So the verdicts in the trial of ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) Bishop Stewart Ruch finally were released yesterday. And it was not what I expected.

I privately predicted a guilty verdict on neglect with exoneration for the rest of the charges. Instead, it was unanimously not guilty on all counts. What surprised me even more is that the Court took to task many of Ruch’s opponents. Really the Court took them to the woodshed. I did not know True Anglicans could get that angry.

Since the Final Order is so long and covers so much, I will focus on a few highlights of that Holy Whapping. But the whole Final Order is definitely worth reading for those interested in trial. If instead one wants a big picture summary, Richard Reeb assists.

As does canon lawyer Chad Graham.

And Anne and Matt Kennedy just had a frank if paywalled livestream about the conclusion of the trial. (Anne is very much worth subscribing to, btw.)

On to highlights from the Final Order of the trial which lays out the verdicts and what is behind them. While summarizing the facts of the case at the beginning, the Court hints at what is to come:

Many of the criticisms leveled against Bishop Stewart Ruch in the Presentments rest on mischaracterizations of decisions he made while attempting to minister to individuals in moments of acute crisis. (p. 5)

In other words, the case against Ruch was not good, and now we are going to tell you about it. The Holy Church now observes Advent, but the Court decided also to observe Festivus with the Airing of the Grievances.

The Order then summarizes how the diocese progressed in safeguarding measures in line with other church bodies. Then it gets into how the Province mishandled matters with its “proliferation” of investigations:

When the Province assumed control of the GRS investigation in late 2021, it set off a proliferation of overlapping and, at times, inconsistent inquiries. These inquiries increasingly shifted focus away from the original Rivera allegations toward broader questions about diocesan leadership, governance, and culture—particularly within Greenhouse. The result, as demonstrated at trial, created a fragmented and often confusing investigatory landscape that produced institutional fatigue and mistrust without substantive findings of episcopal wrongdoing. (p. 9)

This was an eye-popper:

Testimony at trial showed mounting bills into the hundreds of thousands of dollars without any centralized coordination. One bishop testified at trial that his diocese loaned the province $250,000 to fund the continued investigation and that at least one other diocese had extended loans to the Province for the same purpose. (p. 10)

The Court did not ask the obvious question, but I will. Is throwing money at getting Ruch really a proper use of the funds of other dioceses?

Then came this:

The trial testimony also established that the GRS Transition Report was withheld from Bishop Ruch after the Province took control; that elements of GRS’s work were later invoked against him despite his being denied access to the full report; and that the HB and Telios reports, though completed under provincial oversight, were not shared transparently with diocesan leadership. (p. 10)

That is inexcusable. You do NOT withhold evidence from a defendant, period. In a secular court that would be prosecutorial misconduct. A secular lawyer could be disbarred and jailed over this. And it is immediate grounds for mistrial. The Province committed a grave injustice against Bishop Ruch.

The College of Bishops also did poorly:

According to the evidence, by mid-2022, internal tensions and political pressures within the College of Bishops had grown. Bishops expressed divergent views on safeguarding expectations, diocesan autonomy, appropriate responses to advocacy groups, the role and conduct of independent investigations, and whether disciplinary action should be pursued before investigations were complete. Some urged rapid, visible action against diocesan leadership based on perceptions, rumors, or public pressure. Others insisted that canonical due process must be preserved. This divergence produced friction within the College. Witnesses acknowledged feeling “pressured” or “swept up” by public narratives, while others emphasized their desire for impartial review. (p. 10, 11)

The Court taking the College of Bishops to task was not on my card. Good on the Court! At the same time some good bishops advised a better and canonical way to deal with the “rumor and innuendo” flying about. (I will not dig into that process here, but it is summarized on p. 11ff.) The Province shoved that advice aside. The bishops did not even get a response!

Despite the formal request, the rumors and allegations were never adequately addressed. At trial, Bishops Reed, Menees, and Dobbs all testified that the request went unanswered. The evidence established that they never received a response; no Board of Inquiry contacted them; no investigation occurred; and the request remains unresolved. Meanwhile, Bishop Stewart Ruch—now in near-total isolation, cut off from information necessary to understand or respond to evolving allegations—was left without any canonical recourse. (p. 13)

That even though…

Remarkably, one day before numerous bishops submitted their demand for an inquiry into rumor and innuendo, the Telios report was delivered to the provincial leaders overseeing the investigation. That report exonerated Bishop Ruch, noting that “Many of the attacks on Bishop Ruch appear to be born out of anger and frustration with his conservative theology and leadership style.”

Nevertheless, with that exoneration in hand—and with no known action taken on the canonical “rumor and innuendo” request—the extra-canonical Provincial Investigative Team, over the objection of some of its members, obtained the signatures of three bishops on a presentment based on those same rumors and innuendo…. The signing bishops later acknowledged misgivings about the presentment and admitted they had no firsthand knowledge or basis for alleging canonical violations by Bishop Ruch. (p. 13)

So this whole long messy presentment trial that created so much anger and division in ACNA . . . probably should not have happened in the first place. So why was there a trial? The testimony of a prominent bishop is revealing.

Bishop Martyn Minns testified at trial that he perceived a growing and troubling shift in the provincial posture toward Bishop Ruch that he could not explain on evidentiary grounds. He stated that although Archbishop Foley Beach initially expressed affection for Bishop Ruch and hoped the matter would conclude without canonical action, that posture later reversed. Bishop Minns testified that provincial leadership involved in developing the presentment appeared increasingly influenced by advocacy pressure, becoming caught up with ACNAtoo actors and motivated by a perceived need to “give them something,” with Bishop Ruch becoming the focal point. He testified that this shift reflected a developing bias driven not by new factual findings, but by external advocacy pressure.

Bishop Minns further testified that a Telios report shared with him—but not publicly released—explicitly addressed the role of online and advocacy-driven narratives. He read into the record a passage stating that many allegations against Bishop Ruch were unreasonable, vindictive, or rooted in theological disagreement; that much of what was posted online was demonstrably false; and that some complainants appeared influenced by positions taken by advocacy groups rather than by firsthand experience. The report concluded that while there were areas for reconciliation, there was no evidence of abuse by Bishop Ruch, and that online narratives had significantly distorted perceptions of events. (p. 15)

The Court later summarizes:

Rumor, online advocacy, and social media narratives profoundly shaped perceptions of events, expectations of episcopal wrongdoing, and pressure on the Province to act. Yet none of these influences produced evidence or were grounded in firsthand knowledge.

By the end of 2023, the confluence of escalating rumors, institutional uncertainty, flawed investigative processes, and public pressure had produced two Presentments entirely unsupported by evidence. The Court concludes that the narrative foundation of both Presentments rested on misinterpretation, impression, assumption, and procedural error—not on facts that could satisfy the canonical burden of proof. (p. 17)

That’s how we got this awful trial.

All this, and I am not even near halfway through the Final Order. Again, if you care about this matter and about ACNA, it is worth reading the whole thing. The later sections excoriating those Provincial prosecutors who resigned and flounced get a bit hot. Good.

I will add my opinon that the Canons, as imperfect as they are, worked here. They would have worked much better if they had been followed better as Bishops Reed, Menees, and Dobbs advised. Some other bishops and ACNAtoo were unhelpful. (That is Anglican Understatement on my part.)

And the Provincial offices made an awful mess of things and were downright unjust towards Bishop Ruch. The evidence piles up yet higher that we need to take power away from the Province instead of increasing it as Archbishop Wood was so intent to do.

In short, thanks to the Court, we got a just result. Thanks to the Province and some feckless bishops, the way to that result was an unjust and divisive mess.