In a recent American Conservative piece, Gracy Olmstead observes that “the millennial generation is seeking a holistic, honest, yet mysterious truth that their current churches cannot provide.” She reports on three Evangelicals whose journeys reflect a “sacramental yearning” and an “ache for sacramentality” that cannot be satisfied in traditional Evangelicalism. As Jesse Cone puts it, “kids are going high church.”
But what is “high church” worship? The answer can be pretty obvious. On Christmas Eve, I attended midnight Eucharist at the Episcopal cathedral in Savannah, Georgia. Moving as one through air sweet with incense, a trio of clergymen performed the liturgy, accompanied by the cathedral’s magnificent organ and choir. That was high church. The lessons and carols service we attended earlier in the evening, which included a Neil Young song and a breathy jazz rendition of “Christmas Time Is Here” from “A Charlie Brown Christmas”—that was not high church.
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