History of Faith-Based Investing With Jason Myhre

Show Notes

• Jason Myhre is with Eventide, an underwriter of this program. Eventide is also a very special investment company because its entire focus is on faith-based investing. We often think that faith-based investing is a relatively new invention. However, Christians have actually been challenged by this for a long time.
• The story typically starts when the first faith-based investing mutual fund was launched in 1990’s. And we typically see this in the larger story of socially responsible investing. The first socially responsible investing mutual fund came earlier, in the 1970s. And so we tend to think of the story as starting as a secular movement in the 1970s, with Christians joining in later, where we made a kind of Christian version of socially responsible investing that fit our values and ethical commitments. But the real story is actually much, much more interesting than that. It actually began hundreds of years earlier as a Christian movement.
• To tell it right, we first need to talk about how modern investing got its start. Way back in the day, the way that businesses received financing was from the rulers of society—the aristocracy. Christopher Columbus was an example of this. Columbus wanted to start a for-profit shipping company and needed capital. He ultimately got that capital from the rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella.
• In the early 1600s with the invention of the stock and the bond, modern investing was born. In 1600 and 1602, the British India Company and the Dutch East India company, shipping companies like Columbus, raised the capital that they needed to start their businesses by issuing stocks and bonds to ordinary investors. This was a significant advance for business, because now, instead of needing one person to put up all the capital and bear all the risk, you could break it up into many tiny pieces. Now, instead of needing a King and Queen to give you millions of dollars, you could find many smaller investors willing to put up a few hundred dollars.
• It was a huge success. The British India Company and Dutch East India Company became wildly successful and their investors enjoyed great riches as a result. The Dutch East India Company, for example, grew in value to $8.2 trillion dollars (in today’s money), making it far and away the most successful company in history—four times as successful as Apple, the largest company today. However, people soon got dollar signs in their eyes. They observed how many people made a fortune off those first stocks. So, everyone wanted in on the action and started jumping into investing, snatching up every new stock and bond that was issued.
• So here’s an important point in the faith-based investing story. As the attention turned to the profit-making potential of investing, people thought less and less about the kinds of businesses they were supporting and more about getting in on the profit. An ethical vision was needed for investing. The person who would do that was John Wesley.
• John Wesley was a Christian minister in England in the 1700s who started the Methodist movement. Wesley was observing the greed and lack of discernment in investing and decided to speak into it, in the way he knew how, by preaching a sermon to his congregation. His sermon was entitled, “The Use of Money.” This was in 1759 and it was a very practical sermon that spoke to the new world of modern investing.
• I hope this history has been an encouragement to you as believers. The Church was the first to recognize the importance of investing in ways that benefit the lives of others. So, we can be proud of our history here. I also hope that this history has reminded you of the connection of investing to business and the lives of others
• Our problem today isn’t so much greed for profit. Yet, we share in common with this story a lack of awareness of where our investment dollars are going, what businesses we’re supporting, and how we’re earning our returns in investing. While the issues today are different than they were back then, today, business has many problem areas, such as abortion, pornography, tobacco, and more.
• Finally, I hope we can better appreciate the value that faith-based investing can offer to us as we seek to live out our faith in the way we use our money. Faith-based investing offers a way to save for the future by investing in businesses whose products and practices are, I believe, well-aligned with our faith.

On this program we also answer your questions:

• We have just over $27,000 in our health savings account. Our bank is encouraging us to invest quite of bit of that. What would you do?
• I took a course on how to trade from home. How would you suggest I get started in this?