To the Standing Committee of the Diocese of South Carolina
With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah which says:
‘You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing,
and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes,
and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart,
and turn for me to heal them.’
–Matthew 13:14-15
“Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.”
–Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Dear friends:
Let me begin by saying that I love the Lord and I love his church and I love the Anglican Church in North America and I wish her the best and pray for her and her leaders every day.
But I have to tell you that as someone watching what has been happening over the last week since the story broke about the accusations against the current Archbishop I have been profoundly troubled, deeply upset and incredibly concerned; those feelings have done nothing but get deeper every single day since.
I find myself thinking again and again of Dr James Houston at Regent College and his course on Christian spirituality I took it when I had only been a Christian for about four years. Dr. Houston began the class by saying that if you want to understand what it means to think about growing as a Christian, you have to understand the beatitudes, and you have to understand that the beatitudes are written in order.
What that means is the beginning of any real growth is wrestling with and living into the first beatitude, which is blessed all the poor in spirit which Eugene Peterson wonderfully translates as “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.”
He went on to tell us many memorable things in that class, one of them, which I shall never forget, is what is one of the most important characteristics of the character of a genuine Christian. His answer comes like a little voice, which is in fact a piece of dynamite in our current cultural moment in the church in the west, he said the answer is self-mistrust.
If you really understand yourself and the broken nature of the world and the insidious nature of sin, and you need to know that human beings have a stubborn incapacity to handle the truth which manifests itself in ways that the systems which sinful people construct so often miss.
So let me begin in a place where I see almost no ACNA leader beginning and that is I don’t trust myself so maybe what I’m saying is incorrect. That’s for you to decide, but I’ve reached the point where I cannot not say What I feel the Lord is calling me to say.
To state the matter carefully: ACNA is in profound trouble, and I do not think that the people in charge of ACNA see how much trouble we are in.
Ask yourself this question–what would an outside observer who had a healthy sense of self-mistrust and who knew that a healthy institution needs to have a heavy dose of self mistrust—what would he or she say about what is just happened in ACNA over the last few years and especially the last week or so.
The first thing such a person might say: the process by which allegations of misbehavior by ACNA leaders are adjudicated is incredibly messed up and needs to be deeply reformed.
How do I know this—well just look at what we know as fact. Bishop Stewart Ruch has had a process going on by which he’s been put in a form of an ecclesiastical trial for alleged misbehavior. The process is taking a long time and the first thing that we know, is that the prosecutor who was asked to participate in the process named Alan Runyan resigned just a few hours before the process was to complete because what happened in the process was so completely out of kilter and deeply disturbing to him that he felt he had no other recourse but to resign.
Now I happen to know Alan Runyan and I’ve worked with him in some very unusual contexts. He’s a greatly capable person and a wonderful Christian; for someone like him to take a step like that is incredibly significant to me.
It speaks to a process in a canonical system that does not work properly by any reasonable standard.
If you read the new, very lengthy Washington Post story about the Bishop Stewart Ruch situation ask yourself a question– if even 1/8 of what’s in the article is true, how in the world has the system reach this point? It is self-evidently not working.
Now consider recent developments with the allegations against the current archbishop of ACNA, Steve Wood.
A presentment has been filed against him, a formal church procedure alleging misbehavior. The people involved in filing this presentment are people who love the Lord and who love his church.
If the people involved love the Lord and love his church then why is no one in ACNA leadership asking about this reality–there is simply no way that anyone who loves ACNA and cares deeply about her and her future whatever not initially try to use the process provided by the church to make these allegations, but have the people done so?
No; no.
Almost everyone that I’ve seen in ACNA who is looking at the situation is looking at it backwards. They are saying things like trust the process, isn’t it terrible that people in the church felt it necessary to go to a secular newspaper like the Washington Post in order to do what they felt had to be done.
To me that entirely upside down, the question everyone in active leadership should be asking themselves is supposing I was part of the group that made these allegations.
It would then necessarily be the case that I would seek to use the processes provided by the church to do so
It is clear that they did not because they felt that they could not.
Think carefully about what that means, it means that a group of people who love ACNA had such a profound mistrust of the existing process that they felt they had a better chance of beginning to get the truth into the light in a secular newspaper as opposed to the process provided by the church.
Let’s be clear here–no one saying they are right. We are just asking questions, but let’s make sure to ask the right questions. Do you have any idea how sick the process has to be for people in positions of leadership to feel such an extreme measure was necessary? It speaks to a process which is so deeply wrong that it is nearly or entirely bankrupt.
Now again, let’s look at the response to what occurred so far. We have a number of responses, from bishops especially, most of which can be reduced to trust the process, we have an adequate process, we have a process that will work. Let’s just be patient and pray and let it work itself out, and on and on.
That can’t be true and we know it’s not true because of what’s been happening in the Ruch trial, but we also know it’s not true because of the extreme measures that were deemed necessary by the group that filed these allegations against Archbishop Wood.
Yet there’s more.
Whenever you have a situation like this, where there are allegations, you have alleged victims and alleged perpetrators; we simply don’t know what happened, so we have to keep a healthy dose of skepticism, but what needs to be said very strongly is that neither of the allegations nor the denial can be assumed to be true.
Anyone who reads the initial responses can see that the concern for the victims, and the possibility that the allegations could be true, are given short shrift, but the protection of the leaders and the institution and the process are almost always paramount.
So it’s clear that the process is deeply flawed already and you can see it and what has transpired publicly not only in the Ruch trial, but in the response to the allegations against Archbishop Wood so far.
We are still not done. Let’s look at what else has happened with the allegation so far. It is a matter of public record that there was an objection to the presentment made by the Canon for safeguarding, and the Chancellor. They alleged that a standard wasn’t met, even though it has been determined now that the presentment can go forward and the objections have been overcome. We need to pause and ask ourselves a question–who made these objections.
They were made by a Canon who works for Steve Wood and a chancellor who works for Steve Wood. But Steve Wood is the accused in this situation, so no one who works for him can and should be involved in the process at all.
However, they were involved in the process. They should never have been; they should have recused themselves immediately.
Not only has that occurred, but Bishop Ray Sutton, who is now the bishop in charge of this process, has written a letter to the ACNA House of bishops in which he discussed the overcoming of these objections by suggesting that the process by which the objections were made was legitimate. It was anything but. Other people could have been appointed to make objections, but not people who work for or were appointed by the current person accused.
This is just a matter of basic justice and due process. It may seem like a simple thing, but it’s not a simple thing because not only has it occurred, but it has implicitly been sanctioned by the current person in charge of the process.
Notice also that none of the other leaders have made an objection to this.
What we are looking at here, brother and sisters, is a colossal mess which has so many things out of kilter one hardly knows where to start.
We have to question the process, not trust the process, but more than that we have to question the people who are in charge of ACNA, what they are doing, how they are doing it, why they are so defensive and why they are missing so many basic points and not asking the right questions.
And all this is the case at this very early stage….
29 October 2025
–The Rev Dr. Kendall S. Harmon is theologian in residence, Church of the Holy Cross, Sullivan’s Island, SC
