After every week’s controversy, a panel dialogue occasion on stopping sexism and abuse within the Anglican Church in North America has been canceled by the province and revived by one of many church’s non-geographic dioceses.
Initially titled “Imago Dei within the Church: Fostering Wholesome Christian Communities free from Sexism and Abuse,” the panel had been scheduled for February 26, however was known as off by the Rt. Rev. Julian Dobbs on February 18. Dobbs is serving because the interim chief of the denomination whereas its archbishop, the Most Rev. Steve Wooden, awaits ecclesiastical trial on allegations of private and sexual misconduct.
A day later, the Rev. Esau McCaulley introduced {that a} model of the occasion would proceed beneath the aegis of All Saints’ in Naperville, Illinois, and Immanuel in Austin, Texas, two parishes belonging to the diocese of Church buildings for the Sake of Others (C4SO), similtaneously the unique occasion. One of many ACNA’s greatest recognized monks, McCaulley is rector of All Saints,’ and Tish Harrison Warren, a former New York Instances columnist, is on workers at Immanuel.
Dobbs stated in a provincial Q&A session that the choice to cancel the provincial panel “was made by me in session with the 2 bishops who had been part of it.” He later added that he was “desirous of listening to the voice of girls within the ministry and management of the church [and] of selling and offering a secure platform for any ladies who’ve been abused within the church to share their considerations,” including that the occasion can be reconvened within the fall.
The occasion was initially organized by the Ladies’s Management Community subgroup throughout the ACNA’s Subsequent Technology Management Initiative, which routinely holds “Imago Dei” panels on issues about ladies, minorities, college students, households, and accessibility within the church. The panel on sexism and abuse had been promoted on-line since late January, however started receiving adverse consideration when the ACNA’s provincial social media circulated a now-deleted commercial for it on February 13.
Observers who spoke to The Residing Church described the web backlash to the commercial as rapid and extensively important of perceived feminism within the church. Quickly after, it got here to incorporate a extra particular critique of Andrew Bauman’s Protected Church: Find out how to Guard Towards Sexism and Abuse in Christian Communities, the guide chosen to anchor the panel dialogue, which some stated was too dismissive of the Bible. Bauman is a therapist who has written a number of books about sexuality and masculinity.
In line with Protected Church’s writer, Bauman interviewed ladies who “voice[d] the ache they’ve suffered by the hands of insecure leaders who had been typically unaware of how their phrases, actions, and attitudes had been harming their sisters in Christ,” comprising an “sincere have a look at how misogyny masquerades as biblical reality.” The panel lineup to debate the guide initially included one male priest, one feminine deacon, one laywoman, and two bishops: the Rt. Rev. Alex Farmer (Gulf Atlantic) and the Rt. Rev. Alex Cameron (Pittsburgh).
“I don’t see how any bishop who has sworn to uphold the structure of our church can probably move on a guide of this type to his individuals with out being a hireling, or possibly, if he agrees with it, a false instructor who’s denigrating the Scriptures to win, I don’t know what, acclaim from feminists,” stated the Rev. Matt Kennedy, canon for preaching in Bishop Dobbs’ Diocese of the Residing Phrase, in a February 16 livestream.
Kennedy, who has been running a blog and podcasting for years at Stand Agency, known as for Cameron, who was scheduled to average the panel dialogue, to apologize or be reprimanded.
Some adverse reactions drew a connection between Protected Church’s assist for ladies in evangelical pastorates and the female topic of the panel, seeing within the occasion implicit provincial disapproval of those that don’t assist the ordination of girls. An open letter that circulated on-line and gathered over 200 signatures, in accordance with its nameless creator, stated the guide described “conventional complementarian views on male-only priesthood as ‘misogyny cloaked as theological reality,’ ‘cult-like Kool-Support,’ and inherently abusive patriarchal constructions.”
“How will ACNA management make sure that sources and occasions don’t marginalize or deem abusive those that uphold the historic male-only priesthood, and that real accountability applies throughout the Church to protect the orthodox Anglican educating towards ladies’s ordination as defended by our historic formularies and martyrs?” the letter requested.
Its creator has since launched North American Anglicans for Reform, an advocacy group that requires the cessation of girls’s orders within the ACNA.
The Structure of the ACNA has offered since its 2009 founding that every diocese might determine whether or not to ordain ladies, an association popularly known as “twin integrities.” The Faculty of Bishops unanimously reaffirmed diocesan prerogative on the matter in a 2017 assertion that adopted a five-year activity drive examine, writing that “there are differing ideas of ecclesiology and hermeneutics which might be acceptable inside Anglicanism which will result in divergent conclusions concerning ladies’s ordination.”
