While most of the financial media was focused on either the halal investing boom or the Catholic investing revival in 2024 and 2025, another faith-based investing category was quietly having a huge year. Biblically Responsible Investing (BRI), which has historically been the evangelical Christian version of values-based investing, added roughly $50 billion in AUM in 2025. That is a bigger dollar increase than either Catholic or Islamic investing added in the same period, and yet the BRI growth story has gotten almost no coverage outside the Christian finance press.

I want to write about why this happened, who is driving it, and why I think BRI is going to continue growing faster than most people expect in 2026 and 2027. The Christian BRI movement is the most underappreciated story in faith-based investing right now, and the incumbents in the broader values-investing space have mostly missed it.

What BRI is and how it differs from other faith-based approaches

Before getting into the 2025 numbers, let me quickly establish what BRI actually is because a lot of people confuse it with either Catholic investing or generic ESG.

Biblically Responsible Investing is a term used primarily within evangelical Protestant circles to describe investment approaches that screen companies against biblical principles. The specific criteria vary between BRI fund managers but typically include exclusions for abortion, pornography, gambling, alcohol (sometimes), tobacco (usually), anti-family content, and LGBTQ-focused corporate activism. Some BRI funds also exclude companies with specific concerns around China, cryptocurrency, or other contemporary issues that evangelical audiences care about.

BRI differs from Catholic investing in several ways. First, BRI lacks a central authority comparable to the USCCB. Different BRI fund managers make different decisions based on their own reading of Scripture and their own sense of which issues matter most. There is no BRI equivalent of the 2024 USCCB guidelines that creates an industry-wide standard. Second, BRI tends to be more explicitly conservative on social issues, particularly around family and gender. Third, BRI marketing often emphasizes explicit Christian identity in a way that most Catholic investment products do not.

BRI also differs from generic Christian investing. Generic Christian investing might mean any investment approach that a Christian happens to adopt. BRI is a specific category with specific screening criteria and specific fund managers who identify with the label. The overlap is meaningful but they are not the same thing.

The 2025 growth numbers

The BRI space has been tracked by a couple of different organizations, with the most commonly cited numbers coming from the Christian Investment Forum and the Eventide Center for Faith and Investing. According to these sources, total BRI AUM across mutual funds, ETFs, and separately managed accounts grew from approximately $115 billion at the end of 2024 to approximately $165 billion at the end of 2025. That is a $50 billion increase, or roughly 43 percent growth year over year.

The growth came from several sources. New flows into existing BRI mutual funds and ETFs accounted for about $18 billion. Market appreciation of existing holdings contributed about $15 billion. New funds and products entering the BRI category accounted for about $8 billion. And reclassification of existing assets (where investors moved assets from conventional funds into BRI funds) accounted for about $9 billion.

The largest individual BRI fund families had especially strong years. Eventide Funds, which focuses on both BRI screening and what they call "business ethics," grew from about $8.5 billion to about $12.5 billion over the year. Inspire Investing, which runs several BRI ETFs, grew from about $1.8 billion to about $3.2 billion. Timothy Plan, which has been in the space longest and has the most conservative BRI methodology, grew more modestly from about $2.1 billion to about $2.8 billion but added significant new clients. GuideStone Financial Resources, which serves Southern Baptists and other evangelicals, grew from about $21 billion to about $27 billion.

The institutional side also saw growth. Several evangelical denominations, Christian universities, and faith-based foundations moved meaningful amounts of assets into BRI-compliant portfolios in 2025. The Assemblies of God retirement fund, the Southern Baptist Convention's investment program, and several Pentecostal denominational funds all expanded their BRI allocations.

What actually drove the growth

The growth was not driven by any single catalyst. It was driven by the convergence of several factors that each individually would have been minor but together produced a significant shift.

The first factor was the broader Christian cultural moment around values-aligned consumption. Between 2022 and 2025, there was a notable wave of evangelical consumers becoming more intentional about aligning their spending and investing with their values. Part of this was reaction to corporate ESG and DEI initiatives that many evangelicals saw as contrary to their beliefs. Part of it was generational as younger evangelicals started earning income and entering the investing world. And part of it was driven by specific high-profile corporate controversies (the Bud Light backlash of 2023, several pharmacy controversies, various entertainment industry disputes) that made evangelicals more attentive to what their money was actually supporting.

The second factor was the improvement of BRI product quality. Historically, BRI funds had suffered from the perception of high fees and mediocre performance. By 2024 and 2025, several BRI fund managers had improved both. Eventide Funds has actually outperformed the S&P 500 over multi-year periods, which is unusual for any values-screened approach. Inspire ETFs have kept fees reasonable and delivered competitive returns. The quality improvements made it easier for financial advisors to recommend BRI products without having to make excuses about performance.

