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The word Churchmanship was derived from the older noun Churchman which originally meant an ecclesiastic or clergyman but sometime before 1677 was extended to people who were strong supporters of the Church of England. In the 1500's it was used for the lay office of 'churchwarden'. The dictionary gives the extension to 'Churchmanship' as c.1680''. The word "Churchmanship" itself was first used in around 1680 to refer to the attitude of these supporters but now serves to talk about and to label different tendencies, parties, or schools of thought within the Church of England and the sister churches of the Anglican Communion. Not all Anglicans would feel happy to be described as anything but "Anglican".

The oldest label, "High", dates from the late 17th century and described a political attitude which stressed the close relationship the Church of England and the civil power. Together with its later opposite "Low", its meaning shifted as historical settings changed and towards the end of the 19th century the two were used to describe different views on the ceremonies to be used in worship. The opposing attitude was first associated with the "Latitudinarians" because of their relative indifference to doctrinal definition, but the description "Low" soon came into use. In the 19th century, the "Latitudinarians" gave birth to the "Broad Church" which in its turn produced the "Modernist" movement of the first half of the 20th century. Today, the "parties" are usually thought of as anglo-catholics, evangelicals, and liberals; and, with the  exception of "High Church", the remaining terms are mainly used to refer to past history although "Broad Church" may be used today with a different sense to the historical one mentioned above being used to identify Anglicans who are neither markedly high, nor low/evangelical nor liberal and thus overlapping with what used to be called "Central Churchmanship". The precise shades of meaning of any term vary from user to user and mixed descriptions such as liberal-catholic are found.

It is an Anglican commonplace to say that authority in the church has three sources: The Scriptures, Reason, and Tradition. In general, the Lowchurchman and Evangelical tend to put more emphasis on Scripture; the Broadchurchman and Liberal, on reason; and the Highchurchman and Anglo-catholic, on tradition. The emphasis on "parties" and differences is necessary but in itself gives an incomplete picture. Cyril, later Archb of York, wrote of his coming to the Southwark Diocese: "I found the different parties strongly represented with their own organizations and federations ... But where there was true reverence and devotion I never felt any in worshipping and preaching in an Anglo-Catholic church in the morning and in an Evangelical church in the evening ..... and when there was a call for united action ... the clergy and laity without distinction of party were ready to join in prayer, work and sacrifice."

and William comments that: "the historical attention given to the fleeting moments of controversy in the eighteenth century has masked the widespread and profound commitment to peace and tranquility among both the clergy and the laity ... ...High Church and Low Church were not exclusive categories of thought and churchmanship. They were blurred and broad streams within Anglicanism that often merged, overlapped and coincided."

Sometimes the concept of churchmanship has been extended to other denominations. In Lutheran churches it can be liberal Protestant, pietist, confessional Lutheran, or evangelical Catholic.

History to 1715
In theory, since the Reformation as before it, the Church and the Realm of England were co-extensive, composed of the same persons, whether as citizens or churchmen at least up to 1660. The idea that they should be lingered on until well into the nineteenth century.

High Church
The term "High Church" was first used in about 1687 to describe those who held a high view of the link between the Church of England as established by law and the nation which was under threat from James II's attempts to gain legal tolerance for Roman-catholics. This group valued very highly episcopacy, ceremonies and beauty in worship, and a style of devotion all totally opposed to the puritan ideals in vogue England from 1570 through to 1660. These ideas were first mooted at the start of the century and historians project the term back onto these earlier thinkers who were often termed "Arminians" The movement gained strength after Charles I came to the throne in 1625 and William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. The two of them tried to end parliamentary control over the Church and to make it directly dependent on the Crown through the Convocations. The more extreme supporters of this policy held that kings ruled by divine right.

High Church views became unacceptable in England under the Commonwealth and clergy holding them lost their positions, but the survivors recovered power and influence with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. They were able to narrow the range of opinion acceptable within the Church of England by forcing the ejection of clerics who, having ministered in the national church during the Commonwealth, had not obtained episcopal ordination or refused to use the Prayer Book, and also to harass protestant dissenters with the restrictive legislation the so-called "Clarendon Code", but signally failed to reduce Parliament's power over the Church.

James II(1685-88) tried to legalise Roman Catholic worship by royal decree and to advance Catholics to positions of power. Despite his offer of similar status, Protestant dissenters allied themselves with Anglican resistence to his plans partly because of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 and subsequent maltreatment of the French Protestant huguenots. The tense situation was further complicated by the birth of a son to James' second wife who would be raised as a Roman Catholic. (His daughters by his first marriage, Mary and Anne, were both Protestants.) Several highchurch bishops were among the national leaders who voiced the opinion that James' measures were illegal and their subsequent acquittal on a charge of publishing a "seditious libel" marked a definite step down the road towards William of Orange and Mary becoming joint sovereigns.

