UPDATE: It occurred to me that I ought to clarify something. Below I call myself “unordained.” That is in terms of my denomination only. I am ordained, but not by the ELCA, and they do not recognize the form of my ordination as acceptable for rostered ministry within the denomination.

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I have never really considered or given much thought to the distinctions between “high church” and “low church” sacramentalism. However I think I learned something about the subject and about myself after having thought about Peter Leithart’s article at First Things on what he calls “Puritan sacramentalism.” I don’t particularly care for that term, but I can appreciate the main point he is making.

Probably like many people, I have generally used the terms “high church” and “low church” to distinguish congregations and groups that use more or less formality, respectively, in their corporate worship. I’ve been among those he describes in these terms:

For some, high church means formality: elaborate liturgical vestments, dignified gestures and postures, repetitiveness. For some, it’s age: High liturgies use organs, old music, and archaic diction; low worship is guitars, CCM, and the New Living Translation. For some, high church happens when every word and gesture is pre-scripted by a prayer book or missal. I’ve heard of churches where the introduction of a weekly bulletin is an alarming sign of creeping high-churchism.

Most of my adult Christian life has been spent among those suspicious of a set order of worship (though they really only object to the order of the liturgy — their own orders have been equally “set”), written prayers, written or responsive congregational readings, robed ministers, the use of elements like incense, following the seasons of the Christian Year, venerating saints, etc. I have lived mostly in the revivalistic world, not the liturgical world. And those people tend to say one is low church, the other high church. It’s not a precise distinction.

Now, however, I worship in an ELCA Lutheran Church that is decidedly “low church,” even though many of my friends and former parishioners would bristle at what they would call its “formality.” Peter Leithart’s article helped me understand why it fits in the “low church” category. Now there are many in various Lutheran groups who aspire to “high church” status, and even my own denomination betrays some tendencies toward that. I’ll explain as we go along here. However, I think it’s fair to say that, though I believe that the traditional liturgy of the Western Church has stood the test of time as a salutary way for God’s people to come before the Lord in worship, I am also persuaded that a “low church” way of doing the liturgy is most comfortable for me, theologically.

Here is the “tentative alternative hypothesis” Leithart suggests for distinguishing low vs. high:

The issue is not formality or ornamentation or age, but preparation. High liturgies include preparatory rites, sometimes complicated and numerous; low liturgies do not. Orthodox priests perform the prothesis before the Divine Liturgy begins. In a high Anglican liturgy, Scripture readings are preceded by gestures and processions. In a low liturgy, the minster announces a text and reads it. In a high Eucharist, the minister or priest is vested, his hands washed, the elements blessed before the Eucharistic ordo itself. In a low Eucharist, the minister takes bread and wine, gives thanks, and distributes.

He makes his case by referring to Luther, who was one of the most traditional of the Reformers. As one Catholic teacher puts it, “Luther attempted to minimize out-and-out abolitions. He directed his efforts to retaining as many of the ancient ceremonies as possible, seeking rather to orient their significance toward the spirit of his Reforms.” The focus of Luther’s “evangelical” mass was to turn attention away from an emphasis on preparatory rites which give primary attention to the officiants and the rites themselves, and to turn toward the people of God, inviting them to participate more fully in the actions of worship.

Thus for a time the Mass retained in large measure its external appearances. The churches retained the same decor and the same rites, with modifications but directed towards the faithful, for henceforth much more attention was to be paid to the faithful than formerly, in order that they, might be conscious of a more active role in the Liturgy: thus, they were to participate in the singing and in the prayers of the Mass. And, gradually, Latin gave way definitively to the German vernacular.

If this priest and Leithart are correct, then the heart of the distinction between “low church” and “high church” is whether attention is primarily directed toward the priest’s correct performance of the rites or toward the active participation of the congregants.

This makes Peter Leithart’s next point all the more important.

It’s often thought that “high liturgy” and “high sacramentality” go together. . . . From where I stand, though, they appear to be opposed.

How so?

The Reformers held that the power of the sacraments come from God’s designated element combined with God’s Word alone, not from elaborate preparatory rites that guarantee a proper sacrament. In their view “high church” rites undercut both the efficacy of the natural elements of creation and the power of God’s Word alone to sanctify them to bless God’s people. The water, wine, bread, or oil is not “sacramental” enough in and of itself until it is transformed through priestly rites. In “low church” worship, on the other hand, the elements are good simply because they are taken from God’s good creation and combined with God’s word of promise.

Leithart thinks this makes the “low church” approach more deeply sacramental than the “high church” way.

I tend to agree, and I guess that makes me a “low church” liturgical Christian.

Let me mention one situation in my own denomination with which I have disagreed, and I think Leithart’s distinction lies at the root of it. In the ELCA, we promote Word and Sacrament worship and most churches follow some form of the traditional liturgy. In our churches I, an unordained person, am allowed to preach. The pulpit is relatively open. However, I am not permitted to preside at the Table and officiate communion. On a practical level, this seems to me to be perfectly backwards. In my opinion, a person can do a lot more damage by wrongly interpreting the scriptures and teaching falsehood from the pulpit than he or she can by reciting the set rubrics of the Table service and distributing the elements.

Why this distinction? Because there is a residual “high church” sense that the Sacrament must be handled by clergy with due care and cannot be trusted in the hands of the laity. But since the proclamation of the gospel is clearly given in Scripture to all Christians, we do not bar anyone from preaching. I don’t think that distinction holds up and I would love to see our tribe be more theologically consistent.

So, I’m a Protestant after all, and a low church Protestant at that. A sacramental, liturgical, low church Protestant Lutheran.

Peter Leithart goes too far, I think, in calling this a “Puritan” instinct. But it’s low church nonetheless.