As Corporate America Ditches DEI, Robert Netzly’s Christian Investing Firm Booms [WATCH]

Netzly says his company was influential in getting Meta, Walmart and other major companies to rollback their DEI initiatives.

Over the last year, Walmart, Meta, Target and many other companies have run away from their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Robert Netzly, CEO and Founder of Inspire Investing, is thrilled.

He told Uncloseted Media that his company, which specializes in biblically responsible investing, is growing “like a weed.”

Netzly’s company guides Christian investors on how to select companies that are in line with his version of the Christian way. Companies are dinged if they support things like pornography, abortion, or what they refer to as “LGBT Activism.” If your company celebrates Pride Month, hangs a rainbow flag in its lobby, or scores well on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, you’re gonna get a wrist slap on Inspire’s Impact scorecard, which has given Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT) the lowest score possible of -100 and Starbucks (SBUX) and Bank of America (BAC) poor scores of -72.

Netzly says his company—the world’s largest faith-based ETF provider—has been influential in pushing Meta, Walmart and others to leave DEI behind to have them stay out of what he calls “social issues.”

Ahead of an upcoming Uncloseted Media investigation into the world of biblically responsible investing, here’s our interview with Netzly.

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Watch the full interview above or read the transcript here:

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Spencer Macnaughton: Hello everyone. Today I'm here with Robert Netzly, the founder and CEO of Inspire Investing. It's a lead organization in the world of biblically responsible investing. Robert, thanks so much for chatting with me and Uncloseted Media today.

Robert Netzly: It's my pleasure.

SM: For me, I had never even heard the concept of biblically responsible investing. For those who are watching this and have no clue what it is, can you explain it?

RN: Sure. Yeah, so investing in a biblically responsible way, right? So we're essentially trying to put capital with companies that align with traditional biblical values, faith, family, freedom, pro-life issues, things of that nature. So that includes screening companies out of a portfolio. So if a company is selling pornography or making abortion drugs, we don't want to invest in those companies. So instead of a company that has human trafficking in the supply chain, we're looking for one that is a blessing to the people that interact with that business. So we make low-cost ETFs primarily and people can buy those on the New York Stock Exchange all over the world.

SM: Describe your primary clientele.

RN: As you would imagine, Christian investors from all over the world. Although we do have a large number of non-Christian people who just share certain conservative, biblical values.

SM: And tell me a little bit more about Inspire Investing.

RN: We're the world's largest provider of faith-based ETFs. It's been an amazing journey. We really see God at work. We believe strongly that God is on the move with his people, opening their eyes to this huge opportunity to align his money with his values for his glory and our joy. And so our vision is really to see every Christian investing for the glory of God. We're at 3.2 billion dollars under management now, it's astounding to me. We've been named in the top three fastest-growing investment firms in the nation several times. And it's all very humbling because of this massive movement going [on] where people are able to align their money and their faith in a very meaningful way.

SM: Talk to me a little bit more about that. Is it a movement? Is it really growing as a whole, this industry, biblically responsible investing?

RN: Yeah. So I'm here. I'm at a conference right now. Hopefully you don't hear too much background noise, but there are 2,700 Christian financial advisors at this conference in Orlando. It's been growing by several hundred each year, represented by many of the major firms that you see in Wall Street. The momentum is certainly just white-hot. And again, our success is a testament not to our genius or anything like that but really to the grace of God and what he is doing. He really is opening people's eyes and minds to this huge problem that right now they're making money on things and supporting things that are deeply antithetical to their values.

SM: You say it's God's plan, right? And I'm thinking if I were religious, it would be kind of bang for your buck because if you get into financial advising, you're able to have kind of the ideology of God or Christianity penetrate all institutions because you can focus on tech companies or healthcare. Is that something that you think about a lot?

