Category: Cultural Commentary

Why I Don’t Boycott Hobby Lobby

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.

Christians Against Christian Nationalism

I’ve been very clear and forthright in this space about my alarm over the growing tendency for the Christian right in this country to identify our faith with the American state, and recently, with the Trump Administration. Increasingly, the identity “Christian” in this country is coming to be more and more associated with ideas of nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry, anger, and partisan politics. By continually invoking Christianity as a basis for their political engagement, and by attaching religious monikers and praise to Donald Trump, many on the Christian Right are blurring the line, for those outside the faith, between right wing politics and the Church. I wrote about this tendency in my thesis this year.christian nationalism

In this atmosphere, it is more important than ever that Christians who reject this kind of Christian nationalism stand up and make their voices heard. This is the idea behind the public statement “Christians Against Christian Nationalism.” As a Christian theologian, I am more than willing to sign my name to this statement. Here it is in full:

As Christians, our faith teaches us everyone is created in God’s image and commands us to love one another. As Americans, we value our system of government and the good that can be accomplished in our constitutional democracy. Today, we are concerned about a persistent threat to both our religious communities and our democracy — Christian nationalism.

Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.

 As Christians, we are bound to Christ, not by citizenship, but by faith. We believe that:

  • People of all faiths and none have the right and responsibility to engage constructively in the public square.

  • Patriotism does not require us to minimize our religious convictions.

  • One’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, should be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community.

  • Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.

  • Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.

  • America’s historic commitment to religious pluralism enables faith communities to live in civic harmony with one another without sacrificing our theological convictions.

  • Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.

  • We must stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation—including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of worship—against religious communities at home and abroad.

Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue, or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.

If you agree, please click here and add your name.

A Migrant Mother’s Journey

Watch this video. See a mother trying desperately to find a new life for her children. See her tears because drug gangs in her home of Honduras killed her husband, took her home, left her boys in danger. See her anger when she tells her kids the government of Honduras did nothing because they are poor. See the blisters, the dehydration, the dangerous, desperate crossing of the river on a raft. See the young man describing his fruitless two year search for work. See that these aren’t violent and scary monsters that Fox News is telling you they are, but are human beings, mothers, children, young men, trying to get away from violence and unemployment and wrenching poverty.

For decades, we – you and I and America -have told them that America is the greatest, safest, richest, most compassionate and desirable place on earth. They took our words seriously, they believed our promises, they accepted the invitation on our Statue of Liberty as authentic, and not a cruel PR trick. Now, 6000 believers in the American promise – 2300 children! – are at our door and the question is, what are we going to do? Are we going to embrace fear? Are we going to tear gas them? Are we going to throw up our hands and decide the hard work is too daunting , that human lives aren’t worth getting our hands dirty and solving problems? Are we now outsourcing the promise of the Statue of Liberty to Mexico, too?

We have to find compassion. We have to stop being afraid. We have to stop believing the lies – the lies of our president, who tells us these people are evil; the lies of right wing media, who tells us they are dangerous; the lies of the rich and powerful, who tells us if we take in these people, we won’t be able to afford to take care of our own, when in fact we are rich enough and smart enough to do both, we just choose not to. We have to take their pleas for asylum seriously, we have to understand we have a duty, an obligation, because we are responsible for what is happening in Honduras and El Salvador and all across Central America. We have to live up to our own promise.

And, for those of us who are Christians, we must remember that Christ himself was a migrant, that Scripture and the tradition demands our compassion and sacrifice on behalf of the stranger and the immigrant. This isn’t an optional piece of the Christian faith, no more consequential than grape juice or wine at communion. This kind of love and compassion, put to work for others, is the very center of our commitment as disciples of Christ. That means that, no matter the reality of immigration laws or processes, we Christians have a calling to figure it out and respond to the pain of fleeing mothers and children and young men and old men and anyone. This isn’t a Democrat or Republican thing. Screw politics. This is a human being thing.