The General Assembly of the PC (USA) convenes every other year for a week of collective insanity–a dysfunctional family reunion, if you will–that guarantees the denomination will get media coverage for all the wrong reasons.
The “hot button” issues have changed very little because, simply put, liberals are engaged in a decades-long war of attrition that has forced traditionalist Presbyterians to depart for more orthodox denominations such as ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. As usual, sexuality will be front and center in this year’s assembly and I will cover that issue in another post. Other issues that are controversial include several public witness overtures about divestment as well as overtures that call for public comment by the denomination on public policy questions.
Fossil Fuels
Year after year there are calls for the PC (USA) Board of Pensions to divest itself of ownership interests in corporations that (small) parts of the church find objectionable. According to Leslie Scanlon of the Presbyterian an overture asking the General Assembly, “to instruct the Board of Pensions and Presbyterian Foundation to immediately stop any new investment in fossil fuel companies and over the next five years to divest any assets the denomination already has placed in oil, gas and coal firms.”[1] The rationale behind the overture is that by owning fossil fuel company shares the denomination is complicit in global warming.
Divestiture initiatives are wrong-headed because they are, by nature, absolutist. It is an idealist approach rather than a realist one. Such an initiative provides no exceptions for fossil fuel companies that employ best practices in environmental protection. No, any corporation that provides the energy that we (realistically) need is no longer seen to be fit for our investment.
This is foolish idealism—it fails to take into account that there are not sufficient other types of energy sources to effectively provide our nation’s energy. At the moment we need oil, coal, and natural gas. It is not wrong to consume fossil fuels with the understanding that in the future other forms of energy may become affordable and useable and as those resources and markets develop we may switch to use other forms of fuel.
In addition, before any real or perceived duty to environmental stewardship (and it isn’t clear that divestiture would actually improve anything) the Board of Pension has a fiduciary duty to meet the pension obligations they have incurred to future generations of Presbyterians. Meeting those obligations will be extremely challenging and the Board of Pensions will need to invest wisely and broadly. As it stands the Board of Pensions is going to struggle to meet the obligations in the coming decades and limiting the investments in which the Board may invest is not helpful, especially where there is nothing morally wrong about fossil fuel use as a source of energy in the near and mid-term.
Israel/Palestine
The other divestiture initiative is more sinister. Scanlon notes that this is “a recommendation from the Mission Responsibility through Investment Committee that the PC (USA) divest from three companies (Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola Solutions) the committee has found to be involved in non-peaceful pursuits in Israel-Palestine.”[2]
Seemingly the Assembly has a fever for controversy and the prescription is not more cowbell, but more divestment. As I noted above, I am not in favor of divestment. And I’m not in favor of the way this issue has haunted every General Assembly—a similar recommendation failed by only two votes in 2012—for the last several years and taken time and attention away from issues that actually important to the core mission of the church.
To be clear, the three companies are not themselves engaging in non-peaceful activities. There’s no thugs busting unions, no threats to indigenous workers. No, their products are being used in non-peaceful activities by the Israeli government.
The pro-Palestinian lobby objects to the fact that the Israeli government uses caterpillar equipment to demolish sites that are either illegally constructed or potentially used for terrorist purposes. So they wish to stop the denomination’s retirement plan from investing in Caterpillar. These companies produce a good, safe, legal product. They cannot reasonably be held accountable for the fact that their goods are used in a manner that some find objectionable.
The real problem isn’t, of course, these companies. The real problem is that there is a persistent and unrelenting gaggle of anti-Israel activists in the PC (USA). For a more detailed rehearsal of this read, “Will the PC (USA) align itself with a white supremacist?”[3] The Israel/Palestine Mission Network’s production of Zionism Unsettled has drawn criticism from within the denomination and without.
A review of the curriculum Zionism Unsettled will reveal that there are elements in the denomination who clearly wish that Israel did not exist. No less an organization than the Simon Wiesenthal Center has severed conversation with PC (USA) because these resources effective “demonize an entire nation” and constitute a pattern of “malicious behavior.”[4] These activists are waging a war to punish corporations who do business with Israel as a sort of proxy war against Israel itself. In the weeks leading up to General Assembly, I have received reports that representatives of the pro-Palestine lobby are phone commissioners and lobbying for them to vote in favor of divestment. This is a new and more aggressive tactic than has been seen in prior years.[5]
It beggars belief that the PC (USA) should once again enter into a General Assembly obsessing on issues on which reasonable Christians may disagree and yet remain in fellowship with one another. The goal of worthily stewarding God’s creation is a thoroughly biblical one. Yet, at the same time one is called to exercise both common sense and remain connected to reality in proposing specific ways in which to do that.
However, the PC (USA) seems to desire uniformity on this one issue that barely ought to fall within the purview of the church. Likewise on Israel/Palestine: the church has no business punishing corporations simply for selling their goods to nations we dislike. Further, the church has no business passing overtures that effectively call for the destruction of the Israeli state. Presbyterians cannot agree upon these issues and since they are not core theological issues, this is not a problem. The real problem is that the church cannot agree on core theological issues and yet demands that all Presbyterians embrace the liberal social and political agenda of a small faction. That is a recipe for disaster.
[1] Available online at: http://pres-outlook.org/2014/06/host-hot-spots/ (Accessed 14 June 2014).
[2] Ibid.
[3] “We Urge Presbyterian Church Rank and File to Defeat Church Leaders’ Embrace of Anti-Zionism.” Available online at: www.juicyecumenism.org/2014/06/14/ will-the-pcusa-align-itself-with-a-white-supremacist (accessed: 15 June 2014).
[4] “We Urge Presbyterian Church Rank and File to Defeat Church Leaders’ Embrace of Anti-Zionism.” Available online at: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467&ct=13986343#.U5yopnJdUvA (accessed: 14 June 2014).
[5] Viola Larson, “Commissioners Receiving Personal Calls on Overtures.” Available online at: http://www.layman.org/pcusa-general-assembly-commissioners-receiving-personal-calls-overtures/ (accessed: 14 June 2014).
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