Choosing a Bank Is a Spiritual Practice

Banking and finance take us not only to the heart of economic change, but also to the heart of our spiritual practice. One of Jesus’ most widely recognized sayings spoke plainly to this: we cannot serve both God and Mammon. They are competing deities. When our trust in the ways of the cosmic God wavers, we are more susceptible to the powers of the god of money. Financial advisors are persuasive. Higher interest rates and higher returns on investments are attractive. How do we practice God’s guidance on money when the economic god comes at us from all sides? Yet, some do resist. Anytime congregations, households, businesses, or campuses are able to resist the enticements of money that go beyond their moral and spiritual boundaries, the powers of change are in motion.

Wrestling with money is not primarily about numbers, but about our relationship with deity. Choosing a bank is part of that wrestling.

Choosing a Bank Is a Moral Choice

The recent bill passed narrowly by Congress and signed by the president is bringing enormous redistribution of wealth from those with less to those with more. This involves subsidies and tax breaks for corporations (we dare not call this socialism and welfare for corporations) and various tax benefits to the wealthiest people—all paid for by taking these resources from the least powerful of society, fomenting greater poverty, less healthcare, and cruelties to be played out now and in many years to come. Do we have any power as we face this big brutal bill?

A morally bankrupt bill like this underscores that depositing money in a bank is not morally neutral. Money talks. But when a bank receives our deposit, they hit the “Mute” button on our voice, and the “Amplify” button on their own. Once deposited, will our money talk about a jubilee economy or a mammonistic one? The Divine Spirit, astir throughout Creation, calls us to different banking choices from the ones intent on maintaining the system that has been bailed out despite its failure to give economic stability or ecological sustainability.

The decades of deferring to banks as places to trust, and as holders of the mysteries of financial practices and products, are ending. We can do more than feel betrayed. A strong action all of us can take immediately is to un-bank ourselves from financial institutions who are plenty polite to us, but who do the opposite with our money from what we choose. Furthermore, after the drastic failure of banks in 2008, they took our money via the Treasury Department to cover up their failure without once admitting to the corporate socialism that bailed them out.

In other words, far from changing their economic model after 2008, they praised their rapid recovery and continued as before despite speaking of new measures to avoid such failures in the future. They want capitalism with as few restraints as they can get government to agree to … until their systemic greed takes them into a new failure. Then it’s socialism all the way, except it’s called a “bailout.”

We need not wait to withdraw from such economics of we-can-grow-bigger-than-you, an economics that assures the biggest flow of capital goes to the richest people, corporations, and nations. As households, congregations, businesses, non-profits, and campuses, we can move our money to structures that favor local, one-planet living. Take congregations for example. There, good stewardship on investments has been conventionally understood as invest where you get the best financial return. That’s the financial system’s idea of good stewardship. But congregations need to heed a different guide, namely, one that aligns with scripture and Creation. It can’t be good stewardship if it’s based only on financial return because large financial returns hide their true costs borne by the air, water, and land; species losing habitat, paying workers poorly, racism in hiring, and fighting worker efforts to organize.

Congregations either advance the gods of finance or align themselves with the Creator.

Scripture repeatedly advocates for world views expressing the interdependence of all things, not the disconnecting individualism of the global economy. Creation’s evolutionary process gives us a cosmos in which life is constantly and mysteriously woven into a whole. Financial institutions cannot be lords of that whole, despite their presumptuous paradigm; they must be its servants. Banks are not to serve the have-gots over the have-nots. To align with the world view of Scripture, the economic paradigm of banks we choose must serve the entire Earth Community.

Why Avoid the Largest Banks When We Can

We can debate how big is too big for a bank we choose. But some are clearly choices to avoid when we can. The bankrate.com website names the 15 largest in the U.S., based on the criteria of having the largest asset size. These banks are ones to avoid. These are the ones that finance the fossil fuel industry, mining operations despite environmental impacts, many large construction projects, and major projects of corporations. They include

1. JPMorgan Chase

2. Bank of America

3. Citigroup

4. Wells Fargo

5. U.S. Bancorp

6. Goldman Sachs

7. PNC Financial Services

8. Truist Financial

9. Capital One

10. State Street

11. TD Bank

12. Bank of New York Mellon

13. BMO

14. Morgan Stanley

15. First Citizens Bank

The "Big Four" banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) are the largest by asset size and are also among the largest globally.

