Anglican Leader Sues Breakaway Rival for Defamation, Disputing $47,862 Misappropriation Claim

Bishop Julian Dobbs, interim head of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), has filed a defamation lawsuit against Bishop Derek Jones, leader of the Anglican Reformed Catholic Church, which one report describes as a breakaway body. According to the reports, the lawsuit centers on a claim that Jones accused Dobbs of misappropriating $47,862.

Jones first raised financial misconduct claims last fall during a video-conference call with more than 120 Anglican chaplains. Dobbs says the allegations were later resurfaced in a December 30, 2025, article in The Washington Post.

Dobbs disputes the figure. He has submitted evidence to a U.S. federal court in Northern Alabama stating that the actual amount in question was $3,750. He attributes the discrepancy to a 2019 misplacement in a bank account. A letter from a certified accountant, which Dobbs has submitted, says the funds were properly accounted for and used as intended. The reports do not describe any separate finding by a court or other body on these figures.

The lawsuit accuses Jones of maliciously resurfacing old allegations to damage Dobbs’s reputation and discredit the ACNA. On February 17, Dobbs asked the court to order Jones to pay compensatory and punitive damages and to issue a full retraction.

Jones has given a different account of the dispute. He said that the ACNA panel reviewing the allegations included Dobbs, which he described as malicious. One report states that Jones told the chaplains’ call that the core disagreement concerns unresolved issues about the status of the Armed Forces and Chaplaincy Jurisdiction he founded, and not his leadership. That report does not say how Jones characterized the financial figures themselves.

Dobbs’s evidence, as the reports describe it, shows a sum far smaller than the one Jones named, and the question of how the funds were handled is central to the court filing. The reports present the parties’ competing claims without a ruling on the matter. Honest dealing in money matters, as Luke 12:48 sets out in its own terms, [accountability and honest dealing] applies here to both the handling of the 2019 funds and the way the allegations were circulated.