Father Robert Rien, of St Ignatius at Antioch, a Catholic church east of San Francisco, speaks with a crisp buoyant voice that belies his 65 years. When he is angry it fairly crackles.
This Lenten season he is angry at America’s big banks, so angry he has pulled all his parish’s money out of the Bank of America and opened accounts at a small local bank.
He has called on his flock to do the same and joined a nationwide interfaith movement dedicated to divesting from the major banks. They see Lent as the perfect time to spread the word.
”We have a mandate from the gospels to act,” says Father Rien.
”Jesus went to the temple and he challenged the banking system of his day. He said, ‘you are thieves and marauders, you are wrong in what you are doing’.” On Ash Wednesday this year a group of San Francisco clergy spilled ashes outside a Wells Fargo ATM and called for a foreclosure sabbatical, invoking the Biblical term for the ancient practice of forgiving debts.
For lent this year, some will inevitably give up the usual guilty pleasures like chocolate or meat. More than a few churches are taking a decidedly different approach.
About 25 churches have withdrawn $16 million from big banks such as Wells Fargo, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase as part of a Lent-themed protest against the banks’ foreclosure actions, The New York Times reports, citing PICO National Network, a social justice coalition of churches that’s leading the charge. Individual members and organizational partners have also taken out an additional $15 million.
The demonstration, which started on Ash Wednesday, aims to protest “the injustice that still dominates the banking industry in this country, unmasking corporate greed and dishonesty that is destroying our families,” Ryan J. Bell, senior pastor Hollywood Seventh Day Adventist Church, wrote in a blog for The Huffington Post last month.
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