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April 15, 2008
Letter from Chris Iosso
Prophetic choices before the 218th General Assembly
Dear Friends interested in Social Justice and Social Witness Policy:
At tax time, with a recession taking hold — in the midst of a very exciting political primary season — with two wars grinding on — and before Pentecost, I write to share with you information on a number of items going to this year’s General Assembly and on several other matters. We use links rather than attachments and I urge you to look at the resources made available, especially posted copies of the policies themselves. The core of all this effort is the conviction that the Church must speak and act on matters of grave social concern as part of our witness to Jesus Christ.
Because of the two-year General Assembly cycle, we have a seemingly larger-than-usual number of reports going to the commissioners. In order for elected persons to affect the programs of the General Assembly Council, it is necessary to put matters of social concern before the Assembly so that policies can be guided by representatives of the whole church. The word, “policy,” is used to show that we are not simply “pronouncing” on topics or making “deliverances” in an omni-directional manner. The recommendations in all of the reports I will name are printed first according to General Assembly practice; the rationales or background statements follow, even if logically they should come first. But the key rationale is in the Book of Order, that “truth is in order to goodness;” hence the practice of adopting specific recommendations, rather than simply “receiving” them (which we do for study documents).
At this time, as my opening line suggests, we are seeing major changes in prospect on a very significant scale, and these changes affect everything the Advisory Committee is bringing to the Assembly. A brief overview of the set of 9 reports can be found on the ACSWP GA 2008 flier, Responding to the Call. 
This resolution addresses the most drastic evidence of poverty in America, the million plus who are homeless, on average, each night. Authorized by the 2006 General Assembly and developed by expert practitioners from across the church, this speaks directly to those 50 percent of our congregations who do some caring ministry related to people in need — food banks, Habitat for Humanity, offering beds, investing in affordable housing, etc. The basic issue here as elsewhere is to connect the church’s charitable works to the prophetic effort to change structures. Controversial is a proposal to invest unrestricted reserves of the General Assembly Council in affordable housing at two-thirds market rate through the risk-absorbing intermediary of LISC, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. The Church has done such program investing since the 1970s through the Creative Investment Program related to the Mission Responsibility Through Investment (MRTI) Committee and managed by the Presbyterian Foundation, but finances are tighter today.
Crucial to the changes facing our “American” way of life is the rise in the price of energy; we now face a major crisis and opportunity in the retrofitting of everything with a significant carbon footprint. This statement is a hard-hitting and thoughtful “greenprint” for changing personal and social practices, including practices of the church. It is carefully documented and appeals to the technologically minded as well as the big picture generalists. Internationally, the report notes that global hunger is tracking global warming. The scarcity and commercialization of clean water resources, a big ecumenical concern, is being superceded by the pressure on basic grains, partly by the rise of agri- or bio-fuels. This is an inefficient way to make fuel, even for transportation purposes. Beyond that aspect of the struggle over resources, we are also aware that more solvent economies are growing rapidly in energy use: China and India above all. Thus this picture has big geopolitical implications.
Speaking of geopolitics, some see this long war as the intervention to end interventions. The costs in human, material, military and diplomatic terms are enormous and mounting. How do we scale down this catastrophe? The study paper recommends a strongly Gospel-based strategy of “repent, restore, rebuild and reconcile,” internationalizing the occupation and restoring sovereignty as swiftly as reasonable and acknowledging continued humanitarian reconstruction responsibility by the United States. Among the foremost lessons is to insist on “police-model” responses to terrorism rather than vast military over-reactions, punishing whole societies and downgrading the future influence and power of the United States. Among the key recommendations here is that the peacemaking approach of 1980 be updated with the help of college and seminary faculty consultations to address the changed place of the United States in the post-Cold War order. Although the mainline churches were right in counseling against the war, the task of re-visioning our country’s place in the world requires new ways of teaching “the Gospel of peace.”
This resolution is a response to the Gulf Coast crisis that again builds upon the great charitable work of Presbyterians, at least 30,000 of whom have volunteered through Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to help New Orleans and other communities rebuild. One church near a broken levee has an American flag painted on its roof: would that this metaphor for governmental shelter and protection had proven true. The questions here are not only those of justice and governmental responsibility under God, but of our social bond with afflicted areas and populations within the United States. The study paper’s main author grew up in New Orleans and asks hard questions about the elements of “structural racism” and cultural loss in the continued diaspora of almost half of the citizens of that city, without forgetting the losses in Mississippi and elsewhere and on the environment itself.
Over the past 30 years, women’s wages have moved from being 65 to 77 percent of men’s comparable wages. For a church that takes the equality of women and racial-ethnic groups seriously, this basic disparity remains crucial and deeply affects the poverty in which one-sixth of U.S. children live. This resolution builds on the policy, “God’s Work in Our Hands,” which looks at the meaning of calling in today’s world of work (1995), and provides tools for the church to improve its own track record as well as that of society. Several presbyteries have addressed the too-predictable disparities among ministers’ salaries and one, in particular, provides a model for assessing pay equity concerns.
