Thursday is normally Prayer and Worship Day on the blog. With a Thanksgiving recess yesterday, I'm doing Prayer and Worship today. For the next several Thursdays I'll be doing the High Church-Low Church theme--what distinguishes high church from low church?
The first thing to say is that the term "low church" is not derogatory, though it may have originated that way. I don't know really know. Lots of low church people know the term and are proud that their church falls into that category.
The second thing to say is that contemporary worship churches are low church. There tends to be much singing, lengthy preaching and little liturgy. The one thing in contemporary worship that seems a little anomalous to me is uplifted hands. Perhaps I should say that this worship practice ought to fit equally well in high church worship. It's totally Biblical and totally visual, which tend to be marks of high church. What some might consider low church about it is that it is done individually rather than as a whole congregation. I'll talk more about uplifted hands in future posts.
Today I want to talk about church names. Since the Reformation there have been basically two kinds of church names. I would call them religious names and secular names. Generally, though not always, a religious church name indicates more high church worship; secular names, low church. All Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Anglican/Episcopal churches have religious names. Almost all Lutheran churches have religious names. Methodists and Congregational/UCC churches tend to be about half and half. Baptist churches are almost always secular names.
What do I mean by these terms? Religious church names would be names like St. Mark's, Christ, St. Francis, St. Paul's, or for that matter, any saint. Other religious names would include church founders, like Wesley Memorial, Asbury, Cokesbury (a combination of Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, the first two American Methodist bishops), and Aldersgate. Other common religious church names are Resurrection, Reconciliation, Redeemer, and Trinity. Another group of religious church names are Biblical place names, like Mt. Pleasant, Mt. Gilead, Bethel, Shiloh.
By secular church names I mean church names that have no connection with religion. The most common is "First," a very popular name for churches founded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The name is now out of fashion. I don't know of new churches within the last fifty years named "First." Place names are common in secular named churhes, like Myers Park United Methodist (Charlotte) and West Market Street United Methodist (Greensboro), or Fifth Avenue Presbyterian (New York), or University United Methodist (Chapel Hill).
One new name category has emerged over the last thirty years or so with new contemporary worship churches. I might call it "spiritual but not religious" church names. Examples are North Star United Methodist in (northern) Greensboro and Kindred United Methodist in Chapel Hill/Durham.
Very generally speaking, churches with religious names tend to be more high church; churches with secular names, more low church.
"What's in a name?" Romeo says in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I would say a lot is a name. A lot is in church names.
Of all the churches I have ever seen, the one with the lowest church name is Jump-Off Baptist Church in the community of Jump-Off in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee. The highest church name I've ever seen is Dormition of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Church in Greensboro.
If you know any really interesting church names, send them to me on email or in the Comments section of the blog.
Faithfully,
Christian
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