ALLEGED BREACH OF ARTICLE NO. 18 OF THE CONSTITUTION-AND-BYLAWS OF THE IC

Decisions concerning purchase or sale of the IC’s property, which cannot be viewed as part of the IC’s normal operation, shall be brought before the regular Session of the IC or an extraordinary Session, in consultation with the Division.
– The bylaws of the IC, article no. 18.

Is the contract between the IC and Eden from 2022 in harmony with the bylaws and constitution of the IC? In the bylaws there are two articles that have to do with financial commitments and decisions.[1]

Article no. 15 concerns daily/normal operations and commitments. The EXCOM works with a mandate from the churches and is therefore responsible for managing the daily and normal operation and commitments of the IC. Therefore, article no. 15 states that such commitments are under the purview of the EXCOM. The EXCOM is responsible for these commitments and makes decisions about them; but it is the administrators that hold the mandate. The article reads as follows:

The agreement of the EXCOM is needed to make financial commitments on behalf of the IC and in such cases the President and the Treasurer are jointly responsible for the mandate of the EXCOM.

But there are other financial decisions and commitments that cannot be categorized as the daily and normal operation of the IC. This does not refer to the purchase or sale of church buildings. The sale or purchase of church buildings is part of the daily and normal operation of the IC and such decisions are made by the churches themselves in consultation with the EXCOM.

But there are financial decisions and commitments that are greater than church buildings, decisions concerning IC property that is so large or valuable that they concern the entire Conference and not just a particular church. According to article no. 18 such decisions are so great that the few individuals that have a seat in the EXCOM cannot be made responsible to make them on behalf of all the churches. Article no. 18 states that the EXCOM must present such decisions to Session or extraordinary Session so that the delegates of all the churches can participate in the decision-making process. The article reads as follows:

Decisions concerning purchase or sale of the IC’s property, which cannot be viewed as part of the IC’s normal operation, shall be brought before the regular Session of the IC or an extraordinary Session, in consultation with the Division.

The reason for article no. 18 is obvious: Great responsibility is involved in unusually large decisions and because of this it is better that such decisions be made by a larger group of people. Therefore, such decisions are to be brought before delegates at Session instead of leaving them up to EXCOM only.

Here it can be pointed out that article no. 18 is relatively new. The Constitution-and-Bylaws Committee proposed it to Session in 2012.[2] It is hardly a coincidence that this was the first Session after the signing of the 2009 contract with Eden. It may be deduced that the committee wanted to prevent EXCOM from making more such unilateral decisions of that magnitude again.

When the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Iceland is reviewed, a pattern emerges: large financial decisions that did not belong to the daily or normal operation of the Church were usually brought before Session:

Establishing a new institution: When an academy was needed for the Adventist teenagers, the decision of building and establishing an academy was made at Session 1947[3] (this academy was Hlíðardalsskóli)
Establishing a new institution: When a school was needed for Adventist children, the decision of building and establishing it was made at Session 1985[4] (this school is Suðurhlíðarskóli)
Running/closing an institution: In the 1980s, Hlíðardalsskóli academy was doing poorly. The decision whether it should continue to be in operation or whether it should be closed was taken at Session in 1988: Operation would continue with the condition that the academy be sustainable[5]
Running/closing an institution: Several years later, the Hlíðardalsskóli staff felt they had no choice but to close the academy in the autumn of 1995. But the final decision about the fate of the academy was taken at an extraordinary Session in December 1995, where it was decided to close the academy[6]
Selling property: At extraordinary Session in December 1996, delegates decided to give the EXCOM mandate to sell Hlíðardalsskóli in consultation with the Trans-European Division and in harmony with the bylaws of the Seventh-day Adventist Church[7]
Responding to the financial situation of the Conference with a renewed strategy: At Session 2015, the Division representative told the delegates that the financial situation of the Conference was poor. There were only two solutions available: either the Conference would be demoted into a Mission (one administrative lower than a Conference) or the IC would turn the tables around by coming up with a robust mission strategy. The EXCOM was given one year to draw up the strategy and the EXCOM brought the strategy before the second part of Session in the following year (2016)[8]

It is true that the EXCOM has made some large financial decisions unilaterally. The most prominent examples are the mining contracts of 2008, 2009, and 2022, and the rental of Raufarhólshellir Cave in 2016. The decisions of 2008 and 2009 were legally permissible because article no. 18 did not exist at the time. However, even those decisions went against the grain of the past modus operandi of the denomination. And after article no. 18 had been accepted into the bylaws of the IC, the EXCOM was prohibited from making decisions like that again.

