After a week’s controversy, a panel discussion event on preventing sexism and abuse in the Anglican Church in North America has been canceled by the province and revived by one of the church’s non-geographic dioceses.
Originally titled “Imago Dei in the Church: Fostering Healthy Christian Communities free from Sexism and Abuse,” the panel had been scheduled for February 26, but was called off by the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs on February 18. Dobbs is serving as the interim leader of the denomination while its archbishop, the Most Rev. Steve Wood, awaits ecclesiastical trial on allegations of personal and sexual misconduct.
A day later, the Rev. Esau McCaulley announced that a version of the event would proceed under the aegis of All Saints’ in Naperville, Illinois, and Immanuel in Austin, Texas, two parishes belonging to the Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO), at the same time as the original event. One of the ACNA’s best-known priests, McCaulley is rector of All Saints,’ and Tish Harrison Warren, a former New York Times columnist, is on staff at Immanuel.
Dobbs said in a provincial Q&A session that the decision to cancel the provincial panel “was made by me in consultation with the two bishops who were a part of it.” He later added that he was “desirous of hearing the voice of women in the ministry and leadership of the church [and] of promoting and providing a safe platform for any women who have been abused in the church to share their concerns,” adding that the event would be reconvened in the fall.
The event was initially organized by the Women’s Leadership Network subgroup within the ACNA’s Next Generation Leadership Initiative, which routinely holds “Imago Dei” panels on matters about women, minorities, students, families, and accessibility in the church. The panel on sexism and abuse had been promoted online since late January, but began receiving negative attention when the ACNA’s provincial social media circulated a now-deleted advertisement for it on February 13.
Observers who spoke to The Living Church described the online backlash to the advertisement as immediate and widely critical of perceived feminism in the church. Soon after, it came to include a more specific critique of Andrew Bauman’s Safe Church: How to Guard Against Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities, the book selected to anchor the panel discussion, which some said was too dismissive of the Bible. Bauman is a therapist who has written several books about sexuality and masculinity.
According to Safe Church’s publisher, Bauman interviewed women who “voice[d] the pain they have suffered at the hands of insecure leaders who were often unaware of how their words, actions, and attitudes were harming their sisters in Christ,” comprising an “honest look at how misogyny masquerades as biblical truth.” The panel lineup to discuss the book originally included one male priest, one female deacon, one laywoman, and two bishops: the Rt. Rev. Alex Farmer (Gulf Atlantic) and the Rt. Rev. Alex Cameron (Pittsburgh).
“I don’t see how any bishop who has sworn to uphold the constitution of our church can possibly pass on a book of this sort to his people without being a hireling, or maybe, if he agrees with it, a false teacher who’s denigrating the Scriptures to win, I don’t know what, acclaim from feminists,” said the Rev. Matt Kennedy, canon for preaching in Bishop Dobbs’ Diocese of the Living Word, in a February 16 livestream.
Kennedy, who has been blogging and podcasting for years at Stand Firm, called for Cameron, who was scheduled to moderate the panel discussion, to apologize or be reprimanded.
Some negative reactions drew a connection between Safe Church’s support for women in evangelical pastorates and the feminine subject of the panel, seeing in the event implicit provincial disapproval of those who do not support the ordination of women. An open letter that circulated online and gathered over 200 signatures, according to its anonymous author, said the book described “traditional complementarian views on male-only priesthood as ‘misogyny cloaked as theological truth,’ ‘cult-like Kool-Aid,’ and inherently abusive patriarchal structures.”
“How will ACNA leadership ensure that resources and events do not marginalize or deem abusive those who uphold the historic male-only priesthood, and that genuine accountability applies across the Church to preserve the orthodox Anglican teaching against women’s ordination as defended by our historic formularies and martyrs?” the letter asked.
Its author has since launched North American Anglicans for Reform, an advocacy group that calls for the cessation of women’s orders in the ACNA.
