Financial Stewardship and Witness Committee approves MRTI items of business

MILWAUKEE — On Monday, the first day of online committee meetings, the Financial Stewardship and Witness Committee of the 227^th General Assembly recommended that commissioners approve several items of business related to the Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment.

They also heard presentations by the Presbyterian Foundation and its subsidiary, New Covenant Trust Company.

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The committee voted 39-5 to postpone one item of business, FIN-11, Recommendations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Foundation, after a committee member proposed an addition to the recommendations. The proposal mirrors that of a separate commissioner’s resolution, and so the Financial Stewardship and Witness Committee will wait until it knows which committee will discern the commissioner’s resolution before considering its proposed amendment. That proposal reads: “Direct the Presbyterian Foundation to do an independent review of all restricted endowment funds whose income benefits the PC(USA), with full cooperation from Presbyterian Life & Witness, to ensure that such funds continue to be spent according to donor wishes.”

FIN-07, MRTI’s Response to FIN-01 from 2024, passed on Monday by a 45-1 margin following a report from Simon Doong, staff to MRTI, and the Rev. Brenton Thompson, an MRTI committee member. Doong discussed the selective divestment process MRTI undertook with GE Aerospace, Palantir Technologies and GE Vernova that were detailed in this Presbyterian New Service article.  

“Divestment is a means to an end, and not an end unto itself,” Thompson told the committee. General Assembly approval represents “one of the last steps that’s so important to this process.”

FIN-02, MRTI’s Recommendation to Update Military and Weapons Screen, received unanimous committee approval. It directs MRTI to revise the current criteria to discontinue the revenue-based component of the screen for military-related investments and adopt a conduct-based component “to identify companies conducting business with states involved in the commission of the worst violations of international law” and further adapt “a product-based component to include new weapons that lead to mass or indiscriminate injury.”

The current screen “has been useful in the past,” Thompson said, “but it’s not as adaptable or appropriate for increasingly complex and diverse weapons- and arms-development markets.”

“It’s a better balance,” Doong said of the new screen, “between precision and pragmatism.”

FIN-03, the 1984 Divestment Policy Task Force Report, also won approval by 45 commissioners with nary a “no” vote.

Two members of the task force, the Rev. Brian Ellison and the Rev. abby mohaupt, reported to the committee. The task force’s recommendations received approval from investing agencies including the Board of Pensions and Presbyterian Foundation as well as the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, Ellison noted.

He said the current policy “has served the church very well,” but “the world has changed over the last 40 years, and some changes to the policy will improve our practice and strengthen our witness.” He called the proposed changes “meaningful but modest changes” that have “the support of all the affected agencies.”

Today’s investment world has more investment options than it did 40 years ago, mohaupt said. Also present are “heightened consequences of financial illiteracy,” the reality that individual shareholders now hold less influence with companies, and the fact that trust in financial institutions has eroded. In addition, she noted that “PC(USA) social witness policy has evolved since 1984.”

Presbyterian Foundation President and CEO, the Rev. Dr. Tom Taylor, led a team that presented on the work of the Foundation, while his counterpart at New Covenant Trust Company, Ruling Elder Angela Duffy, did the same for the organization she leads.