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Student
Lesson 12
Biblically Responsible Investing
Explore
You, as an investor, can be:
The benefits of being redemptive include:
Actively fund businesses that help others.
Avoid funding abortion, pornography, and other destructive corporate activities
Financing Terror
Like all oil and gas companies, Sinopec’s business model is to extract oil from the ground and then sell it to the highest bidder. During the mid-2000s, Sinopec paid the Sudanese government large sums of money to drill oil in their country.
The Islamic-run Sudanese government then used this money to fund a campaign to cleanse the country of South-Sudan Christians, using their hired assassins, the Janjaweed.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
- Assume you just learned about what is going on in Sudan, and you own just a few shares in Sinopec, which of the following actions would you do: (1) or (2)?
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- Continue hold the shares – you are not responsible, nor causing, the actions of Sudan.
- As partial-owner of company, request that management stop drilling in Sudan until the ethnic cleaning stops. If management does not comply then sell your shares.
Moral Responsibility
Limited Liability Company
- Built into the fabric of a limited liability corporation is an accountability system where management is meant to consistently look up at the face of their shareholders, whose interests they have been hired to represent.
- Managers take seriously the interests of shareholders. Shareholders are given the voting power to determine the board of directors, who then have the power to fire them for not representing shareholder interests.
“Inasmuch as the corporation acts on the investor’s behalf, the investor is a co-author of the wrongful act, and therefore morally co-responsible for it.”
Christian Shareholder
- A Christian can never be a true owner.
- God is the ultimate shareholder whose interests we are seeking to represent as vice-regent (Genesis 1).
“We need to look up at the face of the ultimate Owner of all capital, and see if we are representing His interests.”
What to Do?
Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) is how many Christian money managers, who sought the wisdom of God, have changed the way they invest in the stock market.
While it is true that no investment product is truly “Biblically responsible,” the BRI title simply portrays an effort by Christian investors to be sensitive to Biblical truth in how they invest their money, which is a very good endeavor.
BRI may engage in all or a few of the following activities:
Corporate Engagement
Making the Christian voice known to management.
Negative Screening
Not owning certain companies that do not represent the interests of Christians.
Positive Screening
Finding companies to invest in that represent the interests of Christians particularly well.
Invest Video
Screen
Go to: https://qa.inspireinsight.com/
- Look up the following companies:
| Company | Violations |
| Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) | Abortion, LGBT |
| MGM Resorts (MGM) | Gambling, LGBT |
| Estee Lauder (EL) | Abortion, LGBT |
| Netflix (NFLX) | Pornography, LGBT |
- A mutual fund is a pool of money given to one portfolio manager who will buy lots of stocks together.
- Look up the most popular mutual fund, the S&P 500 Index, which is the top 500 companies in the U.S. (search ‘VOO’).
Buy shares
Buy individual stocks whose products help to restore our broken culture in a Jesus-honoring way.
EXAMPLES
- Brown’s Super Stores sells suburban quality food in poor “food desert” neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
- Vinte Viviendas: works to ensure that low and middle-income families in Mexico have access to affordable housing.
Better to diversify through buying BRI mutual fund shares, which tends to have hundreds of stocks in one product.
Buy ETF shares
- ETFs: Low-cost BRI mutual fund shares that are traded like stocks.
- There are many advantages to using ETF shares.
- Current BRI ETF OPTIONS:
Transition
