There may be a grain of truth in Fraser’s view, distorted as it is.  The churches in Africa and Asia weren’t the comfortable local parishes which has existed forever in their members’ minds.  Missionaries took the faith to pagan and Muslim places, and people believed.  These overseas Anglican churches are filled with people and led by bishops who take the “faith once delivered” very seriously, sometimes at the risk of their property and lives.  Some of the merely comfortable in the CofE are not happy about seeing that vibrant faith arriving back on the home shores.

Katherine (#1),
The phrase “faith once delivered to the saints” was, I believe, coined in fairly recent times by the American Anglican Council.  It refers to doctrine.  More particularly, it refers to the AAC’s understanding of the particular suite of issues that led to the founding of that organization.  It has little to do with faith itself, much less vibrant faith.

Oh, stabill, I think most traditional Anglican believers worldwide would recognize what the phrase means, whoever coined it.  That is the essence of what the “Communion” might mean—a group of churches committed to a common understanding of the faith in doctrine and in practice.

My own seat-of-the-pants view is that the “ordinary” Episcopalian traditionally had two entities he or she kept in mind and another that he or she was proud to be part of:

First was, yes, the local congregation. Many have written of the congregational streak in our ethos and to some extent our polity.

Second was the local diocese, which of course carried on many functions that parish members participated in—not to mention bishops’ visits etc.

The third entity that Episcopalians looked to more and more as the 20th c. went on was the Anglican Communion. In two senses: past (the great Anglican heritage including not only the prayer book but also representative figures such as C S Lewis, Dorothy L Sayers, and Austin Farrer; many others) and present (the activities of the Lambeth Conference; the work of Geoffrey Fisher, who started much of this dynamic movement after Lang’s off-putting gestures, in building up the Communion, all leading in the early 1960s to MRI and then Michael Ramsey, who visited the USA and taught at Nashotah etc.).

Notice that ordinary Episcopalians—and I’m talking about their conscious and half-conscious view of things—were aware of the local church, the diocese, and the larger AC, centered in Canterbury. The national church was not the same magnet—it tended to produce ignorable because bland statements on various topics; it did not become a focus of concern until the debates about the prayer book and women’s ordination.

So I for one think the author is wrong to downplay the international (and historic) Anglican enterprise as a focus of concern; and he neglects, at least as I think of the US situation, to mention that the national church, notwithstanding the legal and canonical powers of GC, wasn’t “all that” till fairly recently. IMHO. As I say, I am speaking of perception (as he is), not of law. And of course I am talking of the American perception, not of the English church.

#2 “The phrase “faith once delivered to the saints” was, I believe, coined in fairly recent times by the American Anglican Council.”

Try Jude 3 (hint: it’s in The Bible!). It has a *lot to do with vibrant faith!

Giles Fraser has campaigned for YEARS in England for gay marriage and gay clergy. Reviling conservative Christians in print or on the BBC is his stock in trade. Now he’s become the Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, a well known tourist attraction in London (admission charge: $20). He runs a pressure group called ‘Inclusive Church’ calling for gay clergy and relationships. It has c. 50 parishes on its books.

Thank goodness I toured St. Paul’s in 1981, before it was deconsecrated into a tourist trap run by an apostate.

I see the meaning in Jude 1:3 as entirely different from the current use of the phrase as code for issues about gays and, sometimes, women clergy.

#8, your perception is itself biased by the idea that it’s all about gays and women.  It isn’t.

Azusa beat me to it.

  3Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. 4For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church and heard many times derogatory comments about “Bible thumpers.” So what do we have? Biblical illiteracy as evidenced by stabill.

Pride and ignorance has MUCH to explain why we are in this mess.

Giles Fraser spoke actively against allowing churches to have exemptions from having to hire homosexuals as non-clergy staff. As we saw in GenCon 09 and the likes of Mr Fraser: Homosexuality advocacy first, the Church second.

stabill:

Jude 1:3
For there have been some intruders, who long ago were designated for this condemnation, godless persons, who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and who deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

different? how, exactly?

sorry. jude 1:4

RE: ” “The phrase “faith once delivered to the saints” was, I believe, coined in fairly recent times by the American Anglican Council.”

What a hoot.

Incredible.

stabill:

You said:

The phrase “faith once delivered to the saints” was, I believe, coined in fairly recent times by the American Anglican Council.

But, as azusa astutely pointed out, one reads in Jude 1:3 (KJV):

... ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.

I was unaware the AAC coined that phrase only recently whilst writing the Bible.  Then, having been shown in confusion about said phrase, you go on to say:

I see the meaning in Jude 1:3 as entirely different from the current use of the phrase as code for issues about gays and, sometimes, women clergy.

This is exactly the problem, isn’t it?  To the bloody revisionists, any passage of Holy Scripture can mean any damned thing they please.  The “faith which was once delivered unto the saints” means anything anyone defines it to mean.

Please.  Get real.  And do, please, examine Jude verse 18.  Thank you.

Clemmitt

.... my inner pedant (very close to the surface) is constrained to note that there is no “Jude 1:3” because Jude has only one “chapter”.
Maybe -Bennison could write a second chapter (‘cos, after all, the Church wrote etc etc)...

azusa - contending for the versification once given.

RE: “I see the meaning in Jude 1:3 as entirely different from the current use of the phrase as code for issues about gays and, sometimes, women clergy.”

Heh.  Having only recently discovered the verse, stabill now places the full weight of his scholarly and informed mind upon its interpretation.

What is true in this article is that most people are “connected” to the communion only in so far as they are “connected” to the media.  Most of this battle is, really, in cyberspace, with collateral damage in parishes. 

Clemmitt, are you scoffing? 

Look, from what I hear, the best way to stop gay people from having sex is to get them to marry.  It seems to work for straight people.

Is there disagreement that the phrase “faith once delivered to the saints” has become code for what reasserters hold in contrast to what reappraisers believe?

But now what was the date of delivery to the saints?  Jude obviously thought it was some time in the first century.  Are we to understand that there were no changes between then and, say, the time of BCP 1662?  Do we think reasserters hold no doctrinal understandings that postdate 1662?

I know it’s bad form to feed the trolls, but,

disagreement: It may have become code to the reappraisers. To me it is holy scripture.

Do we think reasserters hold no doctrinal understandings that postdate 1662? :  Don’t be ridiculous. But as Anglicans we must hold that “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation. ” , else we must form a new denomination. Or worse.  Do you feel a need to see an Episcopalian Angel Moroni bearing new tablets perched atop of all of our architecture ?