wfn.org | Moderator Exhorts Church to Fight Evil of "Unrestricted Capitalism"

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

Reply-To: wfn-news list <wfn-news@wfn.org>
18-February-1999 
99065 
 
    Former Moderator Exhorts Church 
    to Fight Evil of "Unrestricted Capitalism" 
 
    by Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Like the dragon in Revelations who tried to devour the 
messiah, unrestricted capitalism is a dragon that threatens to devour the 
Earth, the Rev. John Fife, a former General Assembly moderator, told 
participants in the 1999 Presbyterian Health, Education and Welfare 
Association (PHEWA) biennial conference here Jan. 28-31. 
 
    And "there is no better place to witness the insatiable appetite of 
this 20th-century dragon," Fife said, "than in the borderlands between the 
United States and Mexico." 
 
    PHEWA participants took up Fife's challenge, visiting border ministries 
in nearby Tijuana, Mexico, where the social and environmental effects of 
U.S. industrial development based on cheap Mexican labor are striking. 
Those visits, and Fife's prophetic remarks, clearly were the high points of 
an otherwise calm biennial. 
 
    Changes in PHEWA's by-laws, a  result of General Assembly-mandated 
reviews of the organization in the last couple of years, meant that only 
two resolutions were submitted to the PHEWA business meeting - many fewer 
than at recent biennials. Over the years, PHEWA has passed numerous 
controversial resolutions, including those openly advocating gay and 
lesbian ordination and bitterly attacking former General Assembly Council 
executive director the Rev. James D. Brown. 
 
    This year the meeting brought nothing of the sort. 
 
    "I think PHEWA has been domesticated," commented the Rev. David 
Cockroft, a PHEWA old-timer. 
 
    In addition to the border trips, the biennial, entitled "Welcoming 
Angels in Our Midst," included more than 40 workshops on various social 
ministry issues, sponsored by the 10 networks that comprise PHEWA. 
 
    Los Angeles activist and long-time national staffer receive top awards 
 
    The association presented its two major awards during the gathering. 
 
    The 1999 John Park Lee Award was given to E. Grace Payne, who for more 
than 30 years was the driving force behind Westminster Neighborhood House 
in the Watts section of Los Angeles.  During her tenure as executive 
director, the ministry's budget grew from $60,000 to $1.5 million, and its 
range of programs expanded to include low-income housing, child care, youth 
skills and job development, a rehabilitation center for retarded adults, a 
shelter for homeless women and a community credit union. 
 
    Though Westminster Neighborhood House closed shortly after her 
retirement in 1996, Payne urged the church to remain involved in troubled 
urban centers like Watts. "There's a million and one stories - of children 
and adults abused, neglected, hungry and unloved - and a million and one 
ways to reach out to them if we listen to them and to Jesus," she said. 
 
    The John Park Lee Award, named after the director for social welfare 
ministries of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is given at each biennial 
"to recognize and perpetuate the qualities of concern, sensitivity and 
involvement singularly exemplified in John Park Lee." 
 
    PHEWA's Rodney T. Martin Award, named after the man who directed PHEWA 
from 1972 to 1990, was presented to the Rev. Donald J. Wilson, who for 30 
years on the national staff of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) championed 
social-justice issues in general and PHEWA in particular. 
 
    Wilson, who retired in 1995, was honored for "helping PHEWA navigate 
through many hard times and crisis situations." Martin was present to give 
the award to his long-time friend and colleague. 
 
                     Reining in the dragon 
 
    The lower-key atmosphere of this biennial didn't seem to rub off on 
Fife. Citing example after example of labor and environmental abuses 
brought on by the establishment of "maquiladoras" - U.S. manufacturing 
plants set up in Mexico to cut labor costs - Fife railed against 
unrestricted capitalism as "a predatory system that even swallows up 
socially conscious managers." 
 
    Such practices, which also go by the name "globalization," are, he 
said, "a race to the bottom." 
 
    "We have all glimpsed the dragon," Fife said. "With the stroke of a 
computer key, international industrialists and financiers can move billions 
of dollars anywhere and everywhere." And the abandonment of one labor 
market for the next cheaper one always produces three results, he added: a 
growing gap between rich and poor, the exploitation of labor, and the 
devastation of the environment. 
 
    Even in Mexico, where thousands of jobs have been created with the 
coming of the maquiladoras, the effects of globalization are being felt, 
Fife said. He cited a General Electric plant which moved from the upper 
Midwest seven years ago to take advantage of average hourly wages of $1.25 
in Mexico, and recently was moved from Mexico to the Philippines, where 
workers could be hired for 27 cents an hour. 
 
    So-called "trickle-down economics" only work, Fife said, if workers 
"can move freely to take the best job at the best wage." Such is not the 
case for Mexican workers, who face increased danger at the U.S. border. 
"Never mind that Mexican migration has been an enormous economic advantage 
in the U.S.," said Fife, who is pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church in 
Tucson, Ariz. "All studies show that the economy of the Southwest would 
collapse without Mexican labor." 
 
    And yet, Fife continued, the U.S. government spends billions of dollars 
a year trying to seal off the U.S.-Mexican border to stop illegal 
immigration. "The border can't be sealed off - it's 2,500 miles of deserts, 
mountains and rivers," he said. "Even if the land border could be sealed, 
people would take to boats - try mining the beaches of California!" 
 
    The dragon of unrestricted capitalism can only be "reined in and 
restrained" by the church, Fife insisted, because only the church combines 
global grass-roots involvement and a passion for justice - the two weapons 
that are needed. "In the end, God will see that justice is done and the 
creation saved," he said, "and the church needs to rediscover itself as the 
community of God in the journey that Christ is leading. 
 
    "It should keep us busy for the next 100 years or so," Fife concluded 
with a laugh. 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  This note sent by PCUSA NEWS
  to the wfn-news list <wfn-news@wfn.org>.
  Send unsubscribe requests to wfn-news-request@wfn.org