Now then, onto more interesting and enjoyable matters: I feel a bit of explanation and justification is in order as regards my title of High Churchman and my assertion that I am, in all probability, the last of them.
High Churchman is, as one could imagine, a designation of religious belief and affiliation. It is also so much more, as this newly launched web log hopes to demonstrate. It is, currently and historically, a term most frequently applied in the context of Anglicanism and any and all religious bodies tracing their origins to the Church of England as it came to be codified between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.
While the terms “high church” and “high churchman” first arose in 17th century England, they are sill very much in currency in the worldwide Anglican Communion of today, and many modern, mainstream Episcopalians are familiar with them. It is, furthermore, entirely accurate to say that these people haven’t the slightest idea what they are talking about and that when they describe a person or a religious body as being “high church” they do so wrongly. Chances are they have never met a person or been aware of a parish that is truly High Church, because I appear to be, for all intents and purposes, the last one.
In order to give a proper picture of what high church actually means and what the High Churchman truly concerns himself with, it would be necessary to launch into a lengthy, dry, heavy-handed historical treatise that I would be only too happy to compose. In the interests of space and continued readership, however, I will have to be content with briefly quoting from one or two dry historical texts. I believe that it is also necessary to stress at this point that this blog is not, in and of itself, concerned with religion or the propagation of any religious perspective. While I am a practicing Christian, I maintain that my status as the Last of the High Churchmen is as much a matter of lifestyle and worldview as it is about my personal and theological convictions, though one may argue that such principals are inseparable. In reading the examples cited below, I ask the reader to deeply consider not so much the spirituality of the kind of religious practitioner described, but more the practical considerations of daily behavior, outlook on life, and relations with one’s fellow man.
James Thayer Addison in his The Episcopal Church in the United States 1789-1931 gives a very satisfactory account of high church belief and practice in the English speaking world before the before such things ceased to be understood and used correctly.
The High Churchman was not then greatly concerned with ritual, and he was vigorously anti-Roman. As an aid to maintaining the position of his Church, he avoided cooperation with Protestants and played but a small part in promoting the various humanitarian causes of the period.
In his description of Anglican/Episcopal church services of the early 19th century, Addison inspires in me chills of excitement and pangs of longing:
The arrangement and the conduct of the services differed from modern practice more extensively than did the actual text of the Prayer Book itself. Nearly all parishes had services both on Sunday morning and on Sunday afternoon, each with its sermon. The morning service generally included not only Morning Prayer but also the Litany and Ante-Communion. Vestments, ornaments, and ritual were all much simpler than they have since become. The minister wore a long surplice without a cassock and usually without a scarf or stole. For the sermon he put off the surplice and donned a black gown… At the altar Churchmen today of whatever type would note an unfamiliar bareness. The priest celebrating the Holy Communion wore no vestments but the surplice and generally stood at the north end of the holy table. On the altar there were no flowers or candles or cross, at most a linen cloth; and the elements were ordinary bread and unmixed wine… Sermons in those days were longer than the modern congregation would tolerate and usually more concerned with doctrine… Perhaps the most notable contrast with the best sermons of our time would be found in the constant reference to Scriptural authority, the frequent quoting of texts, the ponderous formality of the language, and the general want of simplicity and directness.
Ah. Ponderous formality of the language, and the general want of simplicity and directness. Was there once truly such a glorious time in which to be a Christian?
The high church perspective, then, could be said to be concerned not only with ponderous but restrained modes of worship, but also with ponderous but restrained modes of thought and behavior; rigid formality in all things coupled with a proclivity to overanalyze and overcomplicate matters of spirituality and life in general. Such are the vanguards, banners, and bulwarks from which I shall never be dissuaded and which I shall seek to joyously exemplify in all future entries to this blog.
Now that it has been demonstrated to my satisfaction that I am, in fact, a High Churchman, one might ask why it is that I am the Last of the High Churchmen. Aside from the fact that rigidity and ponderousness has experienced a massive downturn in the past century and shows very little hope of being on the rise ever again, there are also to be considered a variety of theological and liturgical movements that overtook the Anglican/Episcopal church in the 19th century. As I have already indulged myself enough in quoting at length from texts of religious history that only I will ever read, I will attempt to summarize these movements as briefly as possible.
There came a time when Anglicans of a “high” persuasion began to believe and worship after a fashion far more reminiscent of Roman Catholicism than classical Anglicanism. The end results were a lot of elaborate but extremely floofy vestments and liturgical actions that also encouraged an often warm, runny, and dangerously enthusiastic attitude towards religion. These came to be known as the Anglo-Catholics. They might have been and still are accused by their detractors of being overly concerned with formality and wholly out of touch with contemporary society, but they had nothing on the older type of High Churchman, who were now known as the “high and dry” and who were fast going extinct and eventually leaving only me behind. Today when people refer to “high church”, what they mean is Anglo-Catholicism, with all of its lace cottas, bejeweled chasubles, Romish-leaning theology, and simpering, closeted homosexuality. It is not my intention to castigate homosexuality here, but more to discourage simpering in closets. I hereby reclaim the title of High Churchman in the hopes of living up to and living by its neglected tenets, discouraging its any further being misused, and making as much noise as possible as I, with it, lapse into obscurity.
