BP AND CORPORATE HOMICIDE . . . A BIBLICAL LENS FOR A CURRENT DEBATE

I am not given to hyperbole.  I prefer understatement, subtlety, turning the rhetoric down.  But missing for me in the unfolding oil rig disaster in the Gulf is OUTRAGE.  This story feels all together too familiar – corporate arrogance and governmental ineptness, slogan-izing corporate CEO’s and posturing politicians.  If anything characterized the response of Jesus and the prophets to injustice it was OUTRAGE.  So . . . a little “reasoned outrage.”

In the highly controversial Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case the Supreme Court recently voted 5-4 to extend definition of the 14^th Amendment granting corporations the rights of persons, freeing them to participate in election campaigning with the same rights and protections as individuals.  I was among those citizens who found themselves stunned and deeply disappointed, fearing that the unbridled resources of corporations poured into election campaigns would overwhelm the political leverage of average citizens, the genius of our electoral process.  It struck down a decade of legislation, foremost among them McCain-Feingold, that has banned “electioneering communication” by corporations, that had limited or barred corporate engagement in the election process.  More fully, more clearly, more decisively than ever before: corporations have personhood . . . and power.

Less known, with limited coverage in our press, on April 6, 2008 the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 came into effect in the United Kingdom.  Careful to provide “due process” and “proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” all corporations became liable to legal proceedings related to food production, transportation, workplace safety and the like. Companies and organizations can be found guilty of corporate manslaughter or murder as a result of serious management failures resulting in loss of life.  In accompanying guidelines to the law corporations are counseled to implement appropriate health and safety procedures, employee training, and periodic inspection and review.  With differing implications: corporations have personhood . . . and accountability.

For those of us who look to the bible as a resource, is there insight and guidance in scripture?  In bulleted form – inviting your further, more in-depth exploration – are three possibilities:

• The prophets – Amos, Micah and Jeremiah come immediately to mind – held systems as well as individuals accountable, per chance from a prescient “corporations as persons” perspective.  Unjust judges and unjust judicial systems, dishonest businesspersons and unjust economic systems were equally confronted and held accountable by these prophets.

• Jesus – who some would argue was silent on such issues – may in fact have made a clear, profound and resounding “statement” as he overturned the money changers tables, which an increasing number of biblical scholars interpret as a symbolic “overturning” of the political/economic  system.  Was the focus not on where the merchants had set up shop (traditional interpretation of this passage) but what kind of business they were doing?  The temple, more than a house of worship, was fundamentally an economic institution that dominated the city’s economic life.  According to historical records, these were more than a cluster of small, independent merchants, but part of a substantial, inter-connected mercantile establishment, big-business first-century style.  Those same records unmask a dominant economic monolith quietly linked political, economic and religious players, the money changers local vendors representing banking interests of substantial power – with  evidence of priestly collusion in a system profiting on the backs of the poor.

• Paul – If we read Colossians 1.16-20 as Paul’s addendum to the creation story, as I do, “thrones, dominions, principalities and powers” as the structural, institutional, corporate dimension of the creation, then, as biblical scholar Walter Wink summarizes, like persons “the Powers are good, the Powers are fallen, and the Powers will be redeemed.”  Perhaps from a biblical perspective: corporations have personhood . . . good, sinfulness and a need for redemption.

If British Petroleum knew their “safety guarantees” were over-stated, that there were no adequate prevention strategies or available technology to respond to equipment failure; if voices of warning were silenced and cost-cutting/profit-enhancing decisions were made knowing that risk levels spiked as a result; if eleven lives were lost in an explosion and countless more lost as a result of this disaster (does “collateral damage” echo in your ears too?) – is there not premeditation and homicide?  If health-care providers have used deception and duplicity to refuse life-saving medical treatments, employed exclusions on technicalities of “pre-existing conditions” based on fabricated evidence with hundreds of deaths the outcome – is there not premeditation and homicide?  If Toyota knew the lethal potential in a faulty accelerator pedal, had statistical evidence of the extent of the risk to drivers in certain circumstances but withheld it – is there not premeditation and homicide?  Such charges have not been brought against a corporation since the Ford Motor Company Pinto gas tank case in 1980.  It is time for another?

Okay corporations . . . for the moment, I’ll agree . . . you have personhood . . . see you in court!