Word.ws English Dictionary

broad church

broad church noun: a wide scope of political or religious philosophies and ideas. Also the alternative letter-case form of Broad Church.

Noun

broad church (plural broad churches)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK) A 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.
    • 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

Proper noun capitalized: Broad Church

Broad Church

  1. (Anglicanism) The 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
    • 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

Also used as

broad church is also the alternative letter-case form of Broad Church.

Synonyms of broad church

Forms of broad church

Noun
pluralbroad churches
Proper noun
alternative formbroad church

Questions about broad church

What does broad church mean?
Broad church means a wide scope of political or religious philosophies and ideas.
What part of speech is broad church?
Broad church can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of broad church?
The plural of broad church is broad churches.

Words near broad church in the dictionary

  1. broad beans
  2. Broad Brook
  3. broad brush
  4. broad brushes
  5. Broad Chalke
  6. broad church
  7. broad churches
  8. Broad Clyst
  9. broad cooper
  10. broad coopers
  11. broad daylight

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: broad church (page history and authors); Broad Church (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 broad church.ogg.

Cite this entry: “broad church.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/broad_church. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.