An Appeal to the ACNA Provincial Assembly on TITLE IV

By The Rt Rev. Dr. Marshall MacClellan

www.virtueonline.org

November 13, 2025

Growing up helping my grandfather on his cattle ranch I remember his old adage, “It’s useless to beat a dead horse.” This phrase comes to mind as I look at the woes of the ACNA TITLE IV discipline process and the train of litigation running. In the upcoming 2026 ACNA Provincial assembly, delegates will debate adjustments to the current disciplinary process.

In this author’s view, the judicial framework of an “ecclesiastical trial” and process should be thrown out as a deceased equine. While I am not an expert in civil jurisprudence, I have been a police officer in Florida and have continued to serve as a law enforcement chaplain in three different agencies in Texas and Florida over the last 42 years. I have worked with criminal and civil trial processes. In my view, the discipline process for priests, bishops and even archbishops should be modeled on a professional ethics board rather than a jury trial framework. While the upcoming proposed adjustments to TITLE IV give more “off ramps,” the entire framework of presentment and trial remain the same horse.

The current ACNA TITLE IV discipline process is based on a judicial model of civil and criminal jurisprudence, judge, prosecuting attorney, defense attorney, and jury. While this works for our civic life, it is absolutely dysfunctional for Christ’s Church.

 In U.S. jurisprudence, the judge, prosecutor and defense attorneys are professionals, vetted, trained, experienced (and well paid) for this purpose. They have volumes of case law that provide legal, enforceable guardrails for impartiality, rules of evidence and enforcing true testimony by witnesses, experts and alleged victims.

In ACNA ‘ecclesiastical trials,’ rules of evidence and procedures may or may not be followed and are not enforceable. Lying under oath is not enforceable as it is in a criminal trial. One need only to glance at the Bishop Stewart Ruch “trial” for the point to be made. How many years has the investigation and trial gone on? How many millions of dollars has the ACNA (from local parish tithes) and Bishop Ruch (personally) poured into the proceedings?

How many prosecutors have resigned in frustration and protest over the dumpster fire? Four prosecutors have thrown up their hands in exasperation. Church tithes have been poured through the sieve of the ‘trial.’ Five years and still counting that Bishop Ruch, his wife and six children, “innocent” or “guilty” have been dragged through the mud.

No “real” justice system would take that long. “Justice delayed is justice denied” said British Prime Minister William Gladstone and echoed by Dr. Martin Luther King. Now that the ACNA Archbishop is up next in this judicial model, one can only imagine the disaster that will ensue and the years and money wasted. Could this be why Bishop Jones, seeing the train wreck of the ‘ruched-up’ trial, the violations of TITLE III process and TITLE IV quagmire, and given no avenue for honest conversation, decided to opt out, disaffiliate and turn to the professionals in Federal Court?

According to Bp Jones, when the Archbishop attempted the ‘godly admonition’, Archbishop Wood admitted that he had already been investigating Jones for a year on “complaints” and had impaneled three like-minded bishops for a presentment without ever seeking from Jones his side of any of the complaints (violating TITLE III, Canon 8, sect. 8.2) or even consulted the JAFC Standing Committee in the process, violating TITLE III, Canon 8, sect 7.1.

Seeing the train wreck of Bishop Ruch’s ‘trial,’ and the violations of the Canons from the outset would be enough for anyone to decide to decouple from the doomed locomotive and take his case to the professionals in Federal Court.

These are the inevitable woes of the ACNA using a “Trial” framework. What if, instead, the ACNA Province used, for TITLE IV the model of an ethics board? Our fellow professional doctors and lawyers use this framework to ensure, enforce, and correct moral and ethical issues regarding licensure or board certification.

This process more favorably fits within Christ’s model for examining and confronting alleged ‘sin’ and invites remorseful restoration (see Matthew 18:15-22). It also fits the range of outcomes, as per TITLE IV, Canon 8, sect. 3.  A ‘real’ judicial framework calls for a binary outcome, “innocent” or “guilty.” An ethics board is more nuanced in options.

What if an archbishop or bishop intends good, but lacks a level of self-awareness or relationship management (EQ) in particular situations? An alleged ‘victim’ perceives something not intended. “Sin” has occurred but not intended. The conclusions and outcomes in an ethics board allow for a wider range of rehabilitation, repentance, and restoration.

The possible ‘punishment,’ in ACNA Canons is, at most, loss of credentials (Holy Orders). The loss of career is significant, but from a law enforcement officer’s perspective, it is not a prison sentence or hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. The worst outcome is exactly the worst outcome of an ethics board, not a criminal or civil trial. An ethics board of peers also fits the calling of bishops as “defenders of the Faith.”

Are ACNA bishops not qualified and trustworthy enough to make these kinds of ecclesiastical determinations? Rather than a presentment using a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney and jury, when complaints are raised against a priest, bishop or archbishop, convene an ethics board of at least three (impartial) clergy peers with the bishop or archbishop as overseer. If the accused is an archbishop, as in the current situation, bring in a primate from another province to oversee. Guardrails and qualifications such as impartiality would need to be detailed.

If a clergy has been accused of actions that go beyond ethical or moral violations into criminality, call law enforcement. If civil law has been violated, then it is proper to take them to the professionals in civil court. Additionally, clergy, even archbishops, are out of their depth running “trials.” In trials expensive attorneys are required and only one trial can be done at a time. The Bishop Ruch trial demonstrates that, in the current framework, this takes years. Imagine if we had several “trials” lined up in a row. Actually, there are. Please consider doing more than changing the saddle on the expired equine or getting a new riding crop. Dismount.

The Rt Rev. Dr. Marshall MacClellan is Bishop Suffragan of the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy section...fotot