How is From Alpha To Omega different from traditional biblically responsible investing (BRI) tools?

Most BRI tools flag categorical issues like tobacco, alcohol, or weapons and stop there. From Alpha To Omega goes further by scoring the holistic effect of a company through a weighted, multi-dimensional methodology. You get a 0-10 Omega Score with context, not just a red or green light.

How do you calculate the Omega Score?

The Omega Score is a 0-10 scale that measures a company's alignment with biblical stewardship principles across three pillars: God's People, God's Planet, and God's Mission. We source data from public disclosures, third-party data providers, and our own research, then run it through a trained AI model built on a human-analyzed sample set. We then apply a weighted scoring methodology to produce a final score.

How do you score funds, not just individual stocks?

For funds, we calculate an aggregate Omega Score by pulling each fund's underlying holdings and weighting each company's individual Omega Score by its position size in the fund. This gives you a composite score that reflects actual weighted exposure, not just a sampling of top holdings.

Is From Alpha To Omega a financial advisory service?

No. From Alpha To Omega is a research and education platform. We provide investment research, scoring, and analysis tools. We do not manage money, provide personalized investment advice, or make buy or sell recommendations. Our content is educational, and all investment decisions remain with you or your advisor.

How much does a membership cost?

Membership is $10 per month or $100 per year. The annual plan saves you the equivalent of two months compared to paying monthly. Both plans include full access to the research portal, Omega Score reports, fund comparison tools, and any new features added during your membership.

Faith-Based Funds & Faithwashing

Jun 10

Written By Garrett Rudolph

Today, many “Faith-Based” funds are really wolves in sheep’s clothing. Values-based investing was not always as profitable or successful as it is today. The space is now crowded by funds and managers who do not share the convictions that their investors have. At one time, it was a genuine sacrifice to stake your Christian beliefs at the risk of your financial health.

A Brief History

1820s — The Quakers were the first Americans to do this in the 1820s with the Free Produce Movement. It began as a boycott to avoid buying slavery-produced goods, spreading in popularity across North Carolina before eventually running out of steam in the 1850s. The movement they started — and the conviction behind it — would persevere across centuries and continues today.

1928 — The Pioneer Fund became the first formally faith-motivated U.S. mutual fund, screening out tobacco, alcohol, and gambling from its portfolio. It remains the third-oldest U.S. mutual fund in existence.

1971 — The Episcopal Church filed a shareholder resolution urging General Motors to end its production and manufacturing activities in apartheid South Africa. This led to the creation of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), uniting Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish denominations to pursue shareholder activism. Today the ICCR includes more than 300 global institutional investors overseeing more than $4 trillion in managed assets.

1981 — Christian Brothers Investment Services (CBIS) began formally managing institutional Catholic assets, eventually reaching $7 billion in AUM exclusively for Catholic organizations.

2001 — Ave Maria Mutual Funds launched as the first mutual fund family explicitly grounded in Catholic social teaching, growing to $3 billion in AUM.

2026 — There are now over 231 faith-based mutual fund and ETF strategies representing over $100 billion in AUM.

Faithwashing Emerges

With all the growth in such a niche market, secular companies are bound to swoop in and attempt to capitalize on the movement. Eighty-nine of the 231 funds (38%) were launched during the ESG craze of 2019–2021.

The single most revealing data point for understanding the faithwashing dynamic is the timing of new faith-based product launches. Morningstar documented a surge in new faith-based products launched between 2019 and 2021, attributing it to "a combination of factors, including the rising demand for ethical and ESG investments, increased cultural and social awareness, and a growing desire to align financial decisions with personal values."[1]

That explanation is partly correct — and partially obscures the commercial reality. The 2019–2021 surge precisely tracked the global ESG demand boom, in which net inflows to sustainable funds worldwide rose from $285 billion in 2019 to $542 billion in 2020 to a peak of $557 billion in 2021.

The math is simple: U.S. Christians represent 62% of the U.S. adult population — hundreds of millions of potential investors whose religious identity potentially informs their investment preferences. If even 5% of the investable wealth of practicing Christians were converted to faith-aligned strategies, the market opportunity would be in the trillions, not billions. Against a backdrop of fee compression across conventional funds, faith-labeled products offer differentiation, retention, and a premium fee story.

