The Patriot Post® · Let's Start Putting Our Money Where Our Faith Is
When looking at the cultural landscape from a biblical perspective, it’s more than clear that America is in dire straits. But what’s particularly striking in recent years is how corporate America has collectively decided to latch on to this moral decline. It wasn’t that long ago that American companies were careful to steer clear of public advocacy or making donations to groups with a stake in contentious social issues such as abortion, LGBT “Pride,” and “Defund the Police” in order to avoid alienating their customers.
Yet as we are witnessing, the moral goalposts determined by secular cultural elitists shift on an almost daily basis, and everyone — without exception — must comply or face cancellation. As the rainbow symbol of sexual anarchy adorns virtually every company logo and our inboxes and social media accounts are flooded with “woke” jargon, it’s easy for believers to feel powerless against a seemingly unstoppable onslaught intended to influence the culture in a direction away from biblical truth.
There is, however, a very concrete and influential way Christians can fight back. Besides the most obvious ways of prayer and voting our biblical values, we also have another powerful way to make our voices heard — by spending our hard-earned money at businesses that are, at a minimum, neutral on the moral issues that matter most. One organization in particular, 2nd Vote, is not only spearheading this vital mission to keep biblically-minded consumers informed on where companies stand on the most important issues of our day, but also providing tangible ways to invest directly in funds that support biblical values. On “Washington Watch,” 2nd Vote CEO Dan Grant joined me to discuss how his organization has launched a new initiative to give consumers a direct say in where their money is going.
“What we’ve done is we’ve taken the research of 2nd Vote [that] looks at a company’s advocacy, its philanthropy, its charity … and we rate companies on a scale of one to five, one or two is liberal, three neutral, and four or five is conservative,” he said. “And we’ve created securities [which] are going up against the existing banks, the existing asset managers out there, which are now very vocal.”
Grant went on to describe how 2nd Vote has created an asset management company that offers publicly traded ETFs (Exchange Traded Fund) that can be invested in that support life, religious freedom, the 2nd Amendment, and more. “ETFs are just like mutual funds,” he explained. “You can buy them like any stock. So if you have a broker, you can call your broker. If you have a self-directed account or if you’re on an open platform, if you’re on E-Trade, you would just type in our ticker symbol. So LYFE is one, EGIS is another security … You could spend as little as $100 to buy one of these securities and support what we’re doing.”
So how are these funds performing so far? “Our securities are performing very well,” Grant noted. “In the first quarter, they outperformed the market significantly. And that allows us to go to these companies as shareholders. And we go to these companies and say, ‘Hey, please stay neutral. Please do not slide to the left on these issues that conservatives find important. And if you do, we’re going to have to divest from you.’”
Go to 2ndVote.com to be a part of this critical movement to harness the purchasing power of believers for biblical truth.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.