Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Religious Shareholder Activism an Inside Job to Harm Companies and Investors
Religious Shareholder Activism an Inside Job to Harm Companies and Investors
Dec 16, 2025 6:49 AM

The Manhattan Institute Centers’s “Proxy Monitor Season Wrap-Up” is hot off the press, and the findings presented by author James R. Copland, are remarkable.

Since 2011, MIC has monitored shareholder activism, which it describes as efforts “in which investors attempt to influence corporate management through the shareholder-proposal process.” This year’s wrap-up includes MIC-researched data from corporations’ annual meetings held by the end of June 2015. By that time, “216 of the 250 largest panies by revenues” pleted their meetings, which enable long-term shareholders owning $2,000 of equity securities to introduce proxy resolutions.

Among these proxy activists are As You Sow, the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility – groups with religious backgrounds and decidedly leftist ideological agendas – and a host of likeminded crusaders of progressive causes:

Among social investors, only As You Sow introduced more than five proposals in 2015 (seven). Many other socially oriented investors sponsored multiple proposals, however: social-investing platforms Arjuna Capital (three), Domini Social Investments (three), Green Century Capital Management (three), Investor Voice (five), Northstar Asset Management (two), Trillium Asset Management (four), and Walden Asset Management (four); religious investors Congregation of Sisters of St. Agnes (two), Sisters of Mercy (five), Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order (two), Sisters of St. Dominic (two), Sisters of St. Francis (three), and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (two); the public-policy group National Center for Public Policy Research (two); and the Nathan Cummings (two) and Park (three) charitable foundations.

According to Copland’s report, religious shareholder activists were responsible for 29 percent of all resolutions submitted to the 216 Fortune panies. What type of proposals did the nuns, clergy and other religious submit? According to Copland:

As was the case in 2006–14, shareholder proposals relating to social or policy concerns constituted a plurality of all such proposals in 2015 (43 percent). Close behind were proposals relating to corporate-governance issues (42 percent)….

As for subclasses of proposal, environmental concerns were introduced most often in 2015 (58 proposals). Proposals related to political spending or lobbying—the most-introduced subclass in 2012, 2013, and 2014—were the second-most numerous (49 proposals).

All told, social issues and policies accounted for 43 percent of all resolutions submitted. Yet none of them passed. Zero. Nought. Zed. Zilch. A big fat nothing:

No shareholder proposals related to social or policy issues received majority support—in keeping with each of the nine prior years in the ProxyMonitor.org database, when not a single social-policy-related shareholder proposal has received the support of a majority of shareholders over board opposition.

No harm, no foul, right? Not so fast. Copland continues:

To be sure, [carbon-intensive coal, oil and gas, and panies] may face peculiar regulatory risks, if rather obvious for energy and panies and their investors. (The risks that climate change itself may place on panies’ business models are too far in the future—and thus too discounted to present—to concern shareholders focused solely on share price, aside from sociopolitical or regulatory concerns.) Yet beyond changing their line of business or increasing lobbying or political activity, there is little that panies can do to mitigate such risks—and the former (but not the latter) would almost certainly be inimical [emphasis in original] to share value.

Got that? The 58 environmental proposals work in tandem with the 49 resolutions to curtail corporate political spending when es to reducing shareholder value. Let’s put it this way, any pany would lose value if plied with the activist shareholder agenda regarding climate change. The same pany also would lose value if it didn’t invest in lobbying efforts in pany’s – and its investors’ (not to mention customers’ and employees’) – best interests. Such lobbying includes countering astronomically expensive government bureaucratic emission-reduction edicts and regulations with little or no empirical proof such measures will result in any positive difference.

