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Voices

Appreciation in general, dissatisfied in some specifics

 

I am impressed by the report of the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church.  Despite critique that I offer below, the care and thoughtfulness of its theology, the honesty and earnestness of its tone, the pastoral wisdom and balance of its approach, as well as the insight and reflection of its ecclesiology make strongly positive contributions.  One does not need to agree with all its points to find in this report a great deal that is constructive and up-building to the body of Christ.  It is a rich resource with content that seems judicious and affirming, instructive and fruitful.  "The Task Force was not asked to resolve all the controversial issues in the church or to relieve the church of all conflict.  The Task Force was asked to help the church deal with current and future conflicts more faithfully."  I believe that at points they have given us some important help. Though a more detailed reflection on the report would take far more space and time than is allowed here, I will venture a few initial personal responses, following the order of the document itself. 

I am grateful for the Theological Basis. The apparent consensus around an orthodox trinitarianism is its primary strength, and points to the central hope for any true "peace, unity, and purity" in our individual or common life. This is not to be taken for granted and is indispensable for our future, not least its affirmation of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Alongside all that is laudatory, unifying, and valuable in this section, two closely related points seemed especially lacking adequate development.  First, I would have expected to find a more developed reflection on what it means that human beings are creatures made in God's image. Surely, it is true we are loved.  But who is the "us" that God loves?  The nature of our humanity, God's intentional relationship to us and purpose for us in love informs our lives and our biblical grasp of what our humanness means. Since our createdness grounds our ethics in meaning and purpose beyond mere naturalism, I wish this had been given more emphasis.

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Implementing the Task Force recommendations: looking ahead

 

 

Let's pretend we jump ahead a year.

Let's pretend the 2006 General Assembly has already met, and it has done exactly what the Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has asked it to do. So how will things in the church be different?

That's a question many in the church are trying to figure out -- they're trying to parse the report and figure out how the landscape of the PC(USA) would change if the task force recommendations were to prevail. That's difficult, because the task force report is not simple -- it's full of complicated, interlocking parts.

And, not surprisingly, different folks come up with different answers.

Some contend that the task force is basically recommending local option in practice if not in technical fact -- that if the recommendations are approved, some sessions and presbyteries will routinely ordain and install sexually-active gays and lesbians even though the PC(USA)'s ordination standards, which limit ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married, would not themselves change.

Others disagree. They say it's close to miraculous that such a diverse 20-member task force could, after several years of difficult work, reach a unanimous recommendation with no minority report -- and they commend the task force for asking the PC(USA) to set aside some if its divisive ways and to return to a sense of balance, based on historic Presbyterian principles.

Voices

God of Creation

Herzliebster Jesu  11.11.11.5  ("Ah, Holy Jesus")

 

God of creation, We have seen the horror--

Great devastation, Overwhelming sorrow!

Hear now your people--  Homes and loved ones taken--

Feeling forsaken.

 

Christ of compassion, You who calmed the rough sea--

Hurricane crashing, We prayed for your mercy!

Comfort your people!  Hold them close, now giving

Hope for their living.

 

Give to your children Food to end their hunger,

Clean water's blessing, News of those they long for!

And by your Spirit, Use our gifts and labors

To help our neighbors.

 

Biblical references:  Genesis 1, Psalm 13, Matthew 8:23-27, 25:31-46; Luke 10:25-37

Tune:  Johann Cruger, 1640

Text:  Copyright © 2005 by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.  All rights reserved.

 

Carolyn Winfrey Gillette gives permission for the hymn's free use by churches that support the relief efforts of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance.  Carolyn Winfrey Gillette and Bruce Gillette are pastors at Limestone Church in Wilmington, Del. 

Editorials

Responsibility and faithfulness

The final report of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church contains few surprises. The recommendations flow effortlessly out of the theological prologue that has been strengthened in its final draft. I do not mean that the recommendations were effortlessly achieved. I suspect they required negotiation and prayer, patience and longsuffering. But they demonstrate the same love for the church that characterize the prologue -- and for that, all Presbyterians may give thanks.