“Nonetheless, we additionally acknowledge that this follow is a latest innovation to Apostolic Custom and Catholic Order. We agree that there’s inadequate scriptural warrant to just accept ladies’s ordination to the priesthood as normal follow all through the Province. Nonetheless, we proceed to acknowledge that particular person dioceses have constitutional authority to ordain ladies to the priesthood,” the bishops wrote.
Congregational reporting in 2024 painted a fancy image of girls’s orders within the ACNA. When counting by common Sunday attendance, dioceses ordaining ladies to the priesthood and the diaconate outnumber those that don’t 5:1, however when counting by dioceses, extra dioceses don’t ordain ladies as monks than do. Altering the “twin integrities” established order would require a constitutional modification by vote of the Provincial Meeting, a physique that provides proportional illustration to dioceses by attendance.
The diocesan prerogative to ordain ladies has additionally been challenged earlier than. In 2024, an open letter, the “Augustine Enchantment,” known as for a bishop-led moratorium on the follow and was signed by over 300 male ACNA clergy.
Within the aftermath of the 2017 bishops’ assertion, the late Rt. Rev. Jack Iker (Fort Value) declared the church “in a state of impaired communion” by the matter.
Throughout the provincial Q&A, Bishop Dobbs, who ordains ladies to the diaconate however not the priesthood, harassed the necessity for “sources that mirror our orthodox theology” at any future occasion on sexism and abuse. He additionally condemned some invective surrounding the occasion and the subject of girls within the church as “utterly unacceptable.”
“There was vital heated and inappropriate rhetoric in social media and different contexts concerning the place of girls within the Anglican Church in North America, even in a single context utilizing the phrase ‘lesbian priestess,’” Dobbs stated. “I’m very aggrieved if anybody related to the Anglican Church in North America is utilizing that sort of language.”
“I believe it might be becoming for us to recall the phrases of the Apostle: ‘Let no corrupting speak come out of your mouths, however solely comparable to is sweet for build up,’” he added.
The Rev. Esau McCaulley, who’s selling the diocesan model of the canceled occasion, expressed frustration in a weblog put up at what he known as “an working assumption that concern for abuse and sexism are stealth ploys that conceal secret agendas, moderately than a priority for the flourishing of all inside our motion.”
“I’m not saying that every one who oppose the ordination of girls are detached to abuse or sexism. There are women and men inside our motion on either side of this challenge,” he wrote. “I’m saying that the argument about ladies’s ordination and the final lack of charity has filtered down and impacts our wider frequent life. We appear to persistently be in concern of a drift in direction of the left, however by no means fear a few type of conservatism that wounds moderately than protects.”
The reconvened occasion, which Bishop Dobbs stated was not deliberate together with his session and isn’t related to the ACNA’s Subsequent Technology Management Initiative or its Ladies’s Management Community, is not going to use Protected Church as an anchor guide. It can characteristic as panelists the Rev. Virginia Musselman, the Rev. Tish Harrison Warren, the Rev. Heather Matthews, and the Rt. Rev. Jeff Bailey (C4SO) along with McCaulley.
Neither of the 2 initially scheduled bishops will take part. Bishop Cameron initially appeared within the new panel’s lineup, however quickly stepped away, citing a want to take “the posture of listening and never main this occasion.” Elected as Bishop of Pittsburgh in 2022, Cameron beforehand served as chairman of the Diocese of the Higher Midwest’s standing committee throughout the Rt. Rev. Stewart Ruch’s go away of absence, pending his ecclesiastical trial on allegedly negligent therapy of experiences of sexually abusive ministers. Ruch was acquitted in late 2025.
Because the ACNA grapples with clergy abuse and sexual politics, urge for food for dialogue seems excessive. McCaulley reported on February 22 that over 500 individuals had registered for the brand new occasion, which Musselman confirmed to TLC was about 5 instances as many registrations as the unique occasion had when it was cancelled.
“The agenda for this occasion is strictly what’s acknowledged within the description,” McCaulley wrote of the brand new panel, “serving to our church buildings be locations free from abuse and hurt.”
Correction: An earlier model of this story incorrectly acknowledged that Andrew Bauman is an Anglican.
Arlie Coles is a lay Anglican from the Diocese of Dallas who writes about fashionable Episcopal historical past and polity. She can also be a machine-learning researcher serving on Common Conference’s Job Drive on Synthetic Intelligence and Mental Property.
