Getting older does give one a sense of historical perspective.
I’m old enough to remember when Christians were supposed to boycott Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ giving it well needed extra publicity but accomplishing little else.
Then there was the angst among those planning denominational meetings when Holiday Inn began allowing the purchase of pornographic movies in units which were to be inhabited by their attendees. Boycott’s were called for, which was tough for the planners to heed.
And I can remember a national assembly of my denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, meeting in Florida the year the Southern Baptists approved a boycott of Disney. As the PCA debated whether to support that boycott, one beleaguered delegate pleaded that if the assembly were to approve the measure that its effective date be put off a week, as he’d brought his whole family to Florida with the promise of a Disney treat.
I’ve seen boycotts come and go with no positive impact. And so when asked by a member of my church to respond to a current drive to hold Starbucks accountable for it’s position on marriage, I answered very quickly:
I tend to ignore such things for several reasons.
1. If I chose products based upon the political activities of the company, I’d have a pretty narrow range of products available to me. I’m pretty sure Apple would go, as would Disney, and probably the NYTimes, a primary news source for me, down to the products I buy in the grocery.
2. And then I’d have to determine which political causes would be worth opposing. SBUX perhaps for its liberal social views; but then perhaps WalMart for what it does to small town economies. Where would I draw the line? Amazon sells some pretty lousy stuff, as does Books-a-Million. It’s kind of hard to make all one’s economic choices in this way.
3. A strategy is only so good as its prospects for success. If one wants to fight SBUX’s political views, pulling out in protest will gain little. Bearing a case up the chain as a loyal and supportive customer is going to have, relatively, greater impact.
Anyway, I am taking the time to respond only because I, as have you, have seen dozens of these protests come down the pike over the years, and as well intended as they are, they have little success.
I see now that my response was very pragmatic, though I stick by it.
Crossing my desktop this morning, however, was a much more theologically perceptive and reflective response by Russell Moore. His post digs deeper into the reasons why boycotts are not a fit vehicle for the Christian message.
But we don’t persuade our neighbors by mimicking their angry power-protests. We persuade them by holding fast to the gospel, by explaining our increasingly odd view of marriage, and by serving the world and our neighbors around us, as our Lord does, with a towel and a foot-bucket.
We won’t win this argument by bringing corporations to the ground in surrender. We’ll engage this argument, first of all, by prompting our friends and neighbors to wonder why we don’t divorce each other, and why we don’t split up when a spouse loses his job or loses her health. We’ll engage this argument when we have a more exalted, and more mysterious, view of sexuality than those who see human persons as animals or machines. And, most of all, we’ll engage this argument when we proclaim the meaning behind marriage: the covenant union of Christ and his church.
I encourage your reading the whole.
The are occasions to make stands and to suffer the consequences. But an economic boycott aimed at strong-arming a position is not one of them.
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