The question of whether the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should divest in some companies doing business in Israel has been explosive — but it does not appear as though specific recommendations proposing divestment in particular companies will be presented to this year’s General Assembly.
The PC(USA)’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee, at its meeting in New York in early February, made it clear that it is continuing its discussions with a handful of companies that have been identified as possible candidates for consideration for divestiture, and won’t be ready to make specific recommendations regarding those firms to the General Assembly in June.
Instead, the committee will ask for more funding to continue its exploration of the issue, and would put off any specific divestment recommendations regarding Israel until the assembly in 2008.
At the same time, however, presbyteries, through overtures, are pushing the divestment question front-and-center for this assembly. Some want the PC(USA) to stick with the 2004 action, which was intended to target companies involved with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Others want the church to rescind it, calling the divestiture action unfair to Israel. A third group of overtures focuses on trying to find ways to invest Presbyterian funds or energy that will promote positive involvement in the troubled Middle East.
Seattle presbytery, for example, in Overture 85 wants the PC(USA) to “pursue faithfully and consistently our historic vision of peace and security” for all people in the Middle East. So the presbytery proposes suspending for two years the process of phased, selective divestment “in order to build up a relationship with groups among Palestinians and Israelis who are actively working for peace.”
So at the same time Presbyterian officials are trying to pursue closed-door conversations with five companies being considered for possible divestiture — Citigroup, ITT Industries, Motorola, Caterpillar and United Technologies — the church also is revisiting the wisdom of the divestment strategy itself.
There are also other fronts on which the Presbyterian relationship with Israel, Palestine and the Jewish people is being worked out — consider this a complicated concoction, sort of a multi-layered torte.
Some Presbyterians are traveling to Israel on trips initiated by Jewish groups.
And in some communities, Jewish groups have been lobbying Presbyterians to take a stand on divestment — proposing draft overtures, finding out who the General Assembly commissioners will be and trying to initiate conversations with them, according to Jay Rock, coordinator of the PC(USA)’s Interfaith Relations Office. “They’re actively involved in trying to get the assembly to change course,” Rock said.
But the conversation is not all about divestment.
At the 2004 assembly, another controversial issue involved Messianic congregations, which use Jewish traditions and music to advance a Christian message.
As a result of that discussion, the assembly instructed some of PC(USA)’s national staff members to “reexamine and strengthen the relationship between Christians and Jews.”
And an effort has begun to do that — a consultation through the National Council of Synagogues that Rock described as well worth having. The first conversation, last fall, focused on the general theological understanding that Presbyterians and Jews have of each other.
The next, scheduled for May, will involve the land of Israel and God’s promises to the people.
And the third, next fall, will be on evangelization of the Jews.
By mutual agreement, the consultations so far have been private, behind closed doors. But “the quality and depth of the conversation is so refreshing and so different from this kind of public, political battling we’ve got going on over divestment,” Rock said.
“We’re having these conversations that range all over the place. They don’t start and end with divestment. They have the whole range of human emotion. We’re talking about real concerns. We’re not polarized. It’s a whole different kind of conversation.”
There also are conversations in the church about what kinds of investment might be possible in Israel and Palestine that would help the people who live there and advance the causes of peace.
One of the companies the PC(USA) is considering divesting from is Citigroup, which has been accused of transferring money used by Palestinian terrorists. Citigroup has denied supporting terrorism in any way.
MRTI officials also have met with representatives from Motorola and ITT Industries Inc., both of which supply communications equipment to the Israeli military, according to MRTI.
But part of the conversation with Citigroup involved possible ways to encourage small-scale financing of business in the region that “could lead to a more just economy,” according to a PC(USA) news release.
Some of the overtures being presented focus on exactly the issue of how to invest in ways that don’t punish Israel, as some contend the divestment action would do, but try to advance the cause of peace.
For example, Overture 94, from Chicago presbytery, asks that the PC(USA) invest “in only peaceful pursuits” in the region and to work with Jews, Muslims and Palestinians to end violence and terror, and to work for the creation of viable states for both Israel and Palestine.
