Methodists Nix Staff-Written Divestment Resolution — For Now
A few weeks after the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church issues an ill-timed blacklist of companies that do business with Israel’s defense establishment, The UMC’s General Board of Global Ministries issues a curious public statement that it has taken “no position on financial divestment in Israel. The international mission agency is not submitting a resolution to The United Methodist Church’s highest legislative body supporting divestment in companies doing business in Israel as a protest to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.”
The document continues:
A draft document positing such action in some circumstances was drafted by staff and inadvertently include (sic) in a packet of other draft resolutions distributed to Board directors; however, the staff-written, so-called “divestment resolution,” had not been reviewed or cleared, as protocol requires, by several other United Methodist agencies that deal with Middle East issues.
Directors have taken no action and the draft resolution has been dropped from consideration. The General Board of Global Ministries is strongly committed to peace and justice in the Middle East. It will proceed on all policy matters related to Israel/Palestine in a collaborative relationship with its partner United Methodist agencies.
So the GBGM’s staff wrote a divestment resolution? Who told them to do that? David Wildman? He will be speaking at a Sabeel conference in Boston in October. The event will be at Old South Church, no less. Sabeel has been a proponent of divestment in several mainline churches, as has David Wildman.
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