Biblically responsible investing (BRI)
Most retirement accounts hold companies whose products and policies you'd never knowingly support. BRI is a framework for fixing that — screening out what conflicts with your faith and, in some approaches, actively seeking companies that create genuine human flourishing. Here's how it works, which funds practice it, and what to do if your 401(k) doesn't offer a values-screened option.
What is biblically responsible investing?
Biblically responsible investing applies faith-based criteria to investment decisions — not just pursuing returns, but pursuing returns in a way consistent with Christian convictions about human dignity, sanctity of life, and moral conduct. It operates on three levels:
- Negative screens — refusing to invest in companies whose activities conflict with Christian values (abortion, pornography, gambling, etc.). This is the most common form and the easiest to implement.
- Positive screens — actively seeking companies whose products, practices, and relationships reflect human dignity and responsible stewardship. This is the "business as a calling" approach taken by some BRI fund families.
- Shareholder advocacy — staying invested in certain companies and using the rights of ownership (proxy votes, direct engagement) to push for alignment from inside. Some institutional Catholic and faith-based investors emphasize this alongside exclusion.
Most individual investors start with negative screens — getting the obvious conflicts out of their portfolios. The deeper forms of BRI require more active management and are typically delivered through a faith-aligned advisor and curated fund lineup.
What's typically excluded
BRI funds don't all apply identical screens, and the revenue thresholds that trigger exclusion vary. But the categories are broadly consistent across fund families:
| Category | Why it's screened |
|---|---|
| Abortion-related products and services | Sanctity of life |
| Pornography and adult entertainment | Sexual immorality and human dignity |
| Gambling | Exploitation and addiction |
| Alcohol and tobacco | Harm to the body and addiction |
| Anti-family entertainment | Broader content and cultural concerns |
| Non-marital lifestyle promotion | Varies by fund; often includes LGBTQ-affirming corporate practices |
| Weapons of mass destruction | Sanctity of life; some funds screen all weapons, others only WMD |
Always read the specific fund's prospectus before investing. Screens can shift, and "BRI" on a label isn't a regulated term — what matters is the underlying methodology.
The major BRI fund families
Several fund families have built comprehensive investment platforms around biblically responsible criteria:
Timothy Plan
Founded in 1994 by Arthur Ally, Timothy Plan pioneered the first pro-life, pro-family mutual fund screens — the first fund company to use biblically based criteria as the primary filter in portfolio construction. It offers equity, bond, and balanced funds across actively managed and indexed strategies, with screens focused on abortion, pornography, gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and anti-family entertainment. timothyplan.com
Eventide Funds
Eventide builds on a "business as a calling" philosophy — going beyond exclusion to also seek companies whose products and services genuinely serve human needs and reflect the possibility of flourishing. They apply both negative screens and affirmative analysis of whether a business is beneficial to the people it touches: employees, customers, and communities. Known for the Eventide Gilead Fund. eventideinvestments.com
GuideStone Funds
GuideStone Funds applies screens consistent with Southern Baptist Convention ethical commitments and is historically associated with GuideStone Financial Resources, which serves pastors and church employees. Increasingly accessible through advisor-managed accounts beyond SBC-affiliated plans. Offers a full range of asset classes. guidstonefunds.com
Inspire Investing
Inspire uses a proprietary "Inspire Impact Score" to evaluate companies against biblical values, and offers ETFs that bring BRI into a low-cost, index-style format — making values-screening accessible at lower cost than actively managed alternatives. Inspire also offers proxy voting services, letting investors in any fund vote proxies according to biblical principles. inspireinvesting.com
Praxis Mutual Funds
Praxis is rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition and applies BRI screens with additional weight on peacemaking — specifically screening weapons manufacturers and defense contractors more broadly than most evangelical-focused funds. Also emphasizes community development investing and shareholder engagement. praxismutualfunds.com
For Catholic investors: USCCB guidelines
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines — updated in 2021 — that direct Catholic institutions (dioceses, endowments, parishes) on investment screening. Many Catholic families use these as a personal framework as well.
The USCCB guidelines organize their approach around six areas:
- Protecting human life — avoid companies involved in abortion, contraception, and embryonic research
- Promoting human dignity — avoid companies involved in pornography and anti-human trafficking violations
- Reducing arms — avoid weapons of mass destruction and landmine manufacturers
- Pursuing economic justice — look at labor practices and predatory lending
- Protecting the environment — consider environmental stewardship in investment decisions
- Encouraging corporate responsibility — engage companies through shareholder advocacy
Catholic investors should note that the USCCB guidelines do not map perfectly to evangelical BRI funds — they share the sanctity-of-life core but differ on environmental emphasis and some labor issues. A Catholic-familiar advisor can build a portfolio that honors the USCCB framework specifically. See the full guidelines at usccb.org.
