The Anglican Church in North America’s Special Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy, which provides canonical residence to 300 military, hospital, and other chaplains, has attempted to secede from that church as its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, faces allegations of misconduct. The jurisdiction announced its disaffiliation from the ACNA on September 22, less than a day after Archbishop Steve Wood informed its chaplains of Jones’ inhibition from ministry.
“I have communicated with the U.S. Department of War Office of Chaplaincy Services to make all necessary notifications to ensure our chaplains’ endorsements remain valid and uninterrupted,” Wood wrote in a September 23 pastoral letter concerning Jones’ stated disaffiliation. “We are committed to supporting our Chaplains.”
The ACNA’s Provincial Office said “credible complaints” against Jones date from July, allege “abuse of ecclesiastical power,” and “do not involve any accusations of physical or sexual abuse or doctrinal concerns.” A godly admonition issued by Wood to Jones, published by the jurisdiction on September 24, identified at least 18 complaints against Jones.
The complaints span a wide range of behavior, with at least six people alleging wrongful use of disciplinary processes, at least three alleging backdating or fabrication of church documents, at least two alleging interference with external employment opportunities, at least one alleging wrongful release of a priest from orders, and six alleging infliction of “financial, emotional, and psychological stress” upon persons in Jones’ care.
The jurisdiction’s publication of the admonition and other documents within an hour-long video narrated by Jones revealed an uncontested sequence of events with hotly disputed meanings. Both the ACNA and the jurisdiction agree that Wood formally admonished Jones on September 12 to comply with an investigation into his conduct, and that Wood inhibited Jones from ministry on September 21. But the jurisdiction has denied the canonical validity of the archbishop’s actions and called the ACNA’s account of them “false and misleading.”
One dispute concerns whether the archbishop has personal authority to open and oversee an investigation into a bishop on the basis of direct and numerous individual complaints. The ACNA’s Title IV disciplinary canons provide for investigations of accused bishops after a formal presentment has been filed by three bishops or ten people, and grant investigation power to a subsequently appointed Board of Inquiry. The ACNA affirmed that Jones is not under presentment, and Wood said he was pursuing the investigation “as a pastoral matter.”
“The Archbishop has a duty to investigate these complaints and has engaged a professional investigator to assist him,” ACNA chancellor Bill Nelson wrote to the Ven. Job Serebrov, chancellor of the jurisdiction, via email on September 17. “Nothing in the canons prohibits the use of an outside firm to assist in an investigation at this preliminary stage.”
Serebrov disagreed, accusing Nelson and Wood of “reading authority into the canons” that did not exist. “The canons do not give authority for a pre-investigation investigation,” he responded. “The sole investigation permitted is a Board of Inquiry following a Presentment.”
In his explanatory video, Jones compared himself to the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch of ACNA’s Upper Midwest Diocese, whose ecclesiastical trial for alleged mishandling of sexually abusive ministers resumes October 8. Ruch’s defense in that matter has also claimed that ACNA’s pre-presentment investigation of the bishop was extracanonical. (Serebrov briefly served as the prosecutor in Ruch’s case before stepping down to prevent any sense of a conflict of interest.)
“Bring it on. I’m happy for you to [investigate],” Jones said he told the archbishop before consulting the jurisdiction’s chancellors. “So I [told] the chancellors and the chancellors [said], ‘We are not doing this. This is exactly what happened with Stewart Ruch. They are continuing to try to go after him. It’s a mess for him. They are not following their own canons. We are going to insist that they follow the canons.’”
A second dispute concerns whether the jurisdiction’s declaration of departure from the ACNA has any effect. While dioceses have been free under ACNA’s Constitution to “withdraw from the Province by action of their own governing bodies at any time” since the denomination’s founding in 2009, the province claims the jurisdiction is not a diocese, but a “canonical ministry” of the church.
Archbishop Wood emphasized in his pastoral letter that the jurisdiction “was created and is sustained by” the ACNA canons, and that it “continues to exist within the ACNA regardless of Bishop Jones’s withdrawal or the withdrawal of any entities under his control.”
But to jurisdiction leadership, the jurisdiction’s pre-ACNA roots in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (Church of Nigeria), separate 501(c)(3) status, and its de facto operations—including planting churches and ordaining clergy—entitle the jurisdiction to diocesan rights, including the right to separate. The jurisdiction counted nine congregations and 288 members in 2024.
Jones accused the ACNA of purposefully delaying a promised rewrite of “Canon 11,” the canon governing the jurisdiction, which he founded in 2007. The jurisdiction maintained Nigerian membership when entering the ACNA in 2014 but relinquished it in 2021 amid tensions between the two churches. It was mutually understood as a condition of release into the ACNA that Canon 11 “would be inoperative” until the rewrite granting fuller rights, which never came, the jurisdiction said.
A third dispute concerns the numerous allegations against Jones. Jones denied their legitimacy in his video, categorizing each complaint into matters already resolved, false accusations, incorrect judgments of his conduct, or instances of a “woke USA” targeting him.
Jones was ordained a priest in 2001 and was consecrated a bishop six years later in the Communion of Evangelical Episcopal Churches, a charismatic church inspired by the Convergence movement that broke from the Episcopal Church in 1995. He serves on the Board of Directors at Nashotah House, and his three-year term expires in October, a Nashotah House representative said.
On September 25, the ACNA’s College of Bishops elected the Rt. Rev. Jerome Cayangyang to oversee the remaining jurisdiction. The departing jurisdiction has delivered a cease-and-desist letter to the ACNA, demanding that it stop claiming supervision over the jurisdiction.
The law firm that issued the cease-and-desist letter, Nelson Madden Black, also represented the Rev. Edward Monk, the Episcopal priest and former chairman of Nashotah House’s board facing felony theft charges, in a 2024-25 Episcopal Title IV case. In June, a Hearing Panel recommended that Monk be deposed from the priesthood, which Monk has appealed.
While the ACNA has seen some individual congregations depart for the Episcopal Church, it has not experienced the attempted withdrawal of an entire jurisdiction since the 2010 disintegration of the partnership with the Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), then led by the Rt. Rev. Chuck Murphy.
Former ACNA Archbishop Bob Duncan, one of two bishops Archbishop Wood had appointed as interim overseers of the remaining jurisdiction, encouraged Jones via email to retire, comparing Jones to Murphy and suggesting Jones would be “remembered as a scoundrel” for not complying with a misconduct investigation.
Jones replied, shortly before the jurisdiction’s withdrawal, that there was no reason for him to retire and that the incident led his staff to conclude “that the ACNA is nothing more than a power-hungry, litigious-minded, increasingly woke TEC II.”
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.