RN: There's not one dollar in this world where Jesus doesn't say “That's mine,” not one soul that Jesus doesn't say “That's mine,” not one bit of ground that Jesus doesn't say “That's mine.” I'm a blood-bought believer by Jesus Christ, and he's my Lord and Savior. All that I do is to then glorify him. And so trying to work that out in my day-to-day profession is certainly a passion and something that, again, is a growing awareness in the investment world.

SM: Obviously, we're an LGBTQ-focused publication, right? So if I go to Inspireinsight.org and I look up companies, for example, I looked up Apple. I noticed that they have, I think, the worst score. They have a negative 100, which is the worst, I think.

RN: Yes, the worst. Yes.

SM: And the reasons that are listed there are abortion activism, exploitation, pornography, and then LGBT activism. So explain what that means. Why are they getting wrist slapped?

RN: Apple's not getting dinged because Tim Cook is openly gay, right? Where we find a problem is when a company takes sides in a social issue, so Apple and others have taken great pains to advance the LGBT message over and against the message of people with traditional faith-based values. So anecdotally, we've heard from Christian employees at Apple and other companies where they don't feel safe bringing their whole self to work because they know the company has taken a stance on defining definitions of gender or marriage and family. But what about this Christian person who believes that marriage between a man and a woman, their faith teaches them that there are two genders? And that's problematic. So we don't want companies to discriminate against LGBT people. We don't want companies to discriminate against faith-based people. And too many companies have crossed the line between just providing a safe and tolerant workplace to really picking sides in what should be a social issue. So that's where we see that category, LGBT activism. It's that pushing of an agenda that we find unfair and unethical.

Photo courtesy: Inspire Investing

SM: And some of the reasons I looked at the reason why Apple was dinged for LGBT activism and a big factor I believe was that they had an above-average employer rating on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index. And that gave them scores that they just gave benefits to LGBTQ employees. They did things like celebrate Pride Month. They might have donated to an LGBTQ-focused charity. Why does that get people dinged in the eyes of God?

RN: Right. Well, things you just described there, with the exception of the Gay Pride parade, are not a problem. We want companies, yes, to provide health benefits to their LGBT employees. That's obvious. There's many things in the Corporate Equality Index from the HRC score that are just, frankly, required legal mandates. You have to do certain things. And they're good things like health benefits, retirement benefits, like non-discrimination in hiring practices.

Now, you mentioned Gay Pride parade. Has Apple sponsored a Focus on the Family Parade? I don't think they would do that, right? So that's an example of taking sides in an issue.

SM: Just to be clear, though, Focus on the Family is an organization that supported conversion therapy before, which some folks would equate to a human rights abuse, right?

RN: And the HRC is an organization that has encouraged hate-filled messages towards people of faith.

So this is my point. This is not a workplace discussion. And the HRC is an activist group, and they are free to do what they want to do. If I'm Apple, and I'm going to support a Gay Pride parade. Okay. Well, then our position is, are you also going to support the Promise Keepers rally,¹ or the traditional marriage, or the other side? It's not fair to say, “We're going to support this parade over here to celebrate these relationships and this view” of really what's a social opinion regarding sexuality and relationships and gender. “And we're decidedly not going to do that over here.” And that's why you find people who, again, don't feel safe coming to work.

I worked at Wells Fargo, I experienced that myself when I walked into a Wells Fargo branch, and they had a Christmas poster that was explicitly LGBT-themed, they can do that. But they've got to understand what the impact that has [on] me, the birth of my Savior. And they're combining that with an ideology and practices that my faith teaches directly against.

SM: Take me inside your mind, how does that impact you emotionally? Like, is it really tough when you walk in and see that Pride Christmas tree? Like, take me inside your mind when you walk into Wells Fargo and see that Pride Christmas tree.

RN: That is my God. Jesus Christ is my Lord and my Savior, taking a Christmas celebration and mixing a message in that is antithetical to the scriptural message. It is incredibly disrespectful, at the very least, to those who hold a Christian faith. And it would be the same thing if you walked into a business and you saw a big poster that said “God Hates Gays,” or something ridiculous like that. So where companies have just lost the plot, with saying, “Look, we want to support our employees,” but then they got hyper-focused on this particular group. And they start doing things that are alienating all these other employees. So now you're seeing companies like Walmart and all these others rolling back their DEI programs and realizing, look, we’ve just got to get back to common sense.

