I think you're missing why people find German compound nouns interesting and notable. Does English have compound nouns and noun phrases? Certainly. But take your example: "gay clergy book row priest." The noun phrase literally represents the sum of its parts, i.e. a priest involved in a row over a gay clergy book. The phrase is complicated, but its meaning is straightforward. In German, however, it seems as if two unrelated nouns come together to form something unexpected. For instance the word for tortoise is "Schildkröte", translated literally as "shield toad." Is a tortoise a toad? Most native English speakers would say no. Does it have a shield? Again, most native English speakers would say no. So you have a case where there are two easily understood German words that come together to form something unexpected (to an English speaker). Perhaps a German would say that yes, a tortoise is a toad and yes, it has a shield. This is probably my own bias, but I don't think compound nouns in English form nouns in the same way as some German compound nouns do, or at least it feels to happen more often in German than in English.