The Anglican Communion [www.anglicancommunion.org] is a worldwide network of over 78 million Christians in forty-four different churches bound by a common faith, heritage and ethos. All share an association with the Church of England - the Archbishop of Canterbury heads the Anglican church worldwide - but each is distinctive in language, culture and practice.

The historical roots of the Anglican Church can be found in England during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, the age of the Protestant Reformation. Influenced by religious thinkers such as Martin Luther on the European Continent, and fueled by the political will of national leaders such as Henry VIII, the Church in England alienated itself from the Roman Catholic Church to found its own national version of a Christian church. To this day Anglicans, strictly speaking, are neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants, preferring to regard themselves as “Reformed Catholics”.

The term “Episcopal” is also associated with the Anglican Communion, meaning that it is a church led by bishops as overseers (the rough English translation of the Greek word episcopos). In fact, a number of national Anglican churches identify themselves formally as “Episcopal” rather than “Anglican”, the Episcopalian Church in the United States among them.