Church Activists Oppose Free Trade: Compassion or Ideology?

From The Institute on Religion and Democracy:

An initiative of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Hunger Program is organizing U.S. and overseas activists to oppose free trade agreements and resist corporate investments in developing countries. This “Joining Hands” initiative was featured in a workshop at an April 5 PCUSA-sponsored conference on “food justice.”

Joining Hands describes itself as “an initiative of the Presbyterian Hunger Program that fights the root causes of hunger by sparking the formation of networks in developing countries. These networks lead the struggle against hunger at a local level while working with PC(USA) presbyteries and congregations to address global hunger issues.” Hunger Program associate Valery Nodem hailed Joining Hands as “the new approach in the church to do mission.” With the rest of the Hunger Program, it is funded through the One Great Hour of Sharing offering.

The Rev. Alexa Smith, PCUSA staff associate for Joining Hands, characterized the initiative as an effort to shine light into the dark places of international commerce. Developing country decisions to enter free trade agreements and allow foreign investment are often made without consulting the people most directly affected, according to Smith. “Most of the decisions that were causing people problems were not public decisions,” she said. “They were decisions that were made in the shadows.” Smith asked her audience to imagine a poor farmer caught by surprise when “a bulldozer was moving toward your house to displace you because the government had leased the land you were living on to a corporation very cheaply to grow a monocrop for export.”

The Joining Hands associate saw such incidents as symptomatic of a global problem: “There are 1.5 billion people in more than 50 resource-rich countries who remain mired in poverty.” Although the resources are abundant, many of those countries have “very authoritarian governments” that appropriate the proceeds from foreign investment for themselves and their loyalists. “Most of the money is siphoned off at the upper level and never filters down for basic needs like infrastructure, health care, education, and housing,” Smith charged.

Here is the dirty little secret of the activists: they don’t really care that much for poor people in poor countries.

They doubtless think they do, but they in fact are motivated by something else: an hostility to capitalism and free markets.

There is no other sufficient way to explain their embrace of crackpot pseudoscience on certain issues:

Nodem was encouraged that people, such as the networks supported through Joining Hands, “are becoming more aware and they are starting to fight back” against the corporations. He counted rising numbers of “divestments or abandoned or postponed projects” as victories for the poor.

Nodem was particularly suspicious of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) developed by multinational corporations. He rejoiced to recount how Haitian farmers had rejected a gift of seeds from Monsanto. Nodem was also pleased to report that “more and more countries around the world have banned or put in place GMO restrictions.” In the United States, he hailed “the whole organic thing” that disdains fertilizers and pesticides.

These folks, like Marquette students who want the university to boycott Palermo’s Pizza, care more about feeling self-righteous than about actually helping those in need.

As Alan F.H. Wisdom points out:

There is no reason to doubt the stories of abuse communicated through the Joining Hands program. In a fallen world, where authoritarian governments and other unjust structures leave many people powerless and vulnerable, it is not surprising that sinful individuals and institutions take advantage. Lack of transparency can make the problems worse.

Free trade may in some sense globalize the opportunities for exploitation. Yet at the same time free trade limits exploitation by undercutting the old local monopolies that used to hold all power. More open economies allow the poor and others to take the initiative in providing for their families. Some of them create their own jobs as entrepreneurs; others find employment with the very corporations that the PCUSA program habitually denounces. All of them benefit from the unprecedented abundance of food produced with the assistance of despised technologies such as fertilizers, pesticides, and genetic modification.

Indeed, this opening of new markets and new opportunities is the means by which hundreds of millions worldwide have emerged from poverty in recent decades. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization reports that over the last 20 years the proportion of undernourished persons in the world has dropped from 19 percent to 12 percent. This is the story that the PCUSA’s Joining Hands initiative is not telling. Perhaps corporations are not always the bad guys.

These clerical leftists are not well-meaning people who are just mistaken. They are rigid ideologues who are putting their anti-capitalist ideology ahead of the interests of poor people in the Third World.

Anti-Israel Attitudes in the Presbyterian Hierarchy

From Christianity Today:

In May, the Presbyterian Church (USA) released “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Ideas and Bias.” Jewish organizations were effusive in their praise. The last decade has seen a spike in violent anti-Semitic hate crimes in Europe. The document could not have been more welcomed and well timed.

The love-fest was short lived. In June, the PC(USA) removed the original document from its website and replaced it with “Vigilance against Anti-Jewish Bias: In the Pursuit of Israeli-Palestinian Peace.”

It would be hard to construct two more dissimilar documents with similar titles. The original pointed directly to problematic PC(USA) overtures and materials, such as overtures “declaring that the Jewish people are no longer in covenant with God … or to blame for the crucifixion.” It was a startling and honest mea culpa that directly addressed Jewish concerns about a steady pattern of criticism of Israel that had morphed into derision of Jews. (The latest U.S. State Department annual report on human rights offered, “The distinguishing feature of the new anti-Semitism is criticism of Zionism or Israeli policy that — whether intentionally or unintentionally — has the effect of promoting prejudice against all Jews by demonizing Israel and Israelis and attributing Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.”)

Ominously, the main focus of the new document is no longer anti-Semitism, but Presbyterian responsibility in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anti-Semitism has become essentially a sideshow to the main event, which seeks “to call an end to the Israeli occupation … to criticize Christian Zionism … to speak out against the placement of the separation barrier.” (Perhaps the denomination might convince Hamas to end its daily barrage of lethal rockets directed at civilians. That might be easier if the denomination would begin by mentioning them, but don’t look for such mention in the document.) PC(USA) members are now cautioned to mind their Ps and Qs as they pursue their one-sided quest for peace. They are urged to be vigilant against slipping into the language and imagery of anti-Semitism while all references to PC(USA)’s own malfeasance have been purged.

Whereas the old document treated such language as inherently wrong, the new one shifts the blame to the Jews. Using crucifixion language in regard to Israeli soldiers is problematic only because Jews “inevitably construe” such imagery as anti-Jewish. Rather than commit to fight the scourge of exploding worldwide anti-Semitism, the PC(USA) now adds to the one-sided demonization of Israel (“the oppressive force in the Israeli-Palestinian situation”) that fuels it.

There is really only one thing one needs to know about the bureaucrats who run the “mainstream” (now far outside the mainstream) Protestant denominations.

They are hardly (if at all) Christians, but they are bureaucrats, and they are leftist bureaucrats. They move in a circle of politically correct liberal and leftist thoughts. And in the modern era, that means siding with the Palestinians against Israel.

In this, they are no different from Marquette bureaucrats in the Office of Student Development and Manresa, which have a history of virulently anti-Israel programming.

If it becomes advantageous to condemn anti-Semitism, they will do so. But their real sympathies lie with Israel’s enemies, and they don’t much mind if these enemies are terrorists.