Anglican denomination erupts into power struggle after Bishop Stewart Ruch’s return

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn(RNS) — Archbishop Foley Beach, the primate of the Anglican Church in North America, accused his denomination’s highest court of attempting to stop an investigation into an Illinois bishop’s alleged misconduct.According to a statement Beach issued Wednesday (June 7), Bishop Stewart Ruch of the Upper Midwest Diocese made a “secret appeal” earlier this year to ACNA’s seven-member Provincial Tribunal to call off the investigation. After the tribunal issued a stay order, Beach and other denominational leaders questioned the impartiality of four tribunal members. He also asserted that the denomination’s bylaws don’t give the tribunal authority to issue a stay order.
This power struggle, which had been conducted behind closed doors for months, broke into the open Wednesday with Beach’s “Update on the Diocese of the Upper Midwest.”
“The Tribunal failed to give proper notice to me, the Presenting Bishops, or the Provincial Chancellors,” of Ruch’s request that the charges against him be dropped, Beach charged in his update. “We were not given a copy of what Bishop Ruch filed and we were not given opportunity to address the issue,” he wrote.
Beach’s update did not name the charges against Ruch, though a separate document he published Thursday suggests they were based in part on a September 2022 report by the investigative firm Husch Blackwell, which the Upper Midwest Diocese had hired to look into allegations swirling in at least two churches of sexual abuse. The investigators found that Ruch had been slow to act in response to abuse allegations.
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