On this day in 1579, a historic frontier was breached: the first Anglican church service took place in the New World – what became the USA.
The legendary and controversial English explorer Sir Francis Drake had voyaged far with his company aboard the ship the Golden Hinde. Battered by its arduous journeys and Spanish intercolations up the coast of South America, the vessel was in need of urgent repair when it found harbour on the coast of what would become California, around San Francisco Bay.
Drake called the newfound land Nova Albion, Latin for 'New Britain'.
One or two days after the landing, Drake and his men held a church service. The presence of Drake's chaplain and clergyman, the Rev Francis Fletcher, made it the first Protestant and first Anglican service on those shores. Today, American Christianity can scarcely be imagined without its Protestant heritage and culture.
Fletcher read from the most iconic of English Protestant literature: the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.
When Drake's men gathered, several Native Indians came to watch them. Fearing that the natives were blaspheming by welcoming Drake's company as gods, he and his men prayed for them. They prayed that God might open the natives' eyes 'to the knowledge of him and of Jesus Christ, the salvation of the Gentiles'.
Today the 75-foot tall 'Prayer Book Cross', commemorating Drake's landing, can now be found in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and Drake's landing site is marked as Drake's Bay
It was a brief and quirky stay for Drake, probably not lasting more than six weeks. Regular Anglican worship wouldn't take place till 1607, on the other side of the continent in Jamestown, Virginia. Nonetheless, given the spiritual heritage that would come – and has endured – from England's shores to America's, Drake's naming of a 'New Britain' was not far wrong.
