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The 19th Century Oxford Movement within the Church of England began as a high church movement; however, over time, many of its leading lights converted to Roman Catholicism, following the path of their spiritual forebear, John Henry Cardinal Newman. Today, the primary source of separation between high church Anglo-Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church itself if the liberal attitude taken by many in the Anglican communion regarding issues which to the Catholic Church are still anathema, such as the ordination of women, and, increasingly, the calls for the acceptance and ordination of homosexuals. It is the disagreement over these issues more than over worship styles that keeps Anglo-Catholicism and Roman Catholicism separate.

In the 17th century, the term "high church" was a description of those divines who placed a "high" emphasis on complete adherence to the Established church position. In the early days of the diversion from the Roman Catholic church, this position was unremarkable, but as the PuritanThe Puritans were members of a group of radical Protestants which developed in England after the Reformation. Terminology The word puritan is now applied unevenly to a number of Protestant churches from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth cs began demanding that English church abandon liturgicalFrom the Greek word λειτουργια, which can be transliterated as "leitourgia," meaning "the work of the people," a liturgy comprises a solemn religious ceremony, following a carefully prescribed f emphasis, episcopal structures, parish ornaments, and the like, the "high" church was distinguished from the latitudinarianLatitudinarian was initially a pejorative term applied to a group of 17th century British theologians who believed in conforming to official Church of England practices but who felt that matters of doctrine, liturgical practice, and ecclesiastical organizs. After the RestorationRestoration can be one of several things, depending on context: In history, a restoration is an historical episode under which a previous government of an area is reinstated. In the History of England the term Restoration has a specific meaning in as much, "high church" was beginning to mean Anglo-Catholic only in contrast to the "low" church position of the latitudinarians. By the 19th century, "high church" referred exclusively to the avowedly Anglo-Catholic position in the English church, while the latitudinarians were referred to as Broad churchBroad church is a term referring to latitudinarian churches in the in the Church of England. After the terms high church and low church came to distinguish the tendency toward Anglo-Catholicism, on the one hand, and Puritanism, on the other, those churche, and the emergent EvangelicalEvangelical has several distinct meanings: In its original sense, it means belonging or related to the Gospel (Greek: euangelion good news) of the New Testament. In the United States, it usually refers to adherents of Evangelicalism. In Europe, especially movement was dubbed Low churchLow church is a term of distinction in the Church of England, initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the Established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and divines began to refer.