Is it wrong to own shares in a company that produces goods and services that are harmful?

In 2014 there was a scandal in the Church of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury described payday loan companies as immoral and vowed to compete them out of business by supporting credit unions. Shortly afterwards, the media reported that the Church of England itself had shares in Wonga, one of the main pay-day loan companies and one which Justin Welby had criticised directly. After the news broke, the Church of England arranged for the shares to be sold and the funds to be directed to more ethical investments. Although Welby himself had no direct control over over the Church's investment decisions, he reported that he was irritated and embarrassed when he heard about the shares and that he was relieved when he heard that the Church had got rid of them. See the BBC report here.

The assumption by both Welby and the media was that if you believe a company's business is immoral, you should not hold shares in that company. 

Is that correct? If the goods and services that a company produces are harmful, is it morally wrong to seek to grow your own finances by holding shares in that company? Does the answer to the question depend on other factors, e.g. (a) whether the company only produces goods and services that are harmful or has a range of good and bad goods and services, (b) the number of shares you hold in the company (c) whether you hold the shares directly or indirectly. 

It is an important question for Christians to ask because it is likely that most Christians hold shares in companies that produce goods and services that are harmful. If you have a normal pension, your pension probably consists of shares in a range of different companies and it is likely that some of those companies will make money by producing goods and services that you believe are harmful or morally wrong.

The reason why this question is so important to me is because of my views on abortion. I believe that all human life is made in the image of God and that human life begins at end of the process of conception. I believe that the only circumstance in which abortion is justified is when not to carry out an abortion would almost certainly result in the death of the mother. In every other circumstance I believe that to carry out an abortion is to commit murder and so I don't want to do anything that promotes, condones or assists abortion. (I appreciate that not everyone will share my views on abortion, but even if you don't agree with me on this issue, I expect there are other things that you feel very strongly about and that you don't want to do anything to facilitate or promote and certainly don't want to profit from. Perhaps you could substitute that for abortion as you continue reading).

The connection to my pension is that it is likely that my pension fund holds shares in pharmaceutical companies, although I don't know that for sure. Pharmaceutical companies produce many things that are good, but they also produce the abortion pill (see here) and the morning after pill. (There is some uncertainty as to whether the morning after pill works by preventing fertilisation, which I would not see as objectionable, or whether it prevents implantation after fertilisation, which I would regard as murder. As it is uncertain we have to say that the morning after pill could be murder if we assume that human life in the image of God begins at fertilisation). If my pension fund does hold shares in pharmaceutical companies, it is in my financial interests for the sale of abortion drugs to grow, because the more profitable the pharmaceutical companies are, the more my shares will grow in value.

When I first considered this issue, I thought that it was clear cut and that the only godly thing for me to do would be to insist that my pension fund did not hold any shares in pharmaceutical companies, even if that meant that my pension would be very small. From what I understand, it is likely that my pension pot would be very small if I did this because most pension companies don't allow you to be this specific if you have a share-based pension. Most pensions are share-based. Almost every pension company will offer what they regard as an ethical pension fund, but that fund will still have shares in pharmaceutical companies because they don't regard abortion unethical. Instead of investing in shares, the pension companies could invest your pension in commodities, cash or property, but none of these will give you the same returns that shares can provide and it is likely that your pension would be very small if this was all the fund was invested in. 

So, is the only godly option for me (and for you too if you share my views on abortion) to take big hit on my pension by insisting that my pension pot has no shares in pharmaceuticals, or is the issue less clear cut than I previously thought?

Here are the factors that could make it less clear cut than I thought.

1. Pharmaceutical companies produce products that save lives as well as products that take away life.

In contrast to Wonga, pharmaceutical companies don't only do one thing. The whole of Wonga's business is payday loans and so if you are opposed to payday loans, you really shouldn't have shares in Wonga because that is their whole business. However, as well producing abortion drugs, pharmaceutical companies produce products that save lives. I want those products to succeed. So perhaps if a pharmaceutical company receives more revenue form the life-saving drugs it produces than the life-destroying drugs it produces, it is OK to hold shares in that company.

A comparison can be drawn here with employment. Most hospital doctors in the UK who work for the NHS are employed by an organisation that carries out abortions. If I wanted to be a doctor to save lives, I think that very few people would say that my belief that abortion is murder should prevent me from working for a hospital that does perform abortions, as long as I did not personally carry out an abortion. Does the same apply for holding shares in a pharmaceutical company? Is it a valid analogy? What if my job in the hospital was not as a doctor but as a manager who recruited doctors who did carry out abortions among their many other duties? Is that still OK, or I have then become complicit in what I regard as murder?