Faithful Presbyterians will profoundly disagree about some of them (see guest viewpoints in this issue). What is remarkable is that the same disagreements are incarnate within the Task Force itself, and yet they, after meeting for these past years, have invited the church to work for a more profound unity than we now know. The Task Force has given us the means to walk the walk that they have walked, and to stop tearing down rather than building up the Body of Christ, Presbyterian. They offer an "opportunity of discovering ways that the church can live more faithfully in the face of deep disagreements." And even in disagreement, they were able "to discern in their life together the outlines of Christian identity to which, we fervently believe, the church is called."

The report belies a theological orthodoxy and constitutional integrity that the church sorely needs to begin a renewed quest for genuine unity. It is from that foundation that we are asked -- not so much to eschew politics -- as to speak theologically and personally with our opponents for the sake of the church.  Some presbyteries and sessions and congregations have already begun such mutual engagement. Governing bodies where minds are made up will need to reach out to those with whom they disagree if the process is to succeed. We are being called to personal responsibility, especially those of us who are elders, deacons, and ministers of Word and Sacrament.

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Task Force: Balance, discernment are goals for PC(USA) future

CHICAGO -- The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) should enter a "season of discernment," in which its ordination standards should not change, but local governing bodies should determine whether candidates for ordination have departed from those ordination standards -- and whether a departure in a particular case "constitutes a failure to adhere to the essentials of Reformed faith and polity."

The Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the PC(USA) approved that recommendation unanimously on August 25, after three and a half years of intensive work and with several of its members expressing joy in the outcome and a certainty, as Sarah Grace Sanderson-Doughty put it, that "we are being incredibly faithful to Christ and to one another."

The task force says the most important of its seven recommendations, the one from which all the others flow, is that Presbyterians learn to live in harmony with one another and "to avoid division into separate denominations."

The task force contends that it's not advocating "local option" regarding ordaining gays and lesbians, because the denomination's national ordination standards -- limiting ordination to those who practice chastity if they're single or fidelity if they're married -- would remain in effect. To adopt local option would be a distinct change, "and it would be un-Presbyterian," the report states.

Instead, the task force says it's returning to historic traditions of Presbyterian life and trying to restore a balance that hasn't always existed in the denomination's recent conflicted days.

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Church leaders condemn Pat Robertson’s call for Chavez assassination

(ENI) Christian leaders representing both conservative and liberal constituencies have lambasted Christian minister/broadcaster Pat Robertson for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Robertson's call "is appalling to the point of disbelief," National Council of Churches general secretary Robert Edgar said on Aug. 23 following Robertson's statement, delivered on the Christian Broadcast Network.

"We have the ability to take him [Chavez] out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,'" Robertson, a former Republican Party presidential candidate, said on his Aug. 22 television show, The 700 Club, of the Venezuelan president, who has often been at loggerheads with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush. "We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong arm dictator," Robertson said. "'It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."'

Editorials

Anticipation

When you read this, the final reports of the Task Force on the Peace, Unity, and Purity of the church will have been published. The PC(USA) has invested itself in this four year process, not because what it recommends will solve our problems re:scriptural authority and ordination, but in hope that a way forward will emerge from the battles ravaging the reunited church for at least two decades.

To anticipate the report, I remembered a sermon on Jesus' Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13, the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time. There is nothing ordinary about this parable, which speaks to the problem of evil -- not as out there to be restrained by the forces of righteousness in a weed-free church. Instead, the parable invites us to decide how we will deal with the weeds. The good farmer sowed wheat in his field. While he and his servants were sleeping an enemy came and sowed weeds. When the servants discovered it, they asked the landowner how it could have happened, and he replied, "An enemy has done this."

