Berthe was a Christian woman. Her husband, Ethelbert, was quite pagan, but allowed his German wife to worship God her own way. (By the way, it's 597 A.D. and we're in Kent, England.) Now Berthe was quite worried about her husband and convinced Ethelbert to at least look into Christianity. Christianity was quite established in England but invaders and conquerors like the Saxons, Angles and Jutes had followed Nordic pagan religions and there just weren't many Christians around Ethelbert and Berthe's neighborhood. So Ethelbert invited Gregory I, Bishop of Rome, to send a few missionaries to Kent...

Augustine didn't want to go. He had no desire to leave his post as prior of the Abbey of St. Andrew in Rome. But a few months later, there he was in England, staring at Ethelbert where they first met, under a grand oak tree. Ethelbert believed that the mighty oak would dispel any magic this Christian might attempt. Augustine instructed his charge patiently on matters pertaining to the faith and by year's end, Augustine baptized Ethelbert.

Ethelbert, the first Anglo-Saxon King to convert to Christianity, gave money to re-consecrate and rebuild an old church in his favorite town where (by now archbishop) Augustine would stay, continuing his mission. And so, Augustine became archbishop of the King's favorite town... The first archbishop of Canterbury.

The Nicene Creed we recite every Eucharist service is a Christian statement of faith accepted by the Anglican, Orthodox, Roman, and most major Protestant denominations. It gets its name from the First Council of Nicaea, held in 325, at which it was adopted. Often considered the only truly universally accepted Christian creed (as revised in 381 at the First Council of Constantinople), the Nicene Creed was the very last time both Catholic and Orthodox communions could bring themselves to agree upon a Credo.

The original purpose of developing a Christian creed was to establish and coalesce the base doctrine of Christian belief. The Nicene Creed is an embodiment, not a full definition, of what is required for personal doctrine and practice. It was hoped that by memorizing this simple summary of the faith, every Christian would gain the main tangible form and ideas of the Church, have a method to recognize deviations from orthodox Christianity and have a universally acknowledged public profession of the faith.

To the majority of modern Christian scholarship, the Nicene Creed is regarded as a prerequisite for Christian faith and that the Creed is quintessentially Christian. In this traditional belief, "all proper Christians affirm the Nicene Creed, and the Nicene Creed is affirmed by all proper Christians."

As ranked by membership... The Roman Catholic Church 65,270,000 members; Southern Baptist Convention 16,053,000; The United Methodist Church 8,298,000; The Church of God in Christ 5,500,000; Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; 5,100,000; National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. 5,000,000; National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. 3,500,000; Presbyterian Church 3,456,000; The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod 2,540,000, African Methodist Episcopal Church 2,500,000; National Missionary Baptist Convention of America 2,500,000; Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. 2,500,000; The Episcopal Church 2,333,000; Churches of Christ 1,500,000; Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America 1,500,000; Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc. 1,500,000; African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 1,448,000; American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A 1,443,000; United Church of Christ 1,359,000; Baptist Bible Fellowship International 1,200,000; Christian Churches and Churches of Christ 1,072,000; The Orthodox Church in America 1,000,000. -- Source: Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, 2003.

One in a series. A few organizational terms...

"Anglican," from the Latin "anglicus," simply means English; a term indicating the English origins and traditions of the Episcopal Church. Applied to any national church which derives from the mother Church of England.

"Catholic," from the Greek "katholikos," literally means "universal--found everywhere." Commonly a reference to the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the term embraces Anglican, Syrian, Greek, Coptic, Russian, and other ancient liturgical churches. Though reformed and protestant, the Episcopal Church is also a catholic, or "universal" church. Catholic churches accept tradition, scripture and usually the validity of one or more ancient creeds as a summary of the Christian faith.

"Episcopal;" a form of church organization which means government by "Episcopos;" which is Greek for bishop.

"Vicar;" a Middle English term referring to a priest in charge of a vicarage-a small parish. Vicars are usually priests acting as deputies of the official priest. From the Latin "vicarius;" "substitute."

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America-When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...

[Of the Fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, twenty-six were Anglican.]