The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 and accession of William III and Mary brought about a crisis for a section of the High Church in that they had sworn life-long allegiance to James and so felt that they could not take the oath to the new rulers. Nine bishops and some four hundred other nonjuring clergy were deprived. The remaining High Churchmen managed to block William's efforts to widen the doctrine and practice Church of England and thus reincorporate Protestant dissenters, but they lost political influence (except for a brief period towards the end of Queen Anne's reign) until the last years the 18th century.

Latitudinarian/Low Church
The origins of the term latitudinarian are uncertain and it has been applied to a number of related but distinct points of view. It is usually restricted to a particular type of cleric who, after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, adopted a new style of preaching which appealed to reason and common sense and emphasized moral growth, but in the early stages remaining orthodox in doctrine. This led them, unlike the High Church, to favour toleration and comprehension for protestant dissent. This brought them into favour with William III and, despite the fact that they formed a relatively small group, the majority of the bishops and dignitaries appointed in the reigns of William and the first three Georges came from their ranks because their political views favoured the Whigs while the High Church was solidly behind the Tories and often Jacobite in sympathy. The epithet "Low Church" was coined by the High Church and first applied to the Latitudinarians. Sacheverell (a highchurch firebrand) characterised them as "believing little or no revelation; preferring reason to Divine Testimony; preferring to be a Deist than believe what is Incomprehensible (a reference to the debate about the doctrine of the Trinity); considering the 39 Articles as too Stiff, Formal and Straitlaced a Rule; looking upon the censuring of False Doctrine as an Intrusion on Human Liberty".

Churchmanship from 1715-1830
The conflicts of the previous century had damaged the Church in that a significant number of conscientious and active "lowchurch" clerics had been forced out by the 1662 Act of Uniformity; the exclusion of the non-jurors in 1689-90 deprived the "highchurch" of a significant proportion of its most able clergy, and the remaining clergy were locked into a structure which "was not appropriate for the age in which they lived, and even less so for the times to come". However, the tone of the first half of the 18th reflected the overall Whig policy of "peace and stability". The period was marked by extremely low expectations of the clergy in general: their regular duties were understood to be the provision of Sunday services, often through the labours of an assistant. Non residence was a scandal. The two key changes to note in this period are the tendency of the latitudinarians to slide into some form of rational deism and the birth of Evangelicalism within the Church of England.

Evangelical
According to Bebbington there are four special marks of Evangelical religion in general: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible, and "what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. However, the presentation of these themes varied with time. Hylson-Smith suggests that Anglican Evangelicals differed from the Methodists in that they did not develop a lay ministry; they were committed to the Church of England, and particularly to respecting the parish structure; they were moderate calvinists rather than "arminians"; and they were uneasy about what they saw as the Methodist over-reliance on the emotions.

The birth of Evangelicalism within the Church of England was virtually independent from two contemporary movements: the Calvinist Evangelical Revival inspired by George Whitefield and the "Arminian"/Methodist one led by the John and Charles Wesley. It started as a "number of men and women, including Anglican clergy, underwent the same conversion experience, and came to preach, often independently the same gospel as their more famous contemporaries".. For example, William Grimshaw(1708-63) in his younger days read prayers and a sermon once a Sunday and, when he got drunk, took care to sleep it off before he came home. Converted not long before he became incumbent of Haworth in Yorkshire in 1742, on arrival he found twelve people came to communion. Before he died up to twelve hundred people were coming, not just from the parish itself but from surrounding ones which lacked a resident clergyman. He was fortunate in that the Archbishop of York refused to take action against him for ministering outside his parish. Most church dignitaries and society in general would have nothing to do with Evangelicals. In 1768 six undergraduates were expelled from St Edmund Hall, Oxford for talking of "regeneration, inspiration and drawing nigh to God" and the University was effectively closed to them. At Cambridge only Magdalene would receive the Evangelicals and the virtual closure of both universities meant that it was almost impossible for known evangelicals to be ordained. The situation only improved in 1788 when Isaac Milner became President of Queens.

Low Church
Low: distinguish from "Evangelical" Carpenter

Anglo-Catholic / High Church
Within the high church tradition there are variations such as traditional Anglo-Catholic, moderate Catholic, modern Catholic, liberal Catholic, prayer book Catholic and Anglo-Papalist.