SM: A lot of people would say you're a smart, articulate man in a suit here, right? That it's not a both sides issue. It's a matter of human rights and gay and trans people having rights and being able to live their life equally, just like everyone else is. And a lot of people would take major issue with you dinging people for LGBT activism, for places that are trying to make the world more equitable for folks who have had a history of oppression and discrimination in this country, particularly. What would you say to those people who are heavily critical of you from that perspective?

RN: I respect that viewpoint and it's easy to see the perspective. I would also say that as a Christian, there's been no group of people persecuted more than us. Whether Apple gives to a Pride parade or not, or puts their finger on the scale to tip the balance towards one way or another. That's not causing anybody's rights to be infringed. Except, in this case, as I mentioned earlier, it is infringing upon the rights of those who have traditional viewpoints and faith-based viewpoints. When you're talking about a company that is comprised of thousands of people with various viewpoints, we can't take sides in a social issue. Particularly in something so deeply important and impactful as marriage, sexuality, relationships, gender. These are sensitive issues that companies should not be involved in.

SM: I think people would say that’s human rights, though, that people just deserve the same rights that you would have to marry your wife, I should have to marry my boyfriend, if I so choose. No?

RN: And Apple shouldn't be a part of that. And I just go back to my previous argument of if Apple really wanted to support a Gay Pride parade, well then I would say, you also need to support the other viewpoint there. Right? Where's the Focus on the Family? Where's the Million Man March? Where is the Promise Keeper's rally? Where are these other things?

SM: Because that group supports conversion therapy, and the other one supports LGBTQ rights.

RN: Yeah, and I would say the LGBTQ rights group supports child grooming.

I mean, if you're going to take extreme examples. What you just said, the conversion therapy example, is an extreme example; you can't deny that there are those in the LGBT group that are taking very direct aim at indoctrinating children to embrace a sexual identity. If I'm Apple, I have no place taking sides in those social issues. And if I do choose to take a side in that social issue, I need to be willing to suffer the consequences as they may be. Such as $22.4 trillion of faith-based capital not investing in your stock. Such as legal risk and lawsuits, like you saw with Bud Light and Target, right? So those are the things that we're just saying, look, I think the wisest thing for a corporation is to stay neutral and to stay out of it. If you choose to take sides, then you're going to have investors like me, like others, speak up and there's going to be consequences.

SM: I think the grooming narrative and LGBTQ, if you look at the data, there is a disproportionate number of pastors and folks in the church committing things like pedophilia and incest significantly higher than the LGBTQ community.

RN: And they should be locked up. Exactly. It's immoral.

SM: I'll just be honest, person to person [with] you, it really frustrates me when people create this grooming narrative around the LGBTQ community. When you look at the data, let's look at the pastors, let's look at the priests, let's look at the people where the numbers are significantly higher in the evangelical space.

RN: And we should, there are people in the LGBTQ community who do bad things, not because they're LGBT, but there are people…

SM: But you're comparing a Pride Month to conversion therapy, not an LGBTQ person to conversion therapy.

RN: I’m just saying Apple shouldn't sponsor Pride parades. And if they do, then they should sponsor the Focus on the Family parade. If they're not willing to support both sides of the viewpoint, my point is they should stay out of it. So I'm not advocating for [them] to give to Focus on the Family, I'm saying they should stay out of it. And that's the logic, that's the common sense.

SM: Obviously DEI is all over the news right now, right?

RN: Right.

SM: And with biblically responsible investing, this feels like the opposite of DEI in a way. Is that a fair way to frame it?

RN: There's certainly large swaths of contradiction between those two things.

