ACNA in Crisis. Steve Wood should resign as archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America.

OPINION

By Warren Cole Smith

MINISTRY WATCH

November 1, 2025

The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a small but mighty denomination. To use an expression from boxing, it is a denomination that “punches above its weight.” Founded just 15 years ago, it has grown to more than 1000 congregations and a membership of 120,000.

It also has a strong presence in places like Dallas and Colorado Springs, cities that are home to significant evangelical institutions. So, you find a surprising number of senior leaders in major evangelical institutions who are Anglican. The bottom line, and as I have written elsewhere, Anglicanism has the potential to breathe new life into the evangelical movement.

But the denomination is facing challenges on many fronts, some of them self-inflicted. Archbishop Steve Wood, the senior leader of ACNA, has been credibly accused of sexual harassment and other offenses. Another bishop, Stewart Ruch, is currently facing a church trial for his handling of a sex offender in his diocese. Bishop Derek Jones, who has led the military chaplain corps, is now behind a rancorous attempt to leave ACNA and take more than 300 chaplains with him.

When you add all these situations up, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than this: ACNA is in crisis, and it is not at all clear to me that it will survive in its present form.

These news-making conflicts have also highlighted some underlying, structural problems with the denomination. The most conspicuous of these is women’s ordination. For 15 years, the leadership of ACNA has delayed a definitive, denomination-wide ruling on the matter, and the result has been a patchwork.

Some dioceses (geographic regions) ordain women, and some do not. Further adding to the chaos, ACNA has also created non-geographic dioceses that ordain women in places where the geographic bishop doesn’t allow it, and vice versa. Such an arrangement is historically irregular and — many say — a violation of the spirit if not the letter of Anglican polity. And even though women’s ordination is not a presenting symptom in the current conflicts, it lurks just beneath the surface. Bishop Derek Jones, for example, has accused Wood of being the product of a “woke USA.” He has said that the denomination’s actions against him are really a proxy war over what he believes is a slide into liberalism under Wood and his predecessor, Bishop Foley Beach.

All of the current controversies — those involving Archbishop Wood and Bishops Ruch and Jones — have also highlighted the inadequacy of the church’s canons to deal with matters of conflict and discipline. Over the past few years, MinistryWatch has covered several scandals in the denomination, and the process has been tentative and clunky at almost every level.

For example, ACNA first made formal charges against Bishop Stewart Ruch — known as a “presentment” — in December of 2022, three years ago. After many fits and starts (some of which you can read about here), the trial finally took place this week, and we still don’t have a verdict. I have heard from credible sources that the cost of the trial will exceed a million dollars.

What Should Happen Next?

More than a year ago, just before ACNA’s provincial meeting in Latrobe, Penn., I wrote what I think the denomination should do to graduate from organizational adolescence into adulthood.

Those recommendations included:

Make a final decision on women’s ordination.

Eliminate non-geographical dioceses, including Church for the Sake of Others.

Revise and expand the canons of ACNA.

Pick a leader with a strong arm and a velvet touch.

Issue a clear statement on sexual issues.

ACNA has so far made almost no progress on any of these recommendations. A committee preparing a statement on sexual issues prepared a draft report, but that report was buried in the bureaucracy of the church and the committee was essentially sidelined. The church made minor changes to its canons at its last provincial meeting. Those changes, while necessary, are not sufficient to deal with the issues coming at the denomination.

Perhaps the biggest fumble, though, was ACNA’s selection of a new archbishop. Not only has he proven himself to be not up to the task, he has become a part of the problem. Even if he is found “not guilty” of the presentment against him, the process itself has already been damaging to him and the church. That is why I would add one more recommendation to the list above: Steve Wood should resign as archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America.

There is no way forward for him that doesn’t do further damage to the church. If he is exonerated of the charges in the presentment, many in ACNA who already distrust his leadership and the inadequacy of the canons will cite that exoneration as proof of a rigged system. If he is found guilty, he is unfit to serve.

I continue to believe that ACNA has great promise. The 15 years of its existence — especially when considered in the long arc of church history — is but a moment. Anglicanism offers much to the world, and to evangelicalism in particular.

But it must face this moment with decisiveness and integrity. ACNA faces an existential crisis that grows more acute by the day, and before Anglicanism can save evangelicalism, it must first save itself.

END