Anglican Christianity is one of the largest Christian traditions in the world. Christianity came to Britain in the first or second century.  When Pope St. Gregory the Great sent a monk named Augustine to England in 597 to establish a Roman mission at Canterbury, he found an already established and robust British church with its own bishops and customs.The two church traditions (Rome and Britain) existed side-by-side until the Synod of Whitby in 663, when for the sake of Christian unity, it was decided that Roman customs would be followed. That relationship continued through most of Anglican church history. During the English Reformation, Anglicanism resumed functioning as a branch of the historic Church, distinct from Rome.

The Anglican church in the American colonies became a separate ecclesial body along with the birth of the United States after the revolutionary war. Anglicans used the name “Episcopalian” almost exclusively after the war. However, they noted that this new Episcopal Church “is far from intending to depart from the church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline, or worship, or further than local circumstances allow” (The Book of Common Prayer, p.11). The word “episcopal” comes from the Greek word episcope (overseer) that the New Testament uses for the office of bishop who oversees a local church. The word “church” comes from the Greek word ekklesia (assembly) that the New Testament uses for God’s people gathered into an assembled congregation. So the term “episcopal church” means a church overseen by bishops, according to the New Testament model.

“The Anglican Communion,” Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher wrote, “has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ’s Church from the beginning. It may licitly teach as necessary for salvation nothing but what is read in the Holy Scriptures as God’s Word written or may be proved thereby. It therefore embraces and affirms such teachings of the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church as are agreeable to the Scriptures, and thus to be counted apostolic. The Church has no authority to innovate: it is obliged continually, and particularly in times of renewal or reformation, to return to ‘the faith once delivered to the saints.'”

To be an Anglican, then, is not to embrace a distinct version of Christianity, but a distinct way of being a “Mere Christian,” at the same time sacramental, evangelical, apostolic, and catholic.

The Anglican Church of North America is the renewed Anglican province (or nation-wide church) in North America. It is comprised of dioceses led by their godly bishops. Our archbishop is a first among equals and a symbol of unity among us. The ACNA began in 2009. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, different diocese and parishes sought to continue faithfully in the Anglican Way outside of the liberalizing Episcopal Church. In 2009, most of these continuing groups unified to form the ACNA. The ACNA is a faithful, orthodox Christian church that holds to the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the historic Creeds, and to biblical ethics for marriage, sexuality, and the sanctity of life. Learn more about the ACNA.