{"id":145471,"date":"2026-05-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=145471"},"modified":"2026-05-28T18:41:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T22:41:00","slug":"anglican-ink-bishop-ashey-withdraws-lecture-claims-about-wood-trial-in-letter-to-acna-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=145471","title":{"rendered":"(Anglican ink) Bishop Phil Ashey withdraws lecture claims about Wood Trial in letter to ACNA College"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Bishop Edgar described the complainants as \u201ccredible and trustworthy\u201d and joined those urging the senior bishops to impose an inhibition, noting that \u201can inhibition makes no judgment as to guilt or innocence \u2026 Rather, it is an acknowledgement that continued ministry in the face of serious charges further damages the reputation of the Church.\u201d The diocesan Standing Committee followed on 14 November with a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.virtueonline.org\/post\/season-of-strain-and-sorrow-anglican-bishops-inhibit-archbishop\">letter of its own<\/a>&nbsp;standing with the bishop and the complainants and urging the College to inhibit Wood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The South Carolina position hardened with experience. On&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.virtueonline.org\/post\/south-carolina-anglican-bishop-demands-transparency-in-acna\">24 March 2026<\/a>, Bishop Edgar and the ADOSC Standing Committee wrote formally to the ACNA Executive Committee demanding transparency. The letter, occasioned by concerns arising from the December 2025 acquittal of Bishop Stewart Ruch (a separate ACNA trial in which the court found that the prosecution had not met its evidentiary burden, set out specific demands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>That \u201cthe standard of avoiding any appearance of impropriety\u201d be upheld among all provincial staff in pending and future proceedings;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That those involved in allowing a court member in the Ruch trial to access prosecution files without the prosecutors\u2019 knowledge or consent be recused from all future disciplinary proceedings, \u201cparticularly those involving Archbishop Wood\u201d;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That a complete transcript of trial and pretrial proceedings, including unedited video or audio, be released;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That all motions, court rulings, and the three pretrial investigations be made public;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>That the identity and engagement letter of any investigator be disclosed, with appropriate confidentiality protections for victims.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThose who would deny a public response to valid questions,\u201d the diocese warned, \u201cinsisting the province is best served by withholding answers \u2014 do so at the risk of destabilizing the very foundation on which their authority rests.\u201d Edgar added: \u201cLack of trust and mutual suspicion erode our communion and weaken our witness to a watching world. But our communion and witness are strengthened by a commitment to transparency and truth that is above reproach.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That earlier framing places the present moment in unusually sharp relief. South Carolina has consistently asked for procedural rigour, transparency, and a posture of belief toward the complainants. Bishop Ashey\u2019s lectures \u2014 delivered to a general audience the week before a dispositive motion was heard in the trial of his client-of-conscience \u2014 were perceived by some bishops as cutting in the opposite direction: prejudging the verdict, attributing improper motives to colleagues, and casting complainants as merely terminated employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read as a whole, the 8 May letter is more than a routine clarification. It is a public acknowledgement, on the record, that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>No bishops have signed the presentment, contrary to impressions Bishop Ashey himself helped create;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The five senior diocesan bishops who joined Dean Dobbs\u2019s inhibition did so on the merits, not under social-media pressure;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Title IV revisions now before the College are being deliberated on their substance, not from institutional self-protection;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Predictions of \u201cexoneration\u201d have no proper place in public commentary about a pending bishop\u2019s trial;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The complainants were not, as Ashey had suggested, simply \u201cterminated employees\u201d;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>His role with Archbishop Wood is volunteer and personal, not provincial, and any judgment on the Archbishop\u2019s compliance with the inhibition belongs to the Dean and the College.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Ashey\u2019s renewed offer to recuse himself from the College of Bishops \u201cuntil after all procedures with regards to Archbishop Wood are concluded\u201d is significant. He had made the same offer earlier and was declined; the public revival of the offer effectively returns the question to Dean Dobbs and to a College that, in the weeks since the lectures, has had to navigate its own discomfort with the optics of one of its members serving as personal counsel to an accused archbishop while continuing to sit and vote among those who will, in due course, receive the Court\u2019s verdict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What the letter does not address is the substantive accusation, attributed to Bishop Ashey in&nbsp;<em>The Living Church<\/em>\u2018s reporting, that \u201cthe province did not forward all of the evidence, including exculpatory evidence, to the court.\u201d If that claim is maintained, it sits uneasily alongside the seven items Bishop Ashey did withdraw. If it is not, it deserves its own clarification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/anglican.ink\/2026\/05\/27\/bishop-ashey-withdraws-lecture-claims-about-wood-trial-in-letter-to-acna-college\/\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Bishop Ashey withdraws lecture claims about Wood Trial in letter to ACNA College<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3l3JWv1o0q\">https:\/\/t.co\/3l3JWv1o0q<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/NPamXRmZSZ\">pic.twitter.com\/NPamXRmZSZ<\/a><\/p>&mdash; George Conger (@GeorgeConger8) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GeorgeConger8\/status\/2059651011942154504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 27, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bishop Edgar described the complainants as \u201ccredible and trustworthy\u201d and joined those urging the senior bishops to impose an inhibition, noting that \u201can inhibition makes no judgment as to guilt or innocence \u2026 Rather, it is an acknowledgement that continued<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=145471\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,63,168,114,435],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-carolina","category-anglican-church-in-north-america-acna","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-law-legal-issues","category-ministry-of-the-ordained"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145471"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145476,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145471\/revisions\/145476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}