Christianity is DEAD
Thursday, 12 Nov 2009 by lee | 4 Comments |
Christianity in the UK is dead
– long live Shari-ah
In a quite staggering announcement from the head of the Government’s new Pensions body (Personal Accounts Delivery Authority), it appears that there is no demand from the UK population for investments that are based on Christian values – one assumes that this must be in some way an official UK Government view. For this reason, there will be no investment funds available under the Personal Accounts regime from 2012 that will give Christian investors the opportunity to invest in line with their principles – no demand and therefore no point in having a fund.
On the other hand, when Personal Accounts are launched in 2012 it will be possible for those who would like to invest with Shari-ah principles to choose a special Shari-ah fund for their investments. This is a wonderful step for the broad Muslim community and we applaud PADA for making the investment opportunity available. It is, however, somewhat disappointing to hear that Christianity is officially a spent force, not generating enough interest and support to warrant a pension fund based on Christian values.
At Ethical Investors, we firmly support the principle of inclusion, rather than exclusion, which is why we take issue with the apparent lack of imagination of PADA and the complete lack of choice for responsible investors. When compulsory pension payments for employees starts in 2012, large numbers of individuals from all faiths, and none, will be forced to compromise their principles by being denied access to ethical pension funds (other than the Shari-ah option).
With less than 3 years to go before Personal Accounts go live, we do hope the Government will be able to exert some pressure on PADA to offer a broad range of ethically screened funds, but it might be a rather forlorn hope on our part. If the PADA view is correct, then maybe it is we at Ethical Investors that need to accept that people don’t want to invest ethically – a bit of a shame as that’s all we’ve advised on for the last 20 years. As we move into our 21st year, however, all the evidence we have is that more and more people are choosing to invest ethically and responsibly. In this case, maybe PADA have got it wrong – very wrong.
What now?
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My wife and I are a young couple investigating possible pension options for the future. In particular we are specifically looking for a Christian ethical investment fund with sound green and human rights credentials. I do not think we are a fringe group. We work at a theology college which produces plenty of graduate students going to work in churches around the UK with a passion for such issues. If such a pension option is available and publicised people will take it. I really think PADA is making a big mistake on this!!.
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Martin
Really delighted to read your response. I absolutely agree that if offered people will take it but PADA have made a decision not to offer anything suitable for Christians. It seems nowadays that it is perfectly acceptable to be completely dismissive about Christianity whilst at the same time being ‘sensitive’ to the views/needs of Muslims. Why? Everyone should be treated the same – if it were the other way around there would be outrage from the Muslim community and that would be perfectly understandable and right. Will there be outrage from the Christian community – probably not. We’ll get jolly cross and then put up with it.
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Hi. My wife and I always invest (including our pensions) in accordance with our Christian principles. I think in line with many other Christians we want to postively influence the whole of society and therefore many of our choices could be masked under a more mainstream heading such as \'environmental concern\' rather than a specifically Christian one - our concern is not with maintaining our identity but rather in seeing the whole of society transformed.
Stewardship produced some interesting research on the giving of Christians - http://www.stewardship.org.uk/documents/givingresearch.pdf - on average we give 12% of our household income as opposed to 1.4% nationally. If 6% of the UK are Christians that means half of all UK giving is done by Christians. With the government rightly keen to support the 3rd sector who provide such good value for money services perhaps this data would be a way of indicating the power of the \'Christian pound\'.
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It saddened me to know these Up to now I wanna believe that there is still hope for us to be advised withsipp advice to see more option. .
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