The full Standing Judicial Commission of the Presbyterian Church in America has weighed in and voted overwhelmingly to reject the Northwest Presbytery’s request to rehear the RE Phil Dudt appeal.
Last month, an SJC panel proposed that the Midway Session’s conviction of RE Dudt be overturned and Phil Dudt elder’s duties be restored. The Session of Midway immediately sent an email to the congregation saying the Presbytery will ask for a rehearing. That request, which was simply another delay tactic, has now been officially rejected by the full SJC.
This decision paves the way for the full SJC to concur with the decision of the panel which found an unprecedented 14 errors made by the Midway Session in the Dudt conviction, including that the charges had no biblical basis, and another 8 errors made the Presbytery in their handling of the appeal. RE Dudt needed only one error to be sustained for his conviction to be overturned. Once the full SJC meets later this month and confirms the decision of the panel, the decision will be binding on both the Midway Session and the Northwest Georgia Presbytery.
Most of the 14 errors made by the Session in the RE Dudt case have also been made in the cases of REs James Scott, Don Barnett, and Clay David. Will David Hall, and what is left of his Session, defy the highest court by continuing the sham trials against those fine men? We will all know the answer to that question very soon.