What is the ANGELican Church?
What is the Angelican Church? Well, there’s no such thing as the Angelican Church. But don’t feel bad for thinking there is. Many people mistakenly think, and even pronounce, Angelican when they first see Anglican. After all, we have some idea of an angel, while we don’t usually have an idea of an Angle (geometry notwithstanding).
But you might be interested to learn that this linguistic confusion goes back centuries to a play-on-words first developed by Pope Gregory the Great. Gregory knew that the Angles, the Germanic people who settled in Great Britain in the Early Middle Ages, shared, like all people, the heavenly hope of the angels.
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The Etymology of Anglican
The word Anglican comes from the Angles, a Germanic tribe that colonized England in the 5th and 6th centuries. Because the tribe became the dominant ethnic group in the British Isles, their country became known as England. Over time, the Church in England was named the Anglican Church.
Today, Anglican refers to the global Anglican Church, united not by place or ethnicity, but by its both catholic and reformed doctrine. The Anglican Church is catholic in sacrament and structure, and reformed in its fidelity to scripture.
Not Angles, but Angels
The first linguistic mix-up between Angles and angels happened nearly 1500 years ago. Bede tells the story of Pope Gregory the Great, who visited a market in Rome in the mid-500s, after the Angles had mostly colonized Britain.
Gregory saw a group of fair-skinned boys for sale as slaves and inquired where they were from and whether they were Christian. He was told that they were from the British Isles and that they were heathens. Gregory gave a “deep-drawn sigh” and lamented that “the author of darkness should have men so bright of face in his grip” (Ecclesiastical History, II.1).
Then Gregory asked what this group of people were called:
He was told that they were called Angli. “Good,” he said, “they have the face of angels, and such men should be fellow-heirs of the angels in heaven.”
Bede, Ecclesiastical History, II.1
All Peoples in Heaven and Earth
The story is at once ironic and profound. It is ironic because it inverts the modern experience of African slavery, showing a time when the light-skinned Angles were enslaved heathens.
It is also profound, for it shows how Gregory the Great saw past the enslavement of this pagan race and instead saw the hope that all peoples have to receive forgiveness and worship Christ in heaven. Gregory knew his Bible and knew that in heaven, there would be:
A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.
Revelation 7:9
Gregory knew that the Angles could share the hope of the angels. In 597, Gregory sent a mission of monks to the British Isles, led by Augustine of Canterbury. That mission from the south, together with the Celtic mission from the north, evangelized the Angles and created the Anglican Church.
Today, the Anglican Church is preaching the gospel all over the earth, true to Gregory’s expansive vision.
With Angels & Archangels
One final point about angels and Anglicans.
The Bible twice depicts the angels praising God with the phrase “Holy, Holy, Holy,” first in Isaiah 6:3 and again in Revelation 4:8. This points to the perfect and unified holiness of our Trinitarian God.
It’s such a powerful moment of praise, that we repeat these words every Sunday in our communion liturgy. As our service puts it, we are:
…joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who for ever sing this hymn to proclaim the glory of your name: Holy, Holy, Holy…
BCP 2019, p. 115
So maybe we Anglicans are Angelicans, after all!
Image: Smiling angel, Notre-Dame de Reims Cathedral, Reims, France. Photo by Ivan_Varyukhin from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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