A Taste of Controversies to Come

The General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC), meeting in Louisville February 24-26, got a small taste of controversies that could upset all its budgetary plans. Most immediately in view were fierce debates over the Middle East between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups within and outside the PCUSA. But lurking just out of sight were theological and moral debates over marriage and sexuality that could be far more explosive at the July 3-10 General Assembly in Minneapolis.
Caterpillar Denounced

The Middle East debate cropped up when the GAMC’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee (MRTI) brought a recommendation for assembly action against Caterpillar, Inc. MRTI’s complaint is that the Israeli army uses Caterpillar construction equipment to build the separation barrier protecting Jewish communities from terrorist attacks and to demolish Palestinian homes used by suspected terrorists. Caterpillar officials have met twice with MRTI; however, “they have not acknowledged responsibility for the end use of their products,” according to MRTI chairman Brian Ellison. The company’s position, Ellison said, is that “they sell tractors. What people do with them is not their responsibility.”

MRTI rejected this position as unacceptable. It proposed that the General Assembly “strongly denounce Caterpillar’s continued profit-making from non-peaceful uses of a number of its products.” Some objections were raised within the council to targeting a single company (Caterpillar) and a single nation (Israel) for condemnation, amidst a world rife with human rights violations. “It’s mind-boggling to me,” said Steve Tonissen, an at-large member of the council’s Stewardship Committee. Tonissen noted that many other companies made products that could be turned toward non-peaceful purposes. “I’ll bet you could find Campbell’s soup cans in the Israeli army,” he remarked, and wondered why hundreds of other companies were not also being denounced.

A group of Presbyterians from Great Rivers Presbytery in Illinois, where Caterpillar is headquartered, had written a letter to dissuade the GAMC from the proposed action against the corporation. “For many people in Central Illinois,” the group said, “Caterpillar is not only a corporate giant, a good investment, and a source of the kind of heavy equipment that is needed to do work in times of stability and times of instability. It is also the employer that provides the income for many families, including many Presbyterian families… In one of our largest and fastest growing churches in Peoria, thirty percent of the members are currently employed by Caterpillar or its subsidiaries.” The letter warned that “if the PC(USA) divests from Caterpillar, they are considering ‘divesting’ from the denomination.”

Council member Clark Cowden from San Diego urged his colleagues to respect the sensitivities of the local presbytery. “The prophetic and social justice ministries of the church are very important,” Cowden said, but when those activities undermine “the fragile connectional nature” of the church, it is wise to be cautious. He did not believe that the proposed denunciation would have much effect on Caterpillar. “I think it will deteriorate the relationship,” Cowden said, and “the brunt of this will be felt by one presbytery.” Nevertheless, the GAMC voted 24-9 in favor of the action against Caterpillar.
Mideast Documents Criticized from Both Sides

Mideast-related tensions also surfaced in the council’s discussion of a proposed theological study paper on “Christians and Jews: People of God.” The paper rejects “[s]upersessionism, the belief that God’s covenant with the church has replaced God’s covenant with Israel, and that the church has supplanted the Jewish people.” While asserting that “[t]he state of Israel is a geopolitical entity and is not to be validated theologically,” the paper insists, “It is not possible to deny the particularity of God’s gift of a specific land to the people of God’s covenant.” It observes that “for the great majority of Jews the Biblical land, the state of Israel, and Jewish identity are inextricably intertwined.”

In this case, the council ran into resistance from groups more sympathetic to the Palestinians. The Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus and the denominationally supported Israel/Palestine Mission Network fired off messages blasting the “Christians and Jews” paper. The mission network characterized the paper as “Occupation Theology.” It regarded the paper as a concession to “the pressure on the churches from American Jewish religious and secular organizations to stop criticizing Israel and provide uncritical support of Israel.”

The Middle Eastern caucus attacked the “shabby and questionable content” of the “Christians and Jews” paper and another paper on Christian-Muslim relations. The caucus suggested that the first paper was too quick in dismissing supersessionism. It complained that “[n]ot even one Middle Eastern member of PCUSA was included” in the consultations leading up to the paper.

GAMC members avoided discussing the substantive issues raised in this debate. But they expressed some discomfort that Presbyterians of Middle Eastern descent had felt excluded from the study process. In the end they passed the “Christians and Jews” paper on to the General Assembly. Roger Gench noted that Mideast political issues would also be addressed in a special committee report coming separately to the assembly.

In fact, that report has provoked controversy from a different direction. It harshly criticizes Israeli policies while saying little against the Palestinian Authority or other Arab governments. The report calls for withholding U.S. aid to “enforce Israel’s compliance” with demands that it withdraw from the West Bank. It recommends no similar pressure against any other actor in the region. The report endorses a Palestinian manifesto that rejects Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, and it summons the U.S. government “to repent of its sinful behavior” in backing Israel.

Even before its release, this special committee report has stirred up a storm. The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent out an e-mail blast predicting that both Jews and many Presbyterians would be outraged. “PCUSA has some of the staunchest supporters of Israel in its ranks,” declared Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein of the Wiesenthal Center. “They are as frustrated as we are that their church leadership team spends so much energy on the Arab/Israeli conflict where there are relatively few Presbyterians who live in either Israel or the disputed territories, and spends too little energy on major human rights issues impacting Christians and Presbyterians who live in Muslim countries, China, and North Korea.”
Even Larger Dangers Ahead

The GAMC approved, without opposition, another politically charged measure. It authorized denominational agencies to participate in a “Truth Commission on Conscience in War.” As IRD President Mark Tooley reported in Front Page magazine, this “truth commission” is almost entirely composed of longtime religious left fixtures. It plans to stage a political show trial March 21-22 at Riverside Church in New York, where a parade of witnesses will accuse the U.S. military of all sorts of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The foreordained conclusion is that U.S. soldiers should be free to exercise “selective conscientious objection” by refusing to serve in those conflicts.

This and other political controversies will seem minor, however, compared to the momentous debates over marriage and sexuality at the next General Assembly. Those debates are not being driven by the GAMC. They are being driven by overtures from presbyteries seeking to redefine marriage as any “two persons” and to eliminate the requirement that ordained officers practice “fidelity and chastity.” If any of these efforts succeeds in Minneapolis, it would shake up all the plans that the GAMC has so carefully laid. The current projections of a 15-20 percent budgetary decline could look wildly optimistic.