The leader of the Anglican Church of North America is mired in a sexual misconduct scandal

The church that condemns openly gay clergy is now being led by a straight man accused of inappropriate behavior by his former children’s ministry director

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In 2003, the Episcopal Church in the United States elected an openly gay bishop. Six years later, in 2009, they decided that any ordained ministry would be open to gays and lesbians—plus they were okay with bishops blessing same-sex marriages.

All of this infuriated many conservatives in the church. Many of them left the denomination entirely and formed their own pro-bigotry sect called the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA). The ACNA now has over 1,000 congregations and 128,000 members. (By comparison, the Episcopal Church in the United States still has over 1.5 million members.)

The ACNA is made up of people who presumably felt they needed to break away in order to maintain their moral purity—something those pesky liberals in the Episcopal Church had abandoned.

The current archbishop of the ACNA—its third—is Steve Wood. And that guy is in the news right now for all the wrong reasons.

The Washington Post exposed some bombshell allegations late last week leveled against both Wood and one of his high-ranking colleagues.

ACNA Archbishop Steve Wood (screenshot via YouTube)

The main allegation against Wood involved sexual misconduct:

The denomination’s senior-most official, Archbishop Stephen Wood, 62, has been accused by a former children’s ministry director of putting his hand against the back of her head and trying to kiss her in his office in April 2024. The incident allegedly occurred two months before he was elected to the helm, according to a new church presentment, which The Washington Post obtained in advance of its Monday submission.

The woman, who gave an interview to The Post, also accused Wood of giving her thousands of dollars in unexpected payments from church coffers before the alleged advance. Wood, a married father of four sons, remains the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in the Charleston, South Carolina, area, and a bishop overseeing a diocese of more than 40 churches across the South.

…

“I was devastated when he became archbishop. It was the responsibility of the bishops to vet him and they failed at it, horribly,” [Claire] Buxton said. “Now, I just want the truth to come out so other people don’t get hurt and that the church is held accountable.”

Buxton worked at the church he currently oversees and gave detailed accounts that showed a pattern of inappropriate behavior by Wood. None of it was illegal. Wood wouldn’t be going to jail for any of this. But it wasn’t acceptable—certainly not from someone in his position.

That’s why Buxton’s testimony led to a formal complaint—a presentment—within the church. The church’s reaction to that presentment was forcing the nearly dozen priests and parishioners who signed it to sign it again “under penalties of perjury,” essentially threatening them with religious punishment as a way to make them back off.

But that’s just one of the allegations. There was another involved Wood’s colleague, Stewart Ruch III, a bishop from the midwest. He was accused of letting men with known “histories of violence or sexual misconduct” hold leadership positions in his diocese and mishandling allegations of abuse. Again, those may not be crimes, but they’re signs that Ruch’s judgment isn’t befitting of his position.

Testimony in Ruch’s trial, which was conducted privately on Zoom, wrapped up in mid-October. A verdict from the court’s seven-member panel of judges — a group of bishops, priests and parishioners — is expected to arrive later this year. Ruch declined to comment through a diocese spokeswoman, who cited a court directive prohibiting him from media interviews during the trial.

When the allegations against Ruch first came to light, he told a former archbishop that this was happening because “Satan hates us.”

But that’s not all!

Wood has also been accused of stealing his colleagues’ sermons and passing them off as his own… on top of just being an asshole to everyone.

Wood also faces complaints from priests that he plagiarized sermons and bullied and disparaged church staffers in the years before he became archbishop. The presentment accuses Wood of violating his ordination vows, committing sexual immorality and bringing “scandal and offense” upon his office.

Cue the inevitable joke: The sexual misconduct was bad enough, but the *plagiarism*?! (Kudos to the Daily Beast for their headline about this story: “Archbishop Accused of Being Sex Abusing Sermon Plagiarist.”)

The ACNA told the Daily Beast that the events in the allegations occurred before he was made archbishop—as if that made a difference—but that they take them seriously. Even if the timeline is accurate, that only makes their elevation of him look worse. Why didn’t they know these things before they made him their leader? Did they not even go through the Ten Commandments checklist before voting? Did no one do a background check? Did no one talk to his colleagues?

All of this is happening while the ACNA is dealing with multiple scandals involving clergy misconduct, as explained by Religion News Service:

In July 2021, a mother went public with allegations that Mark Rivera, a onetime lay leader at Christ Our Light Anglican Church in Big Rock, Illinois, had sexually abused her 9-year-old daughter. At least nine other people have also shared grooming or sexual misconduct allegations against Rivera, who has since been convicted of felony sexual assault and felony child sexual assault.

More than 10 clergy and other lay leaders in the Upper Midwest diocese have been accused of misconduct as a result, and its bishop, Stewart Ruch, stood trial in a proceeding that concluded Oct. 15 — but not before two prosectors had resigned amid claims of procedural misconduct. The church court’s order is expected on or before Dec. 16.

Meanwhile, the denomination has been shaken by dustups involving other bishops. One ACNA bishop was defrocked in 2020 due to his pornography use; in 2024, another bishop, Todd Atkinson, was ousted for inappropriate relationships with women.

This would be disturbing news for any denomination, but it’s wild that it’s happening in one that only exists because they believe homosexuality as an unforgivable sin. And the rot now goes all the way to the top.

Abbi Nye, a member of ACNAtoo (which helps survivors of abuse within the ACNA), says all of these scandals reveal “the rotten fruit of a denomination that refuses to take abuse seriously.”

Too many Christians experience horrific abuse in church and tell themselves that it’s just that one church. It was an unhealthy church, a cult, a high-control group, and other churches are safer. Refugees fleeing the Southern Baptist Convention, Presbyterian Church in America and other fundamentalist Christian groups see the ACNA as a haven. Instead of finding sanctuary, they often encounter church leaders who are unable to care for them. These churches do not understand the dynamics of abuse, and they are incredibly unsafe for wounded people.

At some point, ACNA members have to understand these problems aren’t limited to a few bad leaders. There’s moral rot at the heart of the denomination. A church that was founded in protest of inclusion and compassion was always destined to collapse under the weight of its own moral hypocrisy. They began their movement because they were obsessed with policing the private lives of others, and they’ve become a shelter for men who violate their own vows and use the pulpit as a shield.

What else would you expect? A denomination that proudly stood firm against its idea of “sin” can’t confront the obvious sin festering in its own sanctuaries.

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