Big Christian churches buy and sell stocks and bonds for their building and retirement plans. But they sometimes feel bad about the awful things they can end up financing – gambling, drugs, war. So they’ve written guidelines to divide corporate America into sheep and goats.

Now an Oklahoma company is setting up investment funds it says are based on those sectarian guidelines. So investors will be able to track which U.S. Christian confession is most compatible with worldly success.

FaithShares Trust last week rolled out three exchange- traded funds (ETFs), portfolios that can be bought and sold like individual stocks, targeting Catholic, Methodist, and nondenomina-tional Christian investors. Baptist and Lutheran funds are in the works, too, says FaithShares Trust president Thompson S. Phillips Jr.

What’s the difference?

Take alcohol, FaithShares portfolio manager Garrett Stevens told me:

“Baptist and [nondenominational] Christian funds have no alcohol stocks.

“The Methodists can invest in companies that derive no more than 10 percent of income from alcohol-related sales.” Like restaurant chains.

“The Lutherans throw out companies that make distilled alcohol [but] beer and wine are OK.”

“The Catholics throw out alcohol companies that have bad marketing practices.”

Like telling students binge drinking makes them sexually attractive?

“You got it.”

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