“I love my LBGTQ brothers and sisters, I don’t want them to be discriminated against,” said the 41-year-old Netzly. “But I don't want companies promoting their ‘lifestyles.’”
Nearly all of corporate America disagrees, according to Bill George, an executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “Companies represent all employees, and LGBTQ employees are integral to the work force,’’ he said. Almost three quarters of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage, according to a May poll conducted by Gallup.
At Inspire’s office, 15 minutes west of downtown Boise, the walls are still bare and some rooms are unfurnished. Business has been so brisk that Netzly expanded recently. The vibe is Finance Mod: white walls, white furniture, ping-pong table, cornhole boards. On days when buy orders top sell orders, employees ring a bell on the wall.
How Netzly ended up here still surprises him. He grew up in Salinas, about two hours southeast of San Francisco, and said he found Jesus at age seven. It wasn’t until he was working for Wells Fargo & Co., in tony Carmel-by-the-Sea, where the actor Clint Eastwood used to be mayor, that he found his calling as a Christian investor. Netzly said he was horrified to discover he owned shares in companies that were making what he considered abortifacients.
“I couldn't do my job,” Netzly recalled. “If somebody came to my desk and asked me to place a trade, I couldn't do it with a clean conscience.”
So, he quit in 2011 and began advising people about investing in accordance with his evangelical beliefs. Two years ago, he moved to Idaho, where the cost of living is cheaper, taxes are lower and Republicans outnumber Democrats 4:1.
On this August afternoon, he’s dressed in cropped beige trousers, a blue gingham shirt and flip-flops. He recently returned from Georgia, where he was strategizing with Republican politicos about their war on ESG.
Mixing faith and finance can get tricky. But in some ways, religion-oriented investing isn’t so different from ESG. The idea dates back to at least the 1700s, when the Quakers forbade their members from owning slaves. Today, a range of faith-driven investment firms—mostly Christian, but Islamic and Jewish too—form an influential fringe industry.
“They are a niche within a niche,” said Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, an ETF data and analytics company. In all, the faith-based firms oversee $139 billion under the broad umbrella of sustainable investments. That’s a tiny fraction of the $2.5 trillion of assets in this category industrywide.
Which companies qualify for “God’s portfolios” at Inspire? The lines can get blurry. Inspire screens companies by a variety of categories under the “E,” “S” and “G” of ESG. But it’s the S—social—where things get particularly contentious for Netzly.
“The Pollyanna in me wishes that there could be a two-party ESG system,’’ Netzly said.
Inspire views supporting LGBTQ rights, covering travel for reproductive health, stem cell research and in vitro fertilization as big negatives. So, too, selling alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, gambling and distributing pornography. It endorses companies it deems worthy, engages with those it hopes to convert and excludes or divests from ones that it finds “immoral.”
The result: a list of companies that—while not necessarily declared “blessed”—generally square with Netzly’s beliefs. As with many things in ESG, the lineup can seem confusing.
Defense contractors such as General Dynamics Corp., manufacturer of M1 Abrams tanks and Stinger missiles, are out. But firearms companies like Sturm Ruger, maker of the 9 millimeter Ruger American semiautomatic, are in. Other holdings range from Ferrari NV to Schlumberger NV, plus Dollar Tree and Fox Corp., parent of Fox News.
Inspire recently singled out the 125-year-old J.M. Smucker Co., best known for its jams and peanut butter, for “choosing LGBTQ+ political activism over wholesome family values.” On his website, Netzly urges investors to “push back” with an online petition to Chief Executive Officer Mark Smucker.