TruthBook Religious News Blog

Dan Ehl
11/19/2009

"For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?"
Matthew 16:26

"The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure."
BC Forbes

The American public has been bombarded for the past several years with news accounts of massive Ponzi schemes, predatory lending, unfair labor practices, industrial poisoning of water and air, excessive bonuses, corporate greed, Wall Street manipulations and toxic loans.

All these, along with the cost of the Iraqi War, have been blamed for the meltdown of the American economy. And all of these, says Jeff Swartzentruber, vice president of the MMA Trust Company in Kalona, are inconsistent with Christian principles. What is consistent with these standards, he added, is "stewardship investment."
The concept of stewardship investment is not new. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) founded an insurance fund in 1832 to provide life assurance to its members - and excluded investments in "sin" stocks. That insurance fund, now the FTSE 100 company, Friends Provident, celebrated its 175th anniversary.

Through the years, its exclusion of unethical companies expanded to include issues such as climate change, biodiversity and labor.

Swartzentruber says MMA's origins began in the 1930s when the Mennonite Church leaders identified some financial needs of its members, such as assistance with housing loans and sharing resources among Mennonite churches. It eventually morphed into Mennonite Mutual Aid (MMA) - incorporated in 1945. Its services expanded, along with the members its represents. These now include a number of churches that have Anabaptist ("rebaptize") roots and historic ties to the 16th Century religious reformers, among this list are the Religious Society of Friends, Old Order Amish and Church of the Brethren.

MMA's stewardship investing examines both the financial and social records of hundreds of companies, Swartzentruber says, and uses these six guidelines for investments:

* Respect the dignity and value of all
* Build a world at peace and free from violence
* Demonstrate a concern for justice in a global economy
* Exhibit responsible management
* Support and involve communities
* Practice environmental stewardship

Please click on "external source" for the complete article. And for a Urantia Book/Jesusonian view of wealth, please see Jesus' Discourse on "Dividing the Inheritance" HERE.

Labels: Amish, Dan Ehl, finance, Jeff Swartzentruber, MMA Trust, stewardship, wealth

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

Sir John Templeton: iconic innovator in finance and religion

He was a shrewd stock picker. But his priority was spiritual wealth.

By Gary Moore

from the July 11, 2008 edition

Sarasota, Fla. - Sir John Templeton was many things to many people.

To the general public, he was one of the past century's greatest investors and philanthropists – a man who revolutionized both mutual fund investing and the effort to explore the nexus between science and religion.

After his passing this week, he will likely be remembered by the rational and affluent West as a poor boy from Tennessee turned Rhodes scholar and Dean of Global Investing.

Christians might remember him for his Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, and as someone who puts first things first: Faith, patience, prudence, and ethics were foremost in his thought.

Scientists might remember him most for his Templeton Foundation, which gives millions to study the links between science and religion.

Traditional Europe might remember Sir John, as his friends called him, as a great philanthropist who was knighted by Her Majesty as he valued historic treasures such as Oxford and Westminster Cathedral enough to invest in their futures. And the East will probably remember John as a spiritual creature who valued his Creator above all else, as he'd "been convinced that nothing exists except God."

I will remember him as a good Samaritan who paused to help me during a painful time on Wall Street. His historical and global perspective assured me that markets assuredly rebound – and that it's most wise to, as the poem goes, "keep your head when all about you are losing theirs." That was sage advice then, and it's sage advice today.

We would all be correct in our differing memories of John Templeton. Yet we live in an age of strained relationships, where differences seem intractable. So we might be most enriched if we remember his holistic approach to life.

John worked very intentionally to live the spiritual qualities he prized. And while he may have valued reason, prosperity, tradition, and spirituality, he gave top priority to love, the connecting force that holds us together despite our differences – even the largest ones.

He once startled me by describing how difficult it had been to love Joseph Stalin. He later worked at loving Saddam Hussein. That effort showed how seriously he took the biblical injunction to love his neighbors, including enemies, as himself.

That began with humbly loving God. The Jewish scriptures, which John loved and studied late in life, tell us: "As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he."

In the West, it is common to think of science as being about this world and religion about the next. But John saw reality as a single whole. So his foundation now invests his wealth in scientifically testing that proposition, just as the scriptures say Solomon "tested truth."

We financial types often think of investing as a selfish activity and charity as an altruistic one, so we leave ministry to the ordained clergy. John thought of us as "ministers of prosperity."

The Christian Scriptures say to put your mind on those things that are good, pure and lovely. So John refused to read or watch most media as he knew they might fill his mind with negativity.

But John wasn't just a contrarian for the sake of being different. He simply understood a truth that still escapes most investors: "The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell."

That perspective proved prescient in the late 1990s when he predicted that 90 percent of the new Internet companies would be bankrupt within five years. He added that US stock markets would likely stagnate for a decade. Those were enriching lessons in the school of life.

Yet John was ever hopeful about financial and spiritual progress. A few years ago, he asked me to co-write an article about why the Dow Jones Industrial Average might rise to 1 million by the year 2100.

I was skeptical at first. But then I remembered that John often spoke to us in financial parables, and I realized that the Dow would only need to rise about five percent per year in order to achieve that goal. He was saying that America will be fine but developing nations may also achieve greater parity during this century.

He would be even more pleased if his foundation helps us achieve even greater spiritual progress, the most important progress of all. That is more likely as we now have his example that the ancient values of faith, hope, and especially love still promise a more abundant life for our modern world.

• Gary Moore is an investment adviser who wrote two books about John Templeton, including "Spiritual Investments: Wall Street Wisdom from the Career of Sir John Templeton."

Labels: finance, Gary Moore, God, John Templeton, love, science, spirituality