After two weeks’ delay in validation by the Anglican Church in North America’s provincial office, formal ecclesiastical disciplinary complaints against Archbishop Steve Wood have been officially filed—and expanded.
A group of four priests and seven lay ACNA members first submitted signed and sworn allegations of sexual, financial, and behavioral misconduct against Wood on October 20, but the complaint was initially returned by the province, with requests that each complainant include specific language attesting to the truth of the statements “under penalties of perjury.”
The complainants, who initially refused to comply with the request and called it a “noncanonical requirement,” resubmitted their amended complaint on November 6, including new signature language as well as new charges against Wood and a new cover letter.
“Since clergy and laity of the Province have not seen the first presentment, we think that it is important for them to know that it was initially submitted with the exact language of our existing canons,” said a cover letter obtained by The Living Church.
The Rev. Drew Miller, a complainant and priest in the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, told TLC that the province has confirmed successful filing of the charges, and that a Board of Inquiry, which will determine whether there are reasonable grounds to try Wood, has been impaneled.
According to a November 7 report in The Washington Post, the amended complaint now contains the statement of a woman identified as “Jane Doe 1,” who alleges that Wood sexually harassed her, including by pressuring her to drink alcohol with him in private, despite her objections. The woman said she would “cooperate with official proceedings and investigations” on condition of her anonymity.
Also included is a new affidavit by the Rev. Andrew Gross, the ACNA’s former communications director. Gross, who has worked for all three of the church’s archbishops, alleged that Archbishop Wood was unusually concerned in the aftermath of his election that charges may come against him, to the point of offering to “secretly contribute $10,000” to send a priest on sabbatical because he feared the priest would bring charges.
Gross’ affidavit further said that while he was working for Wood, he heard a credible report of a discussion between Wood and the Most Rev. Ray Sutton, Dean of the Province, that “float[ed] the possibility” of appointing a “bishop-friendly” Board of Inquiry should such charges come.
“I heard about the conversations right after they happened from separate sources, with first-hand knowledge,” Gross said in a statement provided to TLC. “The ACNA membership desperately needs this process to be, as a bishop is supposed to be, above reproach.”
Bishop Sutton, who is acting as archbishop during Wood’s recently announced leave of absence, denied to the Post that any such conversation ever occurred.
On the evening of November 7, the ACNA announced that Sutton recused himself from the Wood matter “to ensure the utmost objectivity in these proceedings,” and that Sutton had appointed the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs to appoint, in turn, a three-member panel of bishops to “review and approve the composition” of the already-selected Board of Inquiry.
“If the Board of Inquiry has already been impaneled, we have every reason to believe that Bishop Sutton was involved, [and] we have no reason to believe that such a board is trustworthy,” Miller told TLC. “As eager as we are to see this move quickly, a new board, organized without the involvement of the archbishop’s staff, nor of Bishop Sutton, will have to be appointed.”
“There’s no good moving quickly if you’re headed in the wrong direction,” he said, adding that Sutton’s recusal and the three-member panel’s future review of board members would be a “step in the right direction” if the panel members were known.
In addition to these new charges, the complainants’ cover letter criticizes communications by the ACNA’s provincial office and by some individual bishops that suggested the complainants took their allegations to the Post before attempting to use the canonical disciplinary channels of the church.
A timeline in the letter outlines the process the complainants say they followed. Claire Buxton, who alleges that Archbishop Wood made continual sexual advances toward her, alerted one priest of her complaint four days after Wood’s election in June 2024, and another priest a month later, who informed the Rt. Rev. Chip Edgar, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, the document said. Edgar’s diocese overlaps with Wood’s Diocese of the Carolinas.
In September 2024, the timeline adds, a priest approached Edgar on Buxton’s behalf about supporting a formal complaint against Wood, which could be filed by three bishops or by ten clergy and lay people under ACNA canons. Edgar declined, saying it was “not canonically possible for him to support such an action,” the letter said.
In November, Edgar allegedly suggested proceeding by pressuring Wood “to initiate an investigation into himself,” an action possible under a different disciplinary canon designed for quashing untrue rumors. The complainants refused. “Rather than helping us report an allegation of sexual misconduct according to the canons, he would effectively be framing us as rumormongers,” they wrote.
Finally, the complainants said, Edgar agreed in March to sponsor the charges and seek other bishops to do the same. Two bishops refused to read the charges outright; one read them, but joined the two in suggesting either “personal reconciliation” with Wood or that the complaint be submitted to Dr. Tiffany Butler, the ACNA’s director of safeguarding and canonical affairs.
Two of the bishops said that submitting the charges to Dr. Butler was the “new provincial policy, and the only way forward that bishops will accept.” The complainants found no written evidence of that policy, and instead moved to organize the canonically permitted 10-person path to submitting the complaint. (The director of safeguarding and canonical affairs has no official role in the ACNA’s canons.)
“The ACNA officially communicated a false narrative about our efforts, stating repeatedly that we had not approached any bishops but went directly to the media. Bishops who knew we had approached them first then declined to correct the record, even when asked to do so in writing,” the cover letter said.
Bishop Edgar confirmed to TLC that the cover letter’s timeline was “basically correct” and characterized the months-long period as a discussion of “the various ways a charge might go forward” under the canons. He said that more information was brought to him over time and that he did not have a full picture of the allegations until March.
“My intent from the very beginning was to see these charges go forward, but the many complexities of overlapping jurisdictions (particularly acute here in South Carolina), and the problems that our current Provincial Canons pose—gladly, now recognized and being addressed—made this process more difficult to navigate,” Edgar told TLC.
“I am relieved that they are now in process and will be adjudicated, and I have made my support for this Presentment clear to the Province.”
Bishop Edgar also expressed frustration with the disciplinary canons in an October 29 pastoral letter, written a year after the events of the complainants’ timeline and in the wake of an earlier Post article detailing the allegations against Wood. Edgar lamented a “troublesome spirit of pride” at the formation of the ACNA in 2009 that, in his view, has hobbled the ACNA.
“I remember laughing about how the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church ran to the hundreds and hundreds of pages; we didn’t need that, we were righteous, we were mission focused, we were on fire for the Lord! We failed to see that evil lurked within us, each and every one,” he wrote.
The complainants also described the involvement of provincial staff in the delayed handling of their case as a conflict of interest. ACNA Chancellor William Nelson is also the chancellor of Wood’s Diocese of the Carolinas; Dr. Tiffany Butler reports directly to Archbishop Wood; and Executive Director Deborah Tepley allegedly “breach[ed] trial protocol” in the “irreparably tainted” trial of Bishop Stewart Ruch, they said.
Tepley stressed in an October 28 letter that Nelson and other provincial staff are not working directly with Wood in the disciplinary matter, but Gross expressed doubt that independence was possible without a special effort to “firewall off” staff members.
“The Archbishop’s chancellor and staff and the Provincial chancellor and staff … aren’t slightly overlapping circles in a Venn diagram, they are one circle,” his statement said.
To date, though he has taken a leave of absence, Archbishop Wood has not been inhibited from ministry—a step the complainants say is necessary to protect the accused from the temptation to misuse authority, protect the church from an appearance of impropriety, protect all potential victims, and encourage a prompt resolution.
“The ACNA leadership has to stop expecting people to blindly trust them. That ship has sailed,” Miller said. “They have to start demonstrating that they are absolutely trustworthy, that they are well above reproach, if they expect our denomination to survive.”
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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.
