Biblically Responsible Investing
“Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:”
—Proverbs 3:9
In May 2023 the pastor of our independent Baptist church brought in someone to speak on Biblically responsible investing.
I didn’t day trade, which I viewed as gambling, so I assumed I wouldn’t get much out of his message.
But he pointed out that owning a broad market index fund makes us co-owners in hundreds or thousands of the underlying companies.
This includes companies that operate contrary to Biblical values, and we were profiting from their sinful acts.
My wife encouraged me to research more about BRI because we truly want to do what is right in the Lord’s eyes.
And by October 2023 we were investing 100% in a Biblically responsible way. Below are resources we used along our journey.
- Financial Issues Stewardship Ministries - FISM has a lot of resources, but the resource I use the most is their YouTube channel at youtube.com/@financialissues.
They have a daily live program at 8:00 AM Central where they discuss BRI issues.
- eVALUEator - This is a paid screening service for financial advisors (that I believe was started by Timothy Plan),
but there is a free service called Screen It Clean It Powered by eVALUEator at christianinvestingtool.com that whosoever may use.
- Timothy Plan - TP is the pioneer in Biblically responsible investing.
They started with BRI loaded mutual funds, but now they have BRI index ETFs at timothyplan.com/our-etfs, including a large/mid-cap ETF and a large/mid-cap high-dividend ETF.
- Faith Investor Services - FIS has an actively-managed BRI ETF at prayetf.com that I believe uses the eVALUEator screens.
They also have a weekly radio podcast at faithandretirement.com that is also available on popular podcast platforms.
- Inspire Investing - Inspire has their own BRI ETFs at inspireetf.com with lower expense ratios that use their own screens at inspireinsight.com,
but their screen calculations are confusing, and I am not convinced they are as strict as the eVALUEator screens.
After further research and prayer, we decided to use the PRAY ETF for the majority of our equity holdings and the TPLC and TPHD ETFs for the remainder.
It is now 2025, and we are still investing in this Biblically responsible manner.
“And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;”
—Colossians 3:23
Karl Swelling
bri@swelling.com
swelling.com
Tuesday @ 11:08pm