follow along with. What you are likely to run into are churches that are neither clearly High nor Low but somewhere in the middle, and you might not be able to say with certainty which way it leans. But they all use the same book for the services, or very nearly so.

Two of the churches near me have female pastors. Does this automatically make them low church?

Absolutely not.

Would I hear different music? I'm just trying to understand what the differences are and which church to visit. I like a "smells and bells" Catholic Mass, but am politically liberal. Where would I fit in?

In the USA, most Episcopal churches are very politically and theologically liberal nowadays, so you are unlikely to have a problem there.

[Fish and Bread]

Ok, how about this for a better question. If a person has never attended a worship service in an Episcopalian church, what should one expect? Would a low church and a high church have different Sunday services? How could one tell what to expect? Two of the churches near me have female pastors. Does this automatically make them low church? Would I hear different music? I'm just trying to understand what the differences are and which church to visit. I like a "smells and bells" Catholic Mass, but am politically liberal. Where would I fit in?
kamikat

You can find the basic "Rite II" liturgy here (There's also the more old-fashioned "Rite I", but it's rarely used):

http://vidicon.dandello.net/bocp/bocp3.htm#page355

As you can see, it's very similar to the Roman Catholic mass, complete with the same liturgical colors and seasons like Advent, Lent, etc. The difference between high and low church isn't in the liturgy itself, which is used near-universally with slight variations permitted to some parishes by the bishops, but in things like how the priest might be dressed, the type of music used, the way the altar and the sanctuary look, etc.

I've been to a service that was actually so high-church that the altar was built into the back of the wall, the priest faced the wall the entire time, and they did the gloria, santus, and our father in latin as billowing clouds of incense flew through the air; and most of the liturgy was chanted. There were a zillion candles and such. I also recently attended a parish that does benediction exactly like on EWTN, has a marian side altar, stations of the cross, and votive candles. Kneeling at altar rails for communion is almost universal in Episcopalian parishes, with a few exceptions, as are stained glass windows, kneelers in the pews, etc.

On the other low-church extreme, I once attended a service in a parish hall with contemporary music with no kneelers, regular non-stained windows, and a simple wooden cross behind a simply dressed altar. The people are that parish didn't pray to saints or anything like that and the priest would sometimes speak informally in between parts of the liturgy.

The average parish is what is called "broad church" and in between those two extremes.

What you'll find is that all parishes follow the same liturgy, but setting for it and the theology in any given parish can vary a fair amount. We're in some ways a mix of Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Unitarian Universalism; and some individual parishes may lean more one way than another. But we all follow the same liturgy (Just with different trappings and sermons that might espouse a different theology) and 99% have the Eucharist every week. There is also a standard lectionary very similar to the Roman Catholic one (Most weeks, we have the same readings, pslam, and gospel as the RCC).

What you'll find will be more significantly more liberal than Roman Catholicism, except in the most conservative parishes. We have married priests, divorced priests, women priests, homosexual priests, etc.. The Bishop of New Hampshire is homosexual and living with his partner, for example. Once there was actually an atheist bishop in the diocese of Newark (New Jersey). There is a poster than hangs in a lot of parish halls that features Jesus with the caption "I came to take away your sins, not your brains". :) We also admit all baptised Christians to communion (In some select dioceses, they even permit non-Christians to receive, though that's a controversial practice).

Conservative parishes and dioceses do exist and make up maybe 10-15% of the Episcopal Church, but are often still less conservative than Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. I was in one of those conservative parishes for a while and even most of the parishioners there were pro-women priests and pro-birth control.

We're also in apostolic sucession that we trace back to the Apostles by way of the Church of England through the Roman Catholic Church and additionally through seperate lines introduced by the Old Catholic Church through the Roman Catholic Church.

Does that help at all?

[PaladinValer]

I've seen these terms used by Episcopalians/Anglicans. What do these terms mean? Does it just apply to worship service or does it also apply to theology. Does low church mean liberal?
thanks!
kamikat

First off, Naomi's reply is just wrong. Just to warn you.

One's churchmanship (or churchwomanship, if you prefer since you are a woman) is one's liturgical preference. It has nothing to do with theology but literally what kind of service you like. If you like a more traditional service with incense, bells, full choir and sung liturgy, elaborate vestments, etc, then you are high church.

If you prefer a more contemporary, bare bones with very little music and simple vestments with no smells and bells, then you are low church.

If you are somewhere in the middle, you are broad church.

Theological terms are Anglo-Catholic, Latitudarian, and Evangelical, going from more traditional to more contemporary. You can be an Anglo-Catholic who is also low church or an Evangelical who is high church.