To move the discussion away from abortion, what about if I worked in a supermarket and the magazines sold by the supermarket included pornography? I am guilty of promoting pornography by scanning the magazine at the till? Does it change if I am store manager or company director? 

Although it is true pharmaceutical companies usually produce a range of products, it is possible that I have shares in specialised companies whose whole business is the production of abortion drugs, so I don't think this factor by itself saves me from having to make what could be a costly sacrifice. 

2. I am not actually the legal owner of any shares.

My pension fund does not make me the direct owner of any shares in any company. My pension company uses the money that I contribute to my pension to buy shares in its own name. The fund managers that work for the pension company buy and sell shares according to how they think different companies are performing in order to grow the funds that they manage. When I come to retire, shares in the funds that my money has been invested in will be sold and then the proceeds will be made available to me. Often it is actually more complicated that this, because the pension companies themselves don't own shares in companies directly, but will own shares in other funds that own the shares in the companies, but the key point here is that it is arguable that the moral responsibility for investing ethically lies not with me but with pension companies (and their fund managers) who are actually the legal owners of the shares.

It is the pension companies, not me, who have the right to attend company meetings in which they hold shares and vote on issues like the appointment of board members and therefore indirectly on the direction of the company. 

Whilst I may not like the thought that I could be profiting indirectly from the successful performance of goods and services that I am opposed to, it is arguable that the moral responsibility for making the investment lies with the pension company rather than with me. 

Because the legal ownership of the shares is with the pension company rather than with me, giving money to a pension company and asking them to invest it for me is not fundamentally different from having money in a bank account. When you put money in your bank account, you are essentially making a loan to the bank that is repayable on demand. For as long as you don't need the money, the bank is free to lend it to others to make money for itself. That is why they can afford to pay you interest, because they use your money to make money for themselves. You do not have any control over who the bank lends money to and so the money you put in your savings account could be used to make loans to businesses that you are opposed to. However, I think most people would say that the moral responsibility for who the money is lent to rests with the bank itself and not with the savers who give to the bank the money that they use to lend out. Arguably, giving money to a pension company is not fundamentally different from putting savings into a bank account. In both cases, the organisation that you give the money to uses it to make investments that they think will make money and then give back to you more money than you gave to them (but in the case of shares, you could actually end up with less money).

I think that with Wonga and the Church of England, a part of the Church of England was itself the direct owner of the shares in Wonga and so the connection it had to the business it objected to was much closer than the the connection I have to the "business" that I object to. 

3. The shares that are held for my benefit will rarely amount to a controlling interest in the companies in which they are invested.

As mentioned above, a share is a share in the ownership of a company and the shareholders usually have rights to attend and vote at company meetings. However, companies in which pension funds invest often have thousands of shares and so it is unlikely that the voting power represented by the shares that are held for me could actually make any difference to what the company actually does. 

The relevance of this is that your moral responsibility for the actions of a company must be affected in part by the ability you actually have to control what that company does.


So what do you think? Is it immoral to have a share-based pension scheme if there is a chance that your pension pot will be growing at least in part because of the harmful goods and services produces by various companies or does the moral responsibility for the investments lie with the pension company?

If you do think it is immoral, do you think that it is equally immoral to have bank account? 

And what about being employed by an organisation that sells goods or services that are objectionable?

Let me know what you think. 

Jesus' physical resurrection from the dead is a real historical event that people need to know about.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead will not, by itself, convince anyone to become a Christian, but no one can become a Christian unless they know that Jesus physically rose from the dead.

"If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." - Luke 16:31

This statement in Luke is not an argument against using historical evidence and the reliability of the New Testament manuscripts to convince people that the resurrection actually happened. 

Jesus (through Abraham in the story of the rich man and Lazarus) is saying that evidence that God is real is not enough to convince people to turn to him in repentance and trust. However, that doesn't mean that it is futile, when speaking to people about Jesus, to start  by talking about facts and evidence. People need to know who Jesus is before then can put their faith in him. Believing that Jesus rose from the dead won't in and of itself cause people to trust in Jesus, but in order to trust him, they do need to know that he rose from the dead, and it is right and useful to go through the evidence with people on this. 

Of course, those who realise they would need to surrender to Jesus if he did rise from the dead won't consider the evidence dispassionately - they will find themselves wanting to reject the evidence because of the implications it has for them, rather on the basis of its weight - but they still need to know the evidence and to be told of this as well as being told that everyone who comes to Jesus in repentance and faith will find forgiveness, love and acceptance and the power of God at work in their lives to live for the one who loved them and gave himself for them.