Hearings to Begin in ACNA Primate’s Trial

By Arlie Coles

THE LIVING CHURCH

May 6, 2026

The Anglican Church in North America’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop will hold hearings this week on the first pretrial motions filed in the disciplinary matter of the Most Rev. Steve Wood, according to a court announcement.

Archbishop Wood, the denomination’s primate, was indicted on ecclesiastical charges of personal and sexual misconduct last December. His trial is scheduled to begin July 20.

Four priests and seven laypeople filed a complaint against Wood last October, alleging that as bishop of the Diocese of the Carolinas and rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Wood plagiarized sermons, bullied staff, and made continual sexual advances toward a children’s ministry director. Wood has denied the allegations.

The ACNA’s disciplinary system sets a denominational prosecutor against an accused bishop, who is tried by a neutral court of three bishops, two priests, and two adult confirmed church members. Before trial, both sides may make requests of the court by motion.

Four motions—two from the defense and two from the prosecution—will be considered at a hearing on May 7, the court announced last week. The court plans to continue the hearing on May 20 if needed.

The court will first consider a motion to dismiss the case entirely, filed by Wood’s defense in March. The court did not publish the text of the motion, but its rules say that defenses of this type may be made on the basis on poor service of papers, expiration of a statute of limitations, or failure by the prosecution to state specific accusations that would constitute a canonical violation. (ACNA canons set a statue of limitations at ten years preceding a complaint, with extension possible.)

If the court does not grant Wood’s motion to dismiss, it will also consider a second motion to close his trial to the public—potentially continuing the controversial practice from its previous trial of the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch. The private nature of that trial had prompted the bishop and standing committee of the ACNA’s Diocese of South Carolina to question the province’s interpretation of “open court,” a term used in the court’s rules.

“‘Open court’ is a legal term of art generally understood to mean in public or non-confidential proceedings,” they wrote in a February letter to the province’s Executive Committee. “American jurisprudence for court and administrative hearings generally favor open proceedings with confidentiality and closed proceedings being applied only where necessary to protect identities of victims.”

ACNA chancellor Bill Nelson, who is also chancellor of Wood’s Diocese of the Carolinas, expressed disagreement with the Diocese of South Carolina when asked about the term at a provincial Q&A on April 17.

“In the secular law context, ‘open court’ often refers to proceedings open to the public, but can also refer to proceedings in which the full court is convened and all parties are represented and present, even when the public is not invited,” Nelson said. “We shouldn’t assume an ecclesiastical trial is going to be conducted in the same manner or follow the same norms as American secular courts.”

The court will also consider two motions filed by provincial prosecutor Elizabeth Medley: a motion for the court to “Re-Establish Fairness,” which the province described as a request for the court to “take certain procedural actions to ensure a fair trial,” and a motion to disqualify the Rev. Canon Jeff Weber from serving as Wood’s defense counsel.

While the basis of that motion has not been published, a connection between Weber and the procedural tumult of the Ruch trial has been publicly alleged. Weber, a North Carolina lawyer and priest in the Diocese of Christ Our Hope, was serving as the Presiding Officer of the court when the longtime provincial prosecutor, Alan Runyan, unexpectedly resigned mid-trial.

Runyan accused Weber of bringing in evidence a previous court order had labeled off-limits, then using the evidence to improperly question a prosecution witness for an hour. Assistant prosecutor Rachel Thebeau also resigned a week later, alleging that Weber had colluded with the provincial office to access the evidence in her files.

The Rt. Rev. Phil Ashey, who is acting as a canonical adviser to Archbishop Wood, defended the court’s actions under Weber at May 2 lecture on ecclesiastical justice. “The province did not forward all of the evidence, including exculpatory evidence, to the court,” Ashey said, “and the court decided … to exercise what courts frequently do in fact-finding, which is to subpoena the records.”

As news broke in The Washington Post of the allegations against Archbishop Wood during the Ruch court’s deliberations, Weber published two blog posts decrying “trial by publicity” and “our age’s reluctance to swear under oath.” The posts coincided with a public swearing dispute between the provincial office and the complainants in the Wood case, and both themes appeared in the court’s acquittal of Ruch.

The Ruch decision might be seen as precedent in the Wood case, though it is not clear whether Weber had already decided to represent Wood as the court deliberated. Weber stepped down from the court on January 21.

Before the Ruch trial, Weber served with the Rt. Rev. Alan Hawkins (Diocese of Christ Our Hope) in leadership at Anglican 1000, the ACNA’s original church-planting arm. Weber’s authorization to practice law in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina was briefly suspended in 2016 for his failing to appear, and the state bar reprimanded him in 2019 for failing to communicate with a client whose settlement money he held as he closed his office, and for disclosing confidential information about the matter to the client’s husband against her wishes.

In deciding the motion to disqualify Weber, the court will consider accused bishops’ rights under the church’s current Title IV disciplinary canons to be represented by counsel, which has typically meant counsel of their choice. Pending revisions to Title IV, which will be voted on by the ACNA’s legislative body this summer but which will not be in effect for the Wood matter, forbid former court members from serving as counsel for either side in new cases for three years.

Given the numerous pretrial motions, Bishop Ashey expressed uncertainty that Wood’s trial would be concluded by the year’s end and said “a good chance” existed that Wood will be exonerated, characterizing the allegations as coming from church staff who “felt aggrieved by the manner in which they were terminated as employees.”

The Post reported in October that Wood’s clergy complainants accused Wood of habitually “demean[ing] them or others” without reference to termination, and that the former children’s minister resigned after Wood allegedly attempted to kiss her in his office. Sources speaking contemporaneously to The Living Church described a known culture of clergy and employee turnover under Wood.

Wood remains unofficially active in the diocese while his case pends, though he remains formally inhibited from ministry. “I’ve been receiving telephone calls from him on almost a weekly basis,” Ashey said, “and it almost always has to do with a question of compliance with the inhibition.”

“It is a specific question, like ‘This person is my friend, but they’re also a leader in the church. I’ve been called to a dinner at their house. Can I go and actually have dinner with this longtime friend, as long as I say I can’t say anything about the trial?’ ‘I have a friend, you know, who is trying to provide economic relief and development to the poorest country in Africa, and he wants me to be an adviser and a fundraiser for him. I’m not wearing my collar. Can I do that?’”

“Sometimes his attorneys will pass questions along to me about how the canons of the church currently operate,” Ashey said.

As the denomination reviews the turbulent Ruch trial, prepares to try its archbishop, and plans to adopt comprehensive revisions to Title IV all at once, attention to navigating episcopal discipline is split between current and future canons. The Diocese of South Carolina, stressing that Wood’s trial “will come before this same court and follow these same procedures,” wrote that the ACNA should “learn as much as possible, and quickly, from what has already occurred so future proceedings may be received as just and credible.”

“Some people have said, ‘Well, this shows that the whole system is rotten, and that we’re going to die, we’re going to fracture,’” Ashey added at his lecture. “Others have said, ‘Well, actually, the system is working because we have new legislation in front of us.’ You’ll have to decide for yourselves.”