A “sin stock” is shares in a company that earns money from activities Scripture treats as morally compromised—classically alcohol, tobacco, gambling, and weapons, with most Christian screens adding abortion and pornography. Buying a stock makes you a part-owner of the business, so the real question is whether you want your money funding things you would never do yourself.
Why ownership carries moral weight
When you own a share, you are not a spectator—you own a slice of the company, you collect a slice of its profits, and you vote a slice of its decisions. That is exactly why this matters to a believer. Ephesians 5:11 tells Christians to “have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them,” and Paul ends Romans 1 by warning against those who not only do wrong but “approve of those who practice” it (Romans 1:32). Profiting from an activity is a form of approval. Paul also urges believers to “reject every kind of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:22). None of this means a stockholder bears the same guilt as a company executive, but it does mean your portfolio is a moral document, not just a financial one. If the whole idea is new to you, our overview of biblically responsible investing lays the groundwork.
The major sin stock categories
Different believers draw the lines in different places, but a few categories show up on almost every Christian screen, each with its own scriptural reasoning.
Abortion and abortifacients
For most Christian investors this is the sharpest line, grounded in the conviction that life begins in the womb. “You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13) and “before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5) frame the unborn as known and valued by God; even unborn John “leaped” in recognition of Christ (Luke 1:41). Screens here target companies that manufacture abortion drugs, perform procedures, or fund advocacy. The bioethics questions extend further into healthcare, which our guide to healthcare and bioethics screening takes up in detail.
Pornography
Jesus set an exacting standard—”anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28)—and Paul called the body “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19), telling believers to “flee from sexual immorality” (1 Corinthians 6:18). Companies producing or distributing explicit content fail this screen cleanly, though the harder cases are platforms and payment processors that merely carry it.
Gambling
Gambling screens lean on the Bible’s warnings about get-rich schemes and the exploitation of the vulnerable. “Dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow” (Proverbs 13:11), and the prophets repeatedly condemn preying on the poor (Proverbs 22:22). Casino operators, lottery contractors, and online betting firms are typical exclusions, a theme the gambling stocks screen explores.
Tobacco and alcohol
These rest less on a single proof text than on the body-as-temple principle (1 Corinthians 6:19) and concern for harm to neighbor. Tobacco is a near-universal exclusion given its clear health toll. Alcohol is more debated, since Scripture treats wine as a blessing in moderation while condemning drunkenness; many screens exclude producers, others tolerate them below a revenue threshold.
Weapons and defense
This is the genuinely contested category. Pacifist-leaning believers exclude weapons makers outright, while others read Romans 13 as granting government a legitimate role in defense and policing, and therefore hold defense contractors with a clear conscience. There is no single Christian answer here, which is why our defense stocks discussion presents both sides rather than dictating one.
Revenue thresholds decide most of the hard calls
Here is the technical detail that quietly determines what your “clean” fund actually holds. Almost no large company is 100% pure or 100% sinful; the question is how much exposure triggers exclusion. Fund families set a revenue threshold, and where they set it changes the portfolio dramatically.
| Threshold | What it means | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|
| 0% (zero tolerance) | Any revenue from the activity excludes the company | Cleanest portfolio, but narrows the universe sharply and can exclude firms where the activity is incidental |
| 5% | Excludes companies earning more than 5% of revenue from the activity | The most common setting among Christian fund families; tolerates genuinely minor exposure |
| 10% | Allows somewhat more exposure before excluding | More permissive; used for less severe categories |
A big-box retailer that earns 2% of revenue from tobacco sales passes a 5% screen but fails a zero-tolerance one. Neither setting is obviously right—tighter screens are purer but smaller, looser screens are broader but messier. The point is to know which threshold your fund uses before you trust its label, a distinction our piece on negative screening unpacks.
The genuinely hard cases
Some companies resist clean sorting. A diversified retailer sells lottery tickets, beer, and adult magazines alongside groceries and clothing. A cloud-computing giant rents server space to gambling apps as a fraction of its enormous business. A digital advertising platform serves ads for alcohol and betting among millions of legitimate clients, and the relevant revenue is nearly impossible to isolate. Social media and big banks raise similar puzzles—a bank may finance both a hospital and a casino. Reasonable Christians land differently on these, and rigid consistency can produce odd results, like excluding a grocery chain over a sliver of tobacco sales while holding a tech company whose ad engine quietly monetizes worse. Honesty about the gray areas is more faithful than pretending the lines are always crisp.
The data problem
Even motivated investors hit a wall: companies rarely break out revenue in the categories Christians care about. A firm reports segments that suit its accountants, not your conscience, so the exact percentage of revenue tied to a screened activity is often a researched estimate rather than a published figure. This is the practical reason most believers outsource screening to specialized fund managers or research services that do the digging, instead of trying to vet thousands of holdings alone.
Divest or engage? A real debate
Two faithful instincts pull in opposite directions. Divestment says sell—refuse to own evil at all, keep your hands clean, and deny the company your capital. Engagement says stay—own a small position precisely so you can file shareholder resolutions, vote your proxy, and press management to change. A divested Christian has clean hands but no voice; an engaged Christian has a voice but owns the stock. Many investors split the difference: hard-exclude the worst categories like abortion and pornography, while engaging companies in the gray zone where reform is plausible. Our look at shareholder advocacy shows how the engagement route actually works in practice.
How to screen your own portfolio
You have three practical routes. The simplest is to buy faith-screened funds and let the manager do the work—our roundup of the best biblically responsible funds covers the major families and their fees. The second is to pull up your current holdings and run them against a screening service or even a fund’s published exclusion list, then sell what fails your line. The third, growing quickly, is direct indexing: platforms from Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard now let you own the individual stocks of an index while applying your own custom exclusion list, giving you diversification with personalized screening, though it usually requires a larger minimum. Pairing exclusions with positive screening—actively seeking companies that do good—turns a defensive strategy into a constructive one.
Does avoiding sin stocks hurt returns?
The evidence says not in any reliable way. Excluding a handful of categories from a market of thousands of stocks creates tracking error, not a guaranteed penalty, and screened funds have historically clustered around their benchmarks rather than systematically trailing them. Some “sin” sectors like tobacco have posted strong long-run returns, but they are a small slice of the market, and a diversified screened portfolio easily makes up the difference elsewhere. The larger drag is usually fund cost, not the screen itself, so watch expense ratios as closely as holdings.
Frequently asked questions
Is it a sin to own a sin stock? Christians disagree. Owning shares is not equivalent to running the company, so few teachers call it a clear-cut personal sin. But because ownership means profiting from and partly approving the business (Romans 1:32), many believers conclude their conscience is cleaner avoiding it. Romans 14 treats such questions as matters of personal conviction.
What counts as a sin stock? The common categories are abortion and abortifacients, pornography, gambling, tobacco, and—more debatably—alcohol and weapons. Beyond that, screens vary by conviction. There is no official master list, which is why knowing a fund’s specific categories and revenue thresholds matters more than the “faith-based” label.
How do I know if I already own sin stocks? Most investors do, often through broad index funds. Pull your holdings and check them against a screening service or a biblically responsible fund’s published exclusions. Broad-market index funds hold the entire market by design, including the very companies most Christian screens exclude.
