The Candidates for Moderator

Rev. John Shuck, pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethton, TN, ranked moderator candidates from the most to least friendly for helping to advance spiritual, ordination and marriage equality for LGBT persons in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He based his ranking (for the most part) on Presbyterian Voices for Justice's questions to the candidates. (Photo: Candidates, left to right--top row: James Belle, Cynthia Bolbach, Jin Kim; bottom row: Maggie Lauterer, Julia Leeth, Eric Nielsen).

Here is my rank from friendliest to least based on their comments:

Maggie Lauterer (Pro-Equality) "Perhaps when we can speak with a strong majority on matters of human sexuality, we can move on with our mission."

Cynthia Bolbach (Pro-Equality) "Those in favor of the full inclusion of gays and lesbians in our life together – and I include myself in that group – believe that we fail to satisfy the Gospel imperative of inclusiveness as we continue to exclude gays and lesbians from leadership in our church."

Eric Nielsen (Dodge but...) "Assessment of the gifts for ministry of Elders, Deacons, or Ministers of Word and Sacrament should be returned to congregations and presbyteries. They know their people and churches best." (Not sure if Eric agrees but the only way to succeed at this is to remove G-6.0106b. Didn't see any comment on marriage equality)

James Belle (Dodge) He quotes the Bible and Westminster with the slickest non-answer to the question.

Jin Kim (Anti-equality, but keep chatting) "My reflections on the life of Jesus lead me to reject both complete equality in the matters of either ordination or marriage, and ruling out any further GA consideration of these questions for years to come."

Julia Leeth (Anti-equality) "I pray the Assembly maintains the traditional definition of marriage as supported by the Bible..."

John's blog is much more entertaining to read than ours, so be sure to read his whole entry about the moderator candidates.