Final Payments and All Completed Forms are Now Due!
Please bring them to the church office during regular business hours or before worship on a Sunday morning, or mail them to:
Lauren Yeh
Nassau Presbyterian Church
61 Nassau Street
Princeton, NJ 08542
Sunday, May 5 – Organizational Meeting
On Sunday, May 5, we will meet for lunch and a brief organizational meeting in Room 302/303, after the second service (12:30-1:30pm). Gather with your work team, learn about the project you’ll be working on, talk about what to pack, what to expect – get to know the 50+ other members of this year’s ASP Trip!
If you cannot make this meeting, please contact Mark Edwards (, 609-933-7599).
ASP 3 S’s (Sensitivity, Safety, and Stewardship) ASP 3 S’s
Be prepared to sign the ASP Trip Covenant (the whole group signs the same document, text below) – sign on “Forms Day” April 7, at the Organizational Meeting in June, or contact Lauren Yeh
Complete ASP Online Registration
Complete ASP Volunteer Statement but do not sign it, VolRegStatement-Group7875 (pdf) – note, this is a 2 page document!
(all the details you need for the online registration are on this form)
Final Payment (contact Lauren Yeh if you are unsure of the amount due)
ASP Covenant Text:
A covenant is a promise or vow made between two parties. In Genesis, God took Abraham outside one night and showed him the stars in the sky. God promised that Abraham’s descendants would be as many as those stars and that from those descendants would come a Savior. We now know that the promise was kept in the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.
ASP covenants to our groups that we will do everything we can to facilitate a meaningful service opportunity. We will provide a center facility and staff; we will fulfill all the details that must come together to make a significant mission experience for our volunteers. As a part of the faith walk through service, ASP asks volunteers to enter into a covenant with ASP. Volunteers are asked to abide by the “Expectations, Rules, and Regulations” that make communal living and working successful. ASP also asks that volunteers abide by additional rules that may be given at their particular center.
Have each volunteer read the ASP “Expectations, Rules, and Regulations,” the 3 S’s: Sensitivity, Safety, and Stewardship, and the ASP Safety Manual before signing.
The world we live in today is one where faith is used mostly to stop progress and to keep the United States from changing. Our history, however, reflects a completely different story. From the first European settlers to the American Revolution, to the expansion of the suffrage, abolition, and Civil Rights, faith groups and faith-led activism have driven this country forward. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King might have said that the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, but it bends only because people pick up the mantle and bend that arc. This session will highlight several major incidents in the American political story where faith-drive activism expanded the circle of moral concern and moved us closer to realizing the Kingdom of God here on earth.
William Field is active in religious and academic circles. He is an Associate Teaching Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University where he lectures on the topic of religion and politics, among other things. He is president of a small congregation of the United Church of Christ in Monmouth County, served for a decade on the UCC’s regional governing body, and went to Germany as a delegate of that body to give a talk on Nationalism, Populism and the Church, here he offered insight into how European and American churches are and should be responding to the rising threat of xenophobia and extremism.
Ongoing through December 16
no class November 18 or 25
In-Depth Bible Study: Colossians
George Hunsinger
9:15 AM
Maclean House
George Hunsinger returns for the 21st year to lead this verse-by-verse examination of Colossians. Bibles are available for use during the class. Find them on the Deacon Desk by the church kitchen. Class meets next door in Maclean House (Garden Entrance).
Jesus, Race & Incarceration:
Why Our Faith Prevents Us from Looking the Other Way
Mary Beth Charters, Jonathan Shenk
Does the life and teaching of Jesus offer any insight on the current climate of racial tension and burgeoning rates of incarceration in our country today? Do white people of faith have any responsibility or culpability regarding our nation’s history of slavery and Jim Crow oppression? How does faith intersect with activism? There are more African Americans under correctional control today than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War. Mary Beth Charters and Jonathan Shenk will speak to these issues and to how race and incarceration have shaped their personal faith journeys, life, and activism.
Mary Beth Charters an ordained elder, is a recent graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and is currently serving as resident chaplain at RWJ University Hospital, New Brunswick. She is a retired educator after 30+ years in school, medical and psychiatric facilities working with diverse ages, populations, and needs.
Jonathan Shenk is a former associate pastor at Dutch Neck Presbyterian Church, Princeton Junction. For the past 12 years he has been the owner of Greenleaf Painters, a house-painting company. In addition to his business involvement, he is a certified spiritual director and an advocate for transforming the U.S. criminal justice system.
