Low Church ("Chiesa Bassa")

LOW CHURCH ("Chiesa Bassa"). - The name L. C. was originally understood as the opposite of High Church and also included the members of the "Broad Church" or "Latitudinarians." It originated before the Oxford movement among those Anglicans to whom it mattered little whether bishops were sworn or not sworn, because they considered the episcopate only as an existing form of ecclesiastical government.

It preserved something of the old Puritan spirit, but without the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. When Methodism arose it copied some elements from it, but it always remained Anglican and inherited the aversion toward Rome of the Anglicans, the Puritans and the Methodists. Because of their insistence on certain truths of the Gospel, e.g., on sin and on forgiveness, the members of the L. C. were called "evangelicals." It was especially among them, in the time of the Hanoverian dynasty, that the government chose many bishops, and from this came the importance that the L. C. once had. During the development of the Oxford movement, it opposed it because of its semi-Catholic attitude. When later it saw that even some Anglican ministers were adopting Catholic ceremonies in worship, the L. C. presented itself as a champion of Anglican uses and customs and instituted the "Church Association," which represented within Anglicanism the group most hostile to the Catholic Church and to the Anglo-Catholics. Its doctrines can be reduced to these: it gives little or no importance to the episcopate and to apostolic succession; it is Erastian (v. ERASTO), but more for political than for religious reasons; it is opposed to the theory of the three branches. Even among the members of the L. C., however, there are nuances, border crossings and penetrations of the doctrines of the other Anglican groups.

Camillo Crivelli