I'm linking to an interesting article on the Episcopal Cafe website, a short piece of history that is very relevant to who we are as Episcopalians today.

We are members of the Episcopal Church of the United States, which is the American branch of the Anglican Communion, which makes us both "Episcopal" and "Anglican." But what does it mean to be Anglican?

Essentially, the Anglican Church began in 597, when Pope Gregory the Great sent a group of missionaries to what once had been called Briton, a land populated by that ancient ethnic group known as the Celts. But by 597, the Germanic tribes -- Angles, Saxons, Jutes, etc. -- had overrun the lower half of the island, and it was now becoming known as "Angle-Land," from which we get "England."

Gregory's missionaries were sent to Christianize what they assumed was an entirely pagan country. When they got there, they found two Christian churches already there. One was the remnant of the British church that had first formed in the days when Rome ruled the land, and had been pushed to what we now call Wales on the western coast. To the north was a Celtic church with its roots in Ireland, which had spread thanks to those Irish monks who, in Thomas Cahill's words, saved civilization.

The missionaries represented the "Catholic," or "universal" Church that was uniting all Christians on the European continent, but from which the other two churches had been isolated for centuries. Needless to say, arguments ensued.

We Episcopal-Anglicans are fond of our "Common Prayer" -- a liturgical language that unites us in a common form of worship that helps form a common faith. But we are also fond of the autonomy that allows each of us to raise questions, and occasionally, disagreements.

This tension between community and autonomy has been with us as Anglicans since our beginning. So has the importance of a liturgy that tries to draw from a variety of sources "whatever things are devout, religious, and right," then binds them together "as it were, into a sheaf." So said Gregory 1400 years ago, and so it is today.

The Anglican way has never been, "My way or the highway." Its has always been a little messy, a little unclear, but at its best, charitable, open and common.