Report on how CIC, the Christian Investing Council, emerged:

Over the past five years, it has been really encouraging for me to see the Christian investing space develop to “the next level” in a lot of ways. And as usual, when you solve the last set of problems, you create the next set of problems. CIC was created to serve needs that the Christian investing industry has now because of the progress it has made in recent years.

More and more people are recognizing that there is a strong consensus about the basic principles of Christian investing. Five years ago, as I worked with people in this space, the emphasis was on differences – this fund uses this approach, that fund uses that one, and there wasn’t a lot of recognition of how much common ground there was among all the approaches. And there were tensions over that. Now, the differences are still there, but I definitely hear a lot more recognition of the overlap than I used to.

That’s why people started asking for a “Nicene Creed of Christian investing,” which was one of the reasons we created CIC. Now, I always balked at calling it a “Nicene Creed” for investing. We don’t have the authority to write a new creed! But I understood what people really meant when they asked for that – they wanted a clear, precise expression of the consensus that was emerging, so they could use it as a reference point and shared guide.

Since I’ve mentioned the Nicene Creed, another development I’ve seen is a greater ecumenical spirit – or should I say “Spirit”? There is definitely more willingness now to lock arms and work together with people who share our commitment to Christ within the Nicene tradition. It was really fascinating for me as a theologian to work on the CIC Statement on Christian Investing with folks from different branches of that big, boisterous tree. “I know that’s the way you say it, but if you say it that way, people in our tradition will think you mean something totally different.” Working through that process stretches you in a good way.

That was another reason for creating CIC. We wanted to cultivate a voice for this ecumenical cooperation. The whole industry will be stronger when we can work together. One basis for the shared work that I hope to see emerging is to create an intentional home for shared reflection and mutual edification.

A third development is that people are asking more nuanced and complicated questions. Which moral issues do we need to have a position on? How do we hold together our desire to avoid investing in things that are against our faith and our desire to engage the world with the influence of God’s holy love? Have we allowed ideology and short-term passions to shape our approach more than a settled, thoughtful grounding in the Bible and the historic Christian church?

You can still take a fairly simple approach if that’s what you think is best. But now you have to explain why that’s the approach you think is best. And we’re all a lot better off when we’re more thoughtful about our theological basis (said the professional theologian).

And this is also a reason we created CIC. As the questions have become more nuanced and complicated, investors need more help with understanding and evaluating them. It’s great that we are now doing things in more and more sophisticated ways, but that’s putting more and more of an informational burden on the investor. CIC is here to help lift that weight by providing clear, independent and reliable educational resources.

—Greg Forster