Inimical indeed. Yet, religious shareholder activism trundles on unabated, its crusade an inside job to harm corporate profitability and shareholder value. It’s shameful and antithetical to any concept of moral principles promulgated by any major religion with which this writer is familiar. More’s the pity.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Monks, Florists, and the Poor
It’s hard to think of anything more onerous than preventing enterprising people from entering the market. To do so is to interfere with their ability to serve others and engage in their vocation. It keeps people poor by preventing them from improving their lives. And one of the worst barriers of this kind is a type of law known as occupational licensing. And that’s exactly what a group of monks in Louisiana ran into in 2010 when the state government...
Praying for Rain in a Drought
A Reuters article highlights the fact that U.S. Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack is praying for rain to help relieve droughts in the Midwest. The drought is having a significant impact on farmers and their crops. The negative affect will of course inevitably lead to higher food prices as the supply is cut. Experts say it could be the most severe dry spell since 1950. The lack of rain and heat is really a simple reminder of our lack of control...
The Truth about Roads, Bridges, and Businesses
Pundits and politicians have been having a field day with President Obama’s speech given in Roanoke, Virginia, last Friday. The quote providing the most fodder is the president’s assertion, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” (Here are a couple recent examples from Paul Ryan and Larry Kudlow.) This has been widely understood to mean that the president is saying that if you have a business, you didn’t build it…and certainly not on...
Churches and Climate Change
I belong to the Christian Reformed Church, and our synod this year decided to formally adopt a report and statements related to creation care and specifically to climate change. I noted this at the time, and that one of the delegates admitted, “I’m a skeptic on much of this.” He continued to wonder, “But how will doing this hurt? What if we find out in 30 years that numbers (on climate change) don’t pan out? We will have lost nothing,...
Miss. State Senator Chris McDaniel on Self-Government & the Moral Order
Over at Y’all Politics, Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel penned an excellent essay on conservatism and the moral order. Deeply influenced by Russell Kirk, McDaniel’s words are worth the read. They are a reminder that sustainable political liberty has to have a proper moral order and foundation for society to flourish. Below is an excerpt of his essay: The embrace of Judeo-Christian morality is an ponent of American life and conservative ideology, particularly in the State of Mississippi. It is...
Is Capitalism the Most Biblical Economic Model?
Richard Land argues the case that free-market capitalism is the economic model that most closely fits in with Christian anthropology: When I lived in England as a Ph.D. student, I was visited during my first fortnight in the country by a fellow student seeking to sign me up for the Socialist Club. In some wonderment I asked him, “Why would you think I would want to join the Socialist Club?” He responded, “Well, I’ve been told you are a Christian...
How Does the U.S. Fare on Measures of the Rule of Law?
The free-market economist Milton Friedman used to argue that for a nation to prosper, all that was needed was to increase privatization and reduce the size of the state. But the collapse of the Soviet Union and munist states made him realize that “Privatization is meaningless if you don’t have the rule of law.” Today, the idea that the rule of law is a ponent of growth is all monplace. So why don’t more economists and policymakers connect the dots...
Evangelicals and Catholics Join Together to Defend Religious Freedom
In 1973, a pair of Supreme Court rulings helped convince many evangelicals and Catholics to align as co-belligerents in the struggle against abortion. In 2012, an executive branch mandate is having a similar effect, this time bringing the groups together to defend religious liberties. A new level of cooperation occurred last week when Wheaton College, a leading evangelical liberal arts school, joined with The Catholic University of America in filing a federal lawsuit opposing the Health and Human Services “Preventative...
ResearchLinks – 07.20.12
Review Essay: “Was Robert Bellarmine Ahead of His Time?” John M. Vella, Homiletic & Pastoral Re Despite his rehabilitation in the last quarter of the 19th century, Bellarmine’s intellectual legacy remains mixed. In one respect, at least, he was a product of his time because his vision of a res publica Christiana depended on a united Christendom that could never be restored. Yet, what is easy to see, in hindsight, was not so clear in the early 17th century. On...
‘Journal of Markets & Morality’ Expands Access
Did you know that, with our new website ), you don’t have to be a subscriber to read content from the two most recent issues of the Journal of Markets & Morality? Now individual articles can be purchased for the meager price of 99 cents. Certainly, it would be more cost-effective to subscribe if you want to read all of our content, but perhaps you would just like to preview an article or two before purchasing the whole thing…. Perhaps,...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved