High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, Liberal, Conservative, Evangelical, Radical, Anglo-Catholic: the worldwide Anglican church is astonishingly diverse. Astonishingly, and also confusingly, not only for non-Anglicans, but for many Anglicans too!
To describe every shade of opinion would need a book, not a couple of pages. So let's stick to High and Low. And let's remember that both high and low church members can be charismatics, liberals, conservatives, or radicals, just to confuse you even more.
By way of caricature, imagine that you go to a "High" church one Sunday. There are six tall candles on the altar, and the altar and lectern are elaborately decorated in green (the correct liturgical colour for the weeks between Trinity and Advent). The main service is the Eucharist, and the minister comes in with the choir, preceded by a processional cross. The service is quite formal, and includes ritual that everybody knows - making the sign of the cross, bowing to the cross behind the altar, standing, sitting and kneeling. The sermon maybe concentrates on what God has done for us, or on the way to holiness.
And the next Sunday, you go to a different church. The altar is plain, there are two candles, and maybe no cross. The service this week is informal. It is called "Morning Worship", and includes a lot of extempore prayer. Or it might be fairly formal, and use the 1662 wording of Morning Prayer. The minister wears a surplice, a short, loose white robe. The sermon concentrates on God's call to us to accept Jesus as our personal saviour. The congregation follow the readings carefully in the bibles provided in the pews.
The differences are not always so clear. Low churches have rediscovered the use of symbols and of liturgy. High churches have rediscovered simplicity. And underlying the differences, there are differences of theology which are also not entirely clear-cut.
The word "high" goes back to the 17th century, a troubled time in British history. The Stuart kings had a high idea of their own authority. Against them were those who felt that government depended on the consent of the people. The bishops and the king tended to support each other in their "high" views - of the Divine Right of Kings, the continuous history of the church, the traditional ministry of bishops, priests and deacons, the value of the sacraments and the right use of the Bible.
In 1689, the English Parliament deposed James II (who had prudently left the country), and invited his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange to take the throne. The bishops were required to take a new oath of allegiance, and several refused, claiming that they could not go back on the oath of allegiance they had taken to James. (In Scotland they all refused, but that's another story!)
These "Non-Jurors" linked the theologians of the 17th century to those of the 19th. In 1833, the government wished to abolish ten Irish bishoprics. This spark ignited a movement which sought to restore the idea of the Church as a divine institution, rather than a consortium of believers - the Oxford Movement, associated with John Henry Newman, who later became a Roman Catholic, with Edward Pusey and John Keble. Their series of ninety Tracts for Our Times written between 1833 and 1841 set out their thoughts.
The Romantic Movement had awoken an interest in primitive Christianity, and the Tractarians became deeply engaged with the ideas of the early church. They also wanted to reintroduce liturgical forms and prayers that had been lost over the centuries. They emphasized the continuity in doctrine, liturgy and practice between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches - and so the name Anglo-Catholic arose to describe them.
High or Low, it is important to remember that Anglicans are one church, one communion. For historical reasons, parts of our communion are "High" - Scotland, the United States, South Africa, while other parts are "Low" - Ireland, South America, India. Our differences are a source of richness, and call us to reflect. We live for Christ, and our love and service can take different forms, for we are all different as individuals. So let us look at Christ before us, and not too judgementally at our neighbour beside us!
HD