In theory, DEI shouldn't necessarily be all that contentious. But when they've been hardened to represent one side of the equation, so in this case, a very kind of extreme leftist viewpoint on diversity, equity, and inclusion, that's when it becomes a problem. You look at extreme cases where Christians have been fired for just saying they didn't want to celebrate gay Pride Month². So DEI has become synonymous with taking sides and particularly a leftist side and alienating and even oppressing those who have different viewpoints. Some people call it reverse discrimination; call it what you will, but that's what [it has become] in practice. And so I applaud these companies who are rolling back their DEI initiatives. So we need to just kind of rethink that and just get back to common sense business and keep the politics and the ideology in the appropriate sphere, not in the workplace. And I think we'll all be better off for that.

SM: And you guys have kind of been influential in some of these recent rollbacks of DEI. In a recent blog post, after Meta announced that they were pulling away from DEI, you wrote that Meta's decision to end its censorship and divisive DEI policies represents a watershed moment for free expression, corporate responsibility, and faith-based investing. You went on to write that you are both honored and humbled to share how Inspire Investing shareholder engagement efforts were instrumental in speaking biblical truth to corporate power and contributed to steering Meta toward a more inclusive, free, and God-glorifying society. That sounds huge for your company based on your mission. How did you impact this decision that was, you know, globally known?

RN: We had been engaged with Meta for about eight months, possibly a little more, with a shareholder resolution centered on censorship. They had famously, infamously, deplatformed many pro-life groups. And so we wanted to push back on that so we filed a shareholder resolution, as investors we can do that. Filed this resolution, engaged with them over a number of meetings. Meta did not want this resolution to go to the vote with their annual meeting with their shareholders.

But that's where it was. The SEC allowed it to go forward. And so we had this ongoing thing, right? So this resolution was going to be coming to Meta shareholders. Along that timeframe, you know, some things had changed. Obviously, Trump had something to do with that. I don't know if it was Trump or really just the tide change that ended up with Trump in the White House, right? Chicken before the egg, not exactly sure. But they can see the writing on the wall. You had Bud Light's disastrous blow-up, Target's disastrous blow-up. Disney's had big troubles. And so companies are starting to take notice. We had some initial resistance from Meta.

And then over time [it] seemed like they realized, the people on the phone we were talking to, their senior legal executives and diversity DEI executives, whatever their personal viewpoints may or may not have been, I think they realized the corporation can't fight the tide on these things.

They scheduled a meeting with us again, one of these follow up meetings. But that ended up being the day after Zuckerberg made his video announcement of all the changes that they're doing with censorship. And so the day after, we end up having this meeting that had been scheduled for weeks with Meta's executives, or an executive team, talking about how they had [made] these different changes, “Can we remove this resolution?” So yeah, I applaud them for listening. I applaud them for engaging with us and I applaud them for making a good decision. And yeah, I'm honored and humbled that we had some small part to play in that and hopefully others as we go along.

SM: And one of the headlines that came out, LGBTQ-themed headlines, was that you can now say that LGBTQ people are mentally ill. Was that something you were happy with?

RN: That's the first time I've heard of it. I mean, that certainly wasn't part of our resolution, that we somehow wanted to call LGBT people mentally ill. That was not part of our thought process

SM: You didn’t see that? That was like national news right after. That was all over the place.

RN: I don't know, man. I'm running a business.

SM: Yeah, yeah.

RN: But you know, the thing about censorship and the thing about free speech, if you want to put it that way, is that people have the freedom to say things that we disagree with. Right. And it might be harmful, you know, it might hurt. Certainly there are limits. You don't want to incite violence. Do we really want to live in a society where we have moral police all over our social media?

SM: How has the Trump effect impacted Inspire Investing and the biblically responsible investing movement?

RN: Trump is a very extreme character. I'll grant you that. How that's affected us is that people are, I think, paying attention. So if somebody was sort of going about their life, not really caring about what they're invested in, or the values that are being supported, or what companies were doing, now everybody knows about ESG and DEI and corporate initiatives. These previously very benign, esoteric financial conversations have become front and center of Main Street. And when people look under the hood of their portfolios, just like me, when I popped the hood of my portfolio and s[aw] abortion drug manufacturers in there, that affects me. You want to align your investments with values that you support. And we're seeing people of faith and many others do the same thing. They want to see their personal values reflected in their shareholder rights.

