Robert A. Chesnut

Robert A. Chesnut’s latest book, Meeting Jesus the Christ Again: A Conservative Progressive Faith, is the product of a lifetime of experience in theological education and pastoral ministry. Bob has served congregations in Boston, Cincinnati, Chicago, Norman, OK, and Pittsburgh. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard Divinity School and has served on the faculties of McCormick, Garrett-Evangelical, and Pittsburgh Seminaries. In Pittsburgh, he pastored the historic East Liberty Presbyterian Church, a highly diverse urban congregation with a huge gothic structure and a dynamic 24/7 ministry serving both its immediate neighborhood and the entire metropolitan area.

Chesnut’s first book, Transforming the Mainline Church: Lessons in Change from Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Hope, tells the story of a dying congregation’s remarkable turnaround after forty years of decline to become a growing, thriving faith community offering renewed hope both to its distressed community and to mainline congregations everywhere. Much like the congregation in Sister Act, this church has offered an inspiring example that has won cover stories in publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal and Presbyterian Survey. For his ministry in Pittsburgh Chesnut received the Thomas Merton Center’s Social Justice Award, the YWCA’s Racial Justice Award, and an award for outstanding community service from the Pennsylvania legislature. Upon his retirement, the East Liberty congregation honored him with the publication of a collection of his sermons entitled, Sermons for the Seasons, several of which offer reflections on the 9/11/2001 attack.

From the start of his ministry in the 1960s Bob has been a social activist. His first congregation, Calvin Presbyterian Church in Amelia, OH, published a tribute to his community ministry which was reprinted by Harvard Divinity School for distribution to all the school’s alumni. Entitled Footprints of a Pastor, it highlighted his leadership in support of public-school funding, civil rights, an ecumenical organization to serve community needs, and government anti-poverty programs.

Dr. Chesnut has served on the national boards of Covenant Network of Presbyterians (advocating for full inclusion of GLBTs in the church), the Presbyterian Multicultural Network, and the Ghost Ranch Conference Center in New Mexico where he was co-founder and Dean of the Multicultural Church Institute. He has taught courses, made presentations, and led workshops at congregations and church conferences nationwide.

Now retired in Richmond, VA, Bob and his wife Jan (a retired librarian and spiritual companion) are active in the Gayton Kirk Presbyterian Church where Jan is an Elder and Bob preaches and teaches from time to time. They enjoy living close to their son Andrew and his wife Fabiola, both of whom are teachers—Andrew as the Bishop Walter Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at VCU and Fabiola as Spanish teacher and chair of the Language and Arts Department at Huguenot High School. Daughter Elizabeth is a para-legal in Denver and her husband Paul is a sous-chef. The Chesnuts have four grown grandchildren.