Faith-Based Investing
by Rev. Jack Heiser
Most people, in our lives, want to do the best things we can to promote peace, justice and the common good. We go to the polls to vote our conscience. When the recent O.J. Simpson TV-Book proposal came before the nation, the public quickly acted to censor it—for the common good.
There is another way people can make a difference. It is in caring about how we invest our money. Most of us have retirement plans and some of us have investment portfolios.
Historically, companies were owned by their founders—Carnegie, Rockefeller, Mellon, etc. Over the years, companies have changed to become publicly traded Corporations. Now most large companies are owned by millions of people. They are owned by the stockholders, (you and me) through publicly traded stocks.
As such, we have the opportunity, based on our values, to insist that the stocks we own (through pension funds, IRA’s 401-k’s, or investment portfolios) be only those that are with companies that are socially responsible.
If a company sells tobacco products, or commits human rights violations, or is environmentally irresponsible, or produces military products that kill indiscriminately, they may be companies in which you would not want your money invested.
For example, tobacco companies have had wonderful advertising campaigns to warn about the evils of tobacco. Yet over the past seven years they have increased the nicotine content of their cigarettes by 10%. The coal industry refuses to apply new technology on their smoke stacks to decrease pollution and so continues to spew high levels of pollutants into the atmosphere. Other companies produce their products by using almost slave labor in sweatshops in third world countries.
Are these the kinds of companies that you want your investment money supporting?
In contrast, Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, an economist from India, over the past twenty-plus years has created the Grameen Bank which lends money to poor people in third world countries to facilitate start up businesses. In lending these ‘micro loans’ to over 7 million poor people his bank, which is profitable, has a repayment rate of close to 99%.
You may agree or disagree with the above criteria. You choose, based on your values, the companies you feel are appropriate in the way they conduct themselves.
To this end you may contact your retirement fund manager or your investment consultant and direct them to invest only in companies that behave in the way your values direct you.
There are also certain funds that make a point to be socially responsible. Several of them are Calvert funds, New Covenant Funds, Oikocredit, Domini, and Trillium. Check them out to see if their criteria for investing matches yours.
Oikocredit, for example, reflects Muhammad Yunus’ principle of investing to organizations in Third World nations seeking to improve living conditions through job creation or similar initiatives.
If you are uncomfortable that your investments are supporting addiction to nicotine, then do something about it. If you are uncomfortable with coal companies that refuse to put new scrubber technology on their smokestacks and continue to pollute the air, do something about it. This is part of what it means to be a responsible citizen.