I grow up Baptist but have recently discovered the Episcopal church, and I am wondering what are some of the differences, mostly the difference in beliefs, how they view the Bible and so on?
Right now The Episcopal Church (USA) has a wide wide range of views on the Bible. There are those who hold to it similarly to a conservative baptists and others for whom it records the spiritual reflections of the Jewish people, and has some use as a spiritually inspirational text but little more. The majority would be somewhere in between. Other Anglican churches, for instance the ACNA, tend to have a narrower range, TEC is the strange case on this one (though others have started widening like that). The main differences between Anglican and Baptist understandings are in the nature of the church and the sacraments. In this regard, Reformed Baptists/Particular Baptists are closer to the Anglican positions than non-Reformed Baptists/General Baptists on the whole. Anglicanism has a strong understanding of the church being a corporate entity, and whilst it does not define the church by visible unity, it disapproves of independent congregations, rather our congregations are united together under a regional leader, the bishop, who maintains fellowship with the other bishops, joining us with the wider church. Reformed Baptists have an understanding of Communion not far from that of Reformed Anglicans, but grape-juice baptists are quite far from the Anglican idea, as Anglicanism, whilst avoiding overly defining the nature of communion, holds communion to be more than a metaphor (even though it is a metaphor also). Baptism is of course the most obvious point, with Anglicans approving of the baptism of infants raised in the church.
More accurately put: - Anglicans, though upholding the practice of 'adult believers only baptism', also uphold the baptism of infants brought to it by a presumably believing parent or parents, to be raised and educated in the Christian faith, fully, as a baptised member of the church. Many Anglicans have been baptised in adulthood and some by total immersion too but the majority traditionally by effusion.