William Cox

William Jackson Cox (January 24, 1921 – January 17, 2025) was an American Episcopalian bishop. Made a bishop in 1972, he served first as suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and then as assistant bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma. A theological conservative within the Episcopal Church, in his retirement, he played a role in the Anglican realignment. Cox performed ordinations and confirmations without the permission of Episcopal bishops, resulting in his deposition from ministry in 2008 and his affiliation with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone and eventually the Anglican Church in North America.

Early life and military service Cox was born in 1921 in Valeria, Kentucky. In 1929, the Cox family sold their farm and moved to Middletown, Ohio, where his parents worked in a paper mill. Cox married Betty Drake on December 20, 1941, and was drafted into the U.S. Army in April 1942. Due to poor eyesight, Cox was deployed in stateside assignments in the Army Medical Corps and the Supply and Logistics Division, rising to the rank of captain and working at the Pentagon by the end of World War II. After the war, Cox was discharged in 1947.

After the war, the Coxes moved to Nebraska, where Cox co-founded AM radio station KBRL in McCook. While there, he was invited to Christmas Eve mass at the local Episcopal church, which he later described as a "life-changing experience." Called up to serve during the Korean War, Cox returned to work in supply and logistics at the Pentagon. The Cox family began attending All Hallows Church in Maryland, where they were baptized. He was later assigned to the U.S. Embassy in London, where he and his family attended a local Anglican church. After this assignment, Cox resigned as a major but continued to serve in the Army Reserve. His first cure was two small mission churches—one white, one black—in Cumberland, Maryland. He merged these two churches into the integrated Church of the Holy Cross in 1960. He also chaired the General Convention's Standing Commission on the Church in Small Communities.

After retiring from the Diocese of Oklahoma in 1988, Cox was called for three years as an assistant bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. In June 2005, at the request of Church of Uganda Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, he ordained three clergy and performed confirmations at Christ Church in Overland Park, Kansas, which had earlier that year negotiated its departure from the Diocese of Kansas.

Cox was invited to come under the primatial oversight of the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.

Later life and death Cox lived in the Tulsa area in retirement, where he was a member of the Anglican Church of the Holy Spirit in the ACNA's Diocese of the Living Word. His wife died in 2009. Cox died on January 17, 2025, a week shy of his 104th birthday.