The Constitution of the ACNA has provided since its 2009 founding that each diocese may decide whether to ordain women, an arrangement popularly called “dual integrities.” The College of Bishops unanimously reaffirmed diocesan prerogative on the matter in a 2017 statement that followed a five-year task force study, writing that “there are differing principles of ecclesiology and hermeneutics that are acceptable within Anglicanism that may lead to divergent conclusions regarding women’s ordination.”
“However, we also acknowledge that this practice is a recent innovation to Apostolic Tradition and Catholic Order. We agree that there is insufficient scriptural warrant to accept women’s ordination to the priesthood as standard practice throughout the Province. However, we continue to acknowledge that individual dioceses have constitutional authority to ordain women to the priesthood,” the bishops wrote.
Congregational reporting in 2024 painted a complex picture of women’s orders in the ACNA. When counting by average Sunday attendance, dioceses ordaining women to the priesthood and the diaconate outnumber those who do not 5:1, but when counting by dioceses, more do not ordain women as priests than do. Changing the “dual integrities” status quo would require a constitutional amendment by vote of the Provincial Assembly, a body that gives proportional representation to dioceses by attendance.
The diocesan prerogative to ordain women has been challenged before. In 2024, an open letter, the “Augustine Appeal,” called for a bishop-led moratorium on the practice and was signed by over 300 male ACNA clergy.
In the aftermath of the 2017 bishops’ statement, the late Rt. Rev. Jack Iker (Fort Worth) declared the church “in a state of impaired communion” by the matter.
During the provincial Q&A, Bishop Dobbs, who ordains women to the diaconate but not the priesthood, stressed the need for “resources that reflect our orthodox theology” at any future event on sexism and abuse. He also condemned some invective surrounding the event and the topic of women in the church as “completely unacceptable.”
“There has been significant heated and inappropriate rhetoric in social media and other contexts about the place of women in the Anglican Church in North America, even in one context using the phrase ‘lesbian priestess,’” Dobbs said. “I’m very aggrieved if anyone associated with the Anglican Church in North America is using that type of language.”
He added: “I think it would be fitting for us to recall the words of the Apostle: ‘Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up.’”
The Rev. Esau McCaulley, who is promoting the diocesan version of the canceled event, expressed frustration in a blog post at what he called “an operating assumption that concern for abuse and sexism are stealth ploys that hide secret agendas, rather than a concern for the flourishing of all within our movement.”
“I am not saying that all who oppose the ordination of women are indifferent to abuse or sexism. There are men and women within our movement on both sides of this issue,” he wrote. “I am saying that the argument about women’s ordination and the general loss of charity has filtered down and impacts our wider common life. We seem to consistently be in fear of a drift towards the left, but never worry about a form of conservatism that wounds rather than protects.”
The reconvened event, which Bishop Dobbs said was not planned with his consultation and is not associated with the ACNA’s Next Generation Leadership Initiative or its Women’s Leadership Network, will not use Safe Church as an anchor book. It will feature as panelists the Rev. Virginia Musselman, the Rev. Tish Harrison Warren, the Rev. Heather Matthews, and the Rt. Rev. Jeff Bailey (C4SO) in addition to McCaulley.
Neither of the two originally scheduled bishops will participate. Bishop Cameron initially appeared in the new panel’s lineup, but soon stepped away, citing a desire to take “the posture of listening and not leading this event.” Elected as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 2022, Cameron previously served as chairman of the Diocese of the Upper Midwest’s standing committee during the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch’s leave of absence, pending his ecclesiastical trial on allegedly negligent treatment of reports of sexually abusive ministers. Ruch was acquitted in late 2025.
As the ACNA grapples with clergy abuse and sexual politics, appetite for discussion appears high. McCaulley reported on February 22 that over 500 people had registered for the new event, which Musselman confirmed to TLC was about five times as many registrations as the original event had when it was cancelled.
“The agenda for this event is exactly what is stated in the description,” McCaulley wrote of the new panel, “helping our churches be places free from abuse and harm.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Andrew Bauman is an Anglican.
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.
