A New Heritage Anglican Logo

I have been experimenting with a new Heritage Anglican logo. It consists of the cross of Saint George with a shield bearing as its charge a hind or (gold) on a field azure (blue) at the juncture of the arms of the cross. The hind charge on the shield recalls the coat of arms of Sir Christopher Hatton whose armorial crest was a golden hind, or female deer. Hatton was the patron of Francis Drake and a major sponsor of Drake’s famous voyage around the world. Drake renamed his flagship, The Golden Hind (or The Golden Hinde) in honor of Hatton in 1577 as he prepared to enter the Straight of Megellan. After passing through the straight, Drake sailed North and landed somewhere in North America. He claimed the land in the name of the Holy Trinity for the English Crown and named it “Nova Albion,” Latin for New Britain. Albion is the classical name of the British Isles. Drake and his crew erected a cross to mark the occasion and his chaplain, the Rev. Francis Fletcher, celebrated the service of Holy Communion. It was one of the first Protestant church services in the New World. It was the first use of the 1559 Elizabethan Communion Service in North America. The 1559 Elizabethan Prayer Book was substantially Thomas Cranmer’s Reformed liturgy of 1552 with a few changes.

The hind charge also recalls the words of King David , “He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places” (Psalm 18:33 AV). Psalm 18 is the story of David’s own life. These particular words appear in the fifth part of the Psalm in which David acknowledges that everything that he had came from God. Psalm 18 is an important reminder of how God helps his people and why. Since God is changeless and unchanging, we can expect him to help us today, as he helped King David almost a thousand years before the birth of Christ.