High church

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A high church is a Christian Church whose beliefs and practices of Christian ecclesiology, liturgy, and theology emphasize "ritual, priestly authority, [and] sacraments," and a standard liturgy.^[1] Although used in connection with various Christian traditions such as High Church Lutheranism, the English term high church originated in the Anglican tradition, where it described a churchmanship in which a number of ritual practices associated in the popular mind with Roman Catholicism were used, or as a description of such practices in the Catholic Church and elsewhere. The opposite tradition is low church. Contemporary media discussing Anglican churches often prefer the terms evangelical to low church and Anglo-Catholic to high church, even though their meanings do not exactly correspond.^{[clarification needed]} Other Christian denominations that contain high church wings include some Presbyterian and Methodist churches. These High-Church Protestants tend to adopt more liturgical and ritually extravagant forms of worship common in Lutheranism and Anglicanism, such as grandiose processions, elaborate music, and historic prayers.^[2]