It should be clear by now, but I’m low church. When I say I’m low church I don’t mean I reject conciliar Christianity, per se. What I mean is that I am Free church, and not necessarily in an Anabaptist way. I am theological free church in the sense that I see the esse or very being/condition of the church grounded, concretely, in the life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; free from any state, or even clerical oversight. I see free church as corollary of God’s free grace; as such the reality, or res of the church is purely a predicate of God’s choice to be God for and with us in ever present ever new ways; that is according to the ‘constancy’ of His life as eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As such, I see the reality of the church as a miracle that cannot be possessed by any liturgy, any pontiff, any sacrament, any archbishop, any pastor or deacon. I see the reality of the church as an ongoing miracle occasioned not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the LORD. Barth gets at this as he writes on election and the freedom of God’s grace: 

We may establish first a point which all serious conceptions of the doctrine have in common. The all find the nerve of the doctrine, the peculiar concern which forces them to present and assert it, in the fact that it characterises the grace of God as absolutely free and thereby divine. In electing, God decides according to His good-pleasure, which as such is holy and righteous. And because He who elects is constant and omnipotent and eternal, the good pleasure by which He decides, and the decision itself, are independent of all other decisions, of all creature decisions. His decision precedes every creaturely decision. Over against all creaturely self-determination it is predetermination—prae-destinatio. Grace is the divine movement and condescension on the basis of which men belong to God and God to men. Whether offered or received, whether self-revealing and reconciling or apprehended and active in faith, it is God’s dealing, God’s will and God’s work, God’s lordship, God Himself in all His sovereignty. Grace cannot be called forth or constrained by any claim or merit, by any existing or future condition, on the part of the creature. Nor can it be held up or rendered nugatory and ineffective by any contradiction or opposition on the part of the creature. Both in its being and in its operation its necessity is within itself. In face of it there is no place for the self-glorifying or the self-praise of the creature. It comes upon the creature as absolute miracle, and with absolute power and certainty. It can be received by the creature only where there is a recognition of utter weakness and unworthiness, an utter confidence in its might and dignity, and an utter renunciation of wilful self-despair. What the creature cannot claim or appropriate for itself, it cannot of itself renounce when it does partake of it, nor can it even will to deprive itself of it. The decision by which it receives and affirms grace takes place in fulfillment of the prior divine decision. It cannot, then, be asserted over against God as a purely creaturely achievement, nor can it be revoked. As the fulfillment of that prior divine decision, it redounds per se to the praise of the freedom of grace: of its independence both of the majesty and of the misery of our human volition and achievement; of the sovereignty in which it precedes and thus fully over-rules or human volition and achievement. All serious conceptions of the doctrine (more or less exactly and successfully, and with more or less consistency in detail) do at least aim at this recognition; at the freedom of the grace of God. We can put it more simply: They aim at an understanding of grace as grace. For what kind of grace is it that is conditioned and constrained, and not free grace and freely electing grace? What kind of a God is it who in any sense of the term has to be gracious, whose grace is not His own most personal and free good-pleasure.1 

This is why when I see various expressions of the church, particularly ones of ‘high’ orientation, who see themselves as some form of the prolongation of the incarnation, or rather, some form of ‘grace perfecting nature,’ I have no desire whatsoever for that type of churchness. That is not to say that such churches are not populated by redeemed people, it is just to say that I think they suffer under a concept of church, and thus God’s grace, that collapses grace into nature in a way that makes grace a predicate of nature; a possession of nature, that somehow becomes accessible by people smart enough to learn how manipulate it—maybe through mass, or the ‘elements’, or the Eucharist, or various other means. I am against these sorts of ‘high’ understandings of grace, and thus church, because I believe it elevates nature without the necessary dissolution and recreation of it through the cross of Christ (which would explain why in the Catholic mass there is a constant re-presentation of Christ’s broken body).  

I am happy to do church in a way that can be reduced to a child’s Sunday school chorus: ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’ I am happy to do church shorn of everything but Jesus Christ; shorn of various formalities, liturgies, fashion, so on and so forth. I am anti-clerical to the core, and repudiate the accretions of church productions and liturgies wherein grace is collapsed into nature, such that grace is no longer free, but instead institutional. Of course, this sword can be applied to mainstream evangelical churches just the same. So, when I say I’m low church I’m referring to a theological rather than sociological or practical understanding of that, per se.   

1 Karl Barth, CD II.2, 17-18.