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WEEK IN RELIGION 4/25/80

SOME CONSERVATIVE FORCES EMERGING TO CHALLENGE

LIBERAL COALITION ON CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITIES

Traders are a blur of action as they maneuver through an earlier crisis

on the New York Stock Exchange. The scene symbolizes, for many, the

good and the bad of big business. This year, April 17 was designated

by a Ralph Nader-led coalition of liberal thinkers as "Big Business Day

(BBD)," to publicize the group's across-the-board demand for corporate

reform. The project had the support of many church officials,

including Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, of the Roman Catholic

Archdiocese of Detroit and Timothy H. Smith, director of the Interfaith

Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), an affiliate of the National

Council of Churches (NCC).

Other religious leaders have opposed the BBD campaign for rhetorical

excesses and specifically cite its allegations that "a corporate crime

wave is sweeping America." Concern over what he believes was verbal

overkill led to the withdrawal of Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum from the coalition's

advisory board. In his letter of resignation, Rabbi Tanenbaum, the

national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee,

said he feared that BBD would "produce a medicine that is worse than the

disease."

Businessmen expressed their displeasure with a censure of their own,

contending that BBD strategies are efforts to create "shadow boards of

directors" to monitor major companies. According to coordinator Charles

Heatherly, a "Growth Day" counter-observance on the same date -- sponsored

by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank -- emphasized "the

positives of the American free enterprise system to provide balance to

Ralph Nader and his zanies."

Bishop Gumbleton has said that he had no reservations about participation

on the BBD advisory board, because he believes that the group's legislative

proposals to ban inter-locking directorates, opens decision making to share­

holders -- and indicates that the campaign "is not calling for business to

be taken over by another system." ICCR Director Smith concurs, and notes

that BBD represented "a rare occurrence when such a broad coalition is

raising questions about the social bottom line of some companies."

Since the 1960's, when some churches divested themselves of stock in

companies that appeared socially irresponsible --whether because of

financial gain from the Vietnam war or business relationships with the

apartheid government of South Africa -- most religious groups have discovered

that proxy activism can be a more effective weapon than dropping insignificant

stock holdings. This spring more than 100 stockholder resolutions have

been filed by church groups affecting 80 U.S. corporations.

Thus far, much of the greatly increased right-wing petitioning has come from Carl

Olsen, an accountant and planner, whose one-man operation during the 1979

proxy season, prompted shareholder votes to stop "anti-capitalist business

dealings and other support of Communist-bloc dictatorships" at 16 major

corporations. Some experts view the right-wing resolutions and the

prospect of proxy participation by conservative political and church

groups,as having a "beneficial effect." John W. Canon, chairman of the

Episcopal Church's Social Responsibility in Investments Committee, may

have summed up the opinions of many: "There has always

been a group which has disliked this methodology because it is identified

with liberals. Now they can't attack it as readily and we will be able

to get at the substance of issues."

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