Proxy voting is a key responsibility of all fiduciaries. Why in particular should conservatives, and especially traditional worshippers, take care with that responsibility? Because in an era of plentiful and typically controversial “shareholder resolutions,” the invested financial assets of individuals and institutions—including religious organizations (dioceses, temples, hospital chains, orders, colleges, etc.)—are quite powerful things. They are tools able to prove consequential to public policy.
That consequence is not always a good thing: Proxy advisers—empowered to vote the value of stock shares for or against shareholder resolutions, can have, and often do have, their own ideological agendas, schemes, and stratagems. And this proxy voting all too often is misaligned with the stated beliefs and missions of the distracted shareholders.
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