The Court of Review of The Episcopal Church has affirmed a Diocese of Southern Ohio hearing panel’s finding of Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy against the Rev. Dr. Daniel W. McClain, and left standing the recommendation that he be deposed from the ordained ministry — but the court also reversed several of the hearing panel’s broader findings and sharply rebuked the panel for granting summary judgment on disputed facts without holding an evidentiary hearing.

The unanimous opinion, released after oral arguments held online on 23 June 2026, arises from a Title IV disciplinary case that began with a complaint filed by the watchdog site Anglican Watch and its editor, Eric Bonetti, in mid-2023.

Writing for the majority, court president Laura A. Russell, Esq., summarised the disposition tersely: “we are affirming in part and reversing in part.”

The court affirmed: 

• the finding that Fr. McClain committed Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy under Canon IV.4.h.9, based on his own “repeated admissions” that “many months before the Rev. McClain’s pending divorce became final, he entered into an extended sexual relationship with a woman (now his second wife), and did so quite publicly, even traveling to England with his new partner at church expense and broadcasting services of morning prayer from the deck of his partner’s home”;
• the parallel finding that he had failed “to model a life of fidelity expected of a member of the clergy”; and
• the hearing panel’s recommendation that the Bishop Diocesan of Southern Ohio depose him from the ordained ministry — a recommendation the court found “supported by substantial undisputed evidence on the record.”

The court reversed, however, the hearing panel’s broader adverse findings that Fr. McClain had “neither the temperament, understanding of obedience, nor the understanding of church polity necessary to perform as a priest,” that he had engaged in “a persistent pattern of conduct,” and that he had made decisions “not in line with the relationship between rector and the congregation entrusted to their pastoral care.” Those conclusions, the court held, were “unsupported by substantial evidence” because they turned on material factual disputes that were never tested at a hearing.

The court also treated the Diocese’s other charges — running from Covid-19 protocols to nepotism, financial management, an unauthorised exorcism, and alleged retaliation — as effectively dismissed, and held that its own ruling will “bar future Title IV claims against the Rev. McClain based on the past conduct alleged in those dismissed charges.”

Much of the opinion is given over to a warning about the misuse of “summary judgment” in Title IV cases — a procedure the canons do not expressly authorise, but which the parties borrowed from Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The Diocese’s partial summary judgment motion, the court noted, “was based exclusively on admitted and public adultery,” and on those narrow facts was permissible. But the hearing panel then declined to hold any evidentiary hearing on the remaining, hotly disputed counts, declaring in its 14 October 2025 order that “the Hearing Panel unanimously agreed that nothing could be submitted or presented in the future that would change the Panel’s findings” and that “there is no need to convene a full hearing.”

That was “plainly erroneous,” the court held. The Canons “plainly require a hearing to be held on every motion filed before the Hearing Panel,” and “where there are contested material facts, the Hearing Panel is only empowered to act on the merits of the charges after an evidentiary hearing.” A subsequent offer by the panel president to hold a Zoom hearing “without any witnesses” did not cure the problem, the court said, because such a session “is plainly NOT an evidentiary hearing.”

“We emphasize,” the court wrote, “that unless represented parties stipulate in writing that the matter can be decided on the written submissions, that failure to hold an evidentiary hearing on a dispositive motion will ordinarily result in reversal.” Only Fr. McClain’s repeated, public admissions of the adultery itself saved the core finding here from being sent back for a new hearing.

A concurring opinion by the Rev. Cn. Gregory Jacobs, Esq., Dr. Delbert C. Glover, the Rt. Rev. Betsey Monnot and Dra. Grecia Christian Reynoso, Esq. held: “Reconciliation cannot be built on unresolved accusations treated as fact. Accountability requires clarity, and justice requires that disputed factual claims be tested as the Canons provide. Healing is hindered, not advanced, when a person remains burdened by findings made without the evidentiary hearing required to resolve contested matters.”

Fr. McClain had urged, in mitigation, that The Episcopal Church’s marriage doctrine has evolved to the point where “a clergyman’s admitted adultery, committed during a divorce proceeding, where the marriage had broken down irretrievably, would not automatically constitute Conduct Unbecoming a Member of the Clergy.” His counsel, Deborah R. Stambaugh, Esq., emphasised that the affair began well after the parties were living apart, that one bishop had already told him the marriage had broken down irretrievably, and that he had by then been suspended for eighteen months and lost his post as rector.

The court dismissed the argument in a single paragraph: “The Ten Commandments, Exodus 21:14 (‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’), the vows of marriage in the Book of Common Prayer (BCP, p. 424 (‘forsaking all others’)), and the ordination vows taken by clergy (BCP, p. 544, (‘wholesome example’)), make clear that adultery … is a violation of those vows, and a very serious matter. Such conduct is Unbecoming of a Member of the Clergy, even if committed during a divorce proceeding.”

