The Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, acting archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America, has sued the Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, former head of the denomination’s chaplaincy jurisdiction, in federal court for defamation.
Bishop Dobbs’ lawsuit was filed on February 17 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama and claims that Bishop Jones repeatedly made false public statements about Dobbs’ previous handling of two financial matters.
Jones and his independent chaplaincy jurisdiction, which announced its departure from the ACNA last September, allegedly “knew or recklessly ignored” that investigations into the two matters had found no wrongdoing by Dobbs, but made the statements anyway, according to the filing.
“Defendants have made these false assertions repeatedly in the public record … in an all-out campaign to make the community, especially the Anglican faithful in North America and abroad, view Bishop Dobbs and other leaders within the ACNA (and, of course, by extension the ACNA) with disdain and disassociate from them,” the filing said.
The lawsuit seeks punitive damages and is the second in a long conflict between Jones and the ACNA. The first, which was filed last October by Jones’ jurisdiction and is pending, accused the ACNA of trademark infringement and unfair competition during the denomination’s attempts to rebuild its chaplaincy in the wake of Jones’ departure.
Chaplaincy-to-CANA payments?
According to Dobbs’ lawyers, Jones made the allegedly defamatory statements against Dobbs in three venues in 2025: a September Zoom call with his chaplains upon his departure from the ACNA, an October filing in his trademark suit against the church, and in a December interview with The Washington Post.
In each forum, Jones accused Dobbs of stealing $48,000 from Jones’ chaplaincy when both men were bishops in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), an early realignment jurisdiction founded in 2005 by the Church of Nigeria and breakaway Virginia Episcopalians. CANA became a founding jurisdiction of the ACNA in 2009 and officially dissolved in 2020, with its CANA West district becoming the ACNA Diocese of All Nations (under the Rt. Rev. Felix Orji) and its CANA East district becoming the ACNA Diocese of the Living Word (under Dobbs).
Exhibits submitted to the court show that Jones first complained of an apparently missing $3,750 to Dobbs’ diocesan chancellor, Raymond Dague, in October 2019. That sum, Jones wrote in a letter, was paid by the chaplaincy over 2017-19 to “financially support the administrative functions of CANA,” but appeared to have been deposited in an account marked for CANA East, Dobbs’ diocese.
Dague replied a month later, writing that while CANA had begun with separate checking accounts for CANA Headquarters and CANA East, the latter subsidized the former so heavily that the distinction between accounts became impractical. Dague said the jurisdiction shifted to tracking payment designations in separate ledgers, ensuring monies went to their intended purpose regardless of destination account, and chided Jones for allegedly reporting Dobbs to the province.
“It is understandable that you would wonder about the deposit of your contributions into separate bank accounts,” Dague wrote. “But would it not have been better for you to have approached Bishop Dobbs or me directly when you had these concerns, rather than inquiring with one of our clergy on at least two separate occasions for the financial records of our diocese, followed by you making an allegation of financial mismanagement to Archbishop Foley Beach?”
Jones claimed in his Zoom call that he and his two suffragans, the Rt. Rev. Michael Williams and the Rt. Rev. Mark Nordstrom, “filed a complaint” to the archbishop, who appointed the Rt. Rev. David Anderson to investigate. (It is not clear whether the complaint was intended to trigger the ACNA’s canonical disciplinary procedures, which can be initiated by the formal complaint of three bishops and would have required the archbishop to immediately impanel a Board of Inquiry to consider indictment of Dobbs.)
On Zoom, Jones said that Bishop Anderson, a retired CANA suffragan and the longtime head of the American Anglican Council, “discovered … they could not account for $47,862 that we sent to CANA that turned out went into Julian Dobbs’ personal account” and called Dobbs “felonious,” later repeating in his trademark suit that after Anderson’s investigation, “Bishop Dobbs was found to have absconded” with chaplaincy money. Dobbs’ defamation suit said that Anderson “had to step away before [the] investigation concluded due to personal health reasons.”
The first provincial investigation was accompanied by a second inquiry by the diocese, court documents show. CPA Paul Cusano, who denied any association with the ACNA, wrote after reviewing the books in May 2020 that CANA’s accounting method was “common practice” for nonprofits and that the chaplaincy money had been properly categorized and designated.
