Edward Mason is Chair of the Church of England’s Ethical Investment Advisory Group. He recently visited the national offices of the Anglican Church of Canada.
From here:
Whether it is the Rockefeller family joining a campaign to withdraw $50 billion from fossil fuel investments over the next five years or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement pushing for changes in Israeli policies toward Palestine, many people are thinking and talking about where they don’t want to put their money.
[….]
“We don’t expect perfection,” Mason said, “but we expect a positive direction of travel and a willingness and desire to make that positive journey. So with BP, it was reforming their safety procedures, which they put a huge amount of effort into.”
Henriette Thompson, director of public witness for social and ecological justice for the Anglican Church of Canada, noted that there is a renewed focus on investment issues for the Canadian church because the joint declaration on responsible resource extraction made with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) at the 2013 Joint Assembly commits the churches to “advocate for responsible and ethical investment and actions by individuals, faith communities, corporations, and governments both in Canada and around the world.”
Mason is working hard to “disincentivise” the use of fossil fuels:
From here:
While engagement with companies is an important component of an ethical investment response to climate change, it is not sufficient. We believe that engagement with policy makers is even more important: only policy makers can put the price on carbon that is needed to disincentivise the use of fossil fuels.
Doubtless he would have visited Canada earlier had it not been for the fact that he paddled himself across the Atlantic in a sustainable canoe constructed from renewable bark harvested from an organically grown Amazonian Hymenaea tree lovingly cultivated from a seed in his own back garden.
One would think that Western Anglicanism, having largely replaced the hope of heaven later with the illusion of utopia now, would be enthusiastically supporting the use of fossil fuel. No other technology has benefited billions of people as fossil fuel has. Even the lenses in Edward Mason’s glasses are probably made of polycarbonate, derived from the demon petroleum; let’s see how well the disincentivising goes without your glasses, Edward.
Don’t forget plastics, artificial fibres, electronics, some types of paint, glossy paper, certain pharmaceuticals…. The list of products derived from oil is a lot longer than many realise.
Are they really ‘pushing for changes in Israeli policies toward the Palestinians’? Would they care to explain just what these changes should be? And why. As for the rest of this carbon mummery, that’s just what it is: mummery.
Thank God for Big Oil. And Israel, while we’re at it.
The CoE Ethical Investment Advisory Group’s BDS efforts need only target Israel because the ‘Palestinian’/Hamas leadership are not ethically challenged as to where to invest their vast and endless infusions of goodwill foreign cash:
a very safe personal Swiss bank account.
I had an interesting conversation with a Pastor of the Alliance Church a few years ago in which he commented that “the Church should be poor”. He meant financially. Of course proper stewardship should be practiced in the maintenance of property (i.e. roofs and heating systems of Church buildings) but money should not be accumulated, and certainly not horded into investments. The money provided to the Church, especially through the Offering Plate, is meant to be used to further the work of God’s Holy Church!
That being said, I am aware of endowment funds and pension plans. Endowment funds especially need to be professionally managed, and I would submit that this would include responsible investment. But for a Holy Church this responsible investment would mean not investing in sin (i.e. the publishing company of Playboy magazine).
Using the endowment funds in an attempt to effect social change is a high-jacking of the fund and thus misusing it contrary to the intentions of the funds benefactor. but why should any of be even the least bit surprised. After all, these are the same people who have high-jacked a Church and turned into an enviro-nazi club.
I had a very similar conversation with an Alliance Pastor a few years ago… it was very challenging.
I agree with most of what you said but I think that “sin” can be expanded to include more than just sexual sins (which is what you suggest with the Playboy example). Many investment funds no longer invest in the tobacco industry even though it also contradicts the primary goal of maximizing profits. I see no difference in also considering social and environmental goals.
In the early 80s Archbishop Hambidge said, “The Anglican Church is in more debt!”
Referring to the Anglican Church of Canada before all this and the Residential Law suits too.
What kind of debt is the ACoC in now?
The only ethical investment that is needed within the ACoC and the Anglican Communion is in the Word of God. Tragically we have witnessed and continue to witness the actions of so-called bishops – more correctly called apostates – that have turned their back on the Lord and are worshiping whatever society or their own thinking desires. The Lord will clearly not bless any so-called church that turns its back on either the authority of Scripture or the uniqueness of Jesus Christ.