Nassau Church in the World: Trends and Current Commitments
Dave Davis
A look back at where we have been and where we are now related to the church’s footprint in our community and in the world. Pastor Davis will present some history and track recent changes in our Mission and Outreach spending while discussing the intent and the discernment that impacts our spending beyond the walls of the church. If you want to know how Nassau Church spends its mission dollars, this presentation is for you!
Dave Davis has been pastor and head-of-staff at Nassau since the fall of 2000. His PhD in Homiletics from Princeton Theological Seminary focused on preaching as a corporate act and the active role of the listener in the preaching event. He has published two sermon collections, A Kingdom You Can Taste and Lord, Teach Us to Pray.
According to a report published by the Anti-Poverty Network of New Jersey, structural racism and poverty create “a multiplicity of injustices” directly and indirectly affecting the education, housing, employment, legal protections, health and hunger of people of color living in poverty. Panelists from Nassau’s Trenton partners will provide concrete examples of the multiplicity of injustices endured by the people that they serve in Trenton and Princeton and how their programs, activism and advocacy work together to help eradicate these injustices.
Adriana Abizadeh serves as the Executive Director at the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund (LALDEF). LALDEF’s organizational mission is to defend the rights of the Latin American community, facilitate its access to health care and education, and advance cross-cultural understanding within the Mercer County region. After a BA in Political Science from Rutgers University, she completed a master’s degree in Public Policy at Drexel University.
Carolyn Biondi serves as the Executive Director of Arm In Arm. Prior to joining Arm In Arm, Carolyn held positions in development, data management and program evaluation in community health care, child welfare and emergency shelter settings. She is currently working toward a second master’s degree, this one in Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Karen Hernández-Granzen serves as pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church of Trenton. She also has leadership roles in the Arts, Music and Culture Committee of the City of Trenton, the Princeton’s Civil Rights Commission, the United Mercer Interfaith Organization, the Bethany House of Hospitality, and the Latin American Legal Defense and Education Fund. She was the inaugural 2017 Community Partner-in-Residence, of the Pace Center for Civic Engagement, Princeton University. She is a 2018 PCUSA Women of Faith Award recipient.
Princeton’s Half Marathon will be held on Sunday, November 4.
Route map with road closings and timing is below. Most roads should be re-opened by 9 a.m. More information can be found on the Princeton Half Marathon website.
How can we make sense of the tragedy in Syria? For years, headlines carry reports of ISIS, chemical weapons, refugees drowning in the sea, and one of the worst humanitarian crises of our times. In the rush of breaking news, however, it can be difficult to get the full picture of the whole conflict is about. Called “essential reading” by the New York Times, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria offers that vital background, exclusively in Syrians’ own words. Prof. Wendy Pearlman spent five years carrying out hundreds of interviews with Syrians across the Middle East and Europe to chronicle the origins and evolution of the Syrian war through the stories of ordinary people who have lived its unfolding. Please join Wendy for a discussion about Syria based on her acclaimed new book.
Copies will be available for sale at the event and Wendy will be available briefly afterward to sign them. Copies will also be available between Sunday Services at Nassau Presbyterian Church on October 21, 28, and November 4.
Wendy Pearlman is the Koldyke Outstanding Teaching Associate Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, where she specializes in Middle East politics. She is the author of four books, as well as dozens of articles, essays, and book chapters. Wendy earned a PhD from Harvard University and a BA from Brown University, and has conducted research in Spain, Germany, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Nassau’s mission partner, Cetana Educational Foundation, is celebrating its 25th anniversary on Friday, November 2 at 7:30 pm with a champagne and dessert affair at the D&R Greenway’s Johnson Education Center on Rosedale Road. The event includes an auction of beautiful Myanmar art and handcrafts (preview items at cetana25.com). Cetana, founded by Nassau member Lois Young and her family, has brought educational opportunities to thousands of Myanmar youth, most recently with its Nassau Church-funded English teacher-training project in Kanpetlet.
Tickets are $100 per person. Contact: Sue Jennings, .
Auction Items can be previewed online: cetana25.com
To find out more about CETANA please visit: cetana.org
Nassau’s first annual water walk fund raiser to support Villages in Partnership, VIP.
Start time: After second service, wear your walking shoes.
We will provide the buckets for carrying water.
Bonhoeffer and the Question of Compromise (1906-1945)
Mark Edwards
9:15 a.m.
Assembly Room
Theology has ideals of divine perfection. Politics has real world problems. What’s a disciple to do when Christ isn’t on the ballot? Working from both Bonhoeffer’s systematized Ethics and his spontaneous reflections from prison, we’ll address what he might teach us about confronting political and theological compromise.