22.4 trillion dollars in this country in stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs that are owned by church members. That's about half or so of the retirement assets in this country, just to kind of give you an idea, that's a lot of capital. So when that pool of capital wakes up and says, “Hey, I want to align my investments with my values,” that starts making a big, big change. And I think we're just seeing the very, very beginning of that.

SM: You think it's going to explode?

RN: We're growing like a weed. And not just us, but many others. So it really is just the beginning innings I think of the faith-based investment movement.

SM: Are there other big companies that you think you might have been influential with, in terms of them pulling away from DEI?

RN: Walmart would be up there. We had the same similar story there with Walmart. We've been in conversations with a number of [companies], you know? Tractor Supply, John Deere, kind of on down the list. Robbie Starbuck is a part of our coalition that we work as a group of partners.

I think they are wise to consider that there are people with very different viewpoints on things like DEI, the role of sponsoring gay Prides in a workplace, things like that. There are very different opinions and so that company has a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to do what’s in their best interest from a financial perspective, that's a legal obligation. In an environment where Bud Light loses immense brand value and suffers irreparable harm for their shareholders because they chose to do a particular marketing initiative. They need to take that into consideration, whether you're pro-LGBT or pro-traditional marriage. Corporations need to hear from both sides. They need to hear those contingencies and make wise decisions that are in the best interest of their shareholders.

SM: Tell me more about what you see over the next few years. What do you imagine will happen with Inspire Investing? What are you hoping to see happen with your company?

RN: We're seeking to be faithful to steward really the influence and the momentum that God has given us in our business. There are a lot of Christians out there who still have yet to really learn the details of what's in their portfolio and how they can invest [in] different ways. So I think more and more of that will happen and companies are realizing that there's more than just one side to this debate. I think they'd lost the plot and thought that, just the extreme left side of the issue of DEI was all investors cared about. But now that the grassroots are getting involved, they're saying, well actually, maybe more of a balanced approach would be wiser for us to take.

SM: And I guess where I disagree with you is those different viewpoints, if they infringe on human and civil rights, as they would in those rooms with gay and LGBTQ issues, that's, I think, where it's tricky for me, if I'm being completely honest.

RN: Sure. Yeah. And the definition of a human right. We're going to disagree on that. And that's where we need viewpoint diversity. And we need to have substantive debates. And these are big, important questions. Frankly, that are probably better served by religion, spiritual accountability, those things, rather than businesses.

SM: Why did you come on an LGBTQ journalistic organization, just out of curiosity? Why did you say yes?

RN: Well, I'm honest when I say I love my neighbors in the LGBTQ community. Obviously we have differences of opinions. I've spoken with many people in the community where they've never actually interacted or had a conversation with a devout Christian. That's where I appreciate you having me on this show. This is an example of what should be happening. These things we discuss should be happening inside companies, instead of everybody just having guests on to agree with 100% of what you say. That's not really exciting, it's not really interesting, probably not super beneficial moving the ball forward. So the same thing happens in a boardroom.

SM: Robert, CEO and founder of Inspire [Investing]. Thank you so much for coming on and speaking with Uncloseted. I'm really grateful for your time.

RN: Thank you, Spencer. Thank you for having me on. Appreciate it.

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1. The Promise Keepers are a Christian organization with the goal of Christian Dominionism. Their founder has said multiple times that homosexuality is “an abomination of God.” When referring to transgender people, their chairman has said that Christian men are “sick and tired of the evil.”

2. There have been several instances of employees suing their employers for religious discrimination after being fired, allegedly for disagreeing with the companies’ policies around Pride Month and LGBTQ sensitivity training. However, multiple of these suits have not been successful.