[f. CHURCH sb. + -ISM.] Belief in or adherence to the church or a church, or to an ecclesiastical system; ecclesiasticism; church-partisanship; often short for established-churchism and for English Churchism; so also High, Low, Broad Churchism.
1768. in C. Chauncy, Letter, 61. The appellant’s idea of religion, essentially different from churchism.
1841. Arnold, in Life & Corr. (1844), II. ix. 261. The old form of High Churchism, retaining much of Protestantism, and uniting it with other notions … which it cherished indistinctly, without pushing them to their consequences.
1868. Contemp. Rev., VII. 618. To justify Dissent by aiming a blow at Churchism.
1871. Hawthorne, Sept. Felton (1879), 37. Some of the queer narrowness of English Churchism.