Mark Edwards joined Nassau as Director of Youth Ministries in September of 2013. He is a lifelong Presbyterian and holds a PhD (Philosophy and Theology, 2013) from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has been an Assistant of Instruction at Princeton University, and is currently an adjunct professor at The College of New Jersey. Mark is married to Janine and they have two children.
The South African theologian Russel Botman was internationally known for his many contributions to public life – as student leader during the struggle against apartheid, as influential congregational minister, as ecumenical church leader, as academic theologian, as President of the South African Council of Churches, as Rector and Vice-Chancellor of Stellenbosch University, and as leading voice in tertiary education in Africa. His family participated in the life of this congregation when Botman was a Fellow at The Center of Theological Inquiry. One of the founding figures in what is today known as “public theology,” he received the Kuyper Prize in 2014 for his contributions to public life. This class will focus on how faith informed and inspired Botman’s own life of public service – in his own words, his “project of hope.”
Dirk Smit is the Rimmer and Ruth De Vries Professor of Reformed Theology and Public Life at Princeton Theological Seminary. Smit came to Princeton from South Africa, where he taught systematic theology at the universities of Western Cape and Stellenbosch, was involved in ecumenical church activities and contributed to public life with both popular and academic writing.
Ignacio Ellacuría: Radical Witness to the Kingdom (1930-1989)
Francisco Pelaez-Diaz
9:15 a.m.
Assembly Room
Why in some instances does witnessing to the Kingdom of God lead to the ultimate sacrifice? How does this sacrifice in some cases become a life-giving inspiration for future generations? The life and work of the Spanish-Salvadoran philosopher and theologian Ignacio Ellacuría represents a clear example of this kind of inspiration for a deep commitment to the work of justice, freedom and the liberation from the social and political conditions that inflict suffering and death. Join Francisco Pelaez-Diaz to learn more about this Latin American theologian, who remains unfamiliar to many in the US, and explore together the answers to these questions.
The Rev. Francisco Pelaez-Diaz is a PhD candidate in Religion and Society at Princeton Theological Seminary. Francisco is originally from Mexico and has worked as an ordained pastor among immigrants in a multiethnic/multiracial PC(USA) congregation in Dayton, Ohio. His dissertation –in progress– Is titled “Migration as a Way of the Cross: Ignacio Ellacuría’s Notion of ‘Crucified Peoples’ for Theological Reframing of Central American Migrant Experience.”
The subject of a high-profile documentary in 2017, An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story, and dubbed by Religion & Politics as “Washington’s Favorite Theologian, ” Reinhold Niebuhr was respected by the political left and right. A pastor (Evangelical and Reformed Church) before he was a celebrated theologian and foreign policy expert, Niebuhr wrote prolifically about the self, morality, ethics, politics, the public square, justice and so much more. Join us for a conversation about theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s legacy and its relevance for our times.
Peter Paris is Elmer G. Homrighausen Professor of Christian Social Ethics Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. Paris is a world-renowned scholar, honored most recently by a collection in his honor, Ethics That Matters: African, Caribbean, and African American Sources. While in Princeton he also worked closely with the Princeton University African American Studies Program. He has also been a Visiting Professor in Harvard University Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary (New York), and Trinity Theological College (Legon, Ghana).
Daniel Migliore is Professor Emeritus of Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. An ordained Presbyterian minister, whose broad interests include systematic theology, Karl Barth, the Trinity, and Christology. During his career he taught courses on Christology, the doctrine of God, the theology of Karl Barth, Barth’s Church Dogmatics, and an introductory course on the doctrines and practices of Christian faith. His book Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology has been a standard through three editions. Dan is a “clergy member” of Nassau.
George Hunsinger returns for the 21st year to lead this verse-by-verse examination of Colossians. Bibles are available for use during the class. Find them on the Deacon Desk by the church kitchen. Class meets next door in Maclean House (Garden Entrance).
Explore Shakespeare’s relationships with, and use of, the text of sacred scripture. Writing before the publication of the King James Version, he relied for the most part on the so-called Geneva Bible, though he occasionally shows awareness of the Vulgate’s Latin. Rather than turning to scripture as a source of truth or meaning as earlier dramatists did, particularly those who wrote the Mystery Plays to which the young Shakespeare was exposed, we find him treating it almost as a source like any other. He thereby explores the tensions about the authority and significance of scripture that dominated so much of English and European public life in the century after Luther posted his 95 theses.