Ok, how about this for a better question. If a person has never attended a worship service in an Episcopalian church, what should one expect?

I would suggest reading the Book of Common Prayer. You can find it here: http://www.holycross-raleigh.org/bcp/

Would a low church and a high church have different Sunday services?

The lower church service is usually the earlier one whereas the higher church service is usually the later one.

How could one tell what to expect?

Well, higher church services tend to be longer since they are more traditional, like singing the agnus dei (Lamb of God) during Communion, an antham, the Doxology, etc.

Two of the churches near me have female pastors. Does this automatically make them low church?

Not one bit. Low doesn't mean liberal, just as high doesn't mean conservative, or visa versa.

Would I hear different music?

Sometimes. Low church services sometimes use more contemporary praise music, if they use music at all. Higher church parishes use traditional hymns.

I'm just trying to understand what the differences are and which church to visit. I like a "smells and bells" Catholic Mass, but am politically liberal. Where would I fit in?

Again, high church doesn't mean conservative.

[pmcleanj]

OKAY!! Once more with feeling! "Low Church" does not mean "contemporary and a-liturgical".

The phrase describing that particular form of churchmanship is contemporary and a-liturgical.

Low Church worship is just a different form of historic, liturgical worship from the historic liturgical High Church forms. Anglicanism is often called a "broad tent". It has width and length, but also height and probably several other dimensions as well. The spectrum from contemporary and traditional, the spectrum from Anglocatholic to evangelical, the spectrum from exuberant to contemplative, -- and the spectrum from high to low.

It's a popular misapprehension that "low church" means departure from liturgical norms and traditional worship; equivalent to "contemporary" worship or Evangelical worship. It doesn't; and that portrayal of low-church worship means that historic low-churchers often get left out when everyone else's needs are being met.

Historic Anglican worship, per the 1662 prayer book, is actually undeniably Low-Church. If you were to follow the rubrics rigourously, and without adding anything to them, you would have a form of worship exceedingly beautiful in its dignified consistency between theology and praxis.

Consider: the prayerbook calls for the Lord's Table (not "altar") to be covered by a "Fair Linen cloth -- not an emproidered parament of any colour, let alone Virgin Blue. Table-cloths are for tables, frontals aren't. These accoutrements of worship are enacted theological statements. Having a Table instead of an "altar" emphasizes that the Lord's Supper is a meal not a sacrifice. The special characteristic of this meal is that by the meal we are participating in one, full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross and that Christ instituted at the Last Supper -- but by not allowing the Table to be confused with the sacrificial blood-altars of pre-Christian religion we are rejecting any suggestion that that One sacrifice was any less than perfect or sufficient.

That's a lot of theology to pack into one choice of how your 'altar' is named and prepared. But that's the character of true Low-Church worship: we don't add worship acts merely for pomp and circumstance. We don't add symbols that speak on only an emotional or historic level, and when we do add symbols we apply them cautiously and precisely. A symbol that speaks powerfully of a great truth -- and at the same time obscures a different part of the truth, has been mis-applied, however lovely it is.

A couple of Sundays ago, I worshipped at a church whose altar bore two candlesticks, a Bible in a brass stand, a spray of flowers, and (almost obscured behind the rest) the Chalice and Paten. But an Anglican church has the Table front and centre because the Eucharistic meal is front and centre in the lives of the Eucharistic community. When you cover your table with additional paraphernalia, the Eucharist itself loses place.

So, also, music. In Low-Church worship, we sing the psalms and canticles in English, in unison. Worship by the people, in the language of the people is an absolute principle of Anglican worship. To worship in Latin or Greek or in complex harmonies, is to create a special class of educated songsters -- a defacto "minor order" -- to take on this specialized act of worship and thereby take it away from the people. Clericalism is thereby promoted, doing violence to Anglican principles of lay participation. Merbecke's original English Plainchant is the epitome of Low-Church music: unison English Scripture. The later development of Anglican chant, English and Scriptural in four-part harmony, is still inherently a Low-Church form: the harmonies are repetetive, pentatonic, and informed by English musicality to remain accessible to plowmen and milkmaids and burgers. Keep your monastic imported Gregorian chants and chamber settings! Give me any day a traditional Low Church setting, with a singing congregation using the words and melodies they have rehearsed every Sunday for their entire lives, until the repetetive pointing has sunk into the very rhythm of their days!

