J. Herbert Nelson selected as nominee for PCUSA Stated Clerk

“has served since 2010 as director of the PCUSA Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C”
Oh great this is going to be Parsons on steriods.

Was there any ever doubt as to the outcome? Rev. Nelson has had a long career both in social advocacy of various issues and causes, we well as a long work history in the bureaucracy of the organization.

This selection only serves to further the evolutionary process of the Office of the Stated Clerk from an administrative function to that of increasing politicization and use of the office for partisan polemics. In essence his office will function as the Bishop of the PCUSA. For those who agree with his points of view he will offer kind, sweet, reassuring words. That pretty much will confirm what they already want and desire to hear. Which was the whole point. The selection is neither bold, brave or revolutionary. It was the safe choice for the PCUSA, the expected choice. Cowards cannot do the work, indeed. Products of the institution: A very easy job to fall into.

I am deeply saddened by this decision. Rev. Nelson is a political activist with a far-left worldview. At this time, the denomination needed someone capable of bridging divides, not cementing PCUSA as the religious arm of the political left.

For the past few years what happens at the GA has been out of the hands of evangelical members. With each successive GA there has been
more and more emphasis on Social Political agendas and less on the
Great Commission of Jesus. Evangelism is secondary or almost non existent.

What happens at the GA is not well known or announced to the general membership. Unless it is an item like changing the definition of marriage
which makes the news, people have been unaware of the trajectory of the
PCUSA. (Churches in the discernment process are becoming aware). J. Nelson will be more of the same political agenda even though it is devisive and will not unite a divided denomination.

If you are a Pastor, Elder, or church member, it is urgent that what happens at the GA is announced to your congregation. There should be a concerted effort to list the amendments, outcomes, events and happenings of this next GA. Transparency is not going to come from the PCUSA…..
as much as they say it does. Members need to see what they support with their time and money.
Whether you like or do not like what is happening at the GA and in the denomination, let’s make the membership in each church aware of
what transpires at the GA!

I must confess that in a perverse kind of way this decision does not entirely displease me. It was to me not unlike hearing the news that a massive stroke has just ended the unbearable suffering of a terminally ill patient. You deeply regret the death, but you also welcome the end of the patient’s agony.

There has been for many years now a carefully cultivated pretense that the PCUSA was a Christian organization with a social justice component added to it. This pretense has served to keep many Christians and churches connected to the organization despite their unhappiness. This selection for Stated Clerk strips away the pretense and leaves no doubt that what Gradye Parsons and others began will now be brought to completion, and the PCUSA will soon become nothing more than a social justice organization with an ever-decreasing Christian component added to it.

After this summer’s General Assembly, any congregation that is still in the PCUSA will have chosen to remain in it for the duration. Individual Christians will still be able to swim for their lives from the sinking ship, but congregations that have not departed will no longer be able to do so, and will have no one to blame for the future that awaits them than themselves. May God have mercy.

I agree with you Donnie Bob, but I don’t really think it’s perverse. Like you say–it’s the natural expiration of a terminally ill body. As recently as last October, three elders from PCUSA churches told me at a Presbytery meeting that they did not know that the PCUSA ordained gay pastors. The membership is clueless..

While I share your impression that this nomination may be a *good* thing for those of us wishing for our congregations to leave PC(USA), I wonder why you believe “any congregation that is still in the PCUSA will have chosen to remain in it for the duration.”

J. Herbert Nelson is indeed a “social justice warrior,” and his tenure at the Washington office certainly bears that out. But what makes you believe that he will make it more difficult than it is already for a church to be granted gracious dismissal?

“Cowards cannot do this work” Please. What cowards cannot do is follow Paul’s admonition to not be conformed to this world. There is no courage in the PCUSAs new mission statement “Find a parade and get in front of it”

My thinking on how difficult it will soon become for congregations to leave the PCUSA is based on what happened in the Episcopal Church back in the early 2000s. The Presiding Bishop at that time was a man named Frank Tracy Griswold III, an old white guy and career cleric who was quite liberal in almost every way, but not exactly a full-blown Social Justice Warrior. Conservatives in the Episcopal Church thought that they had it bad under Frank Griswold. They were soon to discover that they didn’t know how bad bad could be.

When Griswold retired, he was replaced by a fanatically left-wing ideologue and full-bore Social Justice Warrior named Katherine Jefferts Schori who had none of Griswold’s pastoral inclinations, and a whole lot more zeal for fighting and defeating conservatives. She began deposing priests and bishops, and suing parishes and dioceses that threatened to leave the Episcopal Church for conservative groups. During her ten years in leadership she spent tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of dollars on legal actions against other Episcopalians.

My thinking here is that Gradye Parsons has been very much like Frank Griswold, a liberal to be sure, but one who has exercised a certain amount of pastoral restraint in dealing with conservatives. Herbert Nelson’s background and on-the-record opinions and actions give no indication that he will exercise that same kind of restraint. In all likelihood he will be to the PCUSA what Katherine Jefferts Schori was to the Episcopal Church.