Evangelical
Neill notes: From 1930's He goes on to note that within the evangelicals, some are now more open to the ideas and methods of modern scholarship as opposed to the "conservatives". Within the low church tradition of churchmanship there are some distinct variations such as charismatic evangelical, traditional evangelical, open evangelical and conservative evangelical.

Modernist / Liberal
Writing in the 1950's, Stephen Neill remarked that it is not sufficient to say that some are 'high church' and some are 'low church'. He goes on to describe seven colours in the churchmanship "spectrum" at that time. At either extreme he sees a "lunatic fringe", one so Roman-catholic that it is "hard to say what keeps it within the Anglican fold" and the other who are "nonconformists in surplices" and seem totally lacking in "any point of attachment" to the Church of England. Moving in towards the centre, there are on one side the convinced Anglo-catholics and on the other the convinced Evangelicals. Further in there are those who are "high rather than low" and those who are "low rather than high". Finally, while not exactly in the centre, there are the liberals or modern churchmen. He then analises the diocesan bishops classing seven as anglo-catholics, seventeen as "high rather than low", ten as "low rather than high", six as "evangelical" and three as probably not objecting to the designation "liberal".

History to 1715
In theory, since the Reformation as before it, the Church and the Realm of England were co-extensive, composed of the same persons, whether as citizens or churchmen at least up to 1660. The idea that they should be lingered on until well into the nineteenth century. The parish acquired a considerable number of civil responsibilities from the Administration of the Poor Law(1595).

High Church
The term "High Church" was first used in about 1687 to describe those who held a high view of the relationship between the Church of England as then established by law and the nation which was threatened by James II's attempts to gain religious tolerance for Roman-catholics by offering similar freedom to protestant dissenters. Along with this political stance, they valued episcopacy very highly, ceremonies and beauty in worship, and a style of devotion all totally opposed to the puritan ideals which had commanded a great deal of support in England from about 1570 through to 1660. Historians project the term back onto similar thinkers from about 1600 onwards, the famous statement of James I "No Bishop, No King" being an early example of highchurch principles. The movement became stronger and more widespread after Charles I came to the throne in 1625 and William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. Between them, with the enthusiastic support of a number of bishops, they attempted to put an end to parliamentary control over the Church and to make it directly dependent on the Crown through theConvocations. The more extreme supporters of this position held that kings ruled by divine right and answered only to God and their subjects were bound to obey them passively.

The defeat and execution(1649) of Charles I and the establishment of the republican Commonwealth meant that High Church views were unacceptable in England and clergy holding them lost their positions, but the survivors recovered power and influence with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. They were able to narrow the range of opinion acceptable within the Church of England by restricting clerical recognition to those who had obtained episcopal ordination and approved the Prayer Book and 39 Articles thus excluding many puritan clerics who had ministered in the national church during the Commonwealth and to harass protestant dissenters with the restrictive legislation of the "Clarendon Code"; but signally failed to reduce Parliament's power over the Church.

By 1687 the attempts of James II to legalise Roman Catholic worship by royal decree and to advance Catholics to positions of power had brought about an alliance between the Protestant Dissenters and all shades of Anglican opinion. James had offered similar status to the Protestant dissenters. At that time, suspicion of Catholicism had been reinforced by the horrific treatment of the French Protestant huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. The tense situation was further complicated by the birth of a son and heir apparent to James who would be raised as a Roman Catholic: till then his daughters by his first marriage, Mary and Anne, both Protestants, had been the heirs presumptive. Several highchurch bishops were among the national leaders who voiced the opinion that James' measures were illegal and their subsequent acquittal on a charge of publishing a "seditious libel" marked a definite step down the road towards William of Orange and Mary becoming joint sovereigns.

The "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 and accession of William III and Marybrought about a crisis for a section of the High Church in that they had sworn life-long allegiance to James and so felt that they could not take the oath to the new rulers. Nine bishops (out of twenty-six) were deprived of their sees by what was seen as an uncanonical process and some four hundred other clergy suffered a similar fate (see Nonjuring schism). William needed England to sustain the war in Holland against French aggression and he continued the policy of religious toleration which had served him well in Holland. The remaining High Churchmen managed to block William's efforts to reincorporate protestant dissenters into the Church of England by widening the scope of its doctrine and practice, but they lost political influence except for a brief period towards the end of Queen Anne's reign until the very end of the 18th century.

