Last Friday, Diana Appelbaum investigated the moves of the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) toward divestment of shares in companies doing business with Israel, as well as disturbing theologhical moves indicative of underlying anti—Semitism.

A new report from the group Bearing Witness lends credence to her conclusions, with evidence of double standards applied to other countries, accused of far worse behavior than Israel's.

...a host of investments in New Covenant Funds, the family of institutional investment funds managed by the American Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), [are] linked to terror—sponsoring states that are also significant human rights abusers.

Five companies: ENI, Hyundai, Siemens, Total and UBS, have specific economic ties to states responsible for terrorism, repression and severe human rights abuses. UBS paid $100,000,000 in fines for illegally transferring US bank notes to Iran, Libya and Cuba. The South Korean Hyudai Corporation has extensive financial ties with the repressive regime in the North, as well as Iran. European oil giants ENI and Total have substantial development projects in Iran and Libya (with the French Total company having also been involved with projects with Syria, Sudan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq). Iran and Syria are also customers of Siemens, which is also contributing to the construction of the world's largest diesel power station in Khartoum, home to a regime responsible for over two million deaths in South Sudan and Darfur.

Hat tip: John Haber

Thomas Lifson  3 27 06

Update: Bookworm Room publishes a letter from a beleagured member of a PCUSA congregation:

While the article in the American Thinker on the PCUSA is, on its face, correct, it doesn't begin to cover the problems we (yes, I am a member) are currently having in the church. A quick summation would be that at the presbytery level (local government made up of congregations in a geographic area), a solid majority would disagree with much of what comes out of the General Assembly (GA). The liberals (through a long—term concerted effort) have managed to hijack the national government over the last couple of decades while the local governments are predominantly conservative. The GA is also constantly trying to force ordination of practicing homosexuals as well, which is the impetus behind the 'confessing church movement.'

It would take pages to even begin to describe the intricacies of the PCUSA government and the current problems but we do pay something called 'per capita' where for every member in a church, a certain amount of collections is sent to the GA for the national level. Many churches (ours included) within the PCUSA these days withhold these payments due to the serious disagreements between the national and local level—we won't finance their idiocy. Unfortunately, the GA currently has a large majority of 'liberal thinkers' that sound amazingly like the professors in so many colleges and they have stacked the system so that it's incredibly difficult to remove them.

I am reminded of O'Sullivan's Law — that any organization not specifically conservative in orientation will become liberal over time. That seeming truism does not ease the pain of righteous Presbyterians — or Yale alumni (among many others) — at seeing their beloved institutions hijacked.