Walt Disney Company is the single most debated name in all of Biblically Responsible Investing. Not because the analysis is hard. Because Disney used to be the one media company Christian parents actually trusted, and the story of what changed is a big deal for how BRI funds think about corporate behavior.

Let me give you the current state of Disney in BRI screens as of 2026, the history that got us here, and how different funds handle it.

Where BRI funds stand on DIS in 2026

Inspire's BIBL excludes Disney. Has for years. The Inspire Impact Score for DIS is deeply negative.

Timothy Plan excludes Disney. Also has for years. Timothy Plan publicly called for a Disney boycott before it was cool, back in the late 1990s over the company's original LGBTQ employee benefits decisions.

Eventide does not own Disney in its flagship funds. Their Business 360 framework flags multiple content and corporate behavior concerns.

GuideStone does not own Disney in its Equity Income fund or its flagship mutual funds, but their methodology is less strict than Timothy Plan's.

Praxis does not own Disney.

So the consensus is clear. No major BRI fund holds Disney in 2026. That is a very different position than the industry took in 2005 or even 2015.

How we got here

Disney's relationship with Christian investors used to be complicated but not broken. In the 1990s, Disney started offering benefits to same-sex partners, which prompted the Southern Baptist Convention to call for a boycott in 1997. That boycott lasted until 2005 and had limited impact on Disney's business, but it put the company on the radar of every major Christian organization.

From about 2005 to 2016, things were quieter. Disney made Pirates of the Caribbean, they bought Pixar, then Marvel, then Lucasfilm. Their content was aggressively family-oriented and commercially dominant. A lot of BRI funds still excluded Disney, but the exclusion was based more on historical positions than active controversy.

Then 2017 happened. Beauty and the Beast included a scene with a gay character that the director publicly called "an exclusively gay moment." Disney doubled down in messaging. Pixar started including same-sex couples in background scenes. Star Wars content began including overt political messaging.

The big inflection point was 2022. Florida passed the Parental Rights in Education Act (which critics called "Don't Say Gay"). Disney publicly opposed the bill. Leaked internal meetings revealed Disney executives talking about adding "not-at-all-secret gay agenda" content to children's programming. Then CEO Bob Chapek was forced out partially because he was seen as too slow to embrace the corporate advocacy position. Governor Ron DeSantis removed Disney's special district status. The whole thing became a nationally polarizing fight.

For BRI funds that had been on the fence, 2022 settled the question. Disney was not just a company with some content decisions you might disagree with. It was a company actively taking political positions against Christian parents on one of the most contested issues in the culture, and it was embedding those positions in content aimed at children.

The 2023 through 2025 period

The years after the Florida fight were tough for Disney financially. The parks business held up, but the streaming business (Disney+) burned cash. Box office returns on the big Marvel and Pixar releases got worse. Bob Iger came back as CEO in late 2022 and spent much of 2023 and 2024 trying to rehabilitate the company's image with both Christian audiences and secular critics who had started calling Disney content "preachy."

By 2025, there was a noticeable pullback. Some of the most contentious content decisions got reversed or softened. Internal memos leaked showing Disney was rethinking its approach to political messaging. The corporate advocacy tone dialed way back after the Florida experience cost the company real money.

But BRI funds have not changed their position. The reason is that the underlying content library still contains the choices that got made. The benefits and policies that originally drew scrutiny are still in place. And the corporate donation patterns to advocacy groups have not meaningfully shifted.

The biblical framework

Genesis 1:27 establishes male and female. Matthew 19:4-6 has Jesus quoting that verse in the context of marriage. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 addresses sexual behavior. Ephesians 6:4 tells fathers to bring up children in "the discipline and instruction of the Lord." Proverbs 22:6 on training up a child in the way he should go.

The BRI position is not that Disney products are universally harmful. It is that a company whose core content business is producing media consumed by millions of children and whose corporate positions actively oppose biblical teaching on sexuality and gender creates a conflict for Christian investors. You are funding content that shapes the children of other Christian parents, and you are funding political advocacy that those same parents oppose.

That is the case BRI funds make. Disagree if you want, but it is not a flippant position.

The content audit approach

What Inspire and some other BRI firms do is called a "content audit." They look at a company's major recent releases, count references, characters, and thematic content that conflicts with their screen categories, and score the output. Disney's audit scores have been consistently negative for years on LGBTQ content, abortion advocacy (usually through corporate giving rather than content), and anti-Christian characterizations.

This is a methodology that has real limits. It is subjective. The same scene that one analyst flags as harmful, another analyst sees as reasonable representation. Content audits generate debate, not certainty. But they do give BRI funds a concrete, documentable basis for their exclusion decisions, which matters when fund managers have to explain their screens to shareholders.

The corporate giving question

Disney is also on many BRI exclusion lists because of its corporate giving to advocacy groups. The 2022 disclosures showed Disney gave to organizations pushing for curriculum changes in K-12 schools around gender ideology. Disney's leadership statements during the Florida fight were explicit about using corporate power to influence legislation on these issues.

For BRI funds that track corporate giving as part of their screen, this is separate from the content question. Even if you loved Disney's recent movies, the fund would still exclude the stock because of where the company's charitable and political dollars go.

What about the theme parks

A common pushback is "but my family loves Disney World." BRI funds generally separate the consumer question from the investor question. You can visit Disney World and still decline to own Disney stock. The moral calculus of spending a week at a theme park (which employs thousands of people, many of them making decent wages in a clean environment) is different from the moral calculus of being a partial owner of a media company with specific content and advocacy positions.

1 Corinthians 10:27 talks about eating what is set before you without raising questions of conscience. There is biblical precedent for participating in culture without endorsing everything the culture produces. BRI funds are not telling you to skip your family vacation. They are saying, "you do not also need to be an investor."

The financial picture

DIS stock has been mediocre since the 2021 peak. From around 200 dollars in 2021, it traded down to the low 80s by late 2023, recovered to around 115 by late 2024, and has been in the 100 to 120 range through early 2026. The parks business is strong, streaming finally broke into profitability in 2024, but the content business has been volatile and the legacy cable networks (ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel) are in secular decline.

From a pure returns perspective, BRI funds have not missed much by excluding Disney over the last five years. The S&P 500 has more than doubled DIS's total return in that period. Sometimes the screens line up with good performance, sometimes not. For Disney, exclusion has been a financial win on top of a values win.

The nuance most people miss

Here is the thing. A Christian investor who disagrees with the BRI exclusion of Disney is not necessarily wrong. There is room for conscience-driven disagreement. Some Christians look at Disney and think, "imperfect but not so bad that I need to divest." Others look and think, "every dollar of dividends I receive comes from content decisions I want nothing to do with."

Romans 14 is the chapter that keeps coming back to mind here. Paul wrote to the Roman church about disputes over food sacrificed to idols. Some Christians thought it was fine to eat it. Others thought it was a compromise with paganism. Paul's answer was essentially, "do not judge each other, each person should be fully convinced in their own mind, but do not lead a weaker brother into sin."

BRI funds have been fully convinced. They exclude Disney. Christians who reach a different conclusion are not being disobedient, but they should do the work of actually looking at what they are supporting, not just defaulting to "I trust the brand from my childhood."

The bottom line

Disney is not going back into BRI portfolios any time soon. The exclusion is stable. The reasons are documented. The company has not done enough to change its corporate posture to trigger a reevaluation. If you are building a BRI aligned portfolio in 2026, you should not expect to own DIS, and you should not feel weird about it.

Your kids can still watch Finding Nemo. You just do not have to be a shareholder.

Disney (DIS) Under BRI: The LGBTQ Content Question