Smucker spokesman Frank Cirillo said the company has expressed support for legislation that includes LGBTQ civil rights protections. “We are committed to ensuring equitable rights for our employees, their families and those in the communities we serve,” he said.
Netzly said Inspire helped persuade Costco Wholesale Corp., the giant warehouse store club, to stop funding LGBTQ Pride Month parades. Costco’s chief financial officer hasn’t responded to emails seeking comment.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June—a decision hailed as a spiritual victory by conservative Christians—Inspire began tracking corporations that are committing to help employees gain access to reproductive health care (in late August, a federal judge blocked Idaho’s near-total abortion ban).
Currently, that list includes almost 50 companies, from Accenture Plc to Zillow Group Inc. At one of them, Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., Netzly said he may put the issue to a shareholder vote. A company spokesman hasn’t responded to emails seeking comment.
In this fight, Netzly has teamed up with ADF, the conservative legal group, on a “viewpoint diversity” index. The measure supposedly scores companies on how they “respect” freedom of expression and religion.
“There’s a growing threat within corporations to freedom of speech, especially regarding religious and political viewpoints,” said Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s senior counsel.
Netzly urges all investors to heed 1 Corinthians 10:31: Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. But, so far, his investment performance has been mixed. His largest ETF, Inspire 100 (ticker BIBL) has returned an annualized 8.9% since it opened in 2017, compared with 10.7% for the S&P 500 Index during the same period, with most of the underperformance occurring this year. The Inspire International ETF (WWJD) gained at annual rate of 5% since the start of 2019, exceeding the 1.6% advance of the MSCI ACWI Excluding US Index.
In Netzly’s telling, there are huge sums of money at stake. He said Christians in the US have about $20 trillion of investments, savings and retirement accounts.
A few months ago, phones began lighting up at Inspire. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, was attacking ESG as “the devil incarnate.” DeSantis, the Florida governor and White House hopeful, was piling on. Fox News firebrand Tucker Carlson, along with right-wing radio host Glenn Beck, were blaming ESG for everything from high gasoline prices to economic trouble in Sri Lanka.
If ESG was so bad, Inspire clients wanted to know why was Netzly wrapping himself in label? His answer: “I’m not anymore.” He formally renounced the tag and rallied behind the so-called anti-woke campaign.
“Every conservative pundit is calling ESG evil. We just can't counteract that narrative,” Netzly said. “It's exponentially increasing.”
In a blog post, he struck a different tone. “The burning intolerance of the left has hit a gas line in the ESG party hall, escalating the flames to such heights that it has become necessary for us to abandon the building,” Netzly said on Aug. 18.
As they do most Thursdays, Netzly and his family head to a weekly potluck-dinner-cum-Bible-study at a friend’s place. As the kids play outside, the adults discuss Colossians 3 over burritos. Part of the passage is often interpreted as urging people to focus on spiritual matters rather than earthly ones. Few here realize Netzly oversees billions of dollars—or that he’s part of a conservative movement tilting at corporate America.
Netzly demurs when describing what he does as “stakeholder capitalism.” That’s the label prominent executives have adopted when talking about corporations’ broader social purpose. Like ESG, the phrase has been maligned by conservatives.
“It’s a loaded term,” Netzly said of the phrase. He prefers a different one: Companies, he said, should be a “blessing” to everyone.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.