Global financial institutions wield enormous influence. Their muscle decides which

economic model will be used to arrange the lives of most inhabitants and institutions. Their decisions continue to be strongly biased toward wealth accumulation and corporate domination. In their lending decisions, neither the environment nor the common good get high priority. But, we are not powerless in the presence of these major temples of global deference and devotion. We can withhold our consent by withholding our finances from them in many cases. When people, businesses, and congregations withhold consent from banks that finance an unsustainable economy, and instead do business with ones serving Creation and the common good, spiritual practice is underway. Our decisions are not calculated on “Will the bank change?,” but on “Are we being faithful to our morals and spiritual practice?”

Banking for the Planet

In recent decades, a new moment in Earth’s story has arrived — one in which our banking decisions are for the planet or against her. Planet now matters in a way that was not understood a century ago or even 3 or 4 decades ago. Yet, the banks continue to use the damaging economic model of growth without limits. In so doing, they have taken the world economy beyond Earth’s capacity. Each year the bio-capacity of Earth is exceeded and it happens earlier each year. In 2009, it happened by September 24; in 2025, the global overshoot day is July 24.

The Durban Climate Summit in December 2011 spoke clearly to the world, not with clear agreements, but because agreements of consequence were not reached. The best that the world’s largest economies, corporations, and financial institutions could muster in Durban was that they would act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions starting 2020. More recently, the Climate Summit in 2023 in Dubai agreed to triple renewable energy and spoke of the “beginning of the end” of fossil fuels.

The statements from these annual U.N. Climate Summits, called COP, abbreviation for Committee of the Parties, shows that they can read profit statements but are blind to the statements of heaven and earth. The critical decade for change is the one we are in. You and I, every organization we are part of and wherever we have influence, need to speak to every money decision. Each major decision needs to ask, “Are we giving money to the economy that destroys Creation or to one that lives within its limits and its abundance?” We don’t have to wait for a new president or a new summit. We can make decisions for the planet now and share our story with whomever shows interest.

Amplifying Our Faith through Our Banking Choices

If our money is in the wrong bank the energy of our deposit will serve Mammon. The Divine Spirit, astir throughout Creation, calls us to different banking choices—one in which our voice is amplified in the actions of our deposits.

To that end, we have good choices, choices that will get the energy of our money out into the world through bank deposits that do what we believe in. To be clear, even good choices are often not 100% aligned with the values of our spiritual path. There are degrees.

Most recently, I had a sum of money from selling the condo of my deceased sister. For convenience I had deposited it in our local credit union. But then, using the Better Banking Options website https://www.betterbankingoptions.com/ I saw that the Self Help Federal Credit Union did a much better job at strengthening the local economy and empowering local people and businesses. My wife and I had opened an account there previously, so we agreed we’d move the money to a money market account there. When I went to the credit union where I’d first deposited the money and told them I wanted to close that account, their question was, “Are their rates better?” It’s revealing to me that rates and fees are primary criteria for making banking choices. So I told the person helping me, “I don’t even know what the rates are. I know that they do a better job at investing locally than this credit union does. And that’s my reason for moving the money.” There was no response.

In addition to using the Better Banking Options website, the following are generally better alternatives to big banks in order to align our banking choices closer to our spiritual values.

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) are available in some communities. For example, here in San Diego, the non-profit I serve, Jubilee Economics Ministries, does some of our banking with Neighborhood National Bank, a CDFI. Like the other 1,400+ CDFIs in the U.S., it serves low and moderate income neighborhoods as required by their charter—neighborhoods typically avoided by big banks who exploit them instead by funding payday loan and check cashing store fronts in those neighborhoods.

Locally-owned banks with local directors are typically committed to the success of the local economy. The directors and managers understand that their institution is joined with the local economy, other local institutions, and the well-being of people and the eco-region served.

Credit unions are not-for-profit cooperatives owned by their members, who are also the only depositors and borrowers. There are no corporate shareholders they need to please. Credit unions continued to make steady mortgage loans after September 2008 when major banks and mortgage companies collapsed under their dishonesty, personal and systemic. Credit unions continue merging with one another for various reasons. It’s best to choose a credit union after speaking with one of their staff, quizzing them on their mission to see what aligns with your values. Smaller credit unions may be a better choice if they provide the services you need. Or we can choose to put our money in a couple different banks so that we can cover all the services we need and also better fit our values.

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In summary, then, our interactions with money are spiritual, not only financial. People in the financial world may give advice strictly on how to benefit you. People in the religious world most likely leave money matters to the financial world with the exception that they seek donations. If we assert ourselves with our financial advisors and make clear our values, we might develop a trusted relationship that is mutually beneficial. Once we decide that our money choices are spiritual practices we open up amazing relationship possibilities with individuals and organizations. A good many nonprofits connect spiritual practices with money choices. We can search for them. Two examples? Faith & Money Network and Jubilee Economics Ministries.