Voices

The embryonic stem cell controversy and beyond

Readers of the OUTLOOK are familiar with the heated public controversy over the use of human embryos to harvest stem cells for medical research. What are called embryos are actually ova fertilized in a Petri dish. The zygotes are forced to undergo cell division, frozen and stored on a shelf for possible use later, usually for fertility treatment-- but never implanted in a human uterus. For that reason they are not really embryos, technically speaking. The point of interest is that they are currently the best source of "pluripotent stem cells," meaning cells that have the capacity to become any type of cell in the body when properly treated. These cells are needed to develop effective treatments for diseases that already include Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, juvenile diabetes, muscular dystrophy, and paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury.

The sticking point for those who object, including President George W. Bush, is that they believe these fertilized eggs possess the value of human beings and the process of extracting stem cells from them kills human life. Many scientists, on the other hand, have a hard time imagining how a still undifferentiated zygote that will never be implanted in a uterus qualifies as a human being. An estimated 400,000 fertilized ova or embryos are stored in U.S. freezers today, and most of them will be discarded.

Stem cell research is rapidly advancing in many other countries, notably the United Kingdom and South Korea, and in private U.S. labs that do not receive federal funding. Ironically, one of the effects of the Bush administration's ban on embryonic stem cell research funding is that the research is now barreling on outside the ethical guidelines established early in the game by the National Institutes of Health and approved by the Clinton administration. Those guidelines made it clear that only embryos could be used that were created for the purpose of fertility treatment and were in excess of clinical need. When stem cell research is removed from NIH oversight into the private sector, such ethical restrictions are not obligatory.

Voices

The shifting language of Christian Education

Is it time for a survey of the language of Presbyterian Christian Education?

I appreciate the conversation begun by Ben Sparks and pursued by Marge Shaw about the need to rediscover Christian education in our churches. It is not the first time in recent years that someone has asked, "Where has our denomination's historic emphasis on Christian education gone?"

As I look and listen for signs of a vital commitment to Christian education in our churches and the larger church, I am engaging in some interesting conversations. People in our churches and in the church are excited about a number of initiatives that sound a lot like Christian education to me, but when I ask about the difference, I am assured that they are talking about "more than Christian education." So what is going on here? What may be going on is that rather than losing our commitment to Christian education, we are now talking about it in different ways.

Voices

A peace pilgrimage to Japan

Sixty years ago in the blink of an eye an estimated 147,000 people were killed when atom bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Beautiful cities were instantly turned into radioactive wastelands.

As is true in all wars most of the victims were women, children and the elderly. Those near the epicenter were the lucky ones. They were vaporized. Tens of thousands further from ground zero were burned alive, dying in excruciating pain and begging for water. Thousands more died in later months and years of a strange disease called radiation, and even today higher rates of cancer and leukemia prevail in the region. Survivors of the blasts, now in their seventies and eighties, carry monumental physical and psychological scars.

This August, on a peace pilgrimage, I returned to Japan, where I spent nine years (1965-1974) as a missionary. I attended the 60th anniversaries of two bombs that in the words of Einstein "... changed everything except the way we think, and we drift toward unparalleled catastrophes."

Book Reviews

The Gospel According to America: Reflections on a God-blessed, Christ-haunted Idea

by David Dark. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. ISBN 0664227694. Pb., 173 pp. $14.95.

The Gospel According to America is a winding path through the literature, film, and music of the American consciousness. It curves through theology and brings onto the stage of awareness figures ranging from Bayard Rustin to Dorothy Day, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, and Will Campbell. It is not an easy read for those unaccustomed to Melville, Hawthorne, and Pynchon--and far less easy for those who have never listened to Wilco, REM, or Dylan. Written in a style that at times leaves one considering the possibility that David Dark's marvelous offering was translated from the German (not so), the book is demanding; it is not a book for the beach. So why make the journey? Is the demand on the reader worthy?

Indeed it is. For Dark brings biblical insight--delivered in diverse cultural forms--to bear upon our history. He calls us to "stand firmly within the Jewish- Christian tradition and its teaching that evil doesn't come to us self-consciously, introducing itself and offering us a choice ("Join us in our evil"). It's more like a Faustian bargain, a narcissism in which we believe our fantasy to be the only real, unbiased version of events. We surround ourselves with voices that will affirm our fantasy and dismiss as treacherous (or evil) any witness that would call our innocence into question. (p. 76)

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Israel’s Supreme Court approves destruction of synagogues

(RNS) Israel's Supreme Court ruled Aug. 23 that all synagogues in the now-vacated Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank should be destroyed, but that everything portable be relocated to Israel.

