The interim leader of the Anglican Church in North America — who suspended the denomination’s archbishop over allegations of sexual misconduct — was himself previously investigated over two separate allegations of financial impropriety, according to a federal lawsuit and a global charity’s internal records.
Bishop Julian Dobbs, dean of the Anglican Church in North America, was appointed on Nov. 15 to assume the duties of Archbishop Stephen Wood. The next day, with the consent of five other bishops, Dobbs, 57, “inhibited” or suspended Wood for 60 days after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced by two women, one of whom was a church employee. The woman said Wood, a married father, tried to kiss her inside his South Carolina office in April 2024, shortly before he was elected archbishop.
Dobbs’s appointment, approved by the denomination’s College of Bishops, comes at a critical moment for the conservative church of 128,000 members and 1,000-plus congregations across the United States, Canada and Mexico. Its bishops gathered this month for a quickly arranged meeting in Texas, where they addressed how they’ve “lacked attentiveness or care for the flock committed to us,” according to a church report. “It was clear throughout our deliberations that there is a significant deficit of trust toward the College of Bishops,” the letter said.
But the bishop tasked with leading the church out of turmoil has faced his own allegations of wrongdoing. A recent federal lawsuit against the Anglican Church in North America accused Dobbs of having “absconded” with about $48,000 from a chaplaincy that has long endorsed Anglican chaplains to the military and other institutions.
In a separate matter, Barnabas Aid, a global Christian charity based in Britain, investigated Dobbs and his wife in 2018 over more than $28,000 in questionable expenses, according to the internal records of the charity, for which Dobbs and his wife worked. The charity also accused Dobbs and his wife of running a “secret and undisclosed” nonprofit with a similar mission out of a Barnabas Aid office. That nonprofit received donations from supporters on the Barnabas Aid mailing list, Barnabas Aid contended.
Dobbs told The Washington Post that all the financial misconduct allegations against him are “unsubstantiated.” He said the chaplaincy’s claims were “false” and were refuted by multiple investigations — one by the denomination and two by his diocese: the first by its attorney and treasurer, the second by an independent auditor. The denomination’s inquiry into the Barnabas Aid allegations, he said, also absolved him of any wrongdoing.
“All of the allegations against me have been thoroughly investigated and proven to be unsubstantiated,” Dobbs said. “I have never misappropriated funds and any such claims that I have done so are baseless, feckless, and without merit.”
Asked about the Barnabas Aid allegations, his wife, Brenda Dobbs, provided The Post with a statement: “The highest standards of financial integrity were maintained throughout my tenure both professionally and personally.”
Dobbs, who lives in Manassas, Virginia, is one of the denomination’s more high-profile figures, in part because of his public warnings about Islamover the years. In a 2022 letter on his website marking the “Islamic terror attacks” of Sept. 11, 2001, he wrote that the violence was carried out “in the name of a religion that is still intolerant” of people practicing different faiths. He also has appeared on a radio show formerly hosted by Sebastian Gorka, an ally of President Donald Trump who is now his senior director for counterterrorism.
Dobbs helped lead Barnabas Aid USA, then based in McLean, Virginia, from 2006 to 2018 — first as executive director, later as a board member and then chair or president, according to tax filings and his resignation letter. His wife worked there as an office manager. The nonprofit raises money for its global umbrella organization.
The charity compiled a 102-page investigative file — a memo, emails and other records — that was sent in early 2019 to the Anglican Church in North America and obtained by The Post. According to the memo, the charity asserted that Dobbs and his wife engaged in “deliberate acts of misusing Barnabas Aid liquid assets to benefit either themselves or another ministry.” The memo also alleged that they misused funds for travel and other expenses, some linked to Dobbs’s duties for the church and his personal life.
Foley Beach — who served as archbishop when both sets of financial misconduct allegations surfaced — told The Post that all the claims were “thoroughly investigated” and that the inquiries determined that Dobbs “did nothing wrong.” Beach circulated a letter on Dec. 12 to the College of Bishops saying the accusations were deemed “without foundation.”
