UM Lobby Office Endorses Anti-Israel Divestment and U.S. Retreat from Iraq

on September 21, 2007

Directors of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), at their September 2007 meeting, endorsed a divestment campaign against Peoria-based Caterpillar, Inc. for selling bulldozers to Israel.  They also urged “immediate” U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, supported liberalized U.S. immigration policies, supported affirming homosexual behavior within United Methodism, and briefly addressed their ongoing litigation about the United Methodist Building that houses the GBCS staff.  There was additionally a resolution urging divestment from companies doing business with the government of Sudan over its genocide in the Darfur region.

The Caterpillar divestment resolution for the 2008 General Conference would require the United Methodist General Board of Pensions to divest in all Caterpillar stock. It also calls for individual United Methodists to divest from and boycott Caterpillar.

Two Palestinian activists had spoken to the GBCS April gathering “on behalf of divestment in companies doing business with and in Israel.”  Accepting their direction, the GBCS approved the anti-Caterpillar proposal without opposition.

According to the GBCS resolution, “Bulldozers and other heavy equipment manufactured and sold by Caterpillar, Inc. as well as equipment supplied by others to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are still used for the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes, orchards and olive groves in the Occupied Territories, and to clear Palestinian land for illegal Israeli settlements, segregated roads and the Separation Barrier.”

The resolution omits that Palestinian dwellings are often destroyed because they cover underground arms shipment tunnels or are the homes of suicide bombers.  It requires that The United Methodist Church, at its Spring 2008 General Conference, “divest of all equity and debt holdings of Caterpillar” by January 1, 2009. GBCS staffer Wesley Paulson explained that the divestment resolution targeted Caterpillar and not other firms doing business with Israel because others will be submitting resolutions promoting other divestments against Israel.

In another GBCS controversy, the Methodist Building trustees briefly reported about GBCS’s having filed suit with the D.C. Superior Court about the Methodist Building Endowment Fund.  According to its original 1965 trust document, the Fund must be devoted to exclusively to “temperance and alcohol problems.”  But after having largely sidestepped this spending stipulation over 40 years, GBCS is now seeking the court’s interpretation.

It was reported that GBCS General Secretary Jim Winkler  had told the Trustees in August that the case had been delayed by five individuals attempting to legally intervene.  But the GBCS is “on track for a court date in November 2007.”   The board’s finance committee also reported the board’s 2006 audit obtained got a “clean and unqualified opinion.”  An earlier audit had been rejected by the United Methodist General Council on Finance and Administration due to the Building Trust issue.  But GBCS’s lawyers assured the finance agency that the litigation would resolve the issue.

As this 2006 audit was distributed to directors, GBCS President Bishop Beverly Shamana enthusiastically asked them to raise their hands and say “hallelujah!” if they in turn accepted it.  Most directors complied, but a number did not.  The GBCS trustees also cryptically reported to the plenary session that they had addressed “the item initiated by Bishop Schol [of the Baltimore-Washington Conference] at the Spring 2007 Trustees meeting” about the “UM Building Matter,” but they did not elaborate.

During her address to the board, Bishop Shamana talking about immigration, lamenting the “terrible” fence along part of the U.S.-Mexico border.  She recalled a recent visit with the other Western Jurisdiction bishops to “safe houses” for illegal immigrants in Arizona.  Directors approved a new resolution for General Conference called “Welcoming the Migrant to the United States,” which complains that  “millions of immigrants are denied legal entry to the U.S.  It declares:   “In the face of these unjust laws and a system of terror instituted by the Department of Homeland Security, God’s people must resist complicity to injustice and provide sanctuary.”  And it demands legal status for all current and future immigrants, without restriction.

As is its tradition, GBCS urged United Methodism to overturn its current disapproval of homosexual practice.   The directors supported resolutions from the United Methodist Global Young People’s Convocation, which would delete the church’s current ban on actively homosexual clergy and funding for pro-homosexuality advocacy, while also explicitly stating that all professing church members should be included in United Methodist membership counts “regardless of” their “sexual orientation.”

Re-elected at this meeting as GBCS General Secretary, Jim Winkler reported on the board’s continued focus on opposing America’s military efforts in Iraq, including his forthcoming participation in an October 8 interfaith “Fast for Peace,” timed to coincide with the Islamic season of Ramadan.  He decried the U.S. having intentionally “fought the wrong people” with the “criminally wrong” invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Winkler conceded that “many good-hearted people” oppose an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.  But the board backed a resolution for General Conference demanding immediate U.S. withdrawal.  Director Bobby Hicks of North Alabama attempted to replace “immediate” with “expeditious,” but his motion was defeated by 17-13, with over half the directors not present or not voting.

Directors also approved a series of proposed amendments to the United Methodist Church’s stance on pornography, acknowledging pornography’s damage to “the viewer, the performer, and the spouses and the children of the viewers and the performers,” calling for “strict oversight of church-owned computers,” and deleting the current stance opposing “government censorship” of pornography.

Other resolutions hastily approved by the directors endorsed the International Criminal Court, Sudan divestment, and rebuilding of the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.  All of these resolutions must be approved by next Spring’s General Conference before becoming official United Methodist positions.

GBCS’s resolution on Sudan cited state-sponsored human rights violations by the Sudanese government, especially in the Darfur region.  The resolution calls on church agencies, especially the pensions board, to divest from companies doing business with Sudan.  It asserts that a “well-placed” boycott that would deny the Sudanese government essential foreign direct investment in vital sectors like oil. The resolution encourages continued investment in commerce that “benefits the people of Sudan directly,” but claims that the church “should not own or profit from companies whose products or services are used by corrupt governments or regimes to murder, suppress, or displace its citizens and neighbors.” It also asks individual United Methodists “to prayerfully consider taking the same action with the personal and pension assets under their control.”

Regarding its budget, the GBCS had requested that World Service funding from local churches increase from $11.7 million in 2005-2008 to $13.9 million in 2009-2012.  But the Connectional Table and the General Council on Finance and Administration will propose funding of $12.4 million.  GBCS decided to save half a million dollars by cutting programs on human trafficking and mental health issues.

With additional income from Special Sunday offerings, the United Methodist Building, and other sources, the total budgeted GBCS income for 2009-2012 is proposed to be $22.5 million, with a budgeted deficit of over half a million dollars.  That proposed quadrennial income includes some $8.1 million from United Methodist Building income.

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