The court was responding to a petition by Jewish settlers who objected to the government's plan to destroy all Jewish religious institutions -- 30 synagogues as well as eight yeshivas and seminaries -- in Gaza. The destruction would be part of the government's withdrawal of residents and troops from 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the northern West Bank.

Editorials

Our Worst Fear

Last week I was overcome with rage and shame at the pitiful responses to the onset of hurricane Katrina and its watery aftermath. I was ashamed at the helplessness of the government of the United States. I was angry that neither the mayor of New Orleans nor the governor of Louisiana did anything initially except to criticize the federal government for its lack of response. How many lives would have been saved by the immediate response of which we showed ourselves capable after 9/11 in New York -- a disaster which we did not know was coming?  The mayor and governor have power to evacuate people forcibly. The governor can order the National Guard to use whatever means necessary to stop violence, confiscate guns of looters, and protect hospitals and individual citizens. (In one hospital patients were moved to upper floors to protect them from looters who were attacking them.)

The non-response was a massive failure of legally constituted government at every level, but has its origins in decades of anti-government rhetoric, not the least of which is from those who preach Sunday after Sunday non-Christian apocalypticism. And we have paid the price, some citizens with their lives, all of us by the cheapening and denigration of human life. Where, in this pro-life administration that spent emotional and political capital on Terri Schiavo, is the outrage -- or better, the immediate deployment of law enforcement and other resources to save human lives?  How many Terri Schiavos simply perished in New Orleans through lack of response?  How can a president who vows to protect fertilized human eggs seem incapable (with his massive constitutional power) of protecting living human beings?

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Summer heat, circumstances complicate migrant situation; Volunteers arrested

It has been, in a terrible way, a remarkable summer.

The heat in the states along the U.S.-Mexico border has been uncaring, unceasing, record-breaking. The summer monsoons, which typically arrive in early July and bring some water and some relief, came late to Arizona this year, prolonging the difficulty.

Still, the people streamed north from Mexico and Central America, crossing the sand in the baking heat, some with their children, some traveling with no family, some just teenagers, trying to walk their way, against the law, towards a better way of life.

What U.S.-Mexico border policy should be is a matter of much passionate debate -- it won't be resolved in one long hot summer. But while the discussions over immigration policy continue, the flow of immigrants continues too, despite the best efforts of the U.S. Border Patrol. Humanitarian groups with deep involvement from some border- state Presbyterians are determined to show the face of God in the midst of all of this.

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Transforming journeys

It is fall again. Storytellers from short-term mission trips are making their way around the Santa Barbara Presbytery. They "come and tell" at congregations around the presbytery perhaps because they were simply willing to go on one of the five IMPACT trips this year; and because their stories are full of fresh truth about their transformational experiences.

IMPACT, International Mission Project and Cross Cultural Training, is a mission-sending ministry of the Santa Barbara Presbytery. Since 1993, more than 300 people from the presbytery have been sent to serve in 12 countries. One of the reasons, perhaps, for the continued success of the ministry is that participants (from age 15 to 79) have returned to tell, teach, share their stories within their churches and from church to church. They are living letters to the people who sent them out--their children, parents, brothers, sisters and friends. They speak to good listeners!

IMPACT is relational, cross-cultural, built for individual and corporate learning. Twenty-four of the 32 churches in the Santa Barbara Presbytery have sent people on IMPACT journeys. These churches not only support the ministry and the participants but provide council members, pastors and presbytery staff for support, guidance and teaching. Participants leaving for summer trips are commissioned each summer at a presbytery worship. Congregations experience not only the fresh testimonies, but also the benefit of the renewed connections to other churches in the Presbytery. And of course, the new stories are an added invitation each year to people thinking about taking the next step, to go on an international, cross-cultural mission.

