The End of the Anglican Church in North America?
- Jan 9
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 23
COMMENTARY
By David W. Virtue, DD
January 9, 2026
An astute observer of the travails of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) offered this assessment:
"The gravest error now afflicting the ACNA is not misconduct, nor even scandal, but a fundamental category mistake: the confusion of institutional defensibility with ecclesial fitness. Whether allegations are true or false is, at this stage, almost irrelevant. The Church does not require bishops who are merely defensible; it requires bishops whose very visibility does not fracture trust.
"To install an interim archbishop whose past must be explained, contextualized, hedged, or juridically caveated—precisely amid cascading failures of credibility—is not prudence. It is a confession. It reveals a Church that has already surrendered its understanding of authority, mistaking procedural survival for moral coherence.
"This is not about guilt or innocence. It is about contradiction. Episcopal authority is not a credential one holds behind the scenes; it is a public reality that either gathers trust or corrodes it. When leadership itself becomes a point of dispute, the office is already impaired. No amount of clearance can repair what visibility itself destroys.
"The College of Bishops has acted as though the Church could be stabilized by internal process, governed by managerial logic, and healed by compliance. But the Church is not a corporation weathering reputational risk. It is a moral body whose authority depends upon the credibility of those who stand before it. When leaders require explanation simply to be tolerated, authority has already collapsed into administration.
"What we are witnessing, then, is not merely a leadership failure but a theological one: a refusal to reckon with what a bishop is. By privileging technical legitimacy over moral intelligibility, the ACNA has chosen institutional continuity over ecclesial truth.
"And institutions may survive such choices for a time. Bodies do not."
I believe this assessment is accurate. Furthermore, rejiggering the canons will change nothing. This is little more than window dressing, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The problems in the ACNA are systemic. Their model is The Episcopal Church, but with different institutional bodies and the word "orthodox" affixed to the front.
The Crisis of Leadership
Archbishop Steve Wood has fractured trust in the ACNA. The Washington Post article has severely damaged his credibility despite his protestations of innocence. A cloud still hangs over Bishop Julian Dobbs, with charges by JAFC Bishop Derek Jones of financial malfeasance still not fully answered.
"Internal processes" will not heal the divisions, and "managerial logic" will not solve the ACNA's problems. Only an outside organization is capable of addressing the various charges properly.
Canon Chuck Collins has made this point brilliantly. He writes, "I firmly believe that the ground of our church's dysfunction is theological." Dean Collins, a historian with decades of church ministry experience, believes that ACNA bishops need to hire independent church trauma experts to openly assess the cases before them and advise the church on its disciplinary canons. "There might be hope for our future," he suggests.
"Bishops disciplining bishops behind closed doors is a silly, unworkable solution. And the next time we elect a primate, we must call it an assembly, not a conclave. We are electing a leader, not a pope."
The Pattern of Accountability Failures
Bishop Stewart Ruch avoided consequences even though he remains legally guilty of a misdemeanor for his failure to act. The bishops gave him a pass because police decided not to prosecute, since the youth minister was already incarcerated.
Pittsburgh Bishop James Hobby abruptly resigned when it was revealed that he allegedly "failed to act with urgency, transparency, and timeliness when an accusation of sexual misconduct by a member of the clergy was brought to his attention." He did not hesitate but did the honorable thing and resigned. This misconduct involved another adult, not Hobby himself. He still remains in good standing with the ACNA House of Bishops.
So why hasn't Wood resigned? Wouldn't it be the honorable course for him to step down rather than putting the church through a trial that might find him technically not guilty because he has an explanation for everything?
Playing by Worldly Standards
The ACNA is operating by worldly standards, not biblical ones. Lawyers are being hired, and legal fights are about to commence—not just with Wood, but with JAFC Bishop Derek Jones. In Jones's case, a deal could be cut to end all the litigation, but the ACNA steadfastly refuses. The JAFC has extended an olive branch. It has been rejected.
They are ignoring the Apostle Paul's plea not to take fellow believers to court but to resolve matters for the sake of the gospel and public testimony (see 1 Corinthians 6:1-8).
There is no way, if all these trials proceed to court, that the ACNA will emerge with clean hands. Can one imagine hundreds of unbelievers pouring into ACNA churches to hear the gospel, knowing that its leaders covered up sin or made deals to lessen the consequences of wrongdoing? It's not going to happen. The age of sheep-stealing is nearly over. People are no longer moving from church to church; they are simply not going to church. Sunday is for sports, coffee, sleeping in, and reading online newspapers and blogs.
The Path Forward
If the ACNA is to survive—and the jury is out on that—then it must fully remove Archbishop Wood from the church's leadership immediately, quickly reach a settlement with Bishop Derek Jones to end the threatened million-dollar lawsuits, and bring transparency to an otherwise opaque church. Time is running out.
END
Teach them to be holy! In the Orthodox mind, a deacon must have overcome mortal sin, a presbyter must have reached illuminative prayer and a bishop, uniative prayer. How can anything else be authentic or work? We need leadership cultivated by the Anglican spiritual method al la Martin Thornton.
Yes we need skilled church planters and skilled parish developers. But without holy leadership, these people are afraid to function or marginalized.
The Purgative Way (Fr. John Hardon, S.J.) – The Purgative Way is the primary stage in mental prayer, according to the teachings of the great Carmelite mystics St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. The soul’s chief concern in this stage of perfection is an awareness…
The college of bishops do not seem real to me anymore. I’ve noticed a similar sensation in regard to politics and other institutions. It is uncomfortable to admit, but I cannot sustain the energy to keep wondering what people are going to do or the content of their motives, etc. Behind this lies a quiet growing conviction that none of it really matters.
As a former ACNA priest and chaplain in the JAFC, I am a first-hand witness to David Virtue’s comments about the JAFC’s very reasonable offer to mediate. The offer included Bp Jones voluntarily standing trial provided that it was done per the canons. He offered to step down at the conclusion of the trial if convicted to allow the chaplain body to select a successor. The ACNA refused the offer, because they already had their chosen candidate in place. The issues regarding Dobbs’ alleged financial indiscretion have not been addressed in any sort of transparent manner. “Trust us, we know what we’re doing,” is all we hear.
When I relate these events to family and friends, they always say, “Well…
In response to this thread: Could the election of the Archbishop of the ACNA be changed from a "secret conclave of the CoB" to include the Executive Committee plus an equal number of active diocesan bishops in an joint nominating meeting to develop a slate that includes a comprehensive re-vetting of all candidates and then an election by secret ballot by the entire CoB and the Provincial Council?
The sexual revolution still seems at the heart of it all. The gay issue is the main thing. What has to be made clear is that anyone who influences people to believe that gays are benefited as people by normalizing their behavior are actually causing harm to gays. Behavior outside of normal marriage, whether homo or heterosexual, has produced disease in abundance. When this is made clear, a turnaround may begin.