“More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985 … so far this year, 17 …. ”(New York Times, April 14, 2008). Church leaders are in exile in the U.S. Members of our church “accompany” church workers still in 3-million plus slums of Colombians displaced by land seizures and terrorism by para-militaries or rebels. It is in this context that this timely resolution provides background to a “Free-Trade” agreement now stalled in Congress. And though concerns about the impact of such agreements are expressed in the rationale, the Church is most concerned about how to minister in a climate of fear and corruption with which a government richly supported by the United States has been clearly linked. A section of this resolution looks at the similar human rights situation in Philippines, where the United States supports a government responsible for the death and torture of church workers and others who challenge oligarchs and their paramilitaries. The “war on terrorism” can be an excuse for undemocratic governments to violate human rights — this is part of the timeliness of this resolution, though it also notes the 60th Anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Christian support remains crucial for the cause of human rights.
Following the 2006 policy statement on Disabilities, this proposed policy statement (longer and more comprehensive than a resolution) addresses fundamental issues that affect a significant percentage of the population. Distinguishing between common episodic mental stresses and more major and/or systemic disorders, the policy sections recommend “parity” in treatment reimbursement and a variety of individual and community-based responses to the range of serious afflictions. Alongside this judicious use of the “medical model,” however, is an emphatically theological response for those who feel stigmatized and in exile due to serious mental illness. Sections of the report provide personal witness and inside understanding of experiences of suffering and healing, inviting all church members to work with the Holy Spirit in responding to this part of our human condition.
Responding to the 2000 election debacle and continued disenfranchisement of poor and minority citizens, this resolution addresses the basic need for fairness and integrity in the U.S. political system. Despite the reauthorization of the Civil Rights Act, the Justice Department itself has been politicized and new concerns have been raised about paperless electronic voting machines. Beyond these basic challenges, this resolution recommends larger reforms: re-enfranchisement of felons who have paid their debts to society, nonpartisan election commissions, weekend or special holiday voting, D.C. voting rights, further campaign finance improvements, all based in an affirmative, nationwide right to vote. Inequities between “battleground” and “bystander” states caused by the Electoral College will be very evident in this year’s general election, but the report recommends study of additional reforms of the undemocratic College and other voting methods.
One page long, the Social Creed is a consensus of Christian social teaching rather than a doctrinal creed. It recalls and celebrates the very influential 1908 Social Creed of the Federal Council of Churches that built church support for an end to child labor (in the United States!), better working conditions and several major elements of what became the New Deal 25 years later. The current Social Creed broadens concerns and anchors them theologically much more than the earlier version and also encourages the “convergence” with Evangelicals that is increasingly evident on matters such as poverty, the environment and the war. A book, New Prayers for the Social Awakening, inspired by the Social Creed and modeled on Walter Rauschenbusch’s Prayers for the Social Awakening (1909) has been published by Westminster/John Knox; a 28-minute documentary film will be shown at the General Assembly, and a longer booklet on the particular recommendations will also be available.
Other matters: Two conferences:
Envision: The Gospel, Politics, and the Future, a conference at Princeton University, June 8-10, 2008. This is a major event representing the “convergence” referred to above, with major Evangelical leaders like Jim Wallis, Rich Cizik, Ron Sider and Brian McLaren, along with mainline leaders like Randall Balmer, Rita Nakashima Brock and Miguel de la Torre. This is aimed at thoughtful activists, including young adults of many different backgrounds. The Advisory Committee is among the sponsors of this serious look at ethics and faith in this new century. See their Web site and consider passing this information on.
Gun Violence/Gospel Values: Stony Point, September 15-17, 2008, co-sponsored by the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program, Stony Point Conference Center and the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy. This year’s 9/11-timed consultation focuses on handgun and small arms violence, prompted partly by the massacres in Blacksburg, Virginia, and other locations, as well as by the extraordinary reign of gun terror that the United States, alone in the developed world, routinely tolerates. Information will be available on the Peacemaking Program Web site.
At the General Assembly — Additional communications from ACSWP:
Smithfield Foods: Response to Referral: The Advisory Committee was referred the 2006 Assembly’s strong statement of concern for working conditions and an uncoerced union election at the Smithfield Foods pork packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina. ACSWP and representatives of two presbyteries, Coastal Carolina and New Hope, have met with workers, representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, top management of Smithfield Foods and a leading subsidiary, Murphy Brown.
Advice and Counsel Memoranda: These apply General Assembly social witness policy to overtures, commissioners’ resolutions and other reports coming as items of business before Assembly committees.
Narrative Report: This is a brief summary of the Committee’s work that is provided to each Assembly for information.
If you are in San Jose for the Assembly, we invite you to stop by the ACSWP GA booth #612 and introduce yourself. The Social Witness of the church is not something we take for granted. How can we help you in your witness where you are?
Great blessings and strength in God,
Chris Iosso, Coordinator, ACSWP.
Note: ACSWP consulted with the Advocacy Committee for Women's Concerns on the pay equity report and the Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns on the Katrina and Voting Rights reports. |
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