Turmoil at the top
Born in 2009 after a split with the Episcopal Church over its 2003 confirmation of an openly gay bishop, the Anglican Church in North America brands itself a refuge from the “state of brokenness” of its former theological home. The denomination’s official stance on sexuality calls same-sex relationships a sin. It also doesn’t permit women to become bishops or archbishop.
Now, the 16-year-old denomination is grappling with a leadership crisis.
This month, a church board of inquiry found probable cause to put Wood, the archbishop, on an ecclesiastical trial. Wood, 62, also faces accusations that he bullied and demeaned colleagues and plagiarized sermons. He has denied trying to kiss the female employee and declined to comment on the second woman’s accusation. He has called the other charges meritless. If found guilty, he could be defrocked.
Separately, Stewart Ruch III, a Chicago-area bishop, was acquitted this month by an ecclesiastical court after being accused of mishandling a sex abuse case and allowing men withcriminal convictions to worship, work or take leadership roles in his diocese. In the trial’s run-up, Ruch denied the canonical charges, which ranged from violation of ordination vows to bringing “scandal.” The court’s seven members ruled that the prosecution didn’t provide sufficient evidence. ACNAtoo, a watchdog group, declared in a blog post that the court’s final order — which sidestepped some core elements of the case against Ruch — was “rife with easily refutable claims” and “confirms survivors’ fears that the [denomination] will give bishops a free pass.”
The denomination is also contending with a federal lawsuit filed in October by the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy, an Alabama-based nonprofit religious organization that for years has endorsed chaplains to the military. The suit, which seeks at least $7 million in damages, accused the denomination of staging “a failed corporate takeover” when Wood suspended the chaplaincy’s longtime bishop, Derek Jones, “without authority” in September. Wood announced that the suspension came after accusations that Jones abused his ecclesiastical power and after he refused to cooperate with an investigation — allegations Jones denied to The Post. Jones now faces an ecclesiastical trial on four church charges.
A British charity’s allegations
Dobbs, the denomination’s new interim leader, was born in New Zealand, where he served as a rector, hosted a Christian television show, and helped run Barnabas Aid’s local office. In 2006, he immigratedto the United States and began helping oversee Barnabas Aid USA, whose mission was to aid persecuted Christians. By September 2011, Dobbs was consecrated as a bishop to lead a diocese in the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a founding “jurisdiction” of congregations in the Anglican Church in North America. About 2½ years later, Dobbs was appointed the convocation’s head bishop.
Even as Dobbs led the convocation, he continued to help run Barnabas Aid USA.
In 2018, the British-based Barnabas umbrella organization began investigating Dobbs and his wife for claiming unauthorized, unjustified or unexplained expenses, in some cases related to their phones, travel or meals, according to the memo and correspondence in the Barnabas investigative file.
In an August 2018 email to Dobbs and his wife, the charity’s then chief executive, Hendrik Storm, wrote that the expenses over the previous two years totaled about $28,200.
“If left unexplained, it breaches the faith inherent in the working relationship and certainly appears to be fundamentally and directly inconsistent with the obligations you had to Barnabas Fund, perhaps could even be construed as tantamount to fraud,” Storm wrote, using the charity’s older name.
Nearly three weeks later, Dobbs replied: “Never has there been any deception in any of our expenses. We have been completely forthright with these submissions and are committed in being individuals of honesty and integrity in our personal and public lives.”
He said his expenses were discussed in advance and regularly submitted. He noted that his diocese “was solely responsible for the majority of these costs over many years, significantly benefiting” the charity.
The next day, Storm replied: “We have no record of what you are claiming.”
Reached by phone, Storm, who now helps run another global nonprofit, declined an interview but confirmed the authenticity of the emails and memo.
The memo also accused Dobbs and his wife of running another Christian aid charity called Katartismos Global out of the Barnabas office without informing Barnabas officials. The memo characterized the arrangement as “dishonesty and deception by not declaring this clear conflict of interest.” It said Katartismos’s donations came from supporters on Barnabas Aid’s mailing list, “almost certainly diverting away to their own charity donations that would have been given to Barnabas Aid.”
