Religion's Modern Witch Hunt; C. Dickson

While witch hunting in the traditional sense is no longer part of the American scene, a new form of it has emerged in the bureaucratic chambers of some major American religious denominations. This time the object of religious revenge is not ladies wearing black dresses and conducting strange rituals, but rather the management of many major American corporations. A quiet, behind-the-scenes war began in the early 1970s when two national groups were formed to monitor activity of Ameri can businesses and then recommend pun ishments of certain ones by selling off (di vesting) their stock from the portfolios of church retirementfunds when the compa nies did anything with which they disagreed. Dr. Dickson is a chemistry teacher, ordained clergyman, and writer whose articles have ap peared in The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, The Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other scientific, religious, and business publications.

These groups, serving as watchdog units on corporate activity are called the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) headquartered in New York, and the Inves tor Responsibility Resource Center (IRRC) which operates out of Washington. The Mechanicsof Witch Hunting Basically the scenario works this way. The ICCR and the IRRC offer annual sub scriber services for a fee. In the case of the ICCR, each participating group must pay $2,000which entitles it to receive a monthly list of what are called "screens." When a corporate name appears on the screens list there is also a note as to what "sin" it is committing which may range from produc ing alcohol to processing tobacco, polluting the environment, or, until recently, doing business in South Africa. Managers of church retirement fund portfolios who sub scribe to these services may then elect to respond to the screen by selling off all the stock in a particular guilty corporation as a means of protest.

Thus the mission of the ICCR and IRRC, with their salaried full-time staffs, is to search out whatever witches' brews they may find in the kettles of American industry and then recommend punishment by stock divesting. But who are the ICCR and IRRC anyway? The ICCR began in 1971 and occupies the same headquarters as the National Council 119 120 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY 1995 of Churches with whom it works closely. Membership includes churches ranging from Quaker to Catholic and from Method ist to Mennonite. It seeks to manipulate corporate decisionmaking by using meth ods ranging from protest letters to threats of boycott, negative publicity and, of course, divestment of stock holdings in the retire ment funds of its supporting church groups. In addition it makes recommendations of companies in which to buy stock. The IRRC was founded in 1972 and num bers among its members some of the same church groups as ICCR plus some corpora tions who are sympathetic to its cause. This group reports assets valued at nearly three million dollars and annual revenues ap proaching five million. One of its stated purposes is to produce screens of corpora tions with recommendations to punish those companies with which it disagrees.

The combined result of these group efforts is that the stocks of 162 major American corporations have been, to one degree or another, removed from the retirement port folios of clergy and other church workers without their consent and, in most cases, without their knowledge. On the list of "witches" are such financial stalwarts as Borden, John Deere, Hewlett-Packard, Westinghouse, General Electric, IBM, Ford Motor, Colgate-Palmolive, and Bristol Myers, to mention but a handful, all of whom have felt the bite of church divesting. But the real bite has been felt by faithful retired church workers who have discov ered their monthly pensions are nowhere near as large as they had reason to hope they would be. It stands to reason why this is happening. If an individual takes his or her own investment portfolio and strips it of companies with a history of good yields, the returns are sure to take a nosedive.

Appeal to Reason As I detailed in ' 'Pensiongate: The Emerging Crisis of Church Investments" The Freeman (August 1994),there is a solid body of evidence as to why our church bureaucracies should cease orchestrated witch hunting operations against corporate America. There are equally strong argu ments which cannot be expressed by mere statistics. These may be called the reason able human factor. Over the years many companies have done commendable jobs in building the economy of both America and other na tions. Sellingofftheir stock as a punishment tactic ignores these accomplishments. The other human factor church social investors fail to recognize is the fact that congrega tions of all faiths are filled each week with people from every level of employment who work for these companies and who contrib ute part of their earnings to the welfare of the church, while some of the leaders of the church are working to undermine the com panies that employ them. Biting the hand that feeds you has always been a question able course of action.

Meanwhile the conflict between institu tional religion and corporate management continues to be waged by those who direct the back-room, closed-door operation of many church pension funds. For many who believe the task of churches is to minister to human spiritual needs rather than to ma nipulate corporations or destabilize govern ments this whole witch hunting operation seems, at the very least, unnecessary if not downright divisive. While corporate Amer ica is certainly not without its faults the churches must also possess the insight and courage to admit their own shortcomings. In an age when we desperately need dialogue between conflicting ideologies on allfronts, we must also search for those who will have the wisdom to avoid advocating patterns of behavior which tend to drive people apart. We need healers not polarizers and churches, above all institutions, should know this. Admittedly, it has always seemed easier to erect walls which separate than to construct bridges which connect.

Hopefully it will be the bridge builders who carry the day with efforts that set the stage for a new era of cooperation between churches and corporations. They are, after all, two great American institutions which, in the final analysis, need each other. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Full EmploymentA Lesson from the Desertsof Saudi Arabia by Keith Wade T he United States has an unemployment problem. While there are people out of work in every segment of the population, the low-skilled worker has been disproportion ately outplaced. As the minimum wage rises and guaranteed employer-subsidized health care looms ominously on the horizon, more and more companies are deciding that giving the teenager his or her first break is just not worth it. The minimum wage has choked the life out of many small businesses, forced many people who genuinely want to work for a living onto the welfare rolls, and driven up the cost of goods and services. The true minimum wage is not $4.50; the true mini mum wage is nothing at all!