Ah, the Old High Church…
The popularity of the Old High Church–both in the Colonial period and in the years immediately after World War II–is something that flies in the face of a lot of Evangelical church growth orthodoxy. How is it possible to grow a church with such as specific form of worship? How can a church expand if its appeal isn’t broadly popular?
The simple answer, from a Palm Beach standpoint, is this: the Episcopal Church didn’t appeal to many people but the right people, and same–demographically elevated and aesthetically minded–responded. That explains the growth of the Episcopal Church in both periods.
One thing the Episcopal pioneers and their Evangelical opponents would agree on, however, is that in order to grow a church you need two things: commitment to the basic message and way of the church you’re promoting and organisation to back it up. That realisation comes from years in church work and it’s something that eludes many who would like to make it happen.
As a product of the Old High Church, I find there are relatively few people who really want to bring it back, much less make it a vehicle of church growth. So what happened? There are several factors.
The first is the demographic elevation that results. Today the Episcopal Church is filled with people who are relatively well to do, white and old. There is no game plan to find “trads” who will fill an Old High Church, and frankly in the Episcopal Church there is no viable game plan to fill the pews with anyone else either.
The second is the aesthetic appeal, which has been a reliable draw for the Episcopal Church. That kind of appeal, however, draws people who are long on the way the church worships and short on what the church actually teaches and believes, which means that when the liberal seminaries and the ministers they turned out lurched the church leftward from the 1960’s onward, the aesthetically minded let things pass.
The third is Anglo-Catholicism. Say what you will about “formalism” and “vain repetition,” the Old High Church was essentially Protestant in doctrine and belief. Today, however, virtually any church which uses the 1928 BCP–or any other traditional Anglican prayer book–is Anglo-Catholic to a greater or lesser degree. Obviously this started with the Oxford Movement but in times closer to the present the ecumenical movement has made union with Rome an obsession. As someone who went from the Old High Church to the Old Folk Mass in two years, my question is simple: What is Catholic? Is it all the frilly vestments you wear, including those birettas? Is it the Latin interjected into the Mass, like EWTN does? Does this and everything else make the sacraments more valid? Were ours invalid because we strummed guitars during the NOM? (Confession: we actually cheated and offered the Eucharist in both species before it was legal in the U.S., although it was Texas…) And where is the Roman Catholic Church really going after the present Occupant of the See of St. Peter goes to meet God, a serious question for all of us?
I really think that the Anglican/Episcopal world–all of it–would do well to stop and consider these questions before allowing Evangelical and Catholic alike to lead those who don’t understand the tradition astray.
Positive Infinity 