In February 2019, the charity’s investigative memo and emails were sent to the Anglican Church in North America. Eight months later, Beach, then the archbishop, wrote to Barnabas trustees defending Dobbs and citing the denomination’s findings:
“As to the Right Rev. Julian Dobbs, we do not find any [credible] evidence of willful wrongdoing by him, and therefore find no basis for any disciplinary action against him under the canons of this Church,” Beach wrote in the letter obtained by The Post. He defended Dobbs’s expenses, saying “each reimbursement was reimbursed with fund[s] which were written and signed by someone in your organization.”
But the charity pushed back, according to an email obtained by The Post. Chris Sugden, an Anglican priest acting as a liaison between the denomination and Barnabas, wrote Beach reiterating that the Dobbses had not obtained authorization from the head office for “all their expenses and other payments.” Although the charity accepted Beach’s decision to consider the case closed, Sugden also said that the charity would like its disagreement with the church’s conclusion “noted for the record” if the IRS or another authority investigated.
Sugden confirmed to The Post the authenticity of the email exchange.
Asked about the allegations against Dobbs, a Barnabas Aid spokesperson said: “None of the current executive team were around when these matters were alleged to have taken place.” Michael Hewat, the board chairman of Barnabas Aid International, said he was a trustee when the allegations surfaced. But he said he hasn’t seen the charity’s internal records that supported its claims of wrongdoing. “On the basis of what I have seen and know, I have no cause to doubt Julian’s integrity,” Hewat wrote.
Claims from a chaplaincy
Shortly before Beach cleared Dobbs in the Barnabas matter, Dobbs faced separate scrutiny for his leadership of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
In the latter half of 2019, the convocation’s chaplaincy requested an investigation of Dobbs “for missing funds not reported on the financial statements” of the convocation, according to the chaplaincy’s lawsuit against the Anglican Church in North America. Shortly afterward, the denomination said it appointed three people to investigate the chaplaincy’s allegations about the convocation’s financial accounting, including a bishop, a denomination lawyer and a forensic accountant.
Although Dobbs is not a defendant in the chaplaincy’s lawsuit, the allegations concerning him are chronicled in a document attached to the court file known as a “declaration,” written by Derek Jones, the bishop who helped establish the chaplaincy.
The chaplaincy had donated tens of thousands of dollars to the convocation from 2014 to 2019, but the convocation could not account for the money, Jones told The Post.
By April 2020, according to Jones’s declaration, the chaplaincy contacted the IRS concerning Dobbs. When the denomination’s investigation wrapped up, it found “no financial impropriety, misappropriation of funds, or misuse of designated gifts” by Dobbs, according to Beach’s letter to the College of Bishops.
In March 2021, the lawsuit alleges, Dobbs “was found to have absconded with approximately $48,000” of the chaplaincy’s money — a determination made by the chaplaincy, Jones clarified to The Post. But Beach, then the archbishop, told The Post that the denomination’s investigation showed that the allegation was “false and unfounded.”
Dobbs said that he tried to reconcile with Jones in a formal statement addressed to Beach. Jones told The Post that the letter, dated March 22, 2021, was part of an agreement between the denomination and the chaplaincy to move on.
“I regret and apologize for my part and on behalf of my staff, for the confusion in [the convocation’s] financial accounting practices … and for any harm brought to the ministry of the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy,” according to Dobbs’s letter, which the denomination provided.
The letter, Dobbs said, was “not an apology or acknowledgement about my alleged mishandling of finances.” Instead, he said, his letter was meant to “acknowledge the inconvenience that resulted from a perfectly legal” change in his convocation’s accounting practices.
Dobbs’s step toward reconciliation was pivotal. That same day, according to a letter the denomination provided The Post, the chaplaincy’s attorneys told Jones that Dobbs’s apology met their requirements to move on: “We will consider this closed and agree not to initiate an investigation of, or action against Bishop Dobbs with any federal or state authorities.”
The post He suspended the archbishop, but faced his own probes — financial ones appeared first on Washington Post.
