Religious Groups Use Mutual Funds to Push for Social Change

Religious-oriented mutual funds are becoming increasingly popular, as churches and other groups rely less on consumer boycotts and more on investment efforts to influence corporate America, reports the Religion News Service.

Over the past decade, according to Morningstar, an investment-fund tracker, faith-oriented mutual funds increased their assets from about $500-million to more than $17-billion.

“It’s just a matter of growing up” and adding more sophisticated tools for advancing an agenda, said Ronald A. Simkins, director of the Kripke Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Creighton University, in Omaha. “Now, instead of boycotting Disney, they’ll be investing in Fox Family Films.”

For example, the American Family Association, in Tupelo, Miss., is for the first time urging its 2.8 million online members to purge their investment portfolios of companies that support a “gay agenda” or “anti-family” practices.

In another article on religious groups’ efforts to influence corporate America The New York Times Magazine examines Sister Patricia Daly, a nun who sits on ExxonMobil’s board of directors and who has tried to influence the company to adopt more ecologically friendly practices.

Ms. Daly is executive director of the TriState Coalition for Responsible Investment, in New Jersey, a group of Catholic investors who want to use the collective power of their pension funds — money currently invested in the stock market — to influence corporate behavior.

(Free registration is required to view the Religion News Service piece on the Washington Post site as well as the New York Times Magazine piece.)