Editorials

What kind of Jesus?

What kind of Jesus do we preach and teach?

No more important answer awaits the church in September as many of us get back to school and back to church. Living between Lynchburg (Jerry Falwell) and Virginia Beach (Pat Robertson) had not awakened me to the urgency of the question like an article by Bill McKibben* in the August Harper's Magazine called "The Christian Paradox, How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong." In proper, smug Virginia, we pay scant attention to the mavens of fundamentalist (Jerry) and syncretistic (Pat) political power.

Yet McKibben carefully codifies what many of us perceive anecdotally: that there are quite different "gospels" preached in America, some of which are dangerous and idolatrous. He sees the mainline as "mostly locked in a dreary decline as their congregations dwindle and their elders argue endlessly about gay clergy and same-sex unions." Even if McKibben is too bleak in his diagnosis (though not about our numerical decline) he is on target when he writes that while 85% of us Americans call ourselves Christian, 75% of us believe the Bible teaches: "God helps those who help themselves." That is neither biblical nor Christian. Yet America is a nation saturated in Christian identity.

Voices

Marketing God

Visiting in an unfamiliar church is always interesting. I read over the bulletin in order to see how the service would flow. One word appeared repeatedly-- love; not a bad concept if a single theme was in order.

There was no doubt that these people liked the idea that God was love, that Christ was all about love, that the Holy Spirit brought love, and that love was pretty much the key to how things were supposed to get done. I took out my pen and circled the word wherever it appeared. It was probably the first time that "love" had been documented in that church.

What was missing? Well, holiness. I thought a little further. There is something to be said about the fear of the Lord in Scripture but it did not appear here. And it would have been unspeakable in that context to wonder about the wrath of God. Even the color of the walls and creature comforts in the fittings seemed designed to assure worshipers that all was well. The hymns did not distract from the message either. One was even about "partnership," a concept that had gone unnoticed by me in the history of Christian thought.

The Prayer of Confession held no problems. Its components slid through the mind with a minimum of friction. The major worry seemed to be insensitivity, and I am the first to agree that could be a problem. I gathered that I was to report in that I had not responded in love as I could have, a sort of callousness of the soul. And, my goodness, I did not want that to be the case. I mea culpa-ed my way through the environmental crisis and war and peace and felt a lot better for it.

Then I recapped my pen and thought it over. I had come to worship the Almighty in a Presbyterian setting, and I had found myself stuck in a liturgical boutique. There was plenty to buy, as long as you were looking for happy things and a chance to see that everyone had uplift. A kind of emotional branding had occurred, and I had not even recognized it.

I returned home feeling that my diet called for more basic stuff. Among other places that I searched, I settled on Psalm 119.

Movie Reviews

Red Eye

We've all been conditioned to fear the Saudi, the terrorist with the thick Middle Eastern accent and the half-crazed look in his eye. But what if we board a plane on a "red-eye" flight and the killer turns out to be a nice, slender, attractive, blue-eyed Anglo?

Wes Craven delivers a straight suspense movie, no tricks, nothing supernatural, not sci-fi. It's the story line that propels this movie, and the stars do a nice job of taking us all for the ride.

Voices

The General Assembly 2005

G.K. Chesterton believed that a little comic relief in a discussion or debate did no harm, no matter how serious the topic. In his own experience, the funniest things occurred during serious conversations and debates. It was little different with your own distinguished scientist, thinker and diplomat Benjamin Franklin. He was so renowned for delivering comic insights into serious matters that some believe the reason Thomas Jefferson rather than Franklin was asked to write the final draft of the Declaration of Independence was that some of the Founding Fathers suspected Franklin might include a touch of humour in this extremely serious document!