Rhodri Lewis is Senior Research Scholar in English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University, having recently moved from a Professorship of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He remains an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh’s College, Oxford. His most recent publication is Hamlet and the Vision of Darkness (Princeton UP, 2017), and he is currently at work on two main projects: a short book on Christopher Marlowe, and something much longer on the development of satirical writing between 1500 and 1750.
Austen’s final completed novel, Persuasion, published posthumously in 1918, tells the story of spinster Anne Elliot’s second chance at happiness with the same man, Captain Wentworth, she had rejected years before. But marriage is never just marriage in Jane Austen. This hugely satisfying love story is also a tale of spiritual renewal and even bodily rejuvenation, and it imagines, at the same time, a kind of renewal and reform of British social relations. Longing for rebirth, for escape from her autumnal and dimming life, Anne Elliot also enacts an escape from outmoded notions of privilege, class, and marriage.
Deborah Epstein Nord is Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature at Princeton. A specialist in Victorian literature and culture, her latest books are Gypsies and the British Imagination, 1807-1930 (2006), and, with Maria DiBattista, At Home in the World: Women Writers and Public Life, from Austen to the Present (2017). She is currently working on a project about the relationship between 19th-century fiction and the visual arts.
In Paradise Lost John Milton gives an exciting poetic account of the fallen angels, the Creation of humanity (to say nothing of the rest of the universe), and life in Eden before and immediately after the Fall. But to what extent is it Christian, at least in a way that we recognize today? And to what political ends does Milton write? These are some of the abiding questions you will hear addressed in this introduction to Paradise Lost and its milieux.
Russell Leo, originally from Rochester, New York, received his PhD from the Program in Literature at Duke University where he studied Reformation poetics and their impact across seventeenth century Europe. Leo came to Princeton University in 2009, first, as a postdoctoral fellow at the Society of Fellows and, after 2012, as an Assistant Professor in the English Department.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series is easily the best-selling and most popular literature series in recent memory. These books are a “portkey” from Harry’s world into the world of the Bible, because they are jampacked with Christian symbols, values, themes, theological ideas and much more. You are invited to put on your spectacles of faith (if they are shaped like Harry’s even better!) and take a look into the wealth of ideas shared in the seven volumes for fans of all ages.
Debbie Hough recently retired as the Director of Christian Education at Derry Presbyterian Church in Hershey, Pennsylvania. She is a graduate of the Presbyterian School of Christian Education and Princeton Theological Seminary. She is a Harry Potter mini-geek, her favorite character is Professor McGonagall, she’s a Gryffindor and her animagus is a buzzard. And she believes all of this can work together!
Come explore the meaning of Christian faith, church membership, and the foundations of the Presbyterian Church(USA). Classes are open to anyone wanting to discover more about our church and are required for those who wish to become church members. Your presence and membership mean everything to us! Contact Lauren McFeaters (, 609-924-0103 x102)
Examine how Presbyterians addressed slavery in the pre-Civil War period. Contrary to what one might suppose, the institution was not confined solely to the South. Slavery still existed in New Jersey, though with dwindling numbers of people in bondage in the early 1800s. Explore Presbyterian responses to slavery here in Princeton–at the college, the seminary, First Church (predecessor of Nassau), and Witherspoon Strett Church.
Jim Moorhead is professor emeritus of American Church history at Princeton Seminary. He became engaged in research on this topic when he wrote two short essays for the university’s online Princeton and Slavery Project, and when he participated in the task force conducting an historical audit of Princeton Seminary’s relationship with slavery. Jim, his wife Cynthia, and their three children are long-time participants in the life of the Nassau congregation.
Westminster Conservatory Recital
Thursday, October 18
On Thursday, October 18 at 12:15 p.m. Westminster Conservatory presents “The House of Life,” by Ralph Vaughan Williams, a song cycle on poetry of Dante Gabriel Rosetti. The performers, Timothy Urban, baritone and Kathy Shanklin, piano are members of the Westminster Conservatory teaching faculty.
On Thursday, November 15 the series will present High Winds, a trio consisting of Katherine McClure, flute; Melissa Bohl, oboe; and Kenneth Ellison, clarinet.
These free recitals are presented by Westminster Conservatory Faculty at 12:15 PM in Niles Chapel, now in their 17th season.
Choral Evening Service
The Choirs of Nassau & Witherspoon Presbyterian Churches
Saturday, October 20
5:00 PM, Sanctuary
The choirs of Nassau and Witherspoon will join with soloists, brass, and harp to present Alice Parker’s “Melodious Accord: A Concert of Praise” as part of a service of evening prayer and song on October 20, 5:00 PM at Nassau Church. An offering will be taken in support of the Paul Robeson House.