Because of this, I anticipate that once Herbert Nelson is Stated Clerk and Jan Edmiston is Moderator they will start bringing down the hammer on all dissent, removing ministers from their pulpits, assuming original jurisdiction of congregations, and spending whatever they need to spend to put an end to the exodus of churches from the denomination. It will be hard ball, and it will not be pretty. This is why I say that those congregations that have not escaped the PCUSA by that point may very well never be allowed to leave.

I may be wrong about this. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that my predictions failed to materialize. But I do very much believe that after a couple of years of hard ball PCUSA politics from Herbert Nelson and Jan Edmiston, the old white guys Gradye Parsons and Heath Rada will be seen in retrospect to have been real softies by comparison.

This sounds a bit cynical, but churches seeking dismissal in the future may now be accused of being ‘racist’. It’s just another obstacle in the path of those seeking to leave PCUSA.

It’s great to see Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson continue the prophetic tradition begun by our original drum major for social justice, Jesus Christ, when the crowd wanted to exclude/stone the woman at the well. Jesus Christ is the Head of His Church. Social witness demonstrates our love of God, the greatest commandment. Social justice extends our love to one another as Christ loved us. Grace and peace be with you.

Last Fall, Heath Rada, Moderator of the 2014 PC(USA) General Assembly, issued a “Call to the Church”, stating that trust in the national church has been lost in many, if not most, PC(USA) congregations across the nation. “The need for reform is urgent,” he said.
 
From there, the Committee on the Office of the General Assembly began conducting a survey, intending to report the results at this year’s General Assembly, in which Rada urged all Presbyterians to participate.
 
But this sense of urgency that trust has been lost in the national church has been lost on the national church. Ever since Rada made his pronouncement, the national church has proceeded with business as usual.
 
Heath Rada had barely made his pronouncement, when the Presbyterian Mission Agency named as its interim executive director a man in a same-gender “marriage”. More recently, several presbyteries have promoted overtures to this year’s General Assembly to apologize on behalf of the whole church for believing and acting on the Bible’s proscription against homosexual behavior. And now, the PC(USA) Stated Clerk Nominating Committee has put forward as its candidate (whose election is a foregone conclusion) a liberal political activist, who for the past six years has led the politically-charged and controversial Washington Office of the PC(USA), advocating on their behalf many causes that Presbyterians in the pews find odious.
 
All of this goes to show that the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA) truly are out-of-touch with the Presbyterians in the pews. Consequently, the PC(USA) will continue to hemorrhage members, as it has for the past half century, while the national offices remain as blithely ignorant and uncaring as ever.
 
Heath Rada might well believe that reform in the PC(USA) is urgent, but reform is what most certainly NOT will happen in the PC(USA) anytime soon.

Because Rev. Nelson is just like Jesus, and Republican Presbyterians are just a bunch of violent hypocrites. At least you clarify what many of us believe-those in charge of PCUSA do not want to build consensus. They want to exclude non-leftists in order to cement the denomination the political wing of the Democrat party.

Interesting that you put a proposed stated clerk of the PCUSA on the same level as the Son of God. Could not be a better description of liberal theology.

If Nelson is elected, there will be no more room for middle ground in the PCUSA. It will be his way, or the highway. Wait and see.

Mr. Whitehurst, please help me understand how Jesus’ forgiveness of the sin of a woman caught in adultery falls under the category of social justice? Any category of justice under divine law would call for the penalty of death, which the crowd was clamoring for. What Jesus granted was not justice but mercy, don’t you agree? Jesus confronts the crowd, not to defend the woman as being innocent, but to highlight their hypocrisy in not seeking justice sincerely. Even after the threat of her execution is removed, she still needs to be forgiven for her sins. Jesus doesn’t commend her for her pursuit of an alternate lifestyle which pleases God.

If you do a review of Rev. Nelson’s work and writings over his career you find very little of original thought, breaking ground, or even “prophetic” musing. His career has largely consisted of finding a causes issue, matter and attaching himself to it. His writings on the matters of climate change orthodoxy, black lives matter, economic populism, socialism more or less parroting what already had been produced by other content sources or the result of movement divorced from the church.

In this sense he is the perfect choice for the moment the PCUSA is in. Bereft of trust, hemorrhaging membership, institutional collapse, the power base found in the Covenant Network, TAMSF, Israel BDS, Next, found their grip on the wheel slipping a bit. What they needed was a more or less an easy and friendly office, easily manipulated to retain their hold on all things GA and Louisville.

You will see this in Portland and his hand on the gavel. Do you think for 5 seconds the Foothills amendment will see the light of day? Or get a fair hearing, while the Apology voting shall we say is one left open until the desired results are produced. It’s good to the Bishop. But uneasy wears the crown. The same forces that seek to invest you can turn quite easily if they are disappointment. I believe some former employees of the PMA can speak to that. 4 years is a long, long time. Ask your predecessor.

I love it when I see obvious eisegesis at work !!

What is elevated above both and placed on the highest level is “social justice” “My Lord and my God” are replaced by “our original drum major” the sacred is replaced by the mundane.

Now THAT, Ken…is a pretty convenient rationalization for basically anything you want!