Amy Domini Accepts Honorary Degree at Yale Divinity
School (October 10, 2007)
My travels with the Church had conventional
beginnings, a childhood of regular Sunday services, Teaching Sunday school in
high school, attendance at a prep school at a time when that meant daily chapel
and mandatory religion studies. For the time, it was quite a typical
relationship with God.
There were subtexts in my childhood. When I was
about 14 I made some mention of Heaven. My father, who stayed home on Sundays,
asked, “Do you believe in life after death?” I could tell by his voice that I’d
surprised him so I answered, “I guess I hope there is.” He looked at me
seriously and shook his head. “There is no life after death. I lived with the
dead. I would know.” He didn’t explain and I was afraid to ask. We kids all
knew that the War in Naples had been a terrible time and that it wasn’t to be
spoken of. It wasn’t until he was an old man that I learned he and his brother
had lived in the mass bulldozed graves for the worst weeks of the war. Hiding
among the dead bodies until the Americans came. But I was troubled enough, at
age 14, to hope that he was wrong, even to feel that he was wrong.
When I was 19 a girlfriend and I found ourselves
hitch hiking from Dover, where the ferry from France landed, to London. I have
no idea who picked us up. He was a scatty, enthusiastic member of the Anglican
clergy and he cajoled us into making a detour to see Canterbury Cathedral.
There under the soaring spires he spoke of St. Augustine, the missionary and
the murder of Thomas Becket. And he spoke of the role of the Book of Common
Prayer, of the power of a global faith communion and of his own delight at
being granted the grace to be a part of God’s plan.
The years passed…
I began earning a living, I found myself fairly
randomly assigned to the financial services industry. It hadn’t been an
ambition. I was a photo copy clerk who worked her way up. But I was fascinated
by the great game of finance, by the thought that everyone could all have books
and cloths and food and shelter because of the symbiotic relationship between
society and the financing of corporations.
Still, somewhere inside I was of the Kumbayah
generation. It didn’t quite ring true. The military-industrial complex liked
war and did not like environmentalists. Pinto cars and asbestos killed people,
thalidomide deformed babies, lead made them (to use the vocabulary of the day)
retarded and no innate sense of decency inside those corporate headquarters
interfered with profit-making for the shareholders. A tickle of an idea had
taken hold.
Meanwhile there was Canterbury, where the Anglican
Communion met, and heard the cry of pain from their sister church in South
Africa.
In the United States Ralph Nader was waging a
campaign at General Motors. He got some action on his demands that the board of
that company begin to represent the population at large. The Reverend Leon
Sullivan, an African-American preacher from Philadelphia was named to the
board.
Meanwhile the Anglican communion watched and saw
an opportunity. Following the path of Ralph Nader, the Episcopal Church sent
its Presiding Bishop to the annual meeting. He rose and asked the board to
consider withdrawing from running operations in South Africa. Reverend Sullivan
eventually spoke, pledging to create an accountability system that would spur
corporations to be a part of the solution there.
The Episcopal Church accepted this approach and
joined with other faith groups, forming the Interfaith Center on Corporate
Responsibility. But the accountability revealed no progress and by 1986 a
divestment movement was in full force. That year over $200 billion was purged
of corporations doing business in South Africa. And in 1994, without bloody
revolution, a transfer of power took place and the majority got the vote.
For the final ten years of the struggle I was
privileged to be there, serving the SRI committee of the Episcopal Church as
the representative to the board of the Interfaith Center on Corporate
Responsibility.
And the years passed…
Today it is accepted that ethics have a role in
finance. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, ABN/AMRO, and all the greatest research
houses sell corporate social responsible information. 4,000 CSR reports have
been published globally, some admittedly more worthwhile than others, but all
representing legitimacy.
I learned how to read an annual report, from my
grandfather. But he never read my book, Ethical Investing – it upset him too
much, the idea of mixing sloppy values with money making. He was a devout
Episcopalian, a vestryman wherever he lived. He loved to hear of my work with
the Episcopal Church. He followed my fact finding trip to North Ireland, my
efforts to move savings deposits into community development credit unions, my
involvement with the interfaith community over bringing issues ranging from
PCBs in the Hudson to Gender equality in the boardroom into shareholder
meetings with great interest.
But he could never understand that for me, when a
tobacco executive lied about tobacco, and through those lies, killed people,
he’d broken a commandment.
For me, finance and capitalism are not exempt from
God’s will. Investors are not innocent in the actions of the teams they enable.
Right is right and wrong is wrong.
I am as forgiving as Christian as any but there
are ways to make money that go beyond the reach of decency. Further, I found
that when I let my “Jesus time” out of the Sunday morning box and into my
career, I became a powerful force for good.
My father searched for faith among the dead and it
eluded him, but a living Church found me and gave me mine.
Thank you.
