The Most Rev. Steve Wood, the Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican Church in North America, is facing ecclesiastical charges for alleged sexual misconduct, financial misconduct, plagiarism, and bullying behavior, according to an October 23 Washington Post report.
Four priests and seven lay members filed the charges on October 20 against Wood, who is also bishop of the ACNA’s Diocese of the Carolinas and the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.
Central to the charges is an allegation that Wood made continual sexual advances toward Claire Buxton, the former children’s ministry director at St. Andrew’s, from 2021 to 2024. Speaking to the Post, Buxton alleged that the behavior began as inappropriate hugging, then quickly escalated into over $3,000 in unsolicited gifts from the rector’s discretionary fund, repeated sexual remarks in her presence, and attempts to follow her on mission travel.
Buxton, a divorced mother of three, resigned after Wood allegedly attempted to kiss her in his office in April 2024. The complainants, spurred by Buxton’s allegations and Wood’s appointment to the archepiscopate in July 2024, drafted their charges earlier this year and gathered the canonically required signatories by September.
The charges also allege that over several years, Wood “plagiarized sermons and bullied and disparaged church staffers” of St. Andrew’s and the Diocese of the Carolinas. The Post also reported that Wood’s alleged public “sham[ing] and curs[ing] at colleagues” and his use of a diocesan-funded $60,000 truck for hunting trips, prompted one church to leave his diocese for the overlapping ACNA Diocese of South Carolina, which is led by the Rt. Rev. Chip Edgar, in 2019.
“I was devastated when [Wood] became archbishop,” Buxton told the Post. “It was the responsibility of the bishops to vet him and they failed at it, horribly.”
In the ACNA, archbishops are selected by the College of Bishops, without participation from other clergy or laity. Though not canonically required, all archbishops since the denomination’s founding have been selected in conclave, with the bishops making “a vow together before the Lord” not to speak about their deliberations or vetting methods.
The extent to which the College of Bishops may have known about allegations of misconduct against Wood at the time of his selection in conclave is in question. Multiple sources with links to the Diocese of the Carolinas described to The Living Church a culture of clergy and employee turnover under Wood, which should have been known to other ACNA bishops.
Though the complainants were numerous enough to meet the canonical threshold for making a formal complaint, their charges are in limbo. One complainant, the Rev. Rob Sturdy, told the Post that after the sworn complaint was submitted, the ACNA’s provincial office returned it, asking all 11 complainants to sign again with an additional statement of attestation to their allegations’ truth “under penalties of perjury.”
Sturdy said the complainant group refuses to comply, calling it a “noncanonical requirement” that “attempt[s] to intimidate our signatories with potential legal action.”
An ACNA spokesperson told TLC that Dr. Tiffany Butler, director of safeguarding and canonical affairs, made the demand, calling it “the typical standard for any ‘sworn statement’ and the standard applied to other presentments received under this administration.”
“However, Chancellor Bill Nelson, in consultation with the College of Bishops, has acknowledged that no rigid formulation of the oath is required and, in particular, that it does not need to include the phrase ‘under penalties of perjury.’ Our hope is to have resolution on this matter as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.
Technical details about swearing to charges against a bishop have stymied the ACNA’s disciplinary machinery before. In 2023, charges against the Rt. Rev Stewart Ruch of the Diocese of the Upper Midwest, whose ecclesiastical trial for alleged harboring of sexually abusive ministers concluded on October 15 of this year, were initially paused when Ruch claimed that the charging bishops had failed to overtly swear to their allegations, delaying the trial by five months.
If the swearing dispute is resolved, the matter will pass to the Dean of the Province, the Most Rev. Ray Sutton, who is also Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church, a subjurisdiction within the denomination. Taking the usual role of the archbishop in the disciplinary matter, he will appoint a Board of Inquiry consisting of five priests and five church members, who will determine whether there are reasonable grounds to put Wood on trial, according to an ACNA statement.
If the matter goes to trial, Sutton will be responsible for selecting a prosecutor and a legal adviser for the court, but unless Sutton inhibits Archbishop Wood from ministry by obtaining consent of four of the five most senior bishops, Wood will continue in all other archepiscopal duties (unless he recuses himself). An ACNA spokesperson told TLC that Wood is not currently inhibited.
At any time, accused bishops in the ACNA may “confess to the truth of the allegation(s) and submit to the discipline of the Church” and avoid trial. Wood denies the allegations and said on October 21, “I do not believe these complaints have merit. I trust the process outlined in our canons to bring clarity and truth in these matters.”
Other disciplinary matters, which may be affected by the Wood matter, are developing in the ACNA. An ACNA spokesperson confirmed to TLC that formal charges were recently filed and a Board of Inquiry impaneled to consider the case of Bishop Derek Jones, whom Wood inhibited last month after receiving individual complaints of Jones’ misuse of disciplinary processes against the denomination’s chaplains. Jones’ Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy is suing the ACNA in federal court for trademark infringement.
Wood has expressed skepticism about the capacity of the denomination’s court. In a 2024 provincial letter, he wrote that through his 2022-24 service on the court that tried and deposed Todd Atkinson, the former bishop of the Via Apostolica district who was found guilty of inappropriate interactions with women and minors, he “gained perspective on how our disciplinary process works.”
“Of particular interest was the discovery that our court is only able to entertain one trial at a time,” Wood wrote.
Wood was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1992 by Bishop James R. Moodey of Ohio. He became rector of St. Andrew’s in 2000 and was a candidate for the episcopate in South Carolina in 2006 (an election that Bishop Mark Lawrence won). He left the Episcopal Church in 2012 and was elected the first bishop of the ACNA’s new Diocese of the Carolinas.
The Rev. Andrew Gross, the ACNA’s previous communications director, described the allegations of archepiscopal misconduct to the Post as a “crisis without precedent.” The idea is not unknown in the Episcopal Church.
Ahead of the Episcopal Church’s last election of its presiding bishop, its Office of Public Affairs published news of existing Title IV disciplinary complaints against three of the five nominees. The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, not among the three, was elected by the House of Bishops and confirmed by the House of Deputies.
The allegations against Wood come one week after the Most Rev. Laurent Mbanda, Archbishop of Rwanda and chairman of GAFCON, declared the existence of a Global Anglican Communion that includes the ACNA (and excludes the Episcopal Church). Rise Church, an ACNA parish in Portland, Maine, has called for GAFCON’s intervention in the wake of the Post report.
“We are calling on GAFCON, specifically the Rwandan Bishops, to come and help lead a Provincial meeting where the Archbishop and the Bishops, and the Priests, are the first to fall on their knees before Jesus and the ACNA, [to] publicly confess their sins, repenting of all the abuses of power,” the church wrote in a social media statement.
“Every knee will bow before Jesus, eventually. Let’s let it be now, too.”
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.
