SAVING WITH SOUL A GROWING NUMBER OF INVESTORS FOLLOW THEIR CONSCIENCES WHERE THEIR FINANCES ARE CONCERNED.

Byline: Barbara Correa Staff Writer

At first glance, a person's bank account and his soul might not seem to have a whole lot in common. The mundane monthly cycle of paying the mortgage, grocery shopping, buying gas and splurging every once in a while on entertainment doesn't exactly ring with cosmic significance.

But people of faith around Southern California say ethics and world view do indeed direct - and in some cases dictate - everyday decisions about spending, saving and giving away money.

``I wanted to get my daughter a bike for Christmas and I also wanted to get her a kitchen set,'' said Kathy Gabel, a mother of two small children and a member of a Christian church in Pasadena. ``We bought the bike on sale and then my husband and I talked about the kitchen set for three nights.''

In the end, the couple decided the bike was plenty for a 4-year-old on Christmas morning. ``Why should she have all of it?'' said Gabel. ``I don't want my children to think things bring us happiness. I don't want to be a huge consumer.''

Gabel adds that the idea that real meaning comes from relationships and love rather than material things isn't exclusive to Christians or even people who subscribe to a certain religious faith.

At the same time, though, being part of a congregation brings the merger of the spiritual and the financial into everyday experiences.

``You don't have to be someone who attends church or belongs to a church to want your money to go to the right thing. But when you're active in a church, it's more right there in front of you,'' said Kathleen Krecklow of Upland, a volunteer advocate for Mennonite Mutual Aid, the financial services arm of the Anabaptist-based church.

The most visible manifestation of putting faith into financial practice is weekly or monthly tithing, a tradition found in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The concept of returning the ``first fruits'' of the financial harvest back to God by giving to the less fortunate in a community goes back to the Talmud books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.

But while giving to the poor is universally accepted as a generally good idea, actually writing out a check every week or month challenges people of faith to put their money where their faith is.

``It is very difficult,'' said Dr. Yahia Abdul-Rahman, founder of Los Angeles Reliable Investment Bankers Associates (Lariba), an Islamic financial services organization in Pasadena.

Under the five pillars of Islam, Muslims are required to ``purify'' their wealth - a concept called Zakah - by giving a minimum of 2.5 percent to the poor and needy.

``The people who are most successful in our community are the ones who are the most faithful with paying their Zakah,'' said Abdul-Rahman. Giving money away freely also breaks the psychological attachment to it, he said, which could be the real reason the practice is so universally preached.

Living in a materialistic society doesn't make giving any easier.

``We have a tendency to believe we worked for it, it's our hard-earned money. That's the first arena of wrong thinking for the Christian,'' said Jim Bruno, a certified financial planner in Westlake Village and a planning commissioner for the city of Thousand Oaks.

``As soon as you ask yourself the question, How much am I giving? that's a problem. The question should be, How much of what I earn can I keep?'' said Bruno, who adds that 30 percent of his clients are believers and 70 percent are secular.

Such reasoning reflects the concept of stewardship - common to all three of the major faiths - that says everything in the world is God's and that people are not owners but trustees of material wealth. That management responsibility carries with it a duty to give back to the poor.

To help make giving seem more natural and automatic, some religious groups have embraced e-tithing, in which pledged amounts are automatically withdrawn from a bank account.

Vanco Services, in Eden Prairie, Minn., started offering back-office fund-transfer services to churches five years ago, and now serves 5,000 congregations - many in Southern California - from 18 different denominations, from Catholic to Buddhist.

Countering criticism that electronic tithing takes the challenge out of giving money away, Len Theide, a manager at the firm, says signing an e-tithing agreement requires an even greater leap of faith, because whether or not you show up for church Sunday, the money is taken out of your bank account.

``This is the closest you can come to giving first fruits,'' said Theide, who e-tithes to two different Catholic churches. ``You're saying, This is my priority and I'm giving it regardless of my personal ups and downs.''

Tithing might be at the heart of where faith and finance intersect. But there are lots of other ways the two spheres overlap.

Clerics say religious views and ethics color everyday spending, from how to shop to how to take out a loan. And different religions see spending differently.

``How you spend your money is a religious act,'' said Rabbi David Woznica, executive vice president of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation. For example, while Jews are traditionally called to give 10 percent of their income to the needy, they also have a responsibility to enjoy life.

``According to the Palestinian Talmud, you're held accountable for every legitimate pleasure you didn't take advantage of in life,'' said Woznica. ``To live well is fine as long as you're helping other people to live better. I don't think asceticism is a goal in Judaism.''

Meanwhile, others lament carrying a heavy credit card debt.

``It means we're not living (with)in our means,'' said Kathy Gabel, the Pasadena mom, who says she and her husband built up some credit-card debt when they spent five years living in Pico-Union near downtown Los Angeles and working with charity groups there for little income.

For large purchases, such as a car, things can get complicated under Islamic law, which in general prohibits Muslims from paying interest. Lariba, the Islamic financial services firm, offers financing for cars, homes and even business loans under lease-to-purchase agreements that avoid interest.

The interest taboo (called Riba) gets even more interesting in the way it applies to investing.

About half of all public companies would be eliminated for Islamic investors, based either on the Riba prohibition or because the business is involved in something restricted under Islamic law, said Nicholas Kaiser, a portfolio manager for the Amana funds, two mutual funds that invest according to Islamic principles.

Companies whose main business is banking, brokerage, alcohol, gambling, pornography, pork processing and tobacco are off-limits. And Muslims should not buy bonds or take on a company's debt.

``It's impossible to avoid (interest) completely,'' said Brian Ingram, a securities analyst at Saturna Capital Corp., which manages the Amana funds. ``The compromise is that you measure the amount of interest a company either earns or pays and set up thresholds about how much is too much. As far as equity ownership, you look at how the company functions.''

Islamic mutual funds are hardly alone in practicing investing with a moral agenda.

Socially responsible investing is now a full-fledged movement with hundreds of funds for investors who don't want their money going to support companies involved in tobacco, military weapons production, firearms or nuclear power.

Other SRI funds are structured to specific agendas, such as the Myers Pride Value Fund, which invests in companies with specific policies against discrimination based on sexual orientation. The New Alternatives Fund invests in companies either producing or advocating renewable-energy sources.

The number of religious mutual funds, one of the subgroups under the socially responsible investing umbrella, has more than doubled in the past three years, from 34 in 1999 to 75 now, compared with more than 7,000 mutual funds operating in the United States, according to an analysis by Thomson Financial's Wealth Management Group.

Indeed, while eight of 10 people consider themselves to be religious or spiritual and 60 percent of those say they want to incorporate faith values into decisions about money, just one in five people has heard of religious-oriented mutual funds, according to a survey called ``Where Faith and Wall Street Intersect,'' commissioned by Mennonite Mutual Aid, which manages the Praxis family of religious mutual funds.

That shows it doesn't take a special mutual fund for people of faith to manage their money.

Florence Njoku, an unemployed secretary in Los Angeles, has spent every Sunday and many Saturdays over the past four years cooking for the homeless at Faith Chapel in Inglewood. She often contributes her own money to keep the operation going, and she wouldn't have it any other way.

``We just quietly keep doing what we are doing. It's difficult ... Not everybody is called to do this,'' she said. ``Whoever they are or however they smell, we have to love them. We don't broadcast it. Nobody sees us, but God sees us.''

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Jon Gerung/Staff Artist

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INVESTING DOCTRINE

SOURCE: Mennonite Mutual Aid

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