LOUISVILLE — The General Assembly Council is asking the General Assembly in Birmingham to respond to more than two dozen overtures on Israel, Palestine and divestment by setting up a process for monitoring what’s happening in the Middle East.
The council wants the assembly not to jump to action — but to set up a seven- member “working group” that represents a range of views on divestment. That group would spend time listening carefully to Christians, Jews and Muslims concerned about the difficulties in Israel, and would “develop guidance that honors each of their concerns” to present to the assembly in 2008.
The council’s action, taken April 28, takes the form of a “comment” on the pending overtures, many of which involve the controversial decision of the 2004 General Assembly to recommend a process of selective, phased divestment in some companies doing business in Israel. Some of the overtures want that action rescinded; some support divestment; some want the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to consider alternate, “constructive” strategies of investing that would encourage peace in the Middle East.
The council is suggesting that the assembly refer all overtures regarding divestment to the Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee, and that it set up the working group to allow more time for people to monitor the changing political situation in the Middle East and to consider others’ points of view.
It points out that MRTI has not finished its conversations with five companies being considered for possible divestment and won’t bring any recommendation to divest until the assembly in 2008 at the earliest. So advocates of the comment contend there’s no need to rush.
Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly, has been urging the council to say something to this next assembly — to provide some sense of what to do and perhaps reduce the likelihood that divestment becomes as divisive an issue at this assembly as it was two years ago.
At the council’s meeting in February, Ufford-Chase announced his intention to try to draft a statement on divestment, and he invited others interested to join him in that effort. The result was the comment the council approved April 28.
Some changes were made to the idea that Ufford-Chase first presented to the council on April 26. A proposed “task force” became a seven-member “working group,” which Ufford-Chase and the moderator of the 217th General Assembly would appoint.
Language asserting that “most Presbyterians are united in their desires for an end to the occupation and the creation of viable, secure states for both Israel and Palestine” was removed, after some council members asked how anyone knew that was true.
“Gut feeling of the moderator,” Ufford-Chase responded with a grin when asked where that determination had come from.
So that phrase was deleted, and replaced with “most Presbyterians care deeply about the issues of peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.”
A provision also was removed that previously stated that the two moderators would appoint the new group “in close consultation with the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy” — a group that has managed in recent years to generate its own share of controversy. But language stayed in that any recommendations the working group might make regarding policy should be referred to the advisory committee, since the working group wouldn’t have the responsibility of developing policy for the PC(USA).
Whether that will satisfy critics of the assembly’s action remains to be seen.
Alan Wisdom, vice-president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and an opponent of the assembly’s divestment action, said he considers neither MRTI nor the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy to be a “neutral party” on the divestment issue, and he thinks this summer’s assembly needs to rescind the action the 2004 assembly took.
“I think we need to suspend divestment and we need a whole new Middle East policy,” Wisdom said in an interview. He also said he senses “a lot of momentum to just annul the action of 2004,” particularly in light of the changing political situation in Israel.
The council’s comment also encourages conversations — discussions that would include MRTI, the Board of Pensions and the Presbyterian Foundation — regarding alternate investment possibilities “that promote peace and strengthen the economies both in Israel and the occupied territories.”
In other action, the council:
· Prayed for the family of William P. Thompson, the former Presbyterian stated clerk, who died April 27 at age 87. Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s current stated clerk, called Thompson “a passionate leader for justice” in both Presbyterian and ecumenical circles.
· Approved the new co-chairs of the Mission Initiative: Joining Hearts and Hands steering committee. Joanna Adams, pastor of Morningside Presbyterian church in Atlanta, and David Peterson, pastor of Memorial Drive Presbyterian in Houston, are replacing Bill Saul of California and Lucimarian Roberts of Mississippi, both of whom are elders.
So far, $25.5 million has been committed to the $40 million fundraising campaign for international evangelism and new church development in the U.S., according to Allison Seed, a council member from Missouri who serves on the campaign’s steering committee. “I’m confident,” Seed said, “that we are going to make our $40 million goal.”
