Low church

Low-church congregations, however, typically have plainer-looking churches, prefer modern language, have some aspects of contemporary worship, and include more roles for laypersons during service.

The movement to bring Separatists, and in particular Presbyterians, back into the Church of England ended with the Act of Toleration 1689 for the most part.

Though Low church continued to be used for those clergy holding a more liberal view of Dissenters, the term eventually fell into disuse.

The terms were again used in a modified sense, now used to refer to those who exalted the idea of the Church as a catholic entity as the body of Christ, and the sacramental system as the divinely given means of grace.

A low churchman now became the equivalent of an evangelical Anglican, the designation of the movement associated with the name of Charles Simeon, which held the necessity of personal conversion to be of primary importance.

The revival of pre-Reformation ritual by many of the high church clergy led to the designation ritualist being applied to them in a somewhat contemptuous sense.

The Diocese of Sydney has largely abandoned the Prayer Book and uses free-form evangelical services.

More traditional low church Anglicans, under the influence of Calvinist or Reformed thought inherited from the Reformation era, reject the doctrine that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (e.g., baptismal regeneration) and lay stress on the Bible as the ultimate source of authority in matters of faith necessary for salvation.

[10] In 1982 the United Reformed Church voted in favour of the covenant, which would have meant remodelling its elders and moderators as bishops and incorporating its ministry into the apostolic succession.