High Churchman

English

First attested in the 17th century, originally in sense 2, with high meaning “extreme”. Compare High Tory.

High Churchman (plural High Churchmen)

(Anglicanism) A member of the Church of England who prioritises those aspects of Anglicanism which distinguish it from Calvinism and other Protestant denominations, and which it has in common with Catholicism, especially the authority of the priesthood and the importance of church ritual.
- 1966, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, volume 1, page 174:
  Nothing riled English high churchmen more than the phrase Protestant church. It seemed to lump them with Germans against miracle or Swiss against Trinity or ranters against decorum.
- 1971, Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, Folio Society, published 2012, page 571:
  High Churchmen were not beyond praying for the dead; and the stories collected in Boswell's Johnson show that the possibility of ghosts was a reality in the eighteenth century for many educated men […].
(obsolete) An Anglican opponent of religious toleration; a Tory.
- 1688, Some Reasons to Move Protestant Dissenters To be for the taking off Penal Laws, yea and Tests too ‎, page 5:
  The same Noise that is now made against the taking off the Tests, will then be made against a Repeal of Penal Laws. Whoever will consult the various Methods these high Churchmen have used to Cajole and Abuse you, will see cause to conclude, That you cannot run a greater hazard, than to put any Trust or Confidence in them.