The short answer
Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI) is the practice of building a portfolio whose holdings reflect Christian convictions — avoiding companies whose core business contradicts scriptural ethics, and favoring those whose practices honor people, stewardship of creation, and a constructive mission in the world.
A brief history
Faith-based investing screens trace back centuries — Quakers refused profits from the slave trade in the 1700s; Methodists in the 1900s avoided alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. The modern BRI movement coalesced in the 1990s with fund families like Timothy Plan and, later, Inspire Investing, formalizing screens around abortion, pornography, predatory lending, and entertainment that conflicts with Christian values.
How BRI screens typically work
Most BRI frameworks combine two layers:
- Negative screens — exclude revenue from activities considered incompatible with Christian ethics (e.g., abortion, pornography, predatory lending, certain forms of gambling).
- Positive screens — favor companies treating workers well, stewarding the environment, and pursuing a mission that contributes to human flourishing.
- Shareholder advocacy — using ownership to vote proxies and engage company leadership on ethical concerns.
BRI vs. ESG
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) and BRI share family resemblance — both apply values-based screens — but they answer to different authorities. ESG is shaped by secular institutional priorities; BRI is anchored in scripture. A company can score well on ESG and still fail a BRI screen, and vice versa.
The Omega Score: a modern BRI framework
FATO scores public companies and funds across three pillars — People, Planet, and Mission — and distills them into a single Omega Score. The pillars map cleanly onto longstanding BRI concerns: how a company treats human beings made in God's image, how it stewards creation, and whether the work it does is constructive or corrosive.
Where legacy BRI frameworks often rely on a handful of binary exclusions, the Omega Score adds nuance: a continuous 0–10 scale, transparent pillar breakdowns, and controversy/subsidiary risk flags surfacing what binary screens miss.
Getting started
Begin with what you already own. Run your portfolio through the Omega Score to see which holdings align with your convictions and where the conflicts are. From there, you can prioritize swaps, lean into faith-aligned funds, and use FATO's peer comparisons to find higher-scoring alternatives without abandoning sector exposure.