The College of Bishops of the Anglican Church in North America meets this week in Plano, Texas, for a special session at which the bishops are expected to take up the unresolved episcopal election in the Diocese of the Western Gulf Coast together with sentencing in two disciplinary cases already decided against sitting or former members of the college.
The five-day gathering, running Sept. 21–25, falls outside the college’s regular January and June meetings. The Most Rev. Julian Dobbs, Dean of the Province and acting ecclesiastical authority during the inhibition of Archbishop Steve Wood, told the province in a Sept. 2 statement that the bishops would convene “later this month” to address pending discipline and that further communication would follow the meeting. The province has released no daily agenda and no livestream is planned.
The Western Gulf Coast matter reaches the college by referral. On May 16 the diocese’s electing synod met at St. Timothy’s Anglican Cathedral in Spring, Texas, and deadlocked through seven ballots between the Rev. Russell Martin and the Rev. Dr. Ben Sharpe. The clergy order consistently favoured Fr. Martin, the lay order Fr. Sharpe, and neither candidate secured the concurrent majorities required for election. By a vote of 21–17 among the clergy and 23–20 among the laity, the synod referred the choice to the College of Bishops under the provisions of the ACNA constitution and canons — the first such referral since the province’s founding in 2009.
The college was expected to act on the referral at its Tulsa meeting on June 15–17, but no announcement followed those sessions. The Rt. Rev. Clark W.P. Lowenfield, the diocese’s first and only diocesan bishop, remains in office pending the consecration of a successor. A celebration of his ministry and the consecration of the second bishop of the diocese had been scheduled for Aug. 14–15 in Houston; both dates have passed without an announced replacement date.
Two disciplinary sentences head the disclosed business.
The Rt. Rev. Chip Edgar, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, has accepted the charges laid against him following his participation in the Aug. 30 dedication of St. Timothy’s Chapel at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston alongside the Rt. Rev. Ruth Woodliff-Stanley, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. Bishop Dobbs described the joint appearance as having caused “great offense” in view of the province’s stance of principled disengagement from The Episcopal Church. Bishop Edgar has waived a board of inquiry and any trial, leaving sentence to the college. Available sentences under the canons in force run from admonition and censure through suspension to deposition.
The Rt. Rev. Derek Jones, formerly bishop of the province’s Special Jurisdiction for the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy, was found guilty in August by the Court for the Trial of a Bishop on all four counts against him — wilful refusal of a Godly Admonition, contravention of the canons, scandalous conduct and abuse of ecclesiastical power, and promoting schism. Bishop Jones did not lodge an appeal within the thirty-day window, and sentencing falls to the college. The court’s judgment also invited the bishops to consider reversing certain disciplinary actions Bishop Jones had taken against chaplains under his jurisdiction while in office.
The college convenes against a wider disciplinary backdrop. The trial of Archbishop Wood concluded on Sept. 11, and the court has until Dec. 21 to file its opinion. Related proceedings involving other former suffragans of the chaplaincy jurisdiction remain outstanding. The province continues under interim leadership and under the prior Title IV canons; the revised disciplinary canons approved by the Provincial Assembly take full effect in 2027 and do not govern the cases now before the bishops.
Observers including Canon Kendall Harmon and the Living Church correspondent Arlie Coles have noted on social media the lack of advance briefing surrounding the Plano meeting. A communiqué or pastoral letter from the college is the customary form in which results are made public, and one is expected after the bishops rise on Friday.