abstract
| - "High Church" is a term that may now be used in speaking of viewpoints within a number of denominations of Protestant Christianity in general, but it is one which has traditionally been employed in Churches 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 emphasise 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 reflexion of any desire to ally the Anglican Church with Rome, or 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. 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" Lutheranism or "High Church" Presbyterianism. European Lutheranism's answer to Anglo-Catholicism is Neo-Lutheranism.
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