"Enron pricked people's conscience and was also a wake-up call. Where does greed lead?" he said.
Companies, for their part, find religious lobby groups useful barometers of public opinion.
General Motors, the subject of an early resolution when the Episcopalians lobbied it in 1971 to quit apartheid South Africa, said it had found the long years of contact productive.
"Having an ongoing dialogue with these shareholder groups ... is a good way to hear each other's messages," GM spokeswoman Joanne Krell said.
Monsanto, long a target of Sister Susan's coalition for its work on genetic modification of food sources, also extolled the benefits of talking to the groups.
"We've met with Sister Susan Jordan and the other representatives of the Midwest Coalition for many years ... The feedback from many stakeholders around the world is factored into our thinking going forward," Diane Herndon, director of public policy and corporate responsibility, said by e-mail.
Perched behind a stack of documents, Sister Susan said Monsanto was a good listener but had yet to come around to her side in an argument religious investors hold dear.
"Food is a very sacred, cultural issue for many people and contamination of the food supply would be a serious, serious thing," she said.
But shareholder activism has proved its worth, particularly at the moment in the US where a conservative, Republican-dominated Congress is not very open to laws aimed at changing corporate behavior, Liebling said.
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