BRI vs. ESG: an important distinction
Many Christians hear "values investing" and encounter ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) — a secular framework popular in institutional investing. The overlap is real but the priorities differ sharply:
| BRI | ESG | |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | Biblical authority and Christian ethics | Secular stakeholder theory |
| Typical exclusions | Abortion, pornography, gambling, alcohol, tobacco | Fossil fuels, weapons, tobacco |
| Sanctity of life | Central — abortion is the primary screen for most BRI funds | Often absent; some ESG funds actively support abortion access |
| Sexual ethics | Many BRI funds screen for LGBTQ-affirming corporate policies | High ESG scores often favor LGBTQ-affirming policies as a "social" positive |
"ESG" and "BRI" are not interchangeable. A portfolio that scores well on ESG metrics may actively conflict with the values most Christian investors care about most — particularly on sanctity of life. If your advisor talks about ESG as an alternative to BRI, that's worth a careful conversation.
Does values screening hurt returns?
The honest answer: it depends on the period, the market, and the specific screens applied.
Excluding alcohol and tobacco has historically been a slight performance drag in some decades and a neutral factor in others. Excluding certain tech companies (for pornography or anti-family content) can cut into US large-cap exposure. On the other hand, avoiding sectors with specific moral liability has sometimes avoided blow-ups.
Academic research on BRI and faith-based investing is ongoing and results are mixed. The most defensible posture going in: you may pay a modest cost for alignment — or you may not — depending on the horizon and the fund. Decide whether that tradeoff is acceptable before investing, not after a bad year. A good BRI portfolio is still a diversified portfolio; the goal is constraint within good investment principles, not abandonment of them.
What a faith-aligned advisor does is think through the portfolio implications: which accounts should hold BRI funds (taxable vs. tax-deferred), how to achieve reasonable diversification within the screened universe, and how the giving side of the plan — donor-advised funds, tithing commitments, qualified charitable distributions — integrates with the investment side.
What to do about your 401(k)
Most employer 401(k) plans offer a limited fund menu with no dedicated BRI options. Here's a practical framework:
- Check the existing menu carefully. Funds from Eventide, GuideStone, and Timothy Plan occasionally appear in larger plans, especially at Christian employers and church-affiliated organizations. Ask HR or check the plan's fund lineup before assuming there are no options.
- Maximize the accounts you control. A Roth IRA, traditional IRA, or taxable brokerage account has no fund restrictions — fill those with BRI funds. If you're under 50, you can contribute $7,000 to an IRA in 2026; $8,000 if you're 50 or older.1
- Take the employer match in your 401(k), then redirect. Free money from an employer match is worth taking. But beyond the match, you may decide to prioritize accounts where you have full fund choice.
- Roll old 401(k) balances to an IRA. When you leave an employer, rolling a previous 401(k) to a self-directed IRA gives you full fund choice. This is often the right move for BRI-committed investors.
- Use proxy voting services from within. Services like Inspire's Biblically Responsible Proxy Voting let you vote the shares in any fund according to biblical principles — even if you can't change which funds are in the plan.
Questions to ask an advisor about BRI
- Which BRI fund families do you have access to in a managed account?
- Can you show me a sample portfolio allocation using values-screened funds at my risk level?
- How do you handle accounts where BRI funds aren't available — specifically my 401(k) or 403(b)?
- Do you use positive screens in addition to exclusions, or just exclusion?
- If I'm Catholic, are you familiar with how to align a portfolio with USCCB guidelines?
- How do you think about the expected cost (if any) of the screens in my portfolio?
The answers reveal quickly whether an advisor is genuinely fluent in BRI or just willing to accommodate it. See our Certified Kingdom Advisor guide for more questions that separate real alignment from marketing.
Sources
- IRS — IRA Deduction Limits (2026); $7,000 contribution limit ($8,000 age 50+) per IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-28.
- USCCB Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines — U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, updated 2021.
- Kingdom Advisors — professional community for financial advisors serving clients from a biblical worldview; grants the CKA® designation.
- Timothy Plan — history and fund lineup of the first biblically responsible mutual fund family (est. 1994).
- Eventide Investments — "business as a calling" framework and fund methodology.
Values verified as of June 2026. IRA contribution limits per IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-28. USCCB guidelines per the 2021 update. Fund screens and methodologies may change — always verify with the fund's current prospectus.
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