By Asher Price, American-Statesmnan.
An effort among some Presbyterians nationally to get their church to divest from oil, gas and coal stocks is running into opposition from their Texas brethren.
About 30 regional church districts, or presbyteries, have supported a proposal by the San Francisco Presbytery calling on the Presbyterian Church (USA) to pull out of roughly $200 million in fossil fuel investments.
The presbyteries — there are about 170 overall — representing the oil-rich areas of Houston and Midland have proposed counter-resolutions that acknowledge the ills of climate change but discourage divestment; the Texas groups suggest the church use its shareholder status to improve the practices of energy companies.
The dispute, which will play out at the Presbyterian Church’s biennial assembly next week in Portland, Ore., lays bare another sticking point in a church that has already seen itself divided on such issues as gay marriage.
Citing the “destructive effects of climate change on all God’s creation,” the San Francisco proposal calls for no new investment in fossil fuel companies and selling off the fossil fuel stocks the church currently owns within three years.
The Presbyterian Church’s oil and gas investments represent roughly 2 percent of the organization’s investments overall.
“It’s a moral imperative to say we cannot profit from companies that are destroying creation,” said Susan Chamberlain, a coordinator with Fossil Free PCUSA, an organization pushing the divestment effort.
But a trio of resolutions proposed by the Houston-based New Covenant Presbytery, which is made up of 106 churches in Southeast Texas, and supported by presbyteries in Midland, Dallas, Lubbock, South Louisiana and Oklahoma, say divestment is misguided.
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I know for a fact, living in a energy state that the pcusa has benefited greatly from this industry over the years, and this like other things the pcusa has no business getting into. These BDS people seem to worship the created more than the Creator, who is blessed forevermore, to quote the Scriptures, and they seem not to care about the people it will affect, but it makes them feel better, and that’s what really matters.
There are three myths or concepts the ruling cabals or narrow focus groups that rule the PCUSA have chosen to believe over the last 30 o so years.
-That the PCUSA is a national denomination. It is not. Best can be said it is a clearing house of regional or sub-regional interest with different agendas and self-interest. SF its big oil, NYC is all about apologies, etc.
-That when the Stated Clerk or Moderator speaks he/she speaks for the “whole”. Please, do not insult the intelligence. This is not 1545 and the Pope does not reside in Louisville. The election of the Bishop in waiting in Portland does not change that narrative.
-That lacking any other reason for being or a common confessional, faith basis for unity. A bogus “unity” can be generated, a Wendy’s boycott, Israel BDS, climate change zealotry as a way to unify the church. The Stated Clerk in his last missive made clear what the unity of the entity is, Money as in per capita. His words, not mine.
Parallel to that is the opinion of the activist left that the Board of Pensions, Foundation money is their personal piggy bank to exercise their causes or hot button issue of the moment. To paraphrase the late Prime Minsters, sooner or later at the end of the day you run out other people’s money to spend, dead or alive.
Every commissioner who drove or flew to the GA depended on the hated fossil fuel. Gross hypocrisy.