The End of the Anglican Church in North America?

COMMENTARY

By David W. Virtue, DD

www.virtueonline.org

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