The archbishop of the Anglican Church in North America — who is facing allegations of sexual misconduct against two women — was suspended Sunday from his duties leading the 16-year-old denomination.
Stephen Wood, 62, a married father who has been archbishop since June 2024, has been temporarily removed from his job and all clerical duties by the denomination’s “dean,” Bishop Julian Dobbs. In his order announcing the suspension, Dobbs said he issued it with the consent of five of the church’s most senior bishops. The suspension, Dobbs wrote, will last “no longer than 60 days” unless it is extended. The decision to “inhibit” Wood, as the church calls the disciplinary process, comes as he faces a possible ecclesiastical trial that could lead to his defrocking.
“This action does not determine guilt or innocence, nor does it pre-judge any allegation or future proceeding,” Dobbs wrote in the order.
Despite his suspension, Wood technically remains the denomination’s archbishop. He will also still receive his salary, according to the church’s spokeswoman, Kate Harris.
The inhibition is widely viewed among priests and parishioners as more a punishment than the voluntary paid leave of absence Wood took earlier this month. In addition to an online petition signed by more than 150 clergy as of today, the Diocese of South Carolina issued a letter on Friday calling for his inhibition.
“While he has placed himself on a leave of absence, such leave can be ended at his discretion,” the letter read. “An inhibition — though not a statement of guilt or innocence — protects the integrity of the inquiry and ensures that the process needed to seek the truth can proceed without interference.”
Wood did not immediately respond to messages from The Washington Post on Monday morning seeking comment about his suspension.
For nearly a month, the Anglican Church in North America — founded in 2009 by conservatives who had split years earlier from the Episcopal Church over its approval of an openly gay bishop — has been mired in a crisis over its leadership. On Oct. 20, a group of Wood’s former colleagues at St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where Wood was the longtime rector, filed a complaint with the denomination alleging that he tried to kiss the church’s children’s ministry director inside his office in April 2024, two months before his archbishop election.
The complaint document, known as a presentment, is meant to prompt a church Board of Inquiry, which determines whether its allegations merit an ecclesiastical trial. If found guilty, the accused faces a range of punishments, from censure to suspension to defrocking.
Three days after the presentment was submitted, The Post was the first to publish its allegations. Aside from the alleged attempted kiss, the presentment also accused Wood of plagiarizing sermons and bullying and demeaning church staff members during the years preceding his status as archbishop. A week-and-a-half after The Post’s article, on Nov. 3, the denomination announced that he was taking the voluntary leave from his duties as both archbishop and the bishop of a diocese of more than 40 churches in the South. In his own statement, Wood said the leave would last “until the proceedings to address these allegations are resolved.”
He also declared in a separate email that day to his St. Andrew’s congregants that he was retiring as rector of St. Andrew’s Church in South Carolina, a position he held for 25 years.
In his public statement to the denomination, Wood “categorically and emphatically” denied the accusation that he tried to kiss his employee, Claire Buxton, who two months after the alleged incident resigned from St. Andrew’s Church. “While I grieve that anyone experiences harm in the Church, as I have noted to my parish, I believe the charges against me lack merit,” he said.
But four days later, on Nov. 7, The Post reported that the presentment against Wood had been revised to include a new allegation from a second woman claiming he sexually harassed her.
The woman, identified in the complaint only as “Jane Doe 1,” submitted a brief statement saying that Wood’s conduct with her included “pressuring me to be in situations I was uncomfortable with, even after I expressed my discomfort, pressuring me to be in a private space with him, one-on-one, to drink alcohol with him, despite me saying it was inappropriate and that I was uncomfortable.” Jane Doe 1, the presentment said, would cooperate with the denomination’s investigation on the condition that her anonymity be guaranteed.
The expanded presentment also featured a lengthy affidavit by the denomination’s former spokesman, Andrew Gross, who accused Wood of “habitual and intentional” attempts “to deceive and manipulate” leaders and staff. Gross recounted how Wood told him that he wanted to “secretly” pay $10,000 to a priest critical of his leadership to go on sabbatical. Gross also chronicled how he was briefing Wood on misconduct allegations against several bishops when Wood halted him and said he didn’t “want to know anything else.”
Aside from the allegations against Wood, the denomination’s priests and parishioners also are upset about how the accusations entered the public domain. Priests and former staff at Wood’s church in South Carolina who wrote the presentment said they initially sought the endorsements of numerous bishops. The denomination requires that presentments be signed and sworn to by either three bishops or a mix of 10 parishioners and priests.
Their presentment was ultimately offered to four bishops, but they turned the South Carolina group down. Chip Edgar, the bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina, wrote a letter Thursday to parishioners disclosing his early involvement and saying he supports the presentment and its authors.
“I acknowledge it didn’t always seem like I did — I’ve apologized to them and sought their forgiveness, which they have generously given — but I do,” Edgar wrote.
Chris Warner, a Virginia-based bishop overseeing churches in the Mid-Atlantic, told The Post in an interview that he declined to endorse the presentment. He said that when he was approached in May, he didn’t read the complaint. He said he knew from one of its authors that the document contained allegations that Wood behaved “improperly” with a female staff member at St. Andrew’s Church. But Warner said he didn’t know about the specific allegation — that Wood placed his hand on the back of the woman’s head and tried to turn it toward him for a kiss.
Still, he said, “I had some sense that (the allegation) was possible along those lines.” He said he understood that there was a “potential unwanted advance that did not involve physical touch.”
In the spring, when Warner was asked to review the presentment, he said he told one of its authors that the group should first submit the complaint to the denomination’s head of safeguarding and canonical affairs. He said that if they felt “stonewalled” through that process, they could return to him — and then he’d read it.
One reason Warner said he wanted them to go through the denomination’s safeguarding office was that “there are women in that process who will very likely catch any nuances that I as a man might miss.”
He also said he urged them to wait until next year, when he said the denomination’s disciplinary canons would be overhauled to be more efficient.
When Warner read the submitted presentment in October and then its expanded version earlier this month, he felt deeply upset.
“When I read it, I was disturbed, and when I read the second one that came around, I was sick,” Warner said.
On Sunday, Warner emailed his diocese and explained his version of events. He also apologized, both to his diocese’s lay and clergy women, and to the women who made allegations against Wood.
“While I do not know them personally, I now grieve for them,” Warner wrote. “To Claire and ‘Jane,’ I am sorry I did not hear your voices when they were brought to me. I recognize that women’s experiences are too often overlooked or minimized, particularly in systems led by men. Where my response contributed to further pain or trauma, I ask your forgiveness.”
He ended his note by saying he asked the denomination’s most senior bishops to place an inhibition on Wood.
Warner’s decision to not initially read the presentment felt like a shock to his clergy. Just one year ago, in November 2024, Warner announced that he’d issued “Godly admonitions” to the current and former rectors of the Falls Church Anglican — one of the denomination’s largest churches — for failing to initiate an investigation into sex abuse allegations by a former youth minister from the 1990s.
“It’s clear that there are some very angry and hurt people, and I get it. It’s hard to gain that trust back. But the way we do that is through honesty,” Warner told The Post. “We have some serious self-examination to do in the Anglican Church in North America, and I am committed to being a part of that.”
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