[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 40 years ago, 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 the late 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.
[1850. Stanley 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.]
1853. W. 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.
1860. Quart. 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.
1884. Edinb. Rev., July, 198.
Hence Broad-Churchism, Broad-Churchman.
1870. F. 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.
1874. Gladstone, Ritualism, in Cont. Rev., Oct., 673. Some of those clergy who are called Broadchurchmen.