Has TEC been suspended from the Anglican Communion?

Some say, “yes”:

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And some say, “no:

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This is what the CofE director of communications (Arun Arora)is referring to:

So, no – the Episcopal Church has not been suspended from or by the Anglican Communion. The fact that the Primates’ approach is problematic regarding issues of human sexuality is another matter. But let us not imagine that these events make TEC “second class Anglicans,” let alone that they remove TEC members from the Communion in any way. They should have little impact on how members of TEC see themselves as part of a wider Communion, a community of Churches with a common history and with an extraordinary scope and richness.

And this is what George Conger is referring to:

An overwhelming majority of the Primates present voted that TEC should be excluded from all meetings which represent the Anglican Communion and that it should be suspended from internal decision-making bodies, initially for three years.

So is TEC suspended from the Anglican Communion or not? It depends on whether they really are disinvited from the meetings that Archbishop Eliud Wabukala is referring to above; we shall have to wait and see.

I don’t know about you, but the suspense is killing me.

The time for dialogue is over

In a recent pastoral letter, Archbishop Eliud Wabukala, Primate of Kenya and Chairman of the GAFCON Primates Council said:

My experience of this new wineskin in North America brought home to me just how much is at stake when the Primates of the Communion meet in Canterbury at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury next January. I believe this will be an historic meeting unlike anything that has gone before. There is now a shared realisation that the time for dialogue is over and there must be a decision that will settle the future direction of the Communion and free us from being dragged down by controversy and confusion.

The Anglican Church of Canada has set up a Commission consisting of theologians, bishops and laity to initiate a broad consultation on how to interpret “the time for dialogue is over” in the light of cultural context while leaving a generous space for deep disagreement. And even mutual criticism.

We all understand, of course, that the one thing it cannot mean is that there really will be no more dialogue because dialogue is all that is left in Western Anglicanism.

Preliminary findings of the Commission lean towards the Post-Modernist Redaction hermeneutic, where “is over” is a later addition caused by cosmic ray induced bit errors in the memory hosting the original document. The reading should be: “the time for dialogue!”

The Commission will recommend a conscience clause for clergy who wish to exercise the deeply unAnglican option of shutting up.