| 释义 |
Broad Church
[See broad a. 11.]
A designation popularly applied to members of the Church of England who take its formularies and doctrines in a broad or liberal sense, and hold that the church should be comprehensive and tolerant, so as to admit of more or less variety of opinion in matters of dogma and ritual. Also sometimes applied to the corresponding school of opinion in other churches. (Often attrib.)
The phrase came into vogue about 1848, and is framed on the analogy of the far older ‘High Church’ and ‘Low Church’; but it is not used in the same manner, the Broad Churchmen, so called, not having, like the High and the Low Church, a party organization, and seldom acting together as a party. According to the Master of Balliol (Prof. Jowett), the term was first proposed in conversation, in his hearing, by A. H. Clough, and became colloquially familiar in Oxford circles, a few years before 1850. In 1850 Dean Stanley claimed in an article on the Gorham Controversy in the Edinburgh Review, that the Church of England as a whole is of necessity neither ‘High’ nor ‘Low’, but broad, in which there was evidently a reference to the term as one superior to party. But in 1853 the Rev. W. J. Conybeare, in an article in the same Review on ‘Church Parties’, used ‘High’, ‘Low’, and ‘Broad’, as recognized party designations. Already in the 17th c. Dryden had referred (Hind & P. iii. 160) to the more tolerant divines of the church as ‘your sons of latitude’, (l. 187) ‘your sons of breadth’, (l. 229) ‘your broadway sons’.
[1850Stanley in Edinb. Rev. July 266 There is no need..for minute comparison of the particular formularies of the Church to prove..that it is, by the very conditions of its being, not High or Low, but Broad.] 1853W. J. Conybeare in Edin. Rev. XCVIII. 330 Side by side with these various shades of High and Low Church, another party of a different character has always existed in the Church of England. It is called by different names; Moderate, Catholic, or Broad Church, by its friends; Latitudinarian or Indifferent by its enemies. Its distinctive character is the desire of comprehension. Its watch⁓words are Charity and Toleration. Ibid. 273 The three great parties which divide the Church of England..commonly called the Low Church, the High Church, and the Broad Church parties. 1860Quart. Rev. Oct. 497 The authoress [Geo. Eliot] is neither High-Church nor Low-Church, but a tolerant member of what is styled the Broad-Church party. 1884Edinb. Rev. July 198.
Hence Broad-Churchism, Broad-Churchman.
1870F. D. Maurice Letter in Life (1884) I. xii. 184 They [the Liberals] are called Broad Churchmen now, and delight to be called so. But their breadth seems to me to be narrowness. 1874Gladstone Ritualism in Cont. Rev. Oct. 673 Some of those clergy who are called Broadchurchmen. |