Hi all, this is my current church after coming back from overseas, baptised under the anglo-catholic church. I will like to ask whether this church I am currently attending, is a low, broad or high church? Fast forward to minute 45 for the Eucharistic Liturgy. Looking forward to your responses!!
I met Rev. Lew at an AGMP missions conference here in the US a while ago. The Diocese of Singapore is an incredible jewel in the worldwide Anglican Communion. And the St. Andrews Cathedral, I saw it while visiting Singapore 2 years ago (squeaked by right before Covid!). My wife and I sat in the coffee shop attached to the cathedral, and Rev. Lew walked up to us to try to minister to us, when I told him that I met him in the US previously. So they are very evangelistic people, it was incredible. And the Cathedral is a majestic church building, from the old high English influence on the island. Rev. Lew invited us to attend the next day, so my wife and I sat in on a divine service at St. Andrews as well. So the best descriptor I could give is, it's a traditional Anglican liturgy. Which is really the highest compliment I could give. Other than facing the people, everything about them is traditional Anglicanism. They're not aping after alien church traditions, nor watering it down to appeal to the masses. You have to lift up to go there, and that's part of the huge success of the diocese in evangelism, missions.
I think your question is difficult to answer because the church in question is a cathedral. In my experience cathedrals have a mixture of clergy who may come from a wide spectrum of churchmanship. For example, Blackburn Cathedral in the North West of England (UK) has among its clergy a woman and the Anglo-Catholic suffragan Bishop of Burnley who makes provision for those who cannot accept the ministry of women in the Diocese of Blackburn. In addition, worship in cathedrals does tend to be on the more formal side. I have never encountered a cathedral where the clergy wear trendy jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets rather than vestments and have a large screen in place of an altar. You do tend to find vestments, incense and ritual in cathedrals. Among their clergy will be some who love that and some who hink it is all to high church for their taste.
It has high church trappings but I don't get an Anglo-Catholic vibe from this at all. Those containers of individual communion cups would never be touched by an Anglo-Catholic with a ten foot pole. I would guess (and can only guess) that this is a sort of broad-church culture that enjoys some of the high vestments and decor but is essentially low-church evangelical in conviction. Perhaps @Taiping has more insight into this province?
I have a friend who came from there and regularly returns there. He would describe it as proper Anglican, in that there is a genuine enthusiasm for evangelism, hand in hand with a genuine love of liturgy with some formality and generally as I understand it well attended. The Anglican way, with a genuine respectfulness to both God and one another sits well in an Asian Cultural setting.
I visited the cathedral's website to see if I could discern their churchmanship, but have come to no conclusions. I am wondering if the individual cups are a measure put in place because of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The cathedral's website says their normal manner of distributing the Communion is by intinction. The Eucharist is, they say, based on the Church of England's Series 3 and Alternative Service Book 1980.
That is what I've come to understand from my interactions with members of the Province of South-East Asia, yeah. I've not detected a strong Anglo-Catholic presence out there, but my sample size is still pretty slim.