Reappraising the Old High Churchmen

Paidiske · Jan 2, 2026

This was an interesting read. While this isn't necessarily the part of Anglicanism I most easily identify with, there's some food for thought here about what it might offer us today.

"High Church constitutionalism insists that we are shaped through participation, not agreement alone. Institutions bind us in three ways.

First, they restrain—slowing us down, frustrating immediate desire, and requiring submission to procedures and norms.
Second, they connect—placing us alongside people we did not choose, across differences of class, temperament, and belief.
Third, they teach—cultivating habits of disagreement, reform, and authority over time through shared practice."

Reappraising the Old High Churchmen

Can they offer wisdom for our age of populism and polarisation?

markclavier.substack.com

Shane R · Jan 3, 2026

That's interesting reading. Knowing something of the author, who came up in the US Continuing Movement and whose father was one of the more polarizing bishops of the early years of said movement, I appreciated his introductory comments about how he probably would not have appreciated his book when it was new. But he's been gone a while now and has had time to decompress and breath and that is good.

Peter Robinson, presiding bishop of the UECNA, also blogs extensively about the Olde High Churchmen. I think he considers himself one in spirit. I'm not claiming to be especially informed of that strand of Anglicanism but it seems to have more to offer than the rabid Anglo-Catholicism that most of the Continuum latched on to.

Paidiske · Jan 3, 2026

I don't know about more to offer? Maybe it's a more moderate, more balanced approach (or so it seems to me, product of a fairly broad tent of an Australian diocese).

FireDragon76 · Apr 27, 2026

This might be a valid perspective the populist Right needs to hear, but it's tone deaf to the institutional failure of the procedural liberal establishment in the United States. Trust in respectable institutions and procedural logic can numb people to actual moral seriousness. In the 1990's, neoliberal orthodoxy was ascendant in all traditional American institutions, and those who still took seriously the language of moral accountability and truth-telling were increasingly dismissed as cranks or simpletons, as not appreciating "complexity" or "realism".

And the High Church in Anglicanism wasn't unproblematic in its own time. It made accommodations to Cavalier decadence as much as it made space for common life. Puritans were right to chafe under suffering drunkards and swindlers as their betters, no matter the gloss of political theology.

The Liturgist · Friday at 6:21 AM

Paidiske said:
This was an interesting read. While this isn't necessarily the part of Anglicanism I most easily identify with, there's some food for thought here about what it might offer us today.

"High Church constitutionalism insists that we are shaped through participation, not agreement alone. Institutions bind us in three ways.

First, they restrain—slowing us down, frustrating immediate desire, and requiring submission to procedures and norms.

Second, they connect—placing us alongside people we did not choose, across differences of class, temperament, and belief.

Third, they teach—cultivating habits of disagreement, reform, and authority over time through shared practice."

Reappraising the Old High Churchmen

Can they offer wisdom for our age of populism and polarisation?

markclavier.substack.com

I really liked that article, thank you for posting it!

I’ve always loved the Caroline Divines, especially Archbishop Laud and Lancelot Andrewes. And the Oxford Movement I also greatly admired, and the subsequent beautification of the liturgy.

I particularly like the early 20th century Anglo Catholic Rev. Percy Dearmer.

RamiC · Friday at 2:43 PM

If I think of the Church of England, an institution cannot bind our society in any way, however positively it can, if virtually everyone has left the institution.

Although I can see from the OP and the article why certain people in UK politics are attacking institutions and undermining trust in them. They do not want anything that might steady immediate reactions, or nurture unity and community.

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Reappraising the Old High Churchmen

Paidiske

Clara bonam audax