Well it would appear that I am wrong. Extensive research has revealed that I am not, in point of fact, the Last of the High Churchmen. There are others. There are not as many as I would like, not as many as there should be, but there are others out there.
Again, I know that I will have to clarify that when I say High Church, I do not mean Anglo-Catholic. Anglo-Catholicism may have arisen from high churchmanship and may have usurped the title from the true High Churchmen, but they are undeserving of the appellation. Any clergy or layman who thinks that English theology or ritual is inadequate and needs to be supplemented with various superfluities from Spain or Italy is indeed no High Churchman. The jury is still out where Percy Dearmer is concerned.
St. John’s Episcopal Church of Savannah, GA is, by all appearances, a bastion of true, classic high churchmanship. I shouldn’t make such an assertion without having actually gone and worshiped there, but, by all accounts, the possess all of the necessary qualifications: austere but highly formalized worship, sacramental as opposed to evangelical focus, loyalty to the actual Book of Common Prayer as exemplified in the 1928 revision, use of surplices as opposed to albs or cottas, etc. I plan to make a pilgrimage there sometime this year.
Odd to note that the venerable Reformed Episcopal Church seems to have become a bulwark of Anglican High Churchmanship, considering that they were America’s original stalwart Low Church evangelicals. Accounts I have collected from some of their bishops and other clergy have it that they have gone from presiding in the black gown of Geneva to the full surplice in recent decades. Morning Prayer Followed by Holy Communion is the usual mode of the services in the REC and Anglican Divines of a decidedly High Church character are commonly referenced in REC homiletics. Most gratifying and perhaps most puzzling of all is that the only contemporary Anglican clergyman that I know of who still has the decency and the integrity to wear a Canterbury cap in his church is of this selfsame Reformed Episcopal Church.
Of course, there are the various Prayer Book Societies England, America, Canada and the like (actually, I think that those are the only three Prayer Book Societies). Many corresponding members of the Prayer Book Societies will often self-identify as evangelicals, but they forget that rigorous adherence to the Book of Common Prayer and its rubrics were ever a hallmark of the High Churchmen. Evangelicals were always be willing to extemporize and worry too much about preaching. To my mind, the Prayer Book Society and its affiliates remain distinctly High Church.
A word here about the The Society of King Charles the Martyr (SKCM). Charles I and his Abp. of Canterbury William Laud are personal heroes of mine. In their glorious lives and saintly deaths, they exemplified the Gospel of Jesus Christ as expressed in High Church tradition and I believe that they should be counted among the greatest Anglicans who ever lived. That there should be a society devoted to the life and martyrdom of Blessed King Charles I is entirely commendable and I have, for years, contemplated joining their ranks. Imagine my confusion, though, when I discover that members of the SKCM are among the spikiest of Anglo-Catholics, complete with fiddleback chasubles, lacy albs, and birettas. Many affiliated parishes and society members even employ the Anglican Missal or some other such folderol in their services. Let me say unequivocally that this is not the sort of theology and churchmanship for which Charles I and William Laud gave their lives. Charles died in defense of the Book of Common Prayer and its ordinal. Laud’s vision of worship and of church governance (Laudianism) which invoked so much Puritan ire was a thing unto itself and in no way resembled what came to be called Anglo-Catholicism except that it was opposed to Puritanism and had a sacramental focus. The SKCM need to be called to task over this. Whatever happened to Anglicans use of the cope as a primary Eucharistic vestment anyway?
All the same, it is good to know that I am not alone, just lonely.