Lord Mackay, the Queen's representative to this year's General Assembly, was Scotland's former Lord Advocate. He later served as Lord Chancellor in John Major's government. Lord Mackay is in the Chesterton/Franklin mould. He has a brilliant mind and a mischievous sense of humour. He began his address to the Assembly by recalling how he had been present in the Assembly Hall in 1994 when I had been in the chair. "In his address to the Assembly that year," he said, "Dr Simpson recounted how his predecessor as Moderator had written an article making certain comments relating to the Virgin Birth. The article had evoked a large amount of correspondence. Dr Simpson then added that the most telling comment made to him about this theological controversy was also the shortest. 'I wish you Moderators would stick to politics!'" Lord Mackay went on to say, "While influencing public policy is part of the mission of the church, it is clear that her mission encompasses a great deal more than that." He recalled how at the coronation of the Queen, the Archbishop of Canterbury had said to Her Majesty, "To keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God as the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes, we present you with this book, the most valuable thing that the world affords." The Church of Scotland Moderator then presented the Queen with a Bible, saying, "Here is wisdom; this is the Royal law; these are the lively oracles of God." The Bible was then placed reverently on the altar.

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“Do you have a dream?’

Sometimes a dream is not a nightmare; it is a message from God that is received waking or sleeping and you cannot mistake it. Paul had a dream when he was asleep that he should go to Macedonia. It was so vivid and the voice of the man so urgent asking him to come over and help the Greeks that he got passage on a boat next morning (Acts 16:6-10). Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream when he was wide awake. God showed him that his children could be free and that people should not be judged by the color of their skin. It changed his whole life.

Do you have a dream for your church or presbytery? Is there a strong sense that God wants something done and that it cannot wait?

I have a dream for the church that is absolutely compelling. How it can be accomplished I do not know. My simple efforts to begin its realization have met with failure but I cannot give it up. *

It is a plain vision of Presbyterians and peacemaking.

Book Reviews

The People’s New Testament Commentary

by M. Eugene Boring and Fred Craddock. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, Hardcover; 827 pages. ISBN: 0-664-22754-6, $39.95.

Here is a one-volume commentary on the New Testament with up to date information that is also very much in line with what Presbyterians believe. I am tempted to say, "This is the commentary for you;" because I firmly believe that every household should have one handy reference work that helps each person understand Scripture, and you would find this book to be exactly that.

Book Reviews

Reflections Over the Long Haul, A Memoir

by Robert McAfee Brown. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. $24.95. Hb. 305 pp. ISBN: 0664224040

Bob Brown didn't yield the floor until the Grim Reaper nudged him out. Son Peter: "When he quite literally was on his deathbed, a week before he drifted off, and still somewhat rational, I asked him how he was doing. ... I thought he would say something to the effect that all was well, that he was unafraid, that life had been good, that he was ready to move to meet God, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jackie Robinson and all the others. Instead, he looked at me with great determination and said, 'Publish that book.' "

 

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Torrance honored in Lebanon, Scotland ceremonies

 

Iain R. Torrance, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, was the honored speaker at the Baccalaureate Service marking the 50th anniversary of Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon June 26. Both the University of Aberdeen and St. Andrews University in Scotland also awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity degree at their summer graduation ceremonies.

Torrance preached at Haigazian's Baccalaureate Service, held in the First Armenian Church in Beirut, for the university's class of 2005. In his sermon, titled "Hope in the New World," he called Haigazian, an Armenian institution, "a beacon for hope and reconstruction in Lebanon as it stands at the threshold of a new stage in its history." The university was founded as a creative response to the genocide of Armenians in Turkey by those who had escaped, "carrying their vision and faith with them," Torrance said.

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MRTI designates five companies for dialogue, possible divestment

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has named five companies in which it's considering divesting because of those firms' involvements in Israel -- involvement that a church committee contends contributes to the "ongoing violence that plagues Israel and Palestine."

During its meeting in Seattle on Aug. 5, the PC(USA)'s Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee (MRTI) named five companies -- Caterpillar, Motorola, ITT Industries, United Technologies and Citigroup -- it alleges have direct links to the violence, after considering a range of companies in which the church has investments and looking in detail at the business practices of each involving the Middle East.

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