Elizabeth Drescher posts in Religion Dispatches:
Second, even if it is the case that the financial arm of the Episcopal Church, the independent Church Pension Group, did invest when Bain Capital when it was formed in 1984, that doesn’t mean that they continue to hold that investment within the firm’s nearly $9.5 billion portfolio. CPG’s 2012 annual report does not list individual investment holdings. But, with executive staff and trustees (who are elected by delegates and bishops at the Episcopal Church’s triennial General Convention) with deep ties to the investment community that has certainly lived well outside of the ethical standards one would expect for a church-affiliated financial organization, it’s certainly fair for Episcopalians to demand more specifics in terms of investment history, current holdings, and, perhaps more important, the ethical principles that guide what many would assume, but which is nowhere stated on the CPG website or in the annual report, are socially responsible investing practices.
Tweeted cries to “divest now” from Bain may, at the end of the day, be misdirected. But they nonetheless raise important questions to which both the Episcopal Church and its financial affiliate, Church Pension Group, should be quick to respond. Likewise, it seems that church members at large would do well to use the brief kerfuffle over Romney’s mention of the church to consider its role as an economic being whose actions have implications that extend well beyond church walls.