(UNDATED) Even though the “dog days” of summer are usually a slow news period, religion continues to make big headlines. Two recent stories — involving the Episcopal Church and the Syrian-American Jewish community — have drawn wide attention.

I’ve always been interested in the Episcopal Church because my childhood synagogue in Alexandria, Va., was located just a half block from historic Christ Church where George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and other famous people attended services. My hometown is also the site of an Episcopal seminary and two church-sponsored prep schools.

At the Episcopalians’ recent General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., delegates and bishops adopted a pair of controversial resolutions that essentially allowed gay bishops and permitted blessings for same-sex unions. No one should have been surprised by these actions because the 2.1 million-member church has been hotly debating the issues in public for years.

Indeed, the twin issues of gay bishops and approval of same-sex unions has forced some theologically conservative Episcopal dioceses in the U.S. to secede and seek spiritual shelter in the bosom of other churches in the global Anglican Communion. As usual in such intra-denominational disputes, the split has created bitter court fights about ownership of church property. Heaven will have to wait until mundane temporal concerns are resolved.

Shortly after the Anaheim vote, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, brought down his purple hammer on his wayward American flock. He declared the Episcopal Church may have to accept a secondary role in the Anglican Communion because of its pro-gay actions. Williams said “very serious anxieties have already been expressed” across the communion.

But not to worry.

Williams reassured American church members “there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness,” even as the Episcopal Church may have to play a secondary role in ecumenical and interfaith affairs because its newly approved policies do not represent the larger Anglican Communion. Some have called Williams’ formulation a not-so-subtle call for first- and second-class membership in the church.

I am so relieved by Williams’ promise that American Episcopalians, including many high school classmates who have remained dear friends, will not be “cast into outer darkness.” Clergy people do have a way with words, don’t they?

In an e-mail filled with gallows humor, one Episcopal friend wondered whether his prayers would now be restricted to addressing only one half of the Trinity as punishment for the recently adopted resolutions. He concluded with the fear that Episcopal churches could now only welcome vice presidents, lieutenant governors, and deputy mayors, and not chief executives.

On another religious front, five rabbis from the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn and New Jersey were arrested by the FBI for allegedly using their synagogues for illegal money laundering. Another community member was charged with importing human kidneys and then selling the organs for profit to affluent patients in the U.S.

The televised images of handcuffed rabbis being escorted by FBI agents sickened me. Of course, I know the rabbis are innocent until proven guilty — something the Feds often have trouble doing after they conduct a splashy series of well publicized arrests. Nonetheless, it is heartbreaking to see religious leaders charged with such criminal activity.

Little is known about the 75,000 Syrian Jews living in America. That’s because the community (which has resided for centuries in the Arab Middle East) lives in a tightly imposed self-isolation that includes marriages almost always among themselves, deep love for their religion, reverence for their spiritual leaders, and interconnected family businesses. Many community members are newcomers to the U.S., and their extraordinary achievement in living the “American Dream” — albeit on their own terms — is a great success story. This same kind of story, of course, could describe many other religious groups in America.

If the arrested rabbis are in fact brought to trial, it will provide a rare glimpse into the Syrian Jewish community that has been a source of both mystery and pride for the larger American Jewish community. It might even be, as the saying goes, a “teachable moment.”

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)