The reality of the climate crisis is beyond doubt, and its impacts are already being felt across God’s creation, with far worse to come. What we do now, and what we fail to do, will shape those impacts for generations.
The causes of climate change, most significantly the burning of fossil fuels, are the products of human action. Our Reformed and Presbyterian tradition has always been clear that human action carries moral weight — that we are accountable for what we do and what we leave undone. The responsibility to act is not optional. Faithfulness demands a response, and the General Assembly has consistently endorsed and supported existing Mission Responsibility Through Investment’s (MRTI) steadfast work to hold corporations accountable for myriad abuses.
The responsibility to act is not optional.
To hear some faithful Presbyterians tell it, MRTI ignores the urgency of the moment because we have not advocated for categorical divestment. The full record belies this charge. MRTI understands this responsibility acutely, which is why we have brought selective divestment recommendations in three of the last four General Assemblies.
How MRTI works alongside affected communities
The human costs are already visible: erratic and extreme weather, rising food costs, mounting health burdens. The ecological devastation is, in many cases, irreversible. And those already made vulnerable by structural sin and inequity bear the sharpest edge of these burdens. Through relationships with communities such as the Zion Travelers Cooperative Center and the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe in Southern Louisiana — communities living on the front lines of fossil fuel-related environmental degradation — MRTI has sought to approach this work with humility rather than paternalism.
In practice, this looks like MRTI representatives repeatedly visiting the Lowlander Center to listen to community priorities, build trust and connect shareholder advocacy to locally identified needs. It looks like arranging a ConocoPhillips site visit in support of the Pointe-au-Chien Tribe’s environmental restoration goals and inviting denominational partners, including SDOP and PDA, to witness the complex realities these communities face firsthand. MRTI’s goal is not to speak for affected communities, but to help carry their concerns into corporate boardrooms and back to the broader church, so congregations can hear directly how those most affected hope the denomination will respond.
MRTI’s critique of categorical divestment
Advocates for categorical divestment often point to other values and faith-based organizations that made headlines for divesting from fossil fuels. In reality, many of those same entities — like Harvard University — still hold fossil fuel investments at roughly the same percentage of their overall portfolio as our investing agencies hold today. This leaves them with $1 billion in fossil fuel exposure, even as they have publicly committed to fossil fuel divestment.
Related reading: “Why fossil fuel divestment is back before the General Assembly” by Fred Milligan
As a leader in faith-based and ethical investing, MRTI is committed to an intellectual honesty that aligns with Presbyterian polity and theology. We strive for transparency and integrity about the full implications of divestment actions, not merely the percentage of portfolio holdings. Care, rigor, and clarity are not bureaucratic virtues; they are theological ones, and they shape what faithful action actually requires.
Climate action through shareholder engagement
MRTI believes more strongly than ever that this is not the season to abandon established PC(USA) policy and process, or to go it alone. It is time to lean into the communal strategies we have built alongside global interfaith and values-based partners, like Climate Action 100, Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), and Ceres, because the work ahead demands exactly that. We have more than 50 years of history in this work.
MRTI is bringing resolutions such as CLJ-01 to the 227th General Assembly this summer as part of the denomination’s response to the climate crisis. We have strengthened the criteria by which we assess corporations on their environmental records, recommended further engagement with companies where we believe change is achievable, and, where companies have fallen short, recommended divestment.
Wisdom, truth-telling and a just energy transition
Responding to the climate crisis demands both urgency and wisdom. Our tradition has always understood wisdom as a gift — not something we generate through careful analysis alone, but something we receive from the God who holds all things together, including the consequences of our failures. Wisdom cannot be separated from repentance, or from the honest reckoning that allows us to see clearly what we have done and what remains undone. That reckoning equips us to weigh consequences before we act, to identify effective pathways to large-scale energy transition, and justice demands that we work alongside communities most harmed by both climate change and the transition itself.
MRTI has leaned into such wisdom by treating economic health – the livelihoods of workers and the fiscal stability of energy-dependent communities – as a necessary condition for a just transition to renewables, by aligning with hundreds of other socially engaged investing organizations to amplify its corporate engagements, and by working alongside vulnerable communities to bring their concerns to tables of power from which they are otherwise excluded.
Truth-telling is equally essential. Too often, false narratives have delayed action on climate change. Too often, promises of technological solutions have lulled policymakers into underestimating the urgency of what we face. Too often, individuals and communities have chosen convenience over responsibility. And too often, environmental advocates – including Christian ones – have favored performance over effectiveness, self-righteousness over confession, and accusation over cooperation. Performative actions do not promote justice.
Performative actions do not promote justice.
MRTI has consistently chosen truthfulness, even when inconvenient. Its approach relies on proven processes and is directed by denominational policies. We trust that the Spirit is present and active in our deliberations. And knowing that both engagement and divestment carry real costs to ecosystems and people, we have worked to remain responsive to those harms. We’ve held, without illusion, that neither markets nor motives can ever be pure, while favoring practices that prioritize mission and morality over money. And we have worked to make clear that the PC(USA)’s fossil fuel-related holdings represent a smaller share of our portfolio than those of many organizations that claim to have divested fully.
The climate crisis demands urgency. But urgency untethered from wisdom becomes mere reaction, and reaction without truth-telling causes its own harms. MRTI has sought to hold all three together, and that remains our commitment going forward.
