Low church

In Anglican Christianity, the term low church refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual, often having an emphasis on preaching, individual salvation, and personal conversion. The term is most often used in a liturgical sense, denoting a Protestant emphasis, whereas high church denotes an emphasis on ritual, often Anglo-Catholic (with respect to Anglicanism) and Evangelical Catholic (with respect to Lutheranism).

The term was initially pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 17th century, commentators and others – who favoured the theology, worship, and hierarchical structure of Anglicanism (such as the episcopate) as the true form of Christianity – began referring to that outlook (and the related practices) as high church, and by the early 18th century those theologians and politicians who sought more reform in the English church and a greater liberalisation of church structure were in contrast called low church.

To an outsider, the difference between high church and low church may not be immediately obvious. There is a strong tradition of spiritual flexibility in Anglicanism, and many churches do not wish to exclude those who prefer one or the other. Most local churches do not identify as one or the other, and may try to accommodate many forms of worship. Churches that are more lax in ritual generally do not advertise as such, and the vast majority of Anglican churches, including most low church congregations, follow some kind of fixed liturgy. Low-church congregations, however, typically have plainer-looking churches, prefer modern language, have some aspects of contemporary worship, and include more roles for laypersons during service. One definite indicator of a low-church parish is infrequent services for performing sacraments such as the Eucharist. Many low-church parishes are strongly influenced by evangelicalism and individual religious experience, resulting in a tradition called Evangelical Anglicanism.

The term low church was used in the early part of the 18th century as the equivalent of the term Latitudinarian in that it was used to refer to values that provided much latitude in matters of discipline and faith. The term was in contradistinction to the term high church, or high churchmen, which applied to those who valued the exclusive authority of the Established Church, the episcopacy and the sacramental system.

Low churchmen wished to tolerate Puritan opinions within the Church of England, though they might not be in agreement with Puritan liturgical practices. The movement to bring Separatists, and in particular Presbyterians, back into the Church of England ended with the Act of Toleration 1689 for the most part. Though Low church continued to be used for those clergy holding a more liberal view of Dissenters, the term eventually fell into disuse.

Both terms were revived in the 19th century when the Tractarian movement brought the term "high churchman" into vogue. The terms were again used in a modified sense, now used to refer to those who exalted the idea of the Church as a catholic entity as the body of Christ, and the sacramental system as the divinely given means of grace. A low churchman now became the equivalent of an evangelical Anglican, the designation of the movement associated with the name of Charles Simeon, which held the necessity of personal conversion to be of primary importance.

At the same time, Latitudinarian changed to broad church, or broad churchmen, designating those who most valued the ethical teachings of the Church and minimised the value of orthodoxy. The revival of pre-Reformation ritual by many of the high church clergy led to the designation ritualist being applied to them in a somewhat contemptuous sense. However, the terms high churchman and ritualist have often been wrongly treated as interchangeable. The high churchman of the Catholic type is further differentiated from the earlier use of what is sometimes described as the "high and dry type" of the period before the Oxford Movement.

In contemporary usage, "low churches" place more emphasis on the Reformed Protestant nature of Anglicanism than broad or high churches and are usually Evangelical in their belief and conservative (although not necessarily traditional) in practice. They may tend to favour liturgy such as the Common Worship over Book of Common Prayer, services of Morning and Evening Prayer over the Eucharist, and many use the minimum of formal liturgy permitted by church law. The Diocese of Sydney has largely abandoned the Prayer Book and uses free-form evangelical services.