What's an Anglican?

 /ˈaNGɡləkən/ 
Anglicans are Christians.  Despite being relatively unknown in the Rio Grande Valley, there are more than 85 million of us worldwide, making us the third largest denomination of Christians (behind the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches).
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ORIGINS OF THE NAME
The name “Anglican” generally refers to anything related to England and is traceable to the Anglo-Saxon tribes in Europe. Their speech preceded the English language, and their islands became known as "England." Thus, Christians in England became known as "Anglicans."

​The name has nothing to do with “angels.”

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GLOBAL ANGLICANISM
With the spread of the British empire, Anglicans resettled in new lands, including Africa and the American colonies, and they brought their personal faith with them. Many Anglicans also traveled as missionaries.  There are now tens of millions of Anglicans in more than 165 countries.

We are a global family, and while those in England and the United States continue to play an important role, today the “average” Anglican is a young woman from Sub-Saharan Africa.

(Adapted from the ACNA's website.)
SUPPORT THOSE IN NEED
The Anglican Development and Relief Fund demonstrates God's love by helping the poor and needy through leaders working in their own communities.

Learn more about this organization and consider donating to its important poverty-alleviating work here.
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Anglicanism, the world's third largest denomination after Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, is sometimes described as the "middle way" between Catholics and Protestant Christians. We are both catholic and reformed, sharing attributes of both ways of following Christ.

Historical Timeline

  • AD 198: Tertullian (AD 155-222) writes that Christianity has come to Britain. It likely was there much longer.
  • AD 209: Saint Alban first Christian martyr in British Isles.
  • AD 411: Romans largely withdrawn from Britain, and a distinctive Celtic influence continues to shape British Christianity.
  • AD 596: Pope Gregory I sends Augustine of Canterbury to England to convince British Christians to become Roman Catholic and submit to papal authority.
  • AD 664: Synod of Whitby results in most of the British church joining her Roman counterparts, though Anglicans continue to have their own Celtic-influenced approach to Christianity due to their relative isolation from continental Europe.
  • AD 1534: English Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy, disassociating the Anglican Church from Roman Catholicism and declaring the English monarch to be the head of the Anglican Church.
  • AD 1547-1553: English Reformation. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, leads in reforming the theology and liturgy of the Anglican Church to eliminate perceived excesses and unscriptural Roman doctrines.
  • AD 1549: First Book of Common Prayer published. Cranmer revised a handbook for Catholic priests in order to put a simplified English prayer book into the hands of regular Christians. It was revised in 1552.
  • AD 1553: Mary I comes to the throne of England; restores Roman Catholicism as the official denomination in England. Nearly 300 Protestant Christians are burnt at the stake (including Cranmer), while many others flee the country or practice their faith in secret.
  • AD 1558: Mary I dies childless, paving the way for her protestant sister, Elizabeth I, to come to the throne.
  • AD 1571: The Thirty-Nine Articles are adopted as a statement clarifying Anglicanism's theological and practical distinctiveness from 16th-century Roman Catholicism.
  • AD 1662: A new Book of Common Prayer is published. It remains authoritative in Anglicanism to this day.
  • AD 1776: The British colonies in America declare independence. Since most signers of the Declaration of Independence are Anglican, it begs the question of what to do with a British denomination in a country that's suddenly... not British.
  • AD 1785: Creation of the Episcopal Church, the first province of the Church of England in the United States.
  • AD 2009: Establishment of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).
  • AD 2015: The ACNA arrives in the Rio Grande Valley through the work of border missionaries Fr. Michael Jarrett and his wife Dr. Erica Jarrett. Their mission begins to provide a chapel service, medical care, quality education, and immigrant support in the lower RGV.
  • AD 2018: ​Founding of Christ Church RGV in Mission, TX.