LAST WORD

Retired Army officer Gary Terhune spent too much time in the closet, so to speak, in his second career as a financial consultant. Terhune, who owns Portsmouth-based Seacoast Financial Navigation, had jumped into the financial advising business because he felt he had done a good job "of investing my own money so why not do it for others?" This was the dilemma he felt: As a devout Christian, he felt the financial advising industry "was so secular" and he needed something more, an ability to, well, Christianize his work.

"I want to practice Christianity in my business and in life," Terhune told me recently about his missionary journey to let his clients know who he was and how they could make more moral investing choices -- and that he was interested in a morally purer return on investment.

What drives Terhune is his belief -- which is unique in the investing field where returns have little to do with moral potential -- that he metaphorically owns nothing.

"I'm just a steward. I give honor and respect to the real owner: God."

A few years ago Terhune joined the National Association of Christian Financial Consultants, a group of around 700 like-minded Christian financial advisers and he said he found solace in a brotherhood of the few -- he estimates he is one of perhaps four such overt practitioners in Northern New England.

And, earlier this year, he became a certified Christian financial consultant -- of which he estimates there are only 100 in the country.

For the past few years, Terhune has been letting his religious beliefs become more integrated into his profession and found that his clients are receptive to his advocacy of a plan called morally responsible investing.

"The reality is that most of us don't have a clue, none at all, about the companies we invest in," Terhune told me. For those investors interested in a morally responsible investing approach, Terhune offers a special software screening process that segregates, well, the morally fit and unfit public companies.

"For more people," he explained, "it's becoming important where they put their money" and not support businesses with questionable practices.

Like the seven deadly sins, there are seven "moral issues" that raise red flags for the morally responsible investing portfolio. Those are pornography, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, abortion, anti-family entertainment and non-marriage lifestyles.

In that spirit, companies such as Walt Disney and AT&T flunk the test because of their involvement, however limited and sometimes through a subsidiary, in pornography.

When I asked Terhune, who had previously worked for companies such as John Hancock, Citizens Bank and Schooner Financial, what he meant by non-marriage lifestyles, he spoke directly about companies that "support homosexual" initiatives such as extending benefits to same-sex couples. Companies that encourage or reward non-marriage lifestyles don't pass the moral muster.

While they may seem like related practices, Terhune said there are big differences between morally responsible and socially responsible investing -- though in the end, it seemed to me, that it came through the prism of his "Christian point of view." After all, a compelling moral argument could be made for not investing in the arms industry or a company using essentially Third World slave labor -- or in a multinational known for its lax environmental practices (as opposed to its public relations spin).

Terhune said his moral software screen doesn't deal with the military or environmental issues because the former is related to national defense and the latter is, well, not considered a moral issue.

Terhune admitted that when you start splitting the moral hairs it can become a matter of "how you define morality." Terhune was warned by a California marketing firm not to advertise his faith because "it would turn people off." But Terhune said he has found the opposite. While some of his 150 clients have shown little morally relevant interest, others have to various degrees.

"I don't push it but I want them to know who I am," he said.

What he finds is that even people who disagree with his mix of business and religion, of his Christian interpretation of morality, still want him to be their financial adviser because he's still good at what he does.

"We're coming to you because we can trust you," he said they tell him.