The third factor was the growth of the evangelical financial advisor network. Organizations like Kingdom Advisors have been training Christian financial professionals for years, and the number of advisors with explicit BRI expertise has grown significantly. When a client walks into a Kingdom Advisors member's office and says they want to align their investments with their faith, the advisor now has well-developed recommendations and ready access to BRI products. The distribution network has matured in a way that just did not exist a decade ago.

The fourth factor was the content and media ecosystem. Christian radio, Christian podcasts, and Christian YouTube all featured more content about BRI in 2024 and 2025 than in previous years. The Ramsey Solutions ecosystem, which reaches millions of evangelicals, started talking about BRI more often. Several prominent Christian financial personalities created dedicated BRI content. The cumulative effect was that BRI went from being an obscure specialty to something many evangelicals had at least heard about.

Why nobody is writing about this

If BRI is growing faster than Catholic investing in absolute dollar terms, why is nobody writing about it? I think there are a few reasons.

First, the mainstream financial media does not know who to talk to about BRI. The Catholic investing space has clear institutional spokespeople (the USCCB, prominent Catholic financial advisors, visible fund managers). The halal investing space has similar institutional visibility. The BRI space is more fragmented, with the authoritative voices spread across multiple fund managers, ministry organizations, and independent advisors, and none of them have the kind of prominent media relationships that would get them quoted in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal.

Second, BRI is politically inconvenient for some mainstream financial journalists. The BRI movement's emphasis on traditional marriage, explicit biblical morality, and opposition to certain LGBTQ corporate activism makes it uncomfortable territory for journalists who either do not understand the worldview or are hostile to it. It is easier to write about Catholic investing (which is perceived as more moderate) or halal investing (which is seen as culturally exotic) than to engage seriously with an evangelical worldview that many journalists find alienating.

Third, BRI fund managers do not advertise much in mainstream financial publications. They advertise primarily in Christian media outlets that reach their target audience directly. This creates a situation where mainstream financial journalists are not exposed to BRI products through advertising and therefore do not encounter them as frequently as they encounter Catholic or halal products.

The combination of these factors means that BRI growth is happening largely underneath the radar of mainstream financial press coverage, even though the underlying flows are significant.

Where this is going

I think BRI is going to continue growing faster than most people expect over the next three to five years. Here is why.

The evangelical population in the US is large (roughly 60 to 70 million people depending on how you define it), is becoming more intentional about values-aligned consumption, and has significant aggregate wealth. If even a modest percentage of this population moves meaningful assets into BRI-compliant portfolios, the total AUM could double or triple over the next five years. I would not be surprised to see BRI AUM reach $300 billion by the end of 2028.

The product lineup is going to continue improving. Several BRI fund managers are working on new ETF launches for 2026 and 2027. At least one major ETF issuer (not yet publicly announced) is considering launching a BRI-screened index ETF. Fees are likely to compress as competition increases. The quality of available products will continue to improve.

The institutional side is going to continue growing as more evangelical denominations, Christian colleges, and faith-based foundations adopt BRI approaches. The Catholic investing space went through a similar institutional growth phase in the decade following the USCCB guidelines becoming widely adopted. BRI is in the middle of its equivalent phase now.

The political and cultural backdrop is favorable for BRI growth. As long as the broader cultural debate continues to touch on questions of corporate values and political activism, there will be an ongoing market for investors who want to align their money with their evangelical beliefs. The underlying demand drivers are structural, not cyclical.

What this means for the broader faith-based investing ecosystem

The BRI growth story has implications beyond just the evangelical community. It shows that values-based investing is not a single unified movement but rather a set of related but distinct communities, each with its own products, distribution networks, content ecosystems, and growth dynamics. Catholic investing, Muslim halal investing, and Christian BRI are three separate movements that happen to share some common features but are not interchangeable.

For faith-based investing as a broad category, the BRI growth is additive. It represents investors who would not have been in any values-aligned product five years ago and who are now allocating meaningful assets to their faith communities' specific investment approaches. The total faith-based investing universe is larger because of BRI growth, not smaller.

For mainstream financial advisors and wealth managers, the BRI story is a warning that ignoring any significant segment of the faith-based investing landscape is going to cost them client relationships. An advisor whose practice includes evangelical clients needs to know about BRI options whether they personally share the worldview or not. The client base exists, the products exist, and the demand is growing. Advisors who cannot serve that demand are going to lose clients to advisors who can.

The quiet $50 billion BRI growth year of 2025 deserves more attention than it got. I suspect 2026 will be an even bigger year, and at some point the mainstream financial media will notice. When they do, the story will be that evangelical investors have been building a serious faith-aligned investment ecosystem right under the industry's nose, and the incumbents who ignored it are going to be scrambling to catch up.

The Christian BRI Movement's Quiet $50B Growth Year