We were delighted to see this interview with Rev Dr Andrew Harper in the financial digital news platform, Portfolio Advisor, in which he lays out why he got involved in faith-consistent investing – and explains why investing is a natural home for a vicar.
Rev Harper is chief responsibility officer at the Christian ethics-based investment manager Epworth Investment Management, which manages £920m on behalf of churches and charities and is wholly owned by the Central Finance Board of the Methodist Church.
Originally from Texas, he studied international trade and law in the US before deciding to become ordained in the Methodist Church. He moved to the UK to begin training and then worked in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. There, he saw how the world's poorest peoples were all too often negatively impacted by the activities of global multinational industries, such as, for example, tea plantation workers in Kenya and India.
'I became more and more concerned with the people at the lowest end of the totem pole of this industrial cycle of consumption and production,' he says.
That's why he was interested when the position with Epworth and the Central Finance Board came up: 'It looked like a way I could translate my experiences, my educational background... into affecting company change and probably bring a perspective that they may not have been used to.'
The article in Porfolio Advisor also covers Epworth's decision to divest from the oil and gas sector in 2021 after it found that no companies in the sector were aligned with the 2015 Paris Accord climate change targets. Rev Dr Harper says oil and gas companies have 'the technology, the capital, the distribution and the expertise' to transition the world to a green economy,, but essentially are making too much money from oil and gas production.
'They literally have to put their money where their mouth is if they want to be part of a sustainable transition,' he says. 'The position is easy for us, get aligned with Paris or you’re not for us.'
Read the full article on Portfolio-advisor.com: