PCUSA moves forward; Episcoplians back off
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, November 16, 2004
While the Presbyterian Church (USA) has initiated steps toward divestment of funds in corporations that do business with Israel, Episcopal leaders now appear to be backing off their consideration of a similar approach.
The Episcopalians, aware of the global backlash against the PCUSA over its one-sided resolution that favored punitive action against Israelis but not against Palestinians, have decided they intend to pursue a Middle East investment policy that takes into consideration “obstacles to peace” on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides.
The PCUSA began last week setting in motion a divestment policy that would target corporations – such as Caterpillar – that sell equipment and services to the Israelis. The policy, adopted by the 216th General Assembly, spawned fiery responses from Jews, Christians and the secular press.
The outcry intensified after two members of a Presbyterian delegation commended Hezbollah, a Lebanese group that the U.S. State Department, Israel and the United Nations have identified as a terrorist movement that is responsible for thousands of murders, including the deaths of 270 Americans in two bombings.
The Forward, a 107-year-old Jewish weekly in New York, reported having received a copy of the memo that described the Episcopal Church (USA)’s strategy for encouraging peace in the Mideast. (Registration at no charge is required for entering the Web site of The Forward.)
“The memo, from the church’s executive council to its Social Responsibility in Investments Committee, states that ‘the emphasis of this process is not likely to be divestment from companies whose actions are morally questionable, but rather engagement with them,'” The Forward said.
“The Episcopalian decision to eschew sanctions contrasts sharply with the policy being pursued by the Presbyterian Church (USA), which last summer voted to begin a process to divest selectively from companies doing business with companies that aid in Israel’s ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians,” The Forward added.
Meanwhile, in a story titled “Presbyterians move forward on divestment,” the Chicago Tribune said the Presbyterian action, if followed by other mainline denominations, could have a domino affect that “would threaten centuries of progress in Christian and Jewish relations.”
The Tribune story quoted John Buchanan, senior minister at Fourth Presbyterian Church – the largest Presbyterian congregation in Chicago – as saying that the PCUSA divestment policy was not “an attack on Israel. It is a modest attempt by one small denomination to say a word of peace and justice and hope in the middle of continuing mind-numbing violence and human suffering.”
Buchanan is a former General Assembly moderator who, as senior editor of The Christian Century, is one of the leading voices in mainline Protestantism for liberal causes. He was the co-founder of the Covenant Network of Presbyterians, an organization committed to repealing the PCUSA’s constitutional “fidelity/chastity” ordination standard.
The PCUSA is the only mainline denomination that has formally called for divestment of its funds in corporations doing business with Israel, although the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ have considered similar resolutions.
The PCUSA Mission Responsibility through Investment (MRTI) Committee met in New York recently to begin taking steps toward implementing the General Assembly’s resolution on divestment.
The Presbyterian News Service described the meeting as “tense and not always polite.”
MRTI officials said they would probably identify companies targeted by the denomination in 2005 and that no actual divestment, if deemed necessary, would occur before 2006. Leaders of a number of congregations in the PCUSA have told The Layman Online that they will send overtures to their presbyteries seeking to overturn the divestment resolution.