The Rt. Rev. William J. Cox, a champion of elder care and rural ministry who served as a suffragan bishop in the dioceses of Maryland and Oklahoma, died January 17, just a week before his 104th birthday. Cox served as bishop in what is now the Anglican Church in North America since 2008, after being controversially deposed for “abandoning the communion” of the Episcopal Church.
Cox grew up in Kentucky and southern Ohio, and served the U.S. Army in supply and logistics during World War II and the Korean War. He founded an AM radio station in Nebraska before answering a call to ministry. His first cure after ordination in 1957 was two mission congregations in Cumberland, Maryland, which he merged into one integrated church, Holy Cross. While in Cumberland, he also helped to establish the county’s first elder care facility.
Cox was elected suffragan bishop of the Diocese of Maryland in 1972, and his ministry focused primarily on rural and mission congregations. He served as president of the Appalachian People’s Service Organization, a regional ministry of the Episcopal Church focused on ministry and economic development. Under his leadership, a pioneering group of locally trained priests and catechists were trained for three missions in western Maryland, an early example of what is now called “total ministry.” Cox also spearheaded the founding of Fair Haven, one of the nation’s first continuing-care senior communities, and brought Cursillo to the diocese.
In 1980, he accepted a call to serve as suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Oklahoma, and learned to fly a plane to reach the 46 missions under his spiritual care. He also served as an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Texas for three years.
In 2005 at a time when many conservative congregations were leaving the Episcopal Church, Cox, by then long retired, conducted ordinations and confirmations on behalf of the Archbishop of Uganda at Christ Church, Overland Park, Kansas, which was in the process of affiliating with the Church of Uganda.
Title IV charges were filed against him by the bishops of Oklahoma and Kansas, but Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold declined to take action. A year later, when the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori became presiding bishop, the charges were renewed. Cox, by then 87, resigned his membership in the House of Bishops, telling the Presiding Bishop that he intended to continue his episcopal ministry in the Province of the Southern Cone, a South American province that was playing an active role in Anglican realignment.
Bishop Jefferts Schori forwarded Cox’s letter to a Title IV review panel, which determined that he had “abandoned the communion of this church,” a charge that had never previously been associated with a bishop who desired to serve in another province of the Anglican Communion. Cox was deposed by the House of Bishops in March 2008. The same highly controversial canonical procedure was used to depose the bishops and a majority of the priests of five Episcopal dioceses that departed the church in following years.
Cox was affiliated in his final years with the Anglican Church in North America’s Diocese of the Living Word. His bishop, the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs, said that he “leaves behind a legacy of faith, humility, and service that will inspire generations. He will be deeply missed but joyfully remembered as a man who walked humbly with God and faithfully answered his call.”
He was preceded in death by his wife of 68 years, Betty, and a son. He is survived by two children, three grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren.
The Rev. Mark Michael is editor-in-chief of The Living Church. An Episcopal priest, he has reported widely on global Anglicanism, and also writes about church history, liturgy, and pastoral ministry.
