Mark+

Good points.  One of the biggest surprises to me, having come out of the
PCA where knowledge of the Bible and doctrine are almost everything (and
believe me, I do know the problems that can be associated with that),
was the almost entire lack of Bible knowledge and doctrine exhibited by
"cradle Episcopalians."  I started Sunday School when I got to St Mark's
(as a layman) because before that, the only Bible study was Wednesday
evening during Lent (penitential, no doubt).  I was amazed (and continue
to be) when asking people to turn to the Gospel of Matthew, and they'd
begin by leafing through the Old Testament.  That or looking at the
index.  But the best question was, and still is, "what page is it on?"
as if all Bibles were the same.  Granted it isn't as bad as it was, but
it's obvious when working through a book of the Bible that what we're
reading is entirely foreign territory.

And that is a shame.  The Bible is a book for all of God's people, not
just Presbyterians or Baptists or whoever else it is that we stereotype
as being "Bible Thumpers" (and I've always wondered whether or not
Anglican ignorance of the Sripture isn't a reaction against that
stereotype).  How can we live Christian lives the way God wants us to
live them, and commune with Christ in the very intimate way that we meet
him in the Scriptures when, again as St Jerome says, "we are ignorant of
Christ"?

But your observation is dead-on: I see this more in older folks raised
in the Episcopal Church with it's "modernist" thinking; much less so in
younger people (or converts from the Canterbury Trail).

MLW+