SHOULD churches invest their cash in an activist as well as an ethical fashion?

In other words, invest to create good rather than simply avoid obvious evil? The question arises this week after the Church of England found itself accused (not for the first time) of hypocrisy following its announcement that would keep its investment in Amazon despite the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby rightly slagging off the company for paying “almost nothing” in taxes.

The giant online retailer is one of the CofE’s 20 largest investments despite being notorious not just for its tax avoidance schemes but also for paying poor wages.

At the same time, Welby was under pressure to use church funds to buy up the loan book of Wonga, the failed “payday” lender that used to charge obscene rates of interest for helping poor folk feed their families at the end of the working week. Quite justly, Welby’s public denunciation of Wonga and other usurious lenders led to the financial regulators outlawing this evil practice. The fact Wonga has gone bust opens up the prospect that its existing £400 million worth of loans will be sold off cheaply by the administrators to another bunch of vulture capitalists, who will then squeeze as much as they can out of Wonga’s estimated 200,000 indebted customers. The main reason the CofE is under the cosh to intervene is that after Justin Welby’s original criticism of Wonga in 2013, it quickly came to light that the Church was also a shareholder – another case of the CofE preaching one thing and doing another. Having helped destroy Wonga, many think the archbishop has a moral duty to pick up the pieces and prevent the vulture funds taking over.

I admit it is often too easy to denounce the various denominations for not doing more with their cash. For starters, these organisations have pensions to pay and charity rules to obey, which limits what that can do with their money. I’m also sympathetic to Justin Welby and respect his outspoken public criticism of capitalism – he has been more effective in denouncing rogue bankers and exploitative employers than many politicians I could name.

But that said, the churches are very much part of society and reflect the ills of society. They are also major financial investors. When the former building worker Jesus of Nazareth said render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, he was being ironical.

With the world’s stock markets a decade into an insane bull run

that is likely to collapse in 2020, we need to hold church investors to account for capitalism’s ills – just as we would any other investor.

The CofE is a major capitalist enterprise in its own right. In 2016, it made a stunning 17.1% annual return on its £8.3 billion investment portfolio. Last year, it did less well because a rise in the value of the pound hurt its American investments – including, strangely enough, a penchant for US government securities. But expect a bull share market refreshed by Trump’s corporate tax cuts and interest rate rises to drive Church returns heavenward again. The CofE is also a major property owner and I don’t mean just churches. It owns a 10% chunk of the Metrocentre in Gateshead.

We should note that the English Church – like other Christian denominations – does respond to ethical pressures in making investment decisions, especially if there is a lot of negative publicity about. For instance, in 2010 the CofE sold off its stake in Vedanta, an Indian mining company, amid human rights concerns. On the other hand, its equity portfolio has long been dominated by holdings in big, global oil and mining firms such as Shell, Rio Tinto and BHP. This suggests it prefers the easy route to investing; ie passively tracking the world’s most rapacious despoilers of the environment rather than funding new start-ups. There’s nothing in the charity rules to stop the CofE being entrepreneurial rather than living off easy returns. Equally, there’s nothing to stop churches giving up charitable status and paying taxes.

However, I detect a wind of change after a decade that has seen the biggest boom in share prices in modern times combined with austerity and flat incomes for the working poor. In denomination after Christian denomination, the faithful are demanding that the wealth of the church is used for productive, ethical purposes – not just to earn the highest return.

So far, the results are uneven.

For instance, last month, the General Synod of the Church of England – its parliament – voted by 347 to four in favour of selling shares in oil companies that have not aligned their business models with the Paris climate accord by 2023. Of course, many oil companies are only too happy to claim platonic allegiance to the Paris accords while continuing to pump oil and frack gas. The Synod’s decision represents work in progress rather than a definitive shift against the exploiters. However, other churches are moving in the same direction. British Methodists have already ditched investing in coal and oil, as have local Quakers.

Unfortunately, the Church of Scotland has proved to be less ambitious. A plea for the Kirk to divest its holdings in oil and gas companies was rejected at this year’s General Assembly. Instead, delegates voted to keep existing investments in fossil fuel companies, so the Church could retain “a seat at the table” in the hope of persuading companies to “align” with the Paris accords.

In contrast, the Church of England has put its money where its conscience is and threatened to take its cash out if the oil companies don’t comply. The Kirk’s decision is more vague – some would say more mealy-mouthed. In retaliation, some local kirks have withdrawn their money from the Kirk’s national investment trust, which oversees holding worth nearly £500 billion.

The Christian church began 2000 years ago as a revolutionary movement among the very poorest in the Roman world. Initially, it even practised a primitive communism, holding goods in common and sharing everything. The Church’s earliest writings are filled with significant references to the poor as being at the heart of the faith, not just subjects for charity. Luke’s version of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is graphically clear: “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Unfortunately, Matthew’s politically sanitised version displaces this promise from the street to the sky: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

At heart, the battle over church funds is a conflict between establishment interests and those social forces seeking a return to the imperatives of that first Christianity. On one side lies a conservative vision of organised religion which sees the capitalist economy as something separate from moral questions – indeed, who think capitalism is moral. On the other side, are those who realise – even if through dark glasses – that neoliberal finance capitalism is the very mechanism that condemns millions to poverty and the grip of the Wongas and Amazons of this world. It’s time to go beyond shareholder activism. It’s time to throw the money-changers out of the temple itself.