The Anglican Church in North America’s ecclesiastical trial of the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch III is on hold until August 11, but a series of public resignations and allegations of procedural misconduct have demanded the attention of its members and governing bodies alike in the interim.
On August 1, the denomination announced the appointment of its newest provincial prosecutor to pursue the case against Bishop Ruch, who is accused of mishandling reports of abusive ministers in his Diocese of the Upper Midwest. Thomas Crapps, of the ACNA’s Gulf Atlantic Diocese, will step into the role—the third to fill it in as many weeks.
His immediate predecessor, the Ven. Job Serebrov, was appointed as prosecutor by Archbishop Steve Wood on July 22. Serebrov resigned nine days later, citing a desire to avoid the appearance of impropriety after anti-abuse advocates in the denomination raised concerns about his connection to an educational institution closely linked with Bishop Ruch’s diocese.
C. Alan Runyan preceded Serebrov as prosecutor, serving through the pretrial and five days of trial proceedings until his surprise resignation on July 19. Runyan alleged that on the final day of the prosecution’s argument, a member of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop questioned one of his witnesses for over an hour using information the court had previously ruled inadmissible, leaving the trial “irreparably tainted.”
The court has challenged Runyan’s allegations, writing in a July 23 response that “the questions posed by every member of this Court to the witness were appropriate and fell squarely within our responsibilities.” The court also defended its choice to keep proceedings virtual and closed to protect “highly sensitive personal, pastoral, or reputational matters,” denying Runyan’s request for the release of the trial transcripts.
Runyan was joined in resignation a week later by Rachel Thebeau, who served as his assistant counsel. In a July 25 letter disseminated to ACNA members, Thebeau made deeper allegations that ACNA’s Chief Operating Officer, Deborah Tepley, and its Chancellor, William Nelson, had given the court member the inadmissible information used at trial over a month before the trial began.
“On Friday morning [July 18], as I was logging into the court proceeding, I discovered that this court member had access to some of my Dropbox folders,” Thebeau wrote. “About an hour later, during the trial, this court member repeatedly referred to ‘documents and files that I have seen but are not with the Court.’”
“As this debacle was playing out in real time, I emailed the COO [Deborah Tepley] asking her how the court member had gained access to my files and which folders were included. She replied to me, with the Archbishop [Steve Wood] and Chancellor [William Nelson] cc’d, that with the Chancellor’s approval she gave this court member access on June 23. She then listed four of my folders to which he was given access. I was stunned.”
Neither Runyan nor Thebeau has named the member of the court who questioned the witness, though Thebeau said the member “was the one tasked with moderating the proceedings.”
The elected Court for the Trial of a Bishop is composed of three bishops, two priests, and two adult confirmed members in good standing. As senior bishop on the Court, the Rt. Rev. David Bryan (suffragan of Archbishop Wood’s Diocese of the Carolinas) is its president by canon, and the Rev. Jeff Weber (Diocese of Christ Our Hope) has signed a court order as its presiding officer. The Clerk of Court declined to confirm the rest of the court’s sitting membership for The Living Church.
Thebeau said that during the trial, Runyan objected to the improper subject matter being raised, while the court has said that Runyan chose not to object, “despite clear opportunities and invitations to do so.”
Runyan and Thebeau both identify the subject matter as relating to the procedures of an investigation conducted by the ACNA provincial office into Ruch’s diocese—a subject they said was ruled off-limits by an April court order. The court has not published any of its orders between September 2024 and June 2025.
That provincial investigation, launched at the diocese’s request in 2022 under previous Archbishop Foley Beach, began by appointing a Provincial Response Team to select a third-party investigator and assist in triage care for victims of abusive ministers. Thebeau, then employed as the ACNA’s deputy communications director, sat on this team, as did three subject-matter experts who eventually resigned, saying the team had “downplayed or ignored the needs” of the victims.
A Provincial Investigation Team, on which Runyan sat, succeeded the Provincial Response Team to oversee the investigation. In May 2024, Ruch filed a motion to disqualify Runyan from prosecuting due to his participation in the Provincial Investigative Team. The court did not grant Ruch’s motion.
“Prior to the trial, Bishop Ruch sought to make the investigative process part of the case,” Thebeau wrote in her letter. In 2022, Alec J. Smith, counsel to Ruch, wrote in a letter to Beach that the diocese’s request for the investigation was “a serious mistake” and that the investigation’s procedures had no basis in established canons. “The parameters of their application are quite literally being invented as the process moves along,” Smith wrote.
It is unclear whether the files sought by the court member were held by Thebeau in her capacity as assistant counsel to the prosecutor in the Ruch trial, or if her ownership dated from her previous role on the Provincial Response Team.
On July 29, the Archbishop, the College of Bishops, and the Executive Committee of the ACNA issued statements supporting the court. Archbishop Wood called Thebeau’s allegations “serious but misguided,” and the bishops and Executive Committee wrote that they “find no evidence to suggest that the Archbishop or members of his staff acted in any way that violates or compromises the proceedings that are active before the court.”
Some ACNA bishops have distanced themselves from the College of Bishops’ statement. “I believe it is inappropriate for the College of Bishops to comment at all on this matter prior to the conclusion of the trial,” wrote the Rt. Rev. Chip Edgar of the Diocese of South Carolina in a pastoral letter. He said the statement was not unanimous, as at least the bishops sitting on the trial court and those sitting on the eventual appeals court [including Edgar] recused themselves from the meeting that produced it.
“What has been particularly challenging is that these statements—often entirely contradictory—have been made by people that I know and whose integrity I respect,” wrote the Rt. Rev. Alex Cameron of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, who also recused himself, in a letter to diocesan clergy.
“The fullness of the situation remains unknown to me and to most of us. I am praying for three things in light of this: the measured humility to avoid premature conclusions, the clarity and courage to ask the right questions, and the discernment to know when and how to ask.”
Arlie Coles is a lay Anglican from the Diocese of Dallas who writes about modern Episcopal history and polity. She is also a machine-learning researcher serving on General Convention’s Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property.