Contemporary music, on the other hand, often includes innovations that do violence to Low-Church sensibilities. Sure, Christian-rock is an accessible music form compared to, say, the Ancient Office hymns; and accessibility is compatible with Low Church ideals. But many contemporary settings require worship leaders who take solo parts -- creeping clericalism! And many contemporary worship songs introduce non-Traditional ideas: I recall a modern song that borrows the "I believe" from the creed, but goes:
"I believe in God the Father.
I believe in God the Son.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
while Eternal Ages Run.

I believe in the Holy Bible ..."
and lo!, all of a sudden we have a catchy tune adding a fourth person to the Trinity.

There's a reason why the most historic Low Church music sticks exclusively to words taken directly from Scripture. Taize chant often meets the norms of Low Church music, so it is possible to find Low Church contemporary forms: but for a Low Church service, theology comes first! Start with the theology, not with a choice of style.

Or pick the style you like, but don't make the mistake of thinking that form defines "Low Church" worship unless it is driven by the Low Church understanding that belief comes first, and forms exist purely to express the belief.

[kamikat]

ok, now I'm more confused than before.

kamikat

[TomUK]

Kamikat, there's been some excellent responses in this thread so far but i can understand it being difficult to grasp what is being said purely by reading these posts. The Anglican Church is so incredibely broad that one really needs to experience it to understand it and so if you are interested in Anglicanism i recommend that you go and visit a couple of different services. Hopefully after doing that a lot of the stuff mentioned in this thread will make a bit more sense!

[TomUK]

This information comes for the Church of England website. In my opinion it gives an excellent overview of what it is to be an Anglican, and mid-way through there is a brief reference to different styles of worship. I hope you find it useful in some way:

What it means to be an Anglican
Bishops The Scriptures and the Gospels, the Apostolic Church and the early Church Fathers, are the foundation of Anglican faith and worship in the 38 self-governing churches that make up the Anglican Communion. The basic tenets of being an Anglican are:

* We view the Old and New Testaments 'as containing all things necessary for salvation' and as being the rule and ultimate standard of faith.
* We understand the Apostles' creed as the baptismal symbol, and the Nicene creed as the sufficient statement of the Christian faith. (see Creeds)
* The two sacraments ordained by Christ himself - Baptism and the Supper of the Lord - are administered with unfailing use of Christ's words of institution, and the elements are ordained by him.
* The historic episcopate is locally adapted in the methods of its administration to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of his Church.

WorshippersAnglicans trace their Christian roots back to the early Church, and their specifically Anglican identity to the post-Reformation expansion of the Church of England and other Episcopal or Anglican Churches. Historically, there were two main stages in the development and spread of the Communion. Beginning with the seventeenth century, Anglicanism was established alongside colonisation in the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa. The second stage began in the eighteenth century when missionaries worked to establish Anglican churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

As a worldwide family of churches, the Anglican Communion has more than 70 million adherents in 38 Provinces spreading across 161 countries. Located on every continent, Anglicans speak many languages and come from different races and cultures. Although the churches are autonomous, they are also uniquely unified through their history, their theology, their worship and their relationship to the ancient See of Canterbury.

Anglicans uphold the Catholic and Apostolic faith. Following the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Churches are committed to the proclamation of the good news of the Gospel to the whole creation. In practice this is based on the revelation contained in Holy Scripture and the Catholic creeds, and is interpreted in light of Christian tradition, scholarship, reason and experience.

By baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a person is made one with Christ and received into the fellowship of the Church. This sacrament of initiation is open to children as well as to adults.

Central to worship for Anglicans is the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, also called the Holy Communion, the Lord's Supper or the Mass. In this offering of prayer and praise, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are recalled through the proclamation of the word and the celebration of the sacrament. Other important rites, commonly called sacraments, include confirmation, holy orders, reconciliation, marriage and anointing of the sick.

Worship is at the very heart of Anglicanism. Its styles vary from simple to elaborate, or even a combination. Until the late twentieth century the great uniting text was The Book of Common Prayer, in its various revisions throughout the Communion, and the modern language liturgies, such as Common Worship, which now exist alongside it still bear a family likeness. Both The Book of Common Prayer, and more recent Anglican liturgies give expression to the comprehensiveness found within the Church whose principles reflect that of the via media in relation to its own and other Christian Churches. See Today's Services.

man with crossAnother distinguishing feature of the corporate nature of Anglicanism is that it is an interdependent Church, where parishes, dioceses and provinces help each other to achieve by mutual support in terms of financial assistance and the sharing of other resources.

To be an Anglican is to be on a journey of faith to God supported by a fellowship of co-believers who are dedicated to finding Him by prayer and service.