The nominating committee rejected the name of Ganoune Diop as PARL director, and did not come up with a replacement name until yesterday.
The person they eventually nominated is Nela Burcea.
Observations
Ganoune Diop was elected to the position of PARL director in 2015. Before his election at the 60th General Conference Session in San Antonio, Texas, he served as the church’s liaison to the United Nations in New York and Geneva.
In October 2011, Ted Wilson spoke in Wilmington, Ohio. He was accompanied by Ganoune Diop. Wilson was warned several times in the ensuing years that Diop was getting in too deep with ecumenism and the United Nations. Diop seemed to be protected and given wide freedom.
In June 2016, Diop gave a speech at a United Nations Conference titled “Freedom of Religion or Belief and Sexuality: A Conversation,” at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. He said that Christians have a responsibility based on the central Judeo-Christian belief that all human beings are created in God’s image. This responsibility, he said, is to recognize the stamp of the divine in every person and to extend to them the love and respect that Christ modeled in His relationships even with fallen humanity. This should lead us to say no to any form of discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals. This same U.N. released a report in June of 2023 to persuade religious communities to comply with the LGBTQ agenda.
The United Nations increasingly sees LGBTQ rights and religious convictions as being in conflict. Their default position is the elevation of human rights (ie. LGBTQ) over biblical morality. Adventists have no business being connected to the United Nations and should sever all ties with them as an act of urgent biblical hygiene.
Diop was instrumental in creating the 2021 Re-Affirmation Statement. This statement stripped away the rights of Seventh-day Adventists to claim religious liberty as a basis for Covid vaccination exemption during the 2021 Biden vaccine mandates, and SDA hospital mandates (that the GC supported),
Diop also claimed in June 2024 that the SDA church did not promote the C-19 vaccinations. This is not true, as evidenced by this article.
In January 2019, Ganoune Diop hosted a meeting to encourage church organizations to assist the UN in achieving its 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Most of the PARL departments in American Adventism are tilted left, politically, including the Lake Union, Pacific Union, Michigan Conference, and NAD PARL. Liberty Magazine also leans hard left. This begs the question, is denominational leftism driving our PARL departments, or are PARL directors pushing leftism on the church?
Now we have a new PARL director. Nelu Burcea has been in PARL for 10 years. He has a PHD in economics, and a Masters degree in Business Management Development and a bachelors degree in Theology. He’s Romanian. He’s been the liaison with the UN and EU. He has post doctoral training at both Oxford and Harvard.
Will he have the courage and conviction to uphold a biblical worldview in spite of cultural pressure from the unholy United Nations, and ecumenical pressures from religious globalism? We pray that he will.
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“Therefore Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).