Christian investing means building a portfolio that reflects what you believe. You screen out companies whose core business runs against Scripture, tilt toward firms that treat workers and creation well, and manage the money as if it belongs to God — because it does. People call it biblically responsible investing, and the research says it no longer costs you returns.
What Christian investing actually means
Your money votes. Every share you buy makes you a part-owner of a business, which means you share — in a small way — in what that business does with the world. Christian investing treats that ownership as a moral fact, not just a financial one. The goal isn’t to earn a halo by dodging a handful of “sin stocks.” It’s to put capital behind companies you’d be glad to stand beside, and to pull it away from the ones you wouldn’t.
There’s no single Christian portfolio, because there’s no single kind of Christian. A Reformed Baptist, a Catholic, and a Mennonite will weigh abortion, weapons, alcohol, and creation care differently, and their funds reflect that. What unites them is a short list of convictions: honesty in business, the dignity of workers, care for creation, and a refusal to profit from what wounds people. If the spectrum is new to you, our breakdown of the main types of Christian investing lays out where the traditions split.
The biblical case is stewardship, not just avoidance
Start with the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30. A master hands three servants money and leaves. Two put it to work and double it; the third buries his in the ground out of fear. The master’s verdict on the investors — “Well done, good and faithful servant… you have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things” (Matthew 25:21) — and his fury at the one who sat on the cash say something blunt: refusing to grow what God entrusted to you is not the safe, pious option. It’s the condemned one. Investing is the assignment, not a compromise with it. Our full walk through the Parable of the Talents unpacks that.
But the same Bible that tells you to grow money also tells you how. Proverbs 22:7 warns that “the borrower is slave to the lender,” a caution about the bondage debt and predatory lending create. Genesis 2:15 places humanity in the garden “to work it and take care of it” — dominion as gardening, not strip-mining, which is why creation care shows up in so many Christian screens. Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39) reaches all the way into your brokerage account: you don’t bankroll what exploits the neighbor you’re told to love. Paul rounds it out in 1 Corinthians 10:23 — “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” Legal and licit isn’t the bar. Beneficial is. The biblical principles for investing piece gathers the rest of the relevant texts.
How it works: screening and engagement
Two mechanics do most of the work. Negative screening excludes companies by what they do; positive screening seeks them out by how well they do it. Managers don’t just read company names — they dig into revenue. A common rule excludes a business when more than 5% of its revenue comes from a flagged activity, which is how a hotel chain avoids the blacklist just because one franchisee added slot machines.
What gets screened out
The standard exclusions are abortion, pornography, gambling, tobacco, and — for some traditions — alcohol, with weapons makers and predatory lenders often added. The reasoning is biblical, not arbitrary: bodies are temples worth protecting, the vulnerable shouldn’t be farmed for profit, and addiction is the opposite of the freedom Christ offers. Our guide to negative screening and the deeper piece on sin stocks show where the lines usually land.
What gets screened in
The more interesting half is positive screening — rewarding companies for fair wages, safe products, honest leadership, and real creation care. This is the shift that quietly fixed the old complaint about faith-based funds. Instead of a short list of things you can’t own, you get thousands of companies actively doing good, which widens your diversification rather than shrinking it.
Owners also get a voice. Through shareholder advocacy — proxy votes, resolutions, direct meetings with management — Christian funds press companies to change before they sell. Engagement first; divestment when engagement fails.
The funds you’d actually use
You don’t have to vet five hundred companies yourself. A biblically responsible investing fund does the screening, diversifies the holdings, and charges a fee for the service. Here’s a sampling of real options, with recent expense ratios so you can see the cost of conviction:
| Fund | Ticker | Style | Recent expense ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inspire 100 ETF | BIBL | U.S. large-cap index | ~0.35% |
| Timothy Plan US Large/Mid Cap Core ETF | TPLC | U.S. large/mid index | 0.52% |
| Ave Maria Rising Dividend | AVEDX | Dividend, actively managed | ~0.90% |
| Eventide Gilead Fund | ETGLX | Growth, actively managed | ~1.38% |
The pattern is clear: index-style ETFs like Inspire’s BIBL run cheap, around 0.35%, while actively managed funds that hand-pick “redemptive” companies cost more, north of 1%. Both can earn a place in a portfolio. Compare them head to head in our roundups of the best BRI ETFs and the best BRI mutual funds.
Christian investing vs. ESG vs. SRI
These three get lumped together and shouldn’t be. The short version: ESG is mostly about money, SRI is about whatever values you bring to it, and Christian investing is about Scripture.
| Approach | Mainly driven by | Would it exclude a well-run tobacco stock? |
|---|---|---|
| ESG | Financial risk | No, if its governance scores well |
| SRI | The investor’s chosen values | Sometimes |
| Christian / BRI | Biblical principle | Yes |
Here’s the catch that trips people up: an ESG fund can hold a tobacco or gambling stock if it scores well on governance, because ESG treats those as financial risk factors, not moral ones. That gap is exactly what a Christian screen is built to close. We line all three up in detail in BRI vs. SRI vs. ESG.
Does it cost you returns?
This is the question that stops most people, and the honest answer is no, not in any way the evidence can find. A 2020 review of faith-based funds found they did not systematically underperform comparable conventional funds. The logic holds up: the excluded names carry real risk — tobacco litigation, gambling’s regulatory and addiction backlash, payday lenders’ legal exposure — while the companies BRI funds favor tend to show lower employee turnover and stronger governance.
You’ll still hit stretches where an unrestricted index beats you, usually when sin stocks rip higher. That’s the same trade value investors make against growth, and it tends to even out over a full market cycle. Proverbs 13:11 names the temperament you want: “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.” Our look at the benefits and performance of Christian investing digs into the numbers.
How to start
Get the boring foundation in place first — an emergency fund and any high-interest debt cleared — then decide what you actually care about, because your convictions set your screens. From there you have four roads: buy a BRI mutual fund or ETF, hire a Christian financial advisor, use a values-aware robo-advisor, or build the portfolio stock by stock yourself. For most people a single screened fund is the right first move. Our step-by-step on how to start Christian investing covers the account setup, and if you’re still weighing whether any of this beats a plain index fund, put it next to conventional investing and compare.
Frequently asked questions
Is Christian investing the same as biblically responsible investing?
Effectively, yes. “Christian investing” is the umbrella term, and BRI is the disciplined version of it: screening portfolios against biblical principles and engaging companies as a shareholder. You’ll also see “faith-based investing” used the same way. The label matters less than the methodology behind a given fund, so read a fund’s screening criteria before you buy it.
Do I have to give up diversification?
No. Modern BRI fund families now cover U.S. large-cap, small-cap, international, and bonds, so you can build a fully diversified portfolio without leaving the values framework. Positive screening actually widens the pool — you’re choosing among thousands of acceptable companies rather than a scarce handful of “approved” names.
Are Christian funds more expensive?
Some are. Index-style ETFs like BIBL sit near 0.35%, competitive with secular ETFs, while actively managed funds such as Eventide Gilead run north of 1% because real analysts research each holding. The question to ask is whether that active research earns its premium for the slice of your portfolio you’d put in it.
