Liberal Protestants have been hurting for a strong issue to involve their flocks. Opposition to the Viet Nam War is now commonplace, the civil rights crusade has cooled and church mergers are bogging down. So—what better cause than to turn inward and take a long look at church money and where it goes? Already, the churches have mobilized their dollars against bank involvements in South Africa, copper mining in Puerto Rico and discriminatory racial hiring policies in the U.S. (TIME, Feb. 15).
Last week a research unit of the National Council of Churches opened up a subject that is still related to the Viet Nam War but is broader in its implications: investments in the U.S. military-industrial complex. The N.C.C.'s ten-month-old Corporate Information Center, which has been analyzing an estimated $22 billion in religious-investment wealth, reported that ten Protestant denominations* have a total of more than $200 million invested in 29 companies with defense contracts. On those investments, the denominations earned $6,200,000 in 1970.
Several of the ten churches are on record against the Viet Nam War, others have engaged in active opposition to it, and one—the Church of the Brethren—is avowedly pacifist. Without accusing them of hypocrisy, the report chides church investors for failing to consider the moral implications of military-industrial investments, and for inadvertently enjoying the fruits of "war profiteering." The report objects less to the dollar total of church support to such industries (tiny in relation to the companies' $10 billion military sales) than to the "moral aura of legitimacy" that it provides.
Pointed Fanfare. Does the C.I.C. want the denominations to strip themselves immediately of all such investments? No, says Director Frank White, a United Church of Christ layman and former oil and car dealer. The center hopes that the churches will examine their investments closely, influence companies where they can and get rid of their stock only as a last resort —and then with pointed fanfare.
Such advice would have been more firmly grounded if the report had named the agencies within churches that handle the portfolios, rather than merely the denominations involved. Investments are often made by lay moneymen through such boards as church pension funds, which are independent of church programmers.
The report also fails to make moral distinctions between investments in firms heavily committed to defense and those only slightly involved. Examples: The United Church of Christ, the United Presbyterian Church and especially the United Methodist Church are stockholders in Honeywell, with nearly 21% of sales to the military, including antipersonnel weapons like cluster bombs. On the other hand eight churches cited hold stock in Texaco, with a mere 1.3% of its sales to the military. In implying that all military production is immoral—a highly dubious assumption—the report totally ignores the view of those Christians, undoubtedly a majority, who believe that defense still remains a necessity in an all too imperfect world.