The original minimum-commitment approach — identified by FaithInvest — was to "run the portfolio just as we normally do, but tilt it towards the ethical requirements defined by the client." This required "very little thought or commitment from the asset manager.” [6] The most prominent secular-manager example in the U.S. Christian/Catholic space is BlackRock's Catholic Charities Growth & Income Fund, which holds approximately £163 million (~$219.5 million USD as of June 9, 2026).

The prospectus subordinates the Catholic values paraded in the label: "ESG factors are not the sole considerations when making investment decisions." The fund also contains carve-outs that allow it to invest in otherwise excluded products through roundabout means — the fund "may have exposure to other investments (including… derivatives, money market instruments, units or shares in collective investment schemes, cash…) which are inconsistent with the exclusionary screens."[10]

The fund is governed by a negative-exclusion overlay, not a mission-driven investment process. It carries no formal relationship with Catholic theological authority, no reference to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' investment guidelines, and no documented shareholder engagement program aligned with Catholic social teaching. While there is an advisory committee consisting of lay Catholic church members, the committee is "a consultative body only with no executive powers" and "is not authorised to undertake regulated activities… the Manager shall retain absolute discretion in relation to the management and administration of the relevant Sub-Fund" (prospectus). The body is consulted on "significant matters" only biannually — delegate appointments, fees, objectives, and policy. [10]

If we look at how BlackRock operates its ESG-labeled funds, this casts further doubt on the authenticity of the faith-based label. In October 2024, environmental nonprofit ClientEarth filed a formal greenwashing complaint with France's financial regulator, targeting 18 BlackRock "sustainable" funds that collectively held more than $1.04 billion in fossil fuel expansion companies while marketing themselves with "sustainable" in their names. In response, BlackRock announced in March 2025 that it would rename or restructure 17 of the 18 funds, dropping "sustainable" from 14 fund names. This capitulation under regulatory pressure provides strong evidence that BlackRock's fund naming is a marketing function, not a values function.

If BlackRock's "sustainable" labels were commercial overlays — not mission commitments — the same analytical inference applies to its faith-labeled products.

Faithful Vs Faithwash

We have arranged a table below to assist in navigating the potentially murky landscape of faith-based investing through six analytical dimensions:

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We are not saying that a fund or fund manager must meet all of these criteria at 100% to be considered a “true” Faith-Based fund, but these are the factors we would argue should be investigated before committing to one.

The most notable differentiator is screening depth. Negative screening — excluding companies associated with abortion, pornography, alcohol, gambling, and tobacco — is table stakes. It is easily outsourced to a data vendor and requires no original theological research. An asset manager can apply a BRI negative screen in days.

We contend that authentic faith managers layer multiple screening approaches:

Negative screening — exclusion of activities directly contradicting biblical principles
Positive/best-in-class screening — actively seeking companies that exemplify stewardship, human dignity, and just labor practices
Impact investing — directing capital toward companies solving problems aligned with the fund's mission
Shareholder engagement — using ownership stakes as a prophetic voice within corporate governance

The ICCR's engagement record illustrates what genuine engagement produces at scale. Faith-based investors affiliated with the ICCR filed or co-filed nearly one-third of all ESG shareholder proposals in the U.S. between 2020 and 2022, despite representing only 1.1% of the combined $3 trillion in assets controlled by all shareholder proponents. After the opioid crisis, ICCR campaigns resulted in 18 companies adopting policies to recover executive compensation following misconduct. Eventide Funds used its shareholder voice to urge solar panel producers to address slave labor in Chinese supply chains. Inspire Investing engaged in constructive dialogue with Delta Air Lines in March 2026 to secure commitments that allowed greater Christian engagement and expression. A faithwashed product offers none of this and does not truly advance the Kingdom. Its prospectus will cite a "proprietary ESG methodology" or a "values-based screen" without reference to doctrinal authority or scriptural basis.

SEC Names Rule 35d-1 requires funds to invest at least 80% of their assets in alignment with their fund name. For a fund named "Biblical Values Equity Fund" or "Christian Stewardship Growth Fund," this rule technically requires that 80% of holdings reflect whatever "Biblical values" or "Christian stewardship" the fund has defined in its prospectus. This is a step in the right direction, but ultimately the onus for discretion falls on the investor.

The faith-based investor must be equipped with the tools and knowledge to move the Kingdom forward — and not fall victim to wolves in sheep's clothing. We provide tools (link here) of our own proprietary research to assist in this journey, but ultimately, we pray that you apply discernment in your approach to advancing the Kingdom through any source.

How are your investments advancing the Gospel?