The Presbyterians Divest

© 2015, The Author Middle East Policy © 2015, Middle East Policy Council In June 2014, the 221st Presbyterian General Assembly, meeting in Detroit, decided by a vote of 310 to 303 to sell their holdings in three corporations entangled with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. They had passed a similar resolution in 2004 but modified it the following year to permit corporate engagement. In 2012, a resolution to divest had failed by two votes. Now it passed by seven.1 Anyone thinking that this decision centered upon selling stocks is overlooking the broader issues at work. Nothing involving a challenge to Israel is easy, and it is almost never limited to the issues at hand. This article will discuss the history of the decision, the mechanism whereby it was made, the debate that surrounded it, and the peripheral but highly significant issues discussed. This vote did not come out of nowhere. Three decades ago, in 1976, the Presbyterian Church decided to invest only in “socially responsible” stocks. Faced with the injustice of apartheid in South Africa, it set up its Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) to monitor its portfolio. Today, two investment bodies, the Pension Fund and the Foundation, manage a total of $9 billion. Both have a “fiduciary” obligation to act on behalf of the denomination to maximize its returns. This is particularly difficult for a body committed to moral principles of justice if high returns come from what have historically been called “ill-gotten gains.” Should they invest in casinos, film companies that make pornographic movies or banks that launder money? Obviously not, although the Vatican discovered in the 1980s that its investment bodies had been doing exactly that. The Presbyterians specifically indicated that they would not invest in companies involved in tobacco, alcohol, gambling, human-rights abuses, weapons production or any non-peaceful activity. Pursuant to this policy, they sold their shares in several companies that supported apartheid. Over the decades, they have refused to hold shares in companies that make war matériel (such as Raytheon or Lockheed). The logic of this strategy is not that they are changing the way the world operates. Nike will still pay substandard wages overseas even if the Presbyterians shun their company. The issue is twofold: 1) They want to “witness” to the world that they do not approve of certain activities, and 2) They do not want to profit