I want to expand a little bit on the thoughts I used to close my post recently about Chick Fil A, about how I don’t engage in nor do I believe it is morally consequential to “vote with your pocketbook”, to make choices about where to spend or not spend your money based on the political or social stances of various individual corporations or businesses.
I don’t boycott businesses. I haven’t stopped going to Chick-Fil-A. As a teacher, I shop at Hobby Lobby and Mardels pretty often. I enjoy Papa Johns pizza and Jimmy Johns sandwiches occasionally.
I also don’t favor businesses that are favorite among progressives. I’m not a regular patron Starbucks or Target because of their progressive stands on culture war issues. I don’t seek out certain corporate entities for being “right” about things I’m passionate about, like LGBTQ+ rights.
When I shop, I generally shop at places that are affordable, convenient, and especially places near in proximity to me; I think reducing the amount I’m driving because of its environmental impact is a better use of my idealism.
The reason I don’t boycott places is because, if I was gonna boycott a business over its political position on, say, women’s rights, or LGBTQ+ inclusion, why would I not also boycott businesses for their stance on federal tax policy, or labor regulations, or factory farming, or overseas manufacturing and production? Basically, where do I stop? If I am being consistent and true to my political and social priorities, I would boycott everything. I would make my own clothes, grow all my own food, build all my own tools. I would need to be completely self-sufficient and off the grid.
I personally carry a strong critique of market capitalism and the ways it distorts human nature, corrupts our priorities, and undermines our dignity and freedom. If I would be completely consistent in my shopping priorities, I would need to extract myself from the capitalist system. In this view, it doesn’t matter if Target is supportive of trans rights, because Target also markets and manipulates consumers into making conspicuous consumption choices and purchasing items that more than likely were either produced in a way harmful to the environment or harmful to those who made it.
Now, I’m not saying living such a disconnected and off the grid life is bad. In fact, just the opposite: I think it’s very good! I think we should all live that way! It is not, however, a very feasible way to live, individually. This kind of radically disconnected life requires the creation of community. It needs the nurturing and care provided by close connection with others. It needs the power of a group of people coming together and providing a new way of life for themselves and those around them.
This is the kind of community I think the church needs to be; it is what disciples of Christ should be striving for. It is how I hope to live one day. I hope to be able to be part of a community in Christ that values people above consumption, that recognizes the importance of connection and relationship over the ability to buy and own things. This is the community Christians need to be expending energy here and now building, because it is going to take a lot of hard work.
In the meantime, however, I think scoring political tribe points by pointedly and publicly boycotting certain businesses, while still engaging in the overall amoral capitalist system, and all the oppression and coercion it uses, is not only morally inconsistent, but is also a distraction. Like so many things in this social media age, it is a way for people to publicly proclaim their political allegiance, to signal their inclusion in a certain group. It is like the preening of a peacock.
Our energy is better spent elsewhere. Build a community. Don’t just mime your inclusion in one.
Justin DaMetz 
Whenever I go somewhere that society has deemed immoral due to X reason I feel a twinge of guilt but then I think, I don’t want to drive 30 minutes to a more socially approved store. Waste of expensive gas.
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My point is more, waste of environmentally damaging gas, when it happens over and over and over again. But then again, wherever I go, I’m probably patronizing a place that is doing a lot of environmental damage as well! Really, there are no good options here, and that’s the struggle.
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Right! 👍🏻
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Maybe I just shop where I want because businesses tell you what you want so you’ll shop there. Pick your battles
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Allow me to respectfully disagree. If it is true that “the enemy of the good is the perfect’, then I think your standard of perfection is not helpful to the creation of the good. Boycotting a business that is trashing the planet or exploiting its laborforce has a long and effective history. Without boycotts and other economic actions, manufacturers would still be padlocking the exit doors to the fire escapes. Of the many ways to change a system that is harmful to society is boycotting it. To compeletely divorce oneself from an economy as you suggest is actually to give it a pass, abdicating our Christian responsiblity to the least of Jesus’ brothers and sisters who are most exploited by unjust people or situations. In order to help create justice, we must stay engage and discerning. Micah 6:8 teaches us to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. We cannot do that and ignore how we spend our money, particularly spending habits that we can actually change. Thanks for your time.
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Kevin, thank you so much for this kind and thoughtful response and challenge! One of the best things I get to do with my blog is float out in the world half-baked or partially formed ideas like this. I don’t know that I am fully convinced by my own argument in this piece, but I needed to go through the process of writing and engaging with the ideas to move down the path towards my own belief about the subject. In that process, thoughts like yours are very helpful.
I agree in most cases about the perfect being the enemy of the good. But where I struggle in this case is, where do I draw the lines? What I’m seeing from many progressive activists is that we need to not go to Chick-Fil-A, and we need to not go to Hobby Lobby. A few other people make cases against Wal Mart, or Papa Johns, or Jimmy Johns, or what have you. And then you see places like Target, like Starbucks, like Costco, all held up as paragons of consumer virtue. But those lines look really blurry to me! The biggest issues out there, to me, are climate change, and the dangers of free market capitalism on workers and consumers. So how do I decide which businesses to boycott over those, because almost no one is meeting the standard I’d like to see. I don’t want to be a perfectionist. But the standard I see set is that if a business is doing something bad, I need to submit my protest in the form of refusing to patronize that place anymore. If I do go there, it’s considered tacit support for bad things (which is a larger logical fallacy I generally reject in most arenas.)
Theologically, I feel that the creation of an alternate polis, in line with the ideas of Yoder and Hauerwas and the like, is the best answer for Christians. And so that’s why I advocate here for separation; but I don’t think that needs to include disengagement. Instead, its the creation of an alternative vision that stands beside the status quo, and entices involvement because it is a better way of being the world, not an attempt to reject the world. But, I don’t think the path there is through boycotting here and there. I think piecemeal boycotts often distract from larger priorities.
I hope what’s shining through my ramblings in this comment, and my essay, is all the many questions I’m wrestling with on this. I just don’t know what the answer is, where we draw the lines, what is beyond the pale and what isn’t, and how I should engage as a (unwitting) consumer in our modern economy. I don’t expect you to have all the answers, but I sure do love the conversation, and I treasure all the little places it reveal a bit more light.
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Jason: And thank you for your thoughtful reply. I totally get the notion of self-discovery through writing. It always seems to me that I understand something better if I try to write it down – the process of writing is as much self-discovery as it is an expression of thought.
I also understand your puzzlement about “boundaries” – where do we start and where to we stop in our walk of faith? When do we overstep ourselves? When do we fall short? What does “getting it right” it look like? Someone taught me once about what he called “the daily struggle”. Essentially, it is the daily struggle with how we live, move, and have our being as followers of Jesus. We are never a finished work, and we have to take it one day at a time. I think if we try to do everything to perfection, we are trying to boil the ocean. It’s real tough to boil the ocean. I can boil a pot of water, but not the ocean. I can cook a lot of good meals with a hot pot of water!
The notion of an alternative polis is attractive, no doubt. I myself am fascinated by intentional communities and the new monasticism, but the entire separation from society as promoted by Ron Drehr (a la’ The Benedict Option) strikes me as wrong-headed. Jesus never did that. He was up to his elbows in the warp and woof of common, daily life. No doubt, the early church of Acts, with its common life and shared benefits/burdens, was a new thing in the world, but they lived their lives right in the heart of the world, often in what is called “the abandoned corners of empire”. If we are to be salt and yeast in the world, we have to live in the world.
Sorry to ramble myself. Thanks much for the opportunity to reply. Pax!
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