Nor did the court accept Fr. McClain’s argument that the earlier, withdrawn Title IV complaint filed by his estranged first wife, or the Bishop Diocesan’s November 2024 Godly Judgment dissolving the pastoral relationship at St. Paul’s, barred the present proceeding. The new complaint had been initiated by a lay person outside the parish and diocese, the court noted, and diocesan canons did not preclude the Title IV process from continuing.

The case has been a long-running story in the Diocese of Southern Ohio and in the wider Episcopal press.

Fr. McClain became priest-in-charge of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakwood, a Dayton suburb, in September 2020, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic. His tenure, the court noted, “was controversial and resulted in a number of disputes over Covid protection practices, over his hiring as a parish employee of his then-wife, Kate McClain, over his approach to vestry nominations, over his financial management, and over changes he made in the parish’s liturgical practices.”

Kate McClain filed for divorce in April 2022 and, at around the same time, filed a Title IV complaint that included what the court described as “inflammatory accusations about abuse of her and their four sons, accusations that the divorce court reportedly later found to be baseless in resolving the custody dispute.” Fr. McClain was placed on administrative leave by then-Bishop Provisional G. Wayne Smith in May 2022, but the accusation of spousal abuse was reviewed and set aside by the diocesan conference panel, and the vestry asked him to return that autumn. In February 2023 the vestry elected him rector by a 6–3 vote.

The current Title IV proceeding was opened late in January 2024 following the complaint from Anglican Watch. Fr. McClain was placed on administrative leave in February 2024, and the Rt. Rev. Kristin Uffelman White was seated as Bishop Diocesan of Southern Ohio later the same month. In November 2024 the St. Paul’s vestry voted to dissolve the pastoral relationship, and Bishop Uffelman White entered a Godly Judgment to that effect. Fr. McClain now works as a schoolteacher.

The Diocese’s Notice of Allegations, still posted on its public website, sets out the underlying picture: even as his divorce ground on, Fr. McClain was in an admitted “romantic” and “sexual” relationship with another woman, took her with him on a week-long church-related trip to the United Kingdom in summer 2023, and on at least two occasions live-streamed 9 a.m. morning prayer to the parish from the patio of her home in Columbus.

At the Court of Review hearing on 23 June 2026, Fr. McClain did not address the court in person. His counsel, Ms Stambaugh, argued that the hearing panel had denied him any opportunity to defend himself and had allowed a distorted public picture to take hold. “Very unfair and very misleading information had been put out about him,” she told the court, adding that “Father Dan’s dignity has not been respected. He has been made into a leper and a social pariah by what is nothing short of cyberbullying at the hands of the church.” Of his marriage she said: “His wife abandoned him. He sought out healthy companionship that helped stabilize him through a turbulent time after being abandoned”.

Church attorney Steven J. Ellcessor, for the Diocese, urged the court to look past the wider grievances. “This is not a case, like many, where priests have engaged in adulterous affairs, realized their errors, confessed to their bishop, expressed repentance and accepted the consequences of their actions,” he argued. “This priest never reported his conduct to his bishop, continued his conduct openly for well over a year and remained unrepentant.”

Anglican Watch, which filed the underlying complaint and has covered the case in extensive detail for more than three years, welcomed the decision.

“Anglican Watch commends the Diocese of Southern Ohio for acting with integrity by following Title IV,” the site said. “Such an approach gives us hope that the church can ensure mission integrity and move toward greater accountability for its clergy.” It added that “as a result of today’s decision, the matter returns to the Diocese of Southern Ohio, where we expect the diocesan bishop will defrock McClain.”

In earlier commentary on the underlying hearing panel decision, editor Eric Bonetti had put the point in bluntly moral terms: “There is no fact pattern under which his two-year adulterous affair was appropriate,” he wrote, adding that Fr. McClain’s refusal to acknowledge his conduct was “a compelling indictment of his behavior and his lack of an ethical reference point.” “Friendly is not the same as faithful,” he concluded. “Doubtless there are people who found Dan likable, but that does not make him suitable to be a priest”.

The Court of Review’s opinion leaves the Bishop Diocesan of Southern Ohio “free to move forward to a decision on sentencing.” If Bishop Uffelman White accepts the recommendation, Fr. McClain will be deposed — stripped of the authority to function as an Episcopal priest.

For the wider church, the opinion is likely to be read as much for its procedural teaching as for its outcome. The Court of Review has affirmed that admitted, public, unrepentant adultery by a married member of the clergy remains, in 2026, a very serious canonical matter. It has also served plain notice that Title IV hearing panels may not short-cut the Canons’ requirement of an evidentiary hearing by importing summary judgment from secular civil practice — even when the temptation to do so, in a case as public and as painful as this one, must have been considerable.