New Washington Office director named
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, Special to The Layman, May 27, 2010
The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II is the new director of the controversial Washington lobbying office of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Nelson, a third-generation Presbyterian minister, previously pastored a small new church development in a troubled neighborhood of inner-city Memphis. He has extensive connections with organizations seeking to carry on the legacy of the civil rights movement in the South, as well as with the Covenant Network of Presbyterians advocating “full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians.”
Following his introduction at the May meeting of the General Assembly Mission Council in May, the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson II talks with PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons.
Nelson has been pastor of Liberation Community Presbyterian Church in Memphis since its establishment in 1999. An introduction to one of Nelson’s published sermons describes the church as “a tent-making new church development that evangelizes the poor into PCUSA membership.” It was the Memphis area’s first African-American church plant in 46 years.
According to statistics on the PCUSA Web site, Liberation Church started with a membership of 108 in 1999. It membership for the most recent year, 2008, stood at 96. Average worship attendance is reported as 35.
Seeking a ‘Liberation Movement’
Nelson issued a call in 2007-2008 for the formation of an African American Presbyterian Network (AAPN). He presented this call as a response to “considerable discussion among progressive African Americans taking place across the country regarding an African American Presbyterian liberation movement.” Such a movement would “embrace the belief that God through Jesus Christ gives us power to resurrect dying churches; transform stagnant ministries; evangelize the unchurched and build relationships with others without being integrated out of power.”
Nelson protested against “the corporatization of the Presbyterian Church (USA)” and “the regressive tendencies of African American Presbyterians since church reunion in 1983.” He sought to “mobilize the masses toward a direct action strategy.” The Memphis pastor maintained, “Our imperative is to model a posture of strength through self-help and determination.” He foreswore any denominational funding because “we cannot legitimately expect an unrepentant historic oppressor to finance our freedom.”
Nelson expanded on his concerns in a paper published within the past year by the denomination’s Theology and Worship Office. Entitled “Overcoming the Presbyterian Power Trap,” the paper contends, “We are not prepared in this current period to engage an authentic claim to becoming a multicultural denomination until we deal with the inherent racism, classism and gender discrimination within our own ranks.” Nelson warns, “Presently, we are crippled by a model of white male domination at all governing body leadership levels within the PCUSA.”
RELATED ARTICLE:
Read Alan Wisdom’s in-depth interview with Washington Office Director J. Herbert Nelson II
“Presbyterians must bring Jesus into our present arrangements of power constructed by white males so that we may unbind ourselves from the categorization, alienation and separation that has caused centuries of pain,” Nelson declares in an essay posted on the Covenant Network Web site. He affirms “the struggle for full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians,” alongside movements for racial justice, as a form of resistance to categorization, alienation and separation.
“Although we African-Americans live in the contradictions in church life by hiring church personnel and ordaining clergy and officers who are lesbian and gay persons, our theology remains stagnant with regards to full public acceptance,” Nelson regrets. “But why should this be? We can support a movement against exclusive power structures [the lesbian-gay movement] even if we do not think it is exactly like our own struggle as African Americans.” He frames the debate over the “fidelity and chastity” standard for church officers as a dispute over power: “Is this issue really about sin?” he asks. “[O]r is it centered on maintaining the ‘good ole boys’ club through conservative control of the denomination?”
Covenant Network Connections
At the time of this writing, Nelson is listed on the Covenant Network board of advisers. A network newsletter from summer 2005 identified him as then newly elected to a term on the organization’s board of directors.
Nelson was a featured preacher at a Covenant Network conference in November 2006. He addressed the apostle Paul’s condemnation of same-sex relations in Romans 1:24-27 and admitted, “Paul is declaring direct opposition to homosexuality and is labeling it as a sin.”
But the Memphis pastor went on to assert that “the information that was available to him [Paul]” was limited. “Paul had not seen the chromosomal evidence,” Nelson said, “that leads us to the recognition that our traditional classification of maleness and femaleness is now held hostage.” The apostle had not “preached the funeral of a deceased church member who had lived in a lesbian or gay relationship for 34 years,” Nelson speculated. And he doubted that Paul had counseled a parishioner who experienced homosexuality as an unchosen orientation.
“But despite Paul’s limitations,” Nelson challenged his audience, “what is our excuse?” He insisted that the PCUSA must “begin to fashion and shape the gospel as a church around what it really means to live in the 21st century and not the 19th century.” Nelson interpreted Paul’s deeper theology as pointing toward a renunciation of any claims to know God’s will for human sexuality:
Paul in maturity finally realized and came to the understanding that the closer I draw to God, the more uncertain I become of who God really is, and the more ignorant I become of what God is really trying to do. So I give it all up, I give up trying to label, I give up trying to categorize, I give up trying to demonize, I give up trying to make these strong statements of judgment….
Sharp Political Jabs
Nelson’s Covenant Network sermon also slipped in a sharp political jab. “Despite declaring that we [Presbyterians] are called to peace,” he complained, “we are still too slow to speak out against a war whose foundation is based on bogus intelligence and debts being paid for a fraudulent election to Texas oil barons.” The reference to “a fraudulent election” suggested the preacher’s refusal to accept the election of George W. Bush in 2000, and the accusation of “bogus intelligence” implied that Bush initiated the Iraq War out of dishonest and base motives.
Nelson’s political involvement has been particularly through a group that he co-founded called the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance. The alliance sees itself as a successor to the Poor People’s Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was spearheading at the time of his assassination in 1968. “It is clear that nothing short of th
e resurrection and expansion of the movement that Dr. King was leading – a poor people’s movement for justice and righteousness – can save the nation from its blindness, greed and structural flaws,” an alliance flyer declares.
“Far from preaching good news,” the flyer charges, “much of Christendom is silent on the question of the poor and some have even become hostile. Christianity is increasingly becoming the faith of the empire, an empire that proclaims freedom and democracy on the one hand while enforcing economic tyranny within this country and abroad on the other.”
The alliance flyer posits a moral equivalence between terrorists and “the empire” that they attack:
The world reacts to the massive system of international “poverty-making” through random acts of desperate violence. The spirit of the empire is to crush this desperate violence with even greater violence. Each act of violence escalates another round of desperate violence. Thus, the world is plunged into a permanent war culture.
‘A Source of Controversy’
The PCUSA Washington Office director’s position has been vacant since the longtime director, the Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, left in late 2007. A 2009 study of the office’s mission commissioned by the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) stated, “The Washington Office remains poorly understood and supported by much of the church and a source of controversy within it.”
The study cited letters and survey results featuring complaints about “a perceived liberal, Democratic bias on the part of Washington Office staff.” It added that “this partisan perception is widespread and is destructive to the unity and public profile of the PCUSA.” Correspondents and survey respondents also “charge that the Washington Office uses General Assembly guidance selectively to support policy priorities it favors.” They “express concern for a perceived lack of Biblical and theological grounding” and a preoccupation with “a secular political agenda.”
The GAMC study concluded that “a comprehensive analysis and upgrade of the communications strategies and methods of the Washington Office” was the main solution for these problems. “Greater transparency and clarity about how the priorities are established for staff time and focus might well contribute to a broader appreciation for the mission and ministry carried out by the Washington Office,” the study predicted. It did not propose any adjustments in the ideological orientation of the office’s political advocacy.
The GAMC study recommended that the new office director should be a person “who is esteemed within the PCUSA as a culturally sensitive person of theological integrity with a sophistication about public affairs and a commitment to full accountability to the PCUSA.” The council has now selected Nelson to fill that bill.
Alan F.H. Wisdom is vice president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC, as well as director of its Presbyterian Action for Faith & Freedom program.