Some have said that article no. 18 does not apply to the mining contract of 2022, since that contract has to do with renting and not selling. This is equivocation. Article no. 18 forbids the EXCOM from making large decisions concerning purchase and sale. The mining operation comprises more than renting a natural resource. If you rent a house or a car or even a potato plot you receive the house, the car, and the plot back. But that is not so with a mine. When a mine is rented, the renting party sells material from the mine so that the owner receives the mine back emptier or even completely empty back, depending on how much material is sold. Though a mine is rented, it is rented with the idea in mind that material from it will be sold. This means that the mining operation comprises sale of IC property.

The contract between the IC and Eden that was signed on 18 January 2022 allows Eden to sell so much material from the mines that Mt. Litla-Sandfell will entirely disappear. The renting of the mine therefore entails literally the sale of an entire mount. And an entire mount of minerals is worth more than all the other property of the IC combined. If the EXCOM did not establish a new school, or close a school, without the agreement of delegates at Session/extraordinary Session because such decisions were deemed to be too large for the EXCOM to make on their own—and this was before article no. 18 was even written—how much more pertinent would it have been for Session to decide the renting of the mines?

Furthermore, the mining operation does not constitute part of the daily and normal operation of the IC.

It therefore seems likely that article no. 18 of the bylaws and constitution of the IC was transgressed when the new contract between the IC and Eden was signed. It is therefore dubious whether the contract is legal at all. And why did the EXCOM not side with the IC rather than with Eden in a matter that was questionable?

[1] The bylaws of the IC are accessible on the homepage of the IC, www.adventistar.is, cf. the banner at the bottom of the page, on the right. Cf. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aAT5JAS_EUz-VaAYV-sc6QKhKMjSdSkE/view?usp=sharing.

[2] Constitution-and-Bylaws Committee, “Skýrsla laganefndar” (Report of the Constitution-and-Bylaws Committee), meeting documents for Session 2012, p. 66. When the article was accepted at Session 2012, it was inserted as article no. 17, but later its number became 18 as it is today.

[3] Magnús Helgason, “Skýrsla hins tíunda ársfundar hins íslenska konferens S. D. Aðventista, sem haldinn var í kirkju konferensins í Reykjavík, dagana 21. til 26. maí 1947” (Report of the Tenth Annual Session of the Icelandic Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Convened in the Conference Church in Reykjavík, 21–26 May 1947), Bræðrabandið, no. 4 (1947), pp. 2–18.

[4] “29. aðalfundur sjöunda dags aðventista á Íslandi í Aðventkirkjunni Reykjavík 18.–21. apríl 1985” (The 29th Session of Seventh-day Adventists in Iceland, Reykjavík 18–21 April 1985), Bræðrabandið, May/June 1985, pp. 2–25.

[5] “30. aðalfundur sjöunda dags aðventista á Íslandi í safnaðarheimili aðventista Reykjavík 14.–17. apríl 1988” (The 30th Session of Seventh-day Adventists in Iceland, in the Church Hall of Adventists in Reykjavík, 14–17 April 1988), Aðventfréttir no. 5, 1988, pp. 32–33, https://timarit.is/page/5830278.

[6] Eric Guðmundsson, “Málefni Hlíðardalsskóla í Ölfusi” (The Subject of Hlíðardalsskóli in Ölfus), Aðventfréttir no. 5, 1995, pp. 16–18, https://timarit.is/page/5830922.

[7] Eric Guðmundsson, “Aukaaðalfundur Samtakanna 1. desember 1996” Aðventfréttir no. 4, 1996, p. 3, https://timarit.is/page/5830988.

[8] Resolution no. 17, minutes of Session 2015, meeting documents for Session 2019, p. 76.