The old saw about the Communion used to go something like this: “The Africans pray, the Americans pay, and the British make the rules.” It now appears that the British alone no longer make the rules, and that the Americans are already not paying as much as they did before. (The Africans, it may safely be said, have never stopped praying.) The latest statement from the Anglican Communion Office shows (see the last page of the link) that ECUSA has paid through 2014 less than half of what was requested (£204,772 of £538,280). Thus the withdrawal of all funds by ECUSA may turn out not to be the decisive step that many Episcopalians conceive it to be.
What is certain is that in three years, the Anglican Communion will not be what it is now, nor anything like what it was in 2003: the Episcopal Church (USA) has already seen to that. If the recent sanctions provoke ECUSA to amend the Preamble to its Constitution, and to cease proclaiming itself as “a constituent member of the Anglican Communion”, both the Communion and ECUSA would be the better for it.
ECUSA as a former Anglican province has long since decided to walk apart from its fellow Anglican provinces, in its single-minded elevation of human justice over God’s justice as expressed in unequivocal Holy Scriptures. It is time to stop the pretense that it remains willing to be “in communion” with the See of Canterbury — at least, so long as Canterbury remains faithful to Lambeth 1.10, and especially if ECUSA withdraws its financial support (as, in all honesty, it should once it withdraws its membership). Let it find its new communion partners among those who likewise think the Holy Spirit is doing a “new thing” among them, and let the test of Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39) decide who, ultimately, is in the right.