The discrepancy between Jones’ original complaint concerning $3,750 and his public allegations concerning $48,000, Dobbs’ lawyers said, stems from a claim Jones made to The Washington Post that the larger sum was later estimated by the chaplaincy. “The reiteration of those statements and/or confirmation thereof to the reporter are not privileged,” the lawyers wrote.
Dobbs’ conduct has been affirmed by other ACNA figures. After Jones’ public allegations, Bishop Orji said he had “no evidence that Bishop Dobbs defrauded or misused any funds belonging to CANA,” the standing committee of the Diocese of the Living Word affirmed its “complete confidence” in Dobbs’ financial stewardship, and Beach wrote in a letter to the ACNA’s College of Bishops that Jones’ allegations “were investigated fully and found to be without merit.”
Dobbs has repeatedly and categorically denied Jones’ allegations, calling them “recycled charges” that are “untrue, defamatory, and a serious attack not only upon my character but also upon the good name of the Diocese” in a letter to his standing committee.
Barnabas Aid expenses?
Jones made statements about Dobbs’ previous involvement with Barnabas Aid, a British nonprofit for persecuted Christians, that Dobbs’ lawyers have called defamatory. Barnabas Aid is under investigation by the U.K. Government’s Charity Commission for financial impropriety.
In his trademark suit, Jones claimed that after he had discovered the allegedly missing $48,000, he also discovered “an additional financial indiscretion matter” involving Barnabas Aid and Dobbs, who served the charity in leadership roles in New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2018.
That year, the Rev. Canon Chris Sugden, a retired priest in the Church of England, had approached Archbishop Beach with allegations that Dobbs had billed the charity $28,000 in “questionable expenses,” according to The Washington Post. Sugden leads the Oxford Centre for Religion and Public Life’s Ph.D. program and is the longtime executive secretary of Anglican Mainstream, a conservative evangelical network founded in 2004.
In 2014, while Dobbs was a director of Barnabas Aid, the nonprofit’s founder, Patrick Sookhdeo, was accused of sexual assault of a female staffer. Internal investigations acquitted Sookhdeo, Christianity Today reported, but he was later convicted in criminal court.
Sugden and his Oxford Centre partner Vinay Samuel wrote after the verdict that Sookhdeo “was innocent and had been targeted,” and a position with the Oxford Centre kept Sookhdeo close to Barnabas Aid, The Times reported. By 2024, whistleblowers accused Sookhdeo and his wife of illegitimately receiving £1.3 million from charity coffers since 2009.
Court documents show that Archbishop Beach, upon receiving Sugden’s allegations against Dobbs, selected denominational vice chancellor Jeff Garrety and the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eau Claire and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Seminole Nation in his retirement, to investigate.
“Bishop Wantland and Mr. Garetty have thoroughly reviewed each and every allegation… [and] each and every allegation had a legitimate response,” Beach wrote in a letter to Sugden and Samuel. “We do not find any creditable evidence of willful wrongdoing by [Dobbs], and therefore find no basis for any disciplinary action against him under the canons of this Church.”
According to The Times, Barnabas Aid sources said there had been total staff turnover since the 2018 internal allegations against Dobbs, but a recent review gave no cause for suspicion. “We are obviously aware of the allegations made by [Sookdheo] in the past,” one said.
The two courts
Dobbs’ defamation suit is the latest escalation in a wave of episcopal conflict roiling the ACNA. In parallel with the two ACNA-related lawsuits now exercising the federal courts, two bishops will soon exercise the denomination’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop: Jones, and the Most Rev. Steve Wood, the church’s archbishop and primate.
Archbishop Wood remains inhibited during the pendency of his ecclesiastical trial on charges of sexual and personal misconduct, and Dobbs will remain the temporary leader of the denomination until the disciplinary process against Wood is complete, ACNA spokeswoman Kate Harris said at a provincial Q&A on February 20.
Jones, whom the ACNA still considers under its jurisdiction despite his declared departure, is also awaiting disciplinary trial on charges of disobeying canons, causing scandal through alleged mistreatment of his chaplains, and promoting schism.
The civil and ecclesiastical courts alike have proceeded at a slow pace, with Jones’ trademark suit and Wood’s disciplinary trial pending since last October. “Each case begins with the court’s issuance of a summons,” denominational chancellor Bill Nelson said at the Q&A. “The summons has not yet been issued in either of these matters, but they are forthcoming.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Bishop William Wantland as the former Bishop of Fond du Lac.
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.
