broad church

plural broad churches

1. AustraliaNew ZealandUKgovernmentA wide scope of political or religious philosophies and ideas.

   The Liberal party in Australia is often described as being a broad church, encompassing conservatives and radicals, wets and dries.

   1 more example

   If representation and recruitment is an objective, self-styled mavericks like Kelly and his Queensland sidekick George Christensen have some utility. This duo operates like an extended wink and a nudge; they tell voters the Coalition is a broad enough church to be a home for fringe views.

   2021 February 2, Katharine Murphy, The Guardian

   Synonyms: big tent

1. Alternative letter-case form of Broad Church.

alternative broad church

1. AnglicanismThe movement to latitudinarian churchmanship in the Church of England; collectively, those people engaged in the movement.

   Hampden contributed nothing to the theology of his time and specifically rejected the Broad Church in the 1860s.

   1989, M. A. Crowther, “Church Problems and Church Parties”, in Gerald Parsons, editor, Religion in Victorian Britain IV: Interpretations, page 19

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   The first Broad Church, in her view, included Coleridge, Arnold, Kingsley, and Maurice, and was spiritual in the same way as the Evangelicals.

   2009, Herbert Schlossberg, Conflict and Crisis in the Religious Life of Late Victorian England, page 9

   Mid-nineteenth-century Anglican Broad Church thinkers included such figures as FD Maurice, AC Tait, AP Stanley, Benjamin Jowett, and Charles Kingsley. There was also a Broad Church movement (sometimes referred to as ‘liberal evangelical’) in Scotland,which included James Robertson, John Tulloch, John Caird and Norman MacLeod.

   2011, Keith Robbins, Political and Legal Perspectives, page 62