Investments aren’t my specialty at all, but I was lured to a New York Times business story recently that was headlined: “God, Money, YOLO: How Cathie Wood Found Her Flock.” (YOLO means “you only live once.”)
Hmm, I thought, an article about Christian investing? After all, this woman manages some $85 billion in assets. A superstar in the world of investing, she is known for her risky moves and appeal to the Reddit/Millennial crowd.
So, after 20 paragraphs describing the CEO of Ark Invest, we finally got to the God part.
It happened in the 21st paragraph, just after a mention about Wood speaking to business and religious groups about her late-career decision to start her own investment shop.
It began, she says, with a head-on encounter with the Holy Spirit.
On a gorgeous day in August 2012, Ms. Wood — a fund manager struggling through a rough quarter at AllianceBernstein — was struck by the silence inside her stately home in Wilton, Conn.
Her three children were gone, off to camp and other activities for the summer. She was facing two full weeks alone in the nearly 6,000-square-foot house she bought with her ex-husband in the 1990s.
Then she felt it.
“Wham,” Ms. Wood said last year on the “Jesus Calling” podcast, which is centered on the devotional writings of the best-selling Christian author Sarah Young. “I really feel like that was the Holy Spirit just saying to me, ‘OK, this is the plan.’”
“Jesus Calling,” for those of you who’ve lived on Pluto for the past few decades and have never heard of it, is one of the most successful devotional aids of all time. Thirty million units of this book -– and associated products –- have sold since 2004, when the one-time reclusive missionary to Australia (now living near Nashville) first published a devotional with words allegedly from Jesus himself.
Its fans claim that its words are what Jesus would sound like today if living in the 21st century. Its detractors call it theologically shallow and New Agey. In 2014, religion writer Ruth Graham, now with the New York Times, but then writing for the Daily Beast, called it “the evangelical bestseller you’ve never heard of.”
The plan was for Ms. Wood to use her experience as a tech investor to build a new kind of money management firm — optimized for the social media age and embracing a level of transparency that was radical, at least on Wall Street.
To do it, Ms. Wood had to quit her job and put her personal wealth on the line at the age of 57.
“Most of my friends told me I was nuts, and yet I wasn’t listening to them. I knew that I needed to follow God’s will for me,” she told a Christian ministry organization in 2016. “That was the only way I was going to be happy.”
This curious article mentions that she was brought up Catholic and attended Catholic schools. Which brings up some questions. Is she still attending the Catholic Church even though divorced? Or has she segued into evangelical Protestantism?
Well, now. I realize the writer specializes in financial markets, not faith, but that’s some rather basic information missing, considering that the headline pushed the faith angle.
Readers picked up on the lack of direction in the piece. “The author teased us with the God part, then wilted away from it,” said one.
“It really needed an interview with her since I was more intrigued about her religious experience than her investments,” one wrote, “however, it’s clear they couldn’t get it.”
Yes, we all were intrigued about the religion angle. And it was there in this interview, which the article briefly alluded to. We find out she’s a member of Walnut Hill Community Church, a non-denominational congregation with branches in four Connecticut suburbs. The church has about 2,000 members.
We also learn that she named her investment company after the Ark of the Covenant, a major part item in Jewish history. That factoid would have been a nice addition somewhere.
True, religious information on Wood is scanty. This South China Morning Post piece on her — printed several months after Wood’s Aug. 12, 2020, podcast — didn't have much else new, either. This Financial Times piece likewise had little to add on the religion end (Wood refusing to give media interviews doesn’t help) but what surprises me is that no one called over to her church to get a quote from one of the pastors. Who knows; someone might have talked.
Or how about Jericho Partnership, a Danbury, Conn., organization that she spoke in front of in 2016 about “faith in the marketplace.” She dropped several names in this speech; names that a reporter could have followed up on with a phone call.
I realize that many reporters on other newsroom beats have zero experience when it comes to researching a religion story. (I’m the person who, in my first job at a suburban Portland, Ore., daily, was able to do a definitive interview with a local judge — Jewish or Episcopalian, I forget which — because I wandered into his house of worship, found a members’ directory laying around and called him at his unlisted number. Churches and synagogues don’t publicize adherents’ numbers these days, but back in the more innocent late ‘70s, they did. But only someone who attended a church or synagogue would have known how to find such information.)
There are all sorts of ways to add substance to an article with bits of information. What about the Catholic parish in which Wood grew up? Would anyone there remember her? Did anyone talk with her family? Kids? Ex-husband?
This business story, which was largely based on a year-old podcast, could have done a lot better had the reporter known how to nose about the world of religion.
As it was, so much was left out that, with a little detective work, could have been added in. The article required some additional, and very basic, research.
FIRST IMAGE: Promotional picture for the original “Jesus Calling” book.
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