FossilFreeUMC

The United Methodist Church must divest from fossil fuel companies if it hopes to be an ally for climate justice.

If fossil fuel companies were allies in addressing the global climate crisis, they would not have buried their own scientific findings about the reality of climate change in the 1970s, they would not have attacked NASA climate scientist James Hansen when he blew the whistle about climate change to the United States Congress in the late 1980s, they would not have spent billions of dollars on climate disinformation to sow seeds of doubt about climate science from the 1990s to the present, and they would not be doing all in their power to stall efforts to phase out the use of fossil fuels as we are reaching global average temperatures that are already 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial times.

It is morally irresponsible to view fossil fuel companies as allies in the work for climate justice. Fossil fuel companies have shown us time and time again that they have not been allies, are not currently allies, and their current activities give us every reason to believe that they will not be allies in the future. It is the height of moral irresponsibility to believe that by continuing to invest money in their climate wrecking practices that we will somehow make them behave any better in the future than they have in the past or the present.

The United Methodist Church must divest from fossil fuel companies if it hopes to be an ally for climate justice. At a time when The United Methodist Church should be making a bold and prophetic witness concerning the fierce urgency required to phase out fossil fuels for the sake of maintaining a livable climate for the community of all creation, our witness is weakened by our continued investments in fossil fuel companies, the industry most responsible for the climate crisis. It is a moral contradiction to say The United Methodist Church is for climate justice while it continues to profit from investing in the purveyors of climate injustice.

The United Methodist Church and all of its institutions of higher education must divest from fossil companies and also stop accepting money from fossil fuel companies if we are to be the witness the world needs during this most critical decade for climate action.

…we are profiting from the industry most responsible for the sixth great extinction of life on earth, which makes us complicit…

When United Methodist institutions accept money from fossil fuel companies and make money off investments in fossil fuel companies, we are profiting from the industry most responsible for the sixth great extinction of life on earth, which makes us complicit in accelerating the only extinction event knowingly and willfully caused by a single species.

It has been my experience over the past 30 years as a United Methodist minister and as a professor and administrator in a United Methodist related university that financial involvement of The United Methodist Church and its institutions of higher education with fossil fuel companies is much more likely to corrupt The United Methodist Church and United Methodist universities than it is to effect any substantive positive change in fossil fuel companies. The money that fossil fuel companies give to churches and universities comes with fossil fuel drenched strings attached. Fossil fuel executives use the influence they purchase to infiltrate church boards and agencies and to fill trustee and executive positions and even faculty positions at our institutions of higher education, and they expect a return on their investments.

When our United Methodist churches and universities invest our pensions and endowments in fossil fuel companies under the guise that it gives us a seat at the table in order to influence them towards positive change, I can imagine the naïveté of this expectation gives fossil fuel executives whose primary purpose is to make more money from fossil fuels a good chuckle. The very idea that churches and universities could somehow financially invest their way into the hearts of fossil companies and their executives and cajole them to change their fossil fuel burning ways is simply absurd and is far from the prophetic witness needed from The United Methodist Church and United Methodist related universities in the midst of our climate crisis.

Given what we know about how fossil fuel companies use almost any means necessary to sow seeds of doubt about climate change and stall any meaningful action to address the climate crisis by phasing out fossil fuels; it is naive and irresponsible to believe that The United Methodist Church or any religious organization could actually effectuate meaningful climate action by investing money in the very companies that are most responsible for the crisis we face.

If The United Methodist Church wants to continue investing in fossil fuels and thus make money from destroying a livable climate, we should be transparent and just own that; but we have to give up the charade that we are a positive influence on fossil fuel companies by continuing to be shareholders in their contributions to the sixth great extinction on our planet. Far from influencing these companies for the greater good, we are providing these merchants of doubt and dealers of death with moral cover for activities that pose an existential threat to the community of all creation on earth.

---

This commentary originally appeared in One World House. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author via his blog or Facebook.

---

The Rev. Dr. Mark Y. A. Davies is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics and Director of the World House Institute for Social and Ecological Responsibility at United Methodist-related Oklahoma City University. He is Executive Director of the Leadership, Education, and Development (LEaD) Hub North America of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry of the United Methodist Church.