Latitudinarian/Low Church
The origins of the term latitudinarian are uncertain and it has been applied to a number of related but distinct points of view. However, when used of this particular period, it is usually restricted to a particular type of theologian who, after the restoration of Anglicanism by Charles II (1660), adopted a new style of preaching which appealed to reason and common sense and emphasized moral growth, but in the early stages remaining orthodox in doctrine. This led them, unlike the High Church, to favour toleration and comprehension for protestant dissent. This brought them into favour with William III and, despite the fact that they formed a relatively small group, the majority of the bishops consecrated in the reigns of William and the first three Georges came from their ranks because their political views favoured the Whigs while the High Church was solidly behind the Tories and often Jacobite in sympathy. The epithet "Low Church" was coined by the High Church and first applied to the Latitudinarians. Sacheverell characterised them as believing little or no revelation; prefering reason to Divine Testimony; prefering to be a Deist than believe what is Incomprehensible (a reference to the debate about the doctrine of the Trinity); considering the 39 Articles as too Stiff, Formal and Straitlaced a Rule; looking upon the censuring of False Doctrine as an Intrusion on Human Liberty, the measure and extent of his belief.

Churchmanship from 1715-1830
The 17th century had been marked by the high degree of religious conflict, but the tone of the first half of the 18th reflected the overall Whig policy of "peace and stability". The conflicts of the previous century had damaged the Church in that a significant number of conscientious and active "lowchurch" clerics had been forced out by the 1662 Act of Uniformity and the exclusion of the non-jurors in 1689-90 deprived the "highchurch" of a significant proportion of its most able clergy and the remaining clergy were locked into a structure which "was not appropriate for the age in which they lived, and even less so for the times to come". The period was marked by extremely low expectations of the clergy in general: their regular duties were understood to be the provision of Sunday services, often through the labours of an assistant. In 1827, of 10,533 benefices only 4,413 were served by resident incumbents. Even excepting those clergy who were virtually resident in that they lived just outside the legal boundaries of their benefice, non residence was a scandal. In 1838, 3,078 assistant curates were acting for non-resident incumbents. The two key changes to note in this period are the tendency of the latitudinarians to slide into some form of rational deism and the birth of Evangelicalism within the Church of England.

Evangelical
The birth of Evangelicalism within the Church of England was virtually independent from two contemporary movements — the Calvinist Evangelical Revival inspired by George Whitefield and the "Arminian"/Methodist one led by the John and CharlesWesley —. It started as a "number of men and women, including Anglican clergy, underwent the same conversion experience, and came to preach, often independently the same gospel as their more famous contemporaries".. It can be typified by the experience of William Grimshaw(1708-63) who "in his younger days was a typical parson of the period". He read prayers and a sermon once a Sunday and, when he got drunk, took care to sleep it off before he came home. The death of his wife; questions from parishioners about their souls and the loan ofOwen on Justification led to a conversion experience not long before he became incumbent of Haworth Yorkshire in 1742. When he arrived twelve people came to communion, before his death in summer twelve hundred people came, not only from the parish itself but from surrounding ones as well which lacked a resident clergyman. He was fortunate in that the Archbishop of York refused to take action against him for ministering outside his parish. Most church dignitaries and society in general would have nothing to do with them. Joseph Milner (Headmaster of Hull Grammar School) adopted Evangelical views after reading Richard Hooker's sermon on justification and was immediately dropped by his friends and for years "few persons who wore a tolerably good coat would take notice of him when they met him in the street". The small groups of evangelicals in the West Country, Yorkshire and London formed local societies for mutual support and in 1777 the Yorkshire evangelicals formed the Elland Society to fund the studies of future ordinands at Oxford and Cambridge to reduce the difficulty in finding suitable curates. In 1768 six undergraduate students were expelled from St Edmund Hall Oxford after a University Court of Enquiry for talking of "regeneration, inspiration and drawing nigh to God" and other colleges followed suit. At Cambridge only Magdalene would receive the candidates from the Elland Society due to the influence of one of the fellows. In 1788 the situation changed when Joseph Milner's brother, Isaac became President of Queens' and opened the College to Evangelicals.

Bebbington lists four qualities which are the special marks of Evangelical religion in general: conversionism, the belief that lives need to be changed; activism, the expression of the gospel in effort; biblicism, a particular regard for the Bible, and "what may be called crucicentrism, a stress on the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. Howwever, the presentation of these themes varied with time. and Hylson-Smith suggests that Anglican Evangelicals differed from the Methodists in that they did not develop a lay ministry; they were committed to the Church of England, and particularly to respecting the parish structure; they were moderate calvinists rather than "arminians"; they were uneasy about what they saw as the Methodist over-reliance on the emotions.

Low Church
Low: distinguish from "Evangelical" Carpenter

Anglo-Catholic / High Church
Within the high church tradition there are variations such as traditional Anglo-Catholic, moderate Catholic, modern Catholic, liberal Catholic, prayer book Catholic and Anglo-Papalist.

Evangelical
Neill notes: From 1930's He goes on to note that within the evangelicals, some are now more open to the ideas and methods of modern scholarship as opposed to the "conservatives". Within the low church tradition of churchmanship there are some distinct variations such as charismatic evangelical, traditional evangelical, open evangelical and conservative evangelical.

Modernist / Liberal
Writing in the 1950's, Stephen Neill remarked that it is not sufficient to say that some are 'high church' and some are 'low church'. He goes on to describe seven colours in the churchmanship "spectrum" at that time. At either extreme he sees a "lunatic fringe", one so Roman-catholic that it is "hard to say what keeps it within the Anglican fold" and the other who are "nonconformists in surplices" and seem totally lacking in "any point of attachment" to the Church of England. Moving in towards the centre, there are on one side the convinced Anglo-catholics and on the other the convinced Evangelicals. Further in there are those who are "high rather than low" and those who are "low rather than high". Finally, while not exactly in the centre, there are the liberals or modern churchmen. He then analises the diocesan bishops classing seven as anglo-catholics, seventeen as "high rather than low", ten as "low rather than high", six as "evangelical" and three as probably not objecting to the designation "liberal".

Material awaiting evaluation
Low church is now generally also used to refer to the puritan and evangelical traditions within Anglicanism and high church is now generally also used to refer to the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Broad church is generally used for Anglicans whose churchmanship is somewhere between the low and high traditions and is much the same as the tradition historically called latitudinarian.

The terminology used for churchmanship variations can differ from country to country and the same terms can have some differences in meaning in different places.

{{quotation|FRAGMENTS FOR MAIN ARTICLES

The "highchurchmen" of this earlier period were often called "Arminians". This label was invented by the puritans and is misleading in that many of the English "Arminians" were moderate calvinists so far as the doctrine of predestinationundefined was concerned. An alternative name was "Laudians" derived from William Laud, Abp of Canterbury from 1633, executed 1645({{Harvnb|Neill||p=146}};{{Harvnb|Cragg||p=225}}) who clashed with the puritans as he promoted the doctrine of episcopacy by divine right, ceremonial liturgy, the right of the Church under the Monarch to have its own courts and to apply Church-made law without being subordinated to Parliament, and sought to ensure the financial well-being of the clergy.
 * Their Forerunners up till 1687

With the defeat of Charles I and the setting up of the republican Commonwealth, the Puritans and Presbyterians were able to impose their religious point of view, Episcopacy was abolished and Anglicanism outlawed. Many clergy were ejected from their parishes.{{harv|Chadwick||p=245}} These actions caused a great deal of bitterness and when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 after the obvious failure of the puritan revolution to solve many pressing national problems{{harv|Cragg||p=50}} revenge was in the air. In 1662 the adherents of the High Church secured a religious settlement which was largely in their favour and resulted in the ejection of around 1760 puritan incumbents who could not accept it.{{Harv|Neill||p=165}} The Act of Uniformity narrowed the range of churchmanship acceptable in the Church of England by excluding many who would have been acceptable before the time of Laud.{{Harv|Rosman||p=106}}  Four other acts of Parliament between 1661 and 1670 also placed dissenting protestants at a severe disadvantage for the rest of Charles II's reign, despite the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672. His successor, James II was a self-declared roman-catholic who, after a cautious beginning in 1685, tried to impose freedom of worship for roman-catholics by a variety illegal means.{{harv|Cragg||p=59}}

By 1687, the attempts of James II to legalise Roman Catholic worship and to advance catholics to positions of power brought about an alliance between the Protestant Dissenters and the Non-Jurors After the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 the remaining High Churchmen rejected William III's efforts to reincorporate protestant dissenters into the Church of England by widening the scope of its doctrine and practice.{{Harv|Neill||p=180}}
 * High Church 1687-1715

The "Highchurchmen" enjoyed a temporary spell of political power at the end of Queen Anne's reign and in 1711 secured the passing of the Occasional Conformity Act which severely penalized any holder of military or civil office who having received Holy Communion in an Anglican church as required by the Test Act. in order to hold the appointment afterwards took part in dissenting worship. They lost political power with the accession of George I in 1714. -->

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