Who Can Expel the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion?

I have noted that there exists in the Anglican Communion only one written constitution that pre-exists the current controversy and that has universal acceptance. That written constitution is the Constitution of the Anglican Consultative Council which was adopted unanimously by the General Synods/General Conventions of every Province in the Anglican Communion in 1969. That constitution (available on-line at http://www.anglicancommunion.org) makes provision for a Council representative of every Province in the Communion with delegates from the laity, bishops, and priests or deacons. In Article 2 (“Object”), it lists 18 “powers” that the Council exercises. The 18th. power is a sweeping authority “to do all such other things as shall further the objects of the Council.” The ACC Constitution explicitly defines the role of the Primates’ Meeting and the Archbishop of Canterbury in relation to the Council. In Article 3 (“Membership”), it constitutes a list of the schedule of membership, which is attached to and made a part of the ACC Constitution, which explicitly lists by name all the Provinces of the Anglican Communion, including The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada. Because this list is part of the only written constitution of the Anglican Communion, the usual way of deleting a Province from the list is by constitutional amendment. The ACC Constitution provides that any amendment must be passed by the Anglican Consultative Council (which next meets in 2009) and ratified by 2/3 of the General Synods/General Conventions of the Provinces before it becomes part of the ACC Constitution. There is a permissive clause in this same Article 3 that allows the Council, “with the assent of two-thirds of the Primates of the Anglican Communion”, to “alter or add to the schedule”. Again, this requires a meeting of the Council to invoke this clause and a meeting of the Primates to obtain the required two-thirds assent. The only written constitution of the Anglican Communion makes it clear that neither the Primates nor the Archbishop of Canterbury acting alone can legally “alter the schedule” of Provinces of the Communion listed in the ACC Constitution. Any claim or threat to the contrary has no constitutional standing. The Episcopal Church explicitly acknowledges that the Anglican Consultative Council is the body through whose authority all the work of the Anglican Communion is done by labeling the line-item for the assessment to the Communion in the General Convention Triennial Budget, “Anglican Consultative Council”....

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