Eggcorn Forum

I’ve had this kicking around the word processor for a while now, but Good Friday seems like a particularly good day to post it. It’s easy to understand why someone would feel that a Christian church might have some connection to the angels.

And there’s an ancient precedent for this conflation of Angles and angels. An old tradition claims that the Gregory who would eventually become Pope Gregory I once encountered young slaves from England being sold in the marketplace in Rome. Struck with their beauty, he asked where they had come from. The reply was that they were Angles (“Angli” in Latin), and Gregory punningly responded, “Non angli, sed angeli” – “Not Angles, but angels.” Not that I believe that the authors of the 600+ references to the “Angelican church” had this in mind.

The first citation below is from the Harvard Theological Review – back in the day before spellcheckers. Examples:

The Angelican church, whether static, as a conservator of its historic tradition, or dynamic, as an energy trying to leaven the English world, has never been truly contemplative.
http://www.jstor.org/view/00178160/ap050048/05a00150/0

At this particular Angelican church Beyers Naude preached and Desmond Tutu was dean.
http://www.joburgnews.co.za/heritage/worship-five.html

What does the Angelican Church boycotting Israel has to do with Democracy?
http://www.strategypage.com/militaryfor … 19803.aspx

The Falls Church and Truro Church, with a combined membership of more than 3,000, will form the core of what is envisioned as a new Fairfax-based mission of the conservative Angelican Church of Nigeria.
http://www.thechronicleonline.net/content/view/285/508/