Investing in your Mission: Churches and Socially Responsible Investment
On 6-7 May 2008, a conference was held in Brussels on the theme of “Churches and Socially Responsible Investment”.
The conference sought to explore the link between faith and the churches’ concept of investing money, plus an identification of the needs of church financial leadership to implement Socially Responsible Investment (SRI). This included facilitating an exchange between the financial and spiritual leadership on a European level and sharing promising initiatives within church circles relating to SRI.
The conference, with approximately 80 participants from across Europe, was co-organised by the Church and Society Commission of CEC, Oikocredit and the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland. The first day of the conference was held in European Parliament, Brussels, at the kind invitation of Jens Holm MEP. The second day was held in Scotland House, the Brussels representative office and conference centre of the Scottish Government.
Commenting on the outcome of the meeting, the Rev Rüdiger Noll, Director of CEC’s Church and Society Commission said “As an ecumenical organisation of churches relating to the European Institutions, we have stressed that the process of globalisation as well as the paradigm of economic competition must be guided by social and environmental criteria. We are then often asked for an alternative. The conference in Brussels has clearly shown that churches committed to socially responsible investment provide an effective alternative, on which we have to build much more in the future.”
Some of the speeches and papers associated with the conference are available below.
Additional information can be found at the following:
CEC press release: www.cec-kek.org/content/pr-cq0827e.shtml
Oikocredit website: www.oikocredit.org
Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Finland: www.evl.fi
Conference on Churches and Socially Responsible Investment:
• Participants
• Programme
• The Church and Ethical Investments - Jens Holm, MEP, The European Parliament
• Church Investment Policies - The Central Church Fund of Finland
• Churches and Corporate Engagement - Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church (Presentation I)
• Investing in your Mission - Workshop: Churches and Corporate Engagement - Bill Seddon
• Churches and Corporate Engagement - Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church (Presentation II)
• Building up Church Related Alliances - Churches and Socially Responsible Investment - Bill Seddon
• Reformed Investment . A Protestant and Reformed Point of View - David Sinclair
• Theological Criteria for Deciding about Investment Goals - Toine van den Hoogen
• Kirchliche Verantwortungsträger vor der Herausforderung ethischen Investments - Markus Schlagnitweit
• Ziele ethischen Finanzmanagements in der Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland - Thomas Begrich
• The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland’s guidelines for responsible investing
• Ethical Investment Researches Services - An Introduction - Stephen Hine
• Developing an SRI Policy - Stephen Hine
• The Need for Ethical Investment Policy Statements - Klaus Gabriel
• SRI Funds Advice - Thomas Koellner
• SRI Emerging Markets - Urs-Peter Wepfer
• Oikocredit - Ben Simmes
• The Responsibility